Guide to Making Gold

Q. Gold? What's that?
A. At low levels, you might not even have gold yet.
For those unaware:

100 copper - 1 silver
100 silver - 1 gold
100 gold - A lot of money

Q. So, how do I make gold? And fast.
A. Making gold is almost an inappropriate term. Quite often, you'll be making silver over and over again, which will turn into gold. Very few drops in this game sell for a gold or more. When they do, it will almost always be at the auction house.

Q. Auction House?
A. There are three Auction Houses in the game: Ironforge (Alliance), Orgrimmar (Horde), and Gadgetzan (Both). These can be either an excellent place to make money, or a slow, certain doom that results in you blowing all your money on equipment. Be advised, you WILL want to buy anything you can use once you get to the auction house. That being said, you can greatly increase your revenue by visiting here frequently. As a very basic example, consider linen cloth: A stack of 20 sells for 2s60c to vendors. While this isn't nothing, the same stack can go from anywhere to 25s-30s (or more, if you're lucky) at the AH. That's a 1000% increase. Generally, any profession created items or items needed by professions sell very well at the AH, as well as any rare items. More detailed specifics will be covered elsewhere in the guide.

Q. What if I don't wan't to/Can't get to the AH?
A. Well, you have a couple of options: - Save your "greens"/rare items in your bank - Collect VERYTHING you see, and NPC it - Try trading to other players on an individual basis

I highly reccommend saving anything that looks valuable, and eventually selling it at the auction house, because it most likely is. As far as regular junk is concerned, you should have no trouble etting 5 bags of some slot value very early on, so pick up everything you see and sell it. It does add up.

Q. That's all good and all, but so far you're just telling me to "kill stuff". A. Again, specifics will be covered later. However, in general, if you want immediate "money", humanoids drop opper/silver, as well as various types of cloth. Both add up VERY quickly if you decide to "Farm" them for a while. They also seem to drop equipment more often than other types of enemies, so you can almost never go wrong with fighting them. Other than that, nothing short of game experience and selling items to vendors will let you know what enemies are worth more than thers. Spiders tend to have good drops as well. It all depends.

Q. What professions make the most gold?
A. I'm not nearly experienced with all the trade skills, especially at 200+ skill levels, but in general, if you want to make money, especially at lower levels, you can't go wrong with kinning/mining. Both ore and leather sell very well at the auction house. Even a stack of copper bars goes for upwards of 20s/stack.

Q. I followed your advice, and I barely make anything!

A. Context is important:
At level 1-10, you'll be lucky to sell any individual item for more than a silver. Stacks of things will still sell generally low, as will equipment. Also consider that killing level 8 humanoids will get you around 30c, while fighting level 30s can get you upwards of 2s if you're lucky. Don't expect to make gold at any decent rate before level 20. At level 25 you may start to see gold amounts increase slowly. The only exception to this is of course, professions. You can make a bunch of gold mining and skinning early on. At low levels, it's more about being able to afford skills for your class and professions than anything else.