Best/Worst Tradeskill profession (financially)

From a financial perspective, I'd say that weaponsmith becomes less and and less viable the higher you get. The problem is what another poster mentioned: why buy a T7 mastercrafted sword, when you can get a legendary sword with better stats and a higher damage rating? Miss that proc? No problem, just buy an adornhment.
In my experience, the vast majority of weapons that are sold are lower tier (primarily steel, feysteel, a few ebon). Past T5, the rare ore is cheap and plentiful, and the weapons are not nearly as good as what you can get from running a few instances or searching the broker.
Unfortunately, Domino has left weaponsmiths screwed to the post for a very long time and there's no indication that's going to change any time in the near future.

I'm one of those crazies who's got one of each TS class. My experience thus far is that, as Calthine says, you just need to take the time to know your market. Being lazy, I don't always take the time to do that.

To this point, on my server, here's my breakdown of what I've found:

Provi can do no wrong. I can have huge markups (5-10x) and everything sells. *EVERYTHING*
Tailor: bags, bags bags! Your best margins, ironically, may not be on the biggest bags. But no matter what kind they are, they sell. Occasionally the appearance stuff sells, and scattered bits of armor, but nothing sells like the bags.
WW: Invis / stealth / speed totems usually move -- and ammo. They get so tedious to make, and the totems can be scattered across so many tiers that I just gave up.
Sage: No idea. That class levels so ridiculously fast that I never needed to try to sell things. Did this one to upgrade spells for me and my guildies, not to make money directly.
Alchy: Crap shoot on potions / poisons... See Sage.
Armorer: Meh. Not much I recall selling as far as regular stuff goes. No consumables, so your best bet here is to put in the effort to cultivate customers for Mastercrafted gear.
Carpenter: strongboxes (see bags above), repair kits are OK consumable, but pretty low margin. Rugs / portraits / tapestries are slow, but reasonably steady movers. Furniture is something you usually need to advertise / cultivate customers for.
Jeweler: See sage / alchy... Imbued rings usually move well.
Weaponsmith: LOL! Half the stuff on the broker is being offered at a LOSS?! Duh... whah? I did sell a couple rare adornments -- only high-profit items I've sold so far. To this point, my output is direct to vendor, writs, or trash for my transmuter. That being said, I've not tried to market anything -- basic vendor research leads me to a grim prognosis for this profession. Stuff can look really cool, but there's no interest in the market -- at least on my server.

I TS for the following reasons:
1) I enjoy the 'ding' (hence 9 crafters)
2) I like to help out friends / guildies w/ nifty gadgets / twinks / upgrades / what have you
3) I'm a nut.

I wonder if Domino is actually getting the hint here? As much as tradeskilling has improved, you have borked Weaponsmiths. Fix them, please.

Kordran wrote:

WS were pre-borked. And she said at Fan Faire that Kunark came first (apply that to all TS classes whose finals require itemization). Keep yer undies on

Well may be i will start to make good money soon with key totems.
But the many undewater breathing totem that i did long ago are still wasting space in my room.
The problem with totems is that they use one broker slot for 15 silver and the level 28 ones (snow bear, snake)
also go for 15 silver. According to me the market of totem is easily saturated at low levels.
However as you say i saw invisibility totems around 2gold and i remember buying 1- of them for a dark elf
who was not able to negociate since he was not welcome in kelethin.

So the situation of each tradeskill may well depend on the player level.

I also noticed a sharp drop in adept 3 prices, was it speculation ? are people rolling sages
to make their main spells inducing competion ? I don't know ... It's possible that crazy adet 3 price
gave people incentive to create a pure craftman sage.

Anyway at least i made a craftman sage that will be in charge to craft my spells,
so i won't pay 5 gold for an apprentice 4 .
This may also add some additionnal value to my rares. What is clear is that the leveling is simply
amazingly fast. I have a large backlog of blue recipe that i never did and i probaly dinged
21 without making even a level 20 recipe. I never did any rune and i never did twice the same thing.
Now i m getting less recipes but still at least 2x(priest + druid+ mage + wizard+ enchanter) that is 10 recipes minimum.
I remember my woodworker getting only 2 non rare recipes ....


So in anaycase i advice people to have a craftman sage, it levels very fast
and raw material cost 2 copper (exept the roots that should be gathered by your main).

I have a

70 carpenter.
70 provisioner.
70 alchemist.

I harvest ALL my own good so my only cost is time and fuel.

I make the most money off rares i do nto use. Second is strong boxes and patch kits, 3rd is adept III fight spells,4th is grandmaster potions and 5th is Xegonberry based drinks.

I make about 15 plat a day now for about 2 hours of harvesting and 2 hour of crafting.

