There are few things you NEED to buy off the auction house to improve your character.

Look at it this way: There's literally nothing you can buy off the Auction House that you won't get an upgrade for through normal play. Every gold piece you spend on a BoE weapon or armor piece is a gold piece not saved toward truly good purchases. Hooking up your Hunter with a Valano's Longbow on dinging 70 may seem like it will make it easier to get that next upgrade, but it really makes little difference in your performance. You don't need great gear to do most Heroics or to start Karazhan, so don't waste money on BoE gear. Run normal five mans to gear up! Then hit Heroics and Karazhan for epics.

This goes doubly true for leveling up a character. You may want to spend a minimal amount of money every ten levels or so if you're skipping dungeons to power level, and your quest reward gear is out of date, but this should be kept to a minimum.

If you're trying to save money, it's for those big ticket items, a flying mount, then an epic flying mount, an epic recipe from a Tier 5 or Tier 6 raid instance, materials to power level a crafting profession that will pay off with a very high quality epic perk.

It's also OK to buy item enhancements and enchanting materials for your gear once you do start getting epics. Be sure to only buy the raw materials, and have someone else do the assembly from your guild or friends list. WoW is a social game, and among the benefits of socializing are the economic. (Just make sure that you give back as well! Whether by trading services for tradeskilling or just helping people with a quest or instance.)

Here's a tip within a tip: Any time you're standing around a capitol city, say while in between battleground queues, go to the auction house and search for Netherweave Cloth. Buy all of the cloth that's listed for under 3g a stack, or 15s per piece.

Now, make it all into stacks of Heavy Netherweave Bandages, which vendor for 3g per 10.

See what I did there? I do this every day and make a small profit off of someone else's ignorance of the marketplace.

What did I know that they didn't? One, I knew not to get crazy undercutting prices on the Auction House. Two, I knew that bandages vendor for more than raw cloth, and how much that price is.

That's just one example of making a profit from price cutters. If you know the true market value of an item, you can often make a profit from speculation by buying and reselling underpriced goods.

It's also important to know the worth of items when you're doing any kind of grinding. Ideally, you want to grind on the same mob over and over again, so that you get the same trash loot drops, which stacks save bag space, and make for less trips to a vendor, and more grinding uptime for the items you're actually farming. However, bags do tend to fill up.

So, is that Brittle Horn worth more than that Dirt-Covered Fur? And is a stack of either worth more than the Stoppable Force? The vendor value of gray items can be significant, and if you need to clear bag space, it pays to know which grays have higher value than the others.

For the Auction House, I highly recommend the Auctioneer UI Addon. It's been one of the most popular mods forever, and there's a good reason.

For sorting out your junk loot, I like SellValue.

Two guys reached the gold cap. How'd he do it? Playing the Auction House. Capital gainers do well in WoW, just like in real life, if they're smart.

The first thing you need to make money on the Auction House, is Auctioneer. Don't leave home without it.

Here are some more tips:

Enchanting materials don't have listing fees. That means you get to ask a fair market price for them, and if some yutz comes along and undercuts you, you're out no money when the items get returned to your inbox.

If you are constantly getting undercut, then either there is a glut on the market for your item, or you have misjudged the current going price for it. In general, I won't list a BoE blue or green more than twice in a row if I'm getting undercut. I'll wait a bit then relist one more time. After that, the sucker gets disenchanted. There's no point in letting the Auction House fees eat away at your profit, and enchanting mats always sell. For patterns, I just wait until there's a lull in the market, and post when I can get my asking price.

The weekends are a busy time at the Auction House, and this can sometimes work for you and against you. In general, weekends are a good time to move big ticket stuff and a bad time to sell anything that can be easily gathered. Weekends are a good time to go bargain hunting, for a weekday resell.

One way to outfox the undercutters is to put one of an item up that you know will be undercut. Price it a bit above the normal market value. Now the undercutters will come along, and they will price slightly below you. You now list the rest of your items at a reasonable market value slightly below the undercutters.

When someone sorts their Auction House searches by price, the sort is based on the minimum bid. That means if you have a lower minimum bid, your item will show up first, even if your buyout price is higher. Of course, you don't want to take this too far: Never set a minimum bit at a price you aren't willing to sell an item for.

In general, crafting supplies sell for more than the finished goods on the auction house, with few exceptions.

Crafting professions should be taken for the benefit they provide your character first, and for their money-making potential last, if at all.

The bottom line is in most cases, the raw materials sell for more than the finished goods. There is no value adding process in WoW, like in the real world. People will pay more for the raw materials so that they can reap the rewards of the top end crafted goods, than they will for finished goods.

So, if you can sell your stacks of raw leather for more than your leather armor, why make the armor?

However, some items are profitable. If you can buy the materials for significantly less than the finished goods sell for, you can make a profit.

My opinions and experience with the professions follows.

Alchemy gives you two ways to make money, by selling your transmute cooldowns, and by creating various consumables.

