Time is Money, Friend.

Sure we here this from the goblins all the time but was does this mean to us, The World of Wacraft player?

Every moment you spend in game down to the second can be classified as a gain or loss of in game money. In fact this is exactly like real life; except, you have much less in game cost like rent and more in game cost like new clothing. But even with an understand that everything gains money or losses money the game can be confusing... say you just spent 25 gold on a Pattern... lets name the pattern http://thottbot.com/i6661 and at the time you though MAN THIS IS GREAT I can resell for 40 gold... then 7 more post came up at 15 gold each the next day. (This happened to me when I re-rolled Horde from Alliance) Well you could resell that and you would have a loss of 10 gold or you could keep it and use it netting a loss of less (or a gain if your fish sell). The purchasing of items and selling of items only requires a small amount of time. The collecting of raw material or "faction items" requires not only you to of a high level (to see great gains) but for you to invest a great deal of time farming those materials. Depending on your server and character can determine which is the best. I will say that "faction items", raw materials, and high level items gain huge amounts of money when expansions are opened because of the imbalance of supply to demand. I will also say this... Never Never Never buy a single weapon/armor from AH. Go online and check for all the quest for an instance then run that instance till you get all the quest done... then move to the next one. After a full blue set you can focus on quest... hell you can just focus on quest that are your level or low and not have to even instance if you want... I do find that instances are much easier as an experienced player can make a macro to assist (or heal) the main tank and just watch T.V. If you are the rare tank player then you might be able to use some aoe spells and state "if you are not assisting I am not tanking." But the most important thing I can say about playing a character to 70 is to make many characters at once. When you get full reseted exp you can level two times while doing quest before your rested exp is all used. This coupled with the ability to send massive amounts of raw materials to your other characters will easily give you a huge edge on today's playing field. Say you have 5 characters that are leveling from 14-16 this week and every character that levels from 14-16 will gain 100 linen... well thats 500 linen you can send to your tailoring and then THAT is 167 Brown Linen Thinger and THAT is 200 Pixxy Dust and 50 Lesser Magic Essence. As you can see you just made yourself powerlevel enchanting from 1 to 60 only on disenchants and then with your 200 dust and 50 Lesser Magic you can easily get up to 125 enchanting! (In fact 150 enchanting would be a more realistic expectation and 150 enchanting can disenchant up to level 40 items!)

If you level up 4-5 characters at once make sure you pick characters that differ greatly. My suggestions are

Frost Mage (All Frost then arcane) With Mining and Herb (Perhaps your server will pay more for skinning the herb--- sure as heck easier to level *Skin in BM*)
At level 46 my record for AOEing equal or higher level monster is 14 mobs at once at the pirate ships in tarnis during Xmas event. =)
P.S. Talents changing soon =)
You meat and potatoes kind of build. Get a kill quest finish it in 3 pulls. Frost nova an mobs away from a node then mine/herb it for the skill increase. Good money and good items... quick also!

A Healing Priest (Mix both branches while you level) With tailoring and Mining (Mining is needed for Engineering, Gem crafting and Blacksmithing so there is normally a good demand).
Also being a healer you are normally in good demand for instances as well and can generally get messages while sitting in town for groups. BlackFathom Deeps is a MUST for the omgwtflawlpwnwand
The choice of Tailoring and Mining is for two different reasons. Tailoring will enable you to trade the large amounts of spare cloth in for AH goodies like disenchantable items, bags, and BoP cloth items. The mining just goes to promote the cash flow. During The Lich King Drop mining after 2 months and pick up inscription OR read the tester forums in order to know what you need to level to the highest inscription level you can (375?) and collect all the needed items BEFORE Lich king in order to be THAT MUCH RARER as one of the FIRST inscribers on your server. (Inscription will most likely need rep grinding and instance grinding in order to collect rarer patterns much like most professions excluding engineering and gathering professions)
After seeing a paladin attack 