Work, work...

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Yes, the famous quote of the Orc peons. But could it fit better to our daily lives?
I know that aside from my main work in diplomacy I tend to spend most of my time either collecting herbs, mining, fishing or cooking. I also know that I am not the only one who has ended up with this kind of chores to keep the private or group economy floating. But what can we do to lessen our workload but still make enough copper to survive and repair our gear?
Here are some tricks that I have picked up during the years..

Getting started

Pick up one or two of the so called gold maker professions,  these are mining, herbalist or skinner. They will provide a base income that you will be able to build your empire on. The use of these professions do not cost anything to train up to a descent level as they do not need any materials. Either sell everything you collect or save for future use in your empire. These jobs can be done both by inexperienced adventurers and more experienced people who are also doing dailies.

Get a reliable banker who cares for your finances, keeps your auctions up to date and is able to sell the things that you collect in your bags when on trips.

This will get you a base income.

Enchanting and inscribing

When training up your professions you can ask if your banker may want to become your enchanter as well. Quite a handy extra job for a banker I must say. Every item you collect will pass through her hands at some point. This leads to our next point:

Recruit an enchanter to disenchant all low level and unusable gear that you find. And make it a habit to ask the group disenchanter to disenchant anything that you win but do not need. Usually even rare items are worth disenchanting rather then trying to sell.

Ask someone to become your scribe, the glyph market is still very busy and combining your herbalism with someone else's inscription talents will open up a flow of gold. But keep in mind to stay updated on what glyphs are selling good and what glyphs are rare on your auction house. There is no need to create glyphs that are selling for a few silver when there are glyphs around that can be sold for 30-100 gold pieces. Information on what to create is important. Ask your banker, she should know. Another great way to turn inscription into gold is to combine it with enchanting, creating this small papers that enchanters can use for storing their enchants can be sold for a good amount of money and stored enchants on the auction house are always in demand.

Last profession that is useful and can easily be turned into a gold factory is tailoring, there is always a high demand for bags and.. well.. there are a lot of fashionistas around.. bags and shirts sell, and they sell for nice amounts of money. When learning tailoring each apprentice will create a huge pile of low level gear that can be sent to your enchanter for either enchanting or disenchanting. Low level gear with a factory made enchant on can be sold for a much better sum then each one separately.
Please note that tailoring does not produce the same amount of gold as enchanting or inscription does, but it is a nice addition nonetheless.

The market

Each role in your empire will need to know the current prices and fluctuations on the market and it is up to your banker to supply them with that information. Each role will want to know the current prices on materials as well as the products that they can create with these materials. They are the ones with those lists so it is up to them to decide what products will be most profitable, but you will need to bully them to not create too many of each product as that will, in the long run, make prices drop. Keep rare items rare! This is easier to say then do as everyone will be tempted to create 10 red pirate shirts as they are going for 15 gold each.. But if you have that many of them out at one given time, chances are that there will be other people noticing your product. Well, you want other people to notice your products but you do not want your competitors to notice them as they will start creating the same items and undercutting your prices and in no time the whole market for that product will be in a downward spiral.