There's also Transmute Primal Earth to Water. On my server, Primal Earth sells for 5.5 gold currently, while Primal Water sells for 30g. So, this is an easy 24.5g a day.

Alchemy has the advantage of being a fairly cheap crafting skill to level, and the perk items from it are very nice trinkets, called Alchemist Stones. Many of the potions are profitable, even at lower levels.

All in all, it's a decent profession.

Blacksmithing is a huge money sink. It is an expensive profession to level, and often the materials are worth more than the finished product. If you do manage to gather all of the materials for a high end recipe, it's at the cost of other activities that are more profitable.

If you buy the materials and manufacture your items, then you are engaging in speculation that could go either way. Many people will simply have a friend craft the item rather than paying AH markup.

I rate Blacksmithing pretty low on gold making potential.

Do it for the goggles. See Blacksmithing above, but even worse in all aspects as a gold maker, because those problems are compounded by the fact that most Engineering items require Engineering to use.

You can make money by doing enchants for people, but this requires you to stand around a city and advertise in the /trade channel.

If you spent the same time farming mobs, doing quests, or playing the Auction House, you'd make a LOT more gold.

The best way to make gold with Enchanting is to disenchant green drops you get from normal questing or grinding, and sell the enchanting mats. Remember, these have no listing fee, so they're pretty profitable.

You can also grind lower level instances and disenchant the drops. I was making about 100-150g per hour on my Druid by farming Scholomance solo over one weekend. It's not the fastest money, but somewhat fun.

From what I've seen, blue quality gems tend to go for a small markup that may make Jewelcrafting worthwhile.

Also, as with disenchanting, prospecting ore for gems can be profitable as well.

Armor kits and leg armor typically sell well, and for a fair profit. These are the way to go to make money with Leatherworking.

As with Leatherworking, the spellthread leg enhancements sell for a very nice profit.

These are the only thing I do to make money with my tailor, as they have a very good mark up on my server, so it's pretty safe to buy the mats without fear of losing money on the deal.

The gathering professions (mining, herbalism) can be good money, but you MUST have an epic flying mount to compete.

It seems like mining and herb nodes are much further apart in Outland than in Azeroth, and consequentially, you need to be FAST to beat the next guy to the node. If you've ever had an epic flier swoop in on a node you were riding for, you know what I mean.

Once you do have an epic flying mount, both mining and herbalism are very profitable, because crafting materials sell well.

One note on mining: Check the price of the ORE on the Auction House before making bars of metal! Adamantite Ore often sells for more than the bars, because it can be Prospected by Jewel Crafters.

In the case of Skinning, you don't have to worry about the epic flier so much. In fact, if you want to cut the competition, you can get a lot of leather by going into the Black Morass instance and farming the normal mobs inside.

All three professions can be profitable, with the caveat of mining and herbalism having a bit of unwanted competition.

Miners and Skinners should use the Gatherer UI mod. It's invaluable in planning out your gathering routes.

Grinding mobs is a tried and true method of making money. You should look for mobs that sell items with a high value for the time spent on the auction house. Usually, this means farming one of the following:

1. Primals
2. Reputation items
3. Leather

Generally Primals are the best money of the batch. The elementals that drop them drop high value vendor loot and cash as well. The trick to farming Primals is to find an area that's not overfarmed, and that's not easy. This will vary from server to server.

Reputation items are always a good seller. Scryer and Aldor factions both have great rewards, including unique shoulder enchantments that are widely desired. The reputation turn in items for each sell very well. (That's Arcane Tome, Sunfury Signet, Fel Armanents and Mark of Sargeras.) The lower level signets and marks aren't worth farming. Humanoid and Demon mobs drop these, and have good loot tables besides.

As noted in Leatherworking, raw leather sells well. If you have two gathering skills, Leatherworking is a nice addition.

Here's a guide to chosing a grinding spot I wrote a while back to teach beginners the basics.

There are two ways to make money questing.

The first is to simply complete regular quests you didn't do prior to turning 70. If you do all of the quests in Netherstorm after hitting 70, that's about 2000 gold. I like to save Blade's Edge Mountains, Shadowmoon Valley, and Netherstorm. I don't go through and do all of the quests in one sitting after dinging, but go back to the zones when I'm bored with other gold making activities and knock a few quests out from one of the quest hubs.

The second method is to do your Daily Quests. These involve everything from Cooking and Fishing dailies, to Dungeon and Heroic Dungeon dailies, to PVP and faction specific dailies. Basically, these are quests you can do over again once per day each, up to 25 total as of patch 2.4. The advantage here, besides the gold is that you can also gain faction with certain groups, which provide rewards including unique mounts and useful items.

I think that the new Isle of Quel'Danas quests introduced in patch 2.4 are the best available. There's a nice guide to them on WoWHead.

There's comprehensive daily quest info on WoWWiki.

I suggest you use Ligheaded UI mod to help with quests, particularly if you're going through skipped zones. (You'll memorize the dailies soon enough.)