Don't be a lemming

One big mistake that many Warcraft players make is to find out how a particular player is making big money and then try to copy them. While this might sound like a good idea at first, there are a couple reasons why it causes problems.

First, it could be difficult to get set up to make gold the way they do. For instance, if someone is making a killing from selling a certain tailoring item on the Auction House, you could change profession to tailoring to try to cash in. But that would be very expensive to train. Raising a profession from scratch to a high level will cost so much gold that you'll be starting massively in the hole. You will have to make significant amounts of gold from your new method before you will break even.

The second issue is that many times by the time you get set up to make and sell an item, the phase that made it profitable has already passed. You go through all the work and cost of training up a new profession only to find out that the exact method you were going to use is no longer viable. This has happened to many people and it's not fun when it does.

Another thing is that different players are good at different things, and have different interests. While one person may make a killing by mining ore, someone else would be bored out of their mind doing the same thing. Likewise while a jewelcrafter may be able to make a steady 100 gold a day with only a few minutes of their time, it wouldn't work for someone that needed to make 500 gold a day because it simply doesn't scale up.

Lastly, remember that people often exaggerate. So before you run off trying to duplicate someone else's efforts, you may want to scale down in your mind how much they claim to be making.

Find Your Own Way

What you need to do to truly be successful at farming for gold in World of Warcraft is determine what method of earning gold works best for you. If you don't like spending more than a little time now and then, and you can live with making a steady but small stream of income, concentrate on developing a method that accomplishes it. For instance, a little bit of light AH trading, a short and sweet gathering route, or a single hub of daily quests.

If you have lots of time and want to amass money in a hurry, none of the above are going to be the answer for you. Maybe you can corner an entire market on the AH, develop a long routine of daily quests, or park yourself in a good mining location for hours at a time.

If you like doing quests, go on a mission to complete all of the quests in Wrath of the LIch King. The monetary rewards will be significant. If you hate questing, but like doing instances, get a few likeminded people together and work on running heroics repeatedly and selling or disenchanting all the loot.

The key is to find whatever fits in best with your own playing style and interests. This will set you up for long term success because you'll be motivated to stick with your chosen method. If that requires you to train into mining, so be it. If you have to dump a couple thousand gold into jewelcrafting, go for it. But make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons or you may find yourself really regretting it.