Many have said something similar, but I will add my spin:
I think that being a good tradeskiller has absolutely nothing to do with your class, it has more to do with (1) finding a niche...something that people need, and (2) being a customer-service type of sales person.
I currently have 7 TS characters (everything but a weaponsmith and a carpenter) and I have found that I can make a really healthy amount of money with each of them. Usually, I try to pick 2-3 items that I can concentrate on that will not bore me to death, and then I concentrate on those areas. Study the brokers and tells for help in the chat channels and you will quickly discover what those areas should be.
If you have an armor/weapon/adept rare, announce in an appropriate channel that you will make a custom piece of mastercrafted armor for $X. If you don't, keep your LFW tag on and let people come to you.
If you can make consumables, packs, or boxes, find 2-3 that sell well and concentrate on those.
If you can make adornments, make a couple of examples and then display those in an appropriate channel.
Note that I am NOT talking about constant spamming of channels (I HATE that). I am merely saying do a (really) short pitch once or twice a night, and then let the people come to you. I don't advertise at all, but still get 10 or 12 requests per week to make items because people know (1) I'm nice, (2) I charge reasonable prices, and (3) I will work with them to get exactly what they want without hosing them over.
That leads to another, last piece of advice: Be friendly and reasonable. I price everything on the cheap side. If an item can be imbued, I automatically do it for free (the imbue mats are cheap). I hand out items I think people should be using and/or aware of. I do all of this because (1) I like to help people, and I am not just in it for the money, but (2) I know if I treat people right, they will have me make more things for them. It works for me.
Good luck!

You remind me of my favorite promotional tool. Of course, this only works well with consumables.... When KoS came out I made bagsfull of totems and sat in Sinking Sands giving them out for free, one each to a customer.

My own experience (as someone who has all the crafting profs at or very near cap) is that knowing the market is the key to making coin through tradeskilling. But even if you know the markets well, you will still not make the same coin that an adventurer can make in the same time

For me, my weaponsmith makes no profit what-so-ever. Weapons normally sell on broker for less than the rare's do.
Armourer is in a similar situation although not quite so bad.
My carpenter makes a nice, steady, regular amount of coin. I can pretty much predict what/how much I will sell in any given week.
All of the other classes have good and bad weeks but generally make around the same amounts of cash over a few months.
Consumable items (provi stuff, poisons, totems etc..) always sell quite fast, if you want to make a lot of them and have a small mark-up on each.
Larger priced, rare items (ad3's, rare-furniture etc...) will sell slower, but for a large mark-up on the one craft.

The mistake I see a lot of new crafters make is expecting everything they craft to sell and just throwing all their grindage up. Fact is, for the most part common (non-rare) crafted doesn't sell much (there are obvious exceptions like consumables, some jewelry, furniture). So people grind crafting, chucking everything on the market, then get upset when they're out of broker slots and nothing is selling. If you sell gear or spells, it's not unreasonable to expect to vendor-dump most of your common goods.

The other things to look at on the market are a) market scarcities and b) market flooding. If there are 15 pages of chameleon totems on the market, I won't bother making any even though it's a popular utility item. But if I notice there are never any Pristine Imbued Oak Fighting Batons on the market ever, I might make one and see if it sells or not. If it sells zippy quick, then I might make two (I'm also prepared to Transmute it if it sits there too long!)

While I agree that there are no best / worst tradeskills, some ARE more fun than others. On Blackburrow server, my sage makes good money selling spells, but I have a LOT more fun with my Carpenter, making items for my friends and guildmates to decorate thier in game homes with

I have a 70 armorer that doesn't make a lot of money (xegonite armor just doesn't move that well and I don't make the lower tiers even though there probably is profit there.) Back in the old Cobalt days, he made a mint, though.
I have a 70 sage that makes a ton of money.
I have a 70 jeweler that makes average money.
I have a 350 transmuter that makes great money.
Working on the others.
PS I only sell stuff that I make from rares. The rest I vendor (if I make it while leveling.)

The key to making money while crafting is to look at the market before you begin. I wait until I have about 15 of a rare. I buy the rares cheap on the broker (sometimes this takes awhile). Let's say I have 15 engraved leather pelts. If I can get them for under 12g then I'll buy them up. I never harvest --- takes too damn long. Anyway, I open my recipe book and open the broker window and see how much each item is selling for. Then I make 5 of each and put them on the broker, undercutting everyone (usually by a few gold - those undercutting by one cp should be ashamed of themselves). I usually make about 5-10 plat a week this way, and my tailor is only level 47 atm.
I just hate crafting stuff that won't sell for much profit. And I never sell the handcrafted stuff that I make to level or grind --- waste of space.