Don’t disregard low level patterns. Take for example [item]Toughened Leather Gloves[/item]. These Rare (blue) level 22 gloves sell really well on most servers.
The materials for these gloves are 4 medium leather, 2 cured medium hide, 2 spider silk, and 2 Elixir of Defense.
The leather and the hide will come very easy for you if you are also a skinner (as most leather workers are), the spider silk drops off spiders level 15-32. The Elixir of Defense is available from alchemist friends or guildmates, or off the Auction House.
Depending on your server, these gloves will fetch 2 – 10 gold apeice, and your materials costs should be about half that.
If you take the time to actually gather as much of the materials yourself instead of paying for them on the auction house, then you will be able to pocket a nice profit for a little time investment.
This is another occasion where the Auctioneer add-on really shines. Unless you’re in-game checking the auction house all the time, you may not know what crafted items are selling really well on your server. In fact, [item]Toughened Leather Gloves[/item] may not sell well at all on your server – Auctioneer will help you determine this, and help you find other crafted items to focus on instead.
Now, good business dictates that you do whatever you can to lower your expenses, and as a result, your profit margin will go up.
In this example, our profits will be limited by the cost of Elixir of Defense. Since a leatherworker/skinner cannot make them, and they are not available anywhere except through the auction house or from other players, you’re at the mercy of others if you wish to craft this item (I’ve seen a few servers where the cost of a single Elixir of Defense is higher than what Toughened Leather Gloves go for!)
How can we get around this limitation? With a Trade Mule (more on this tomorrow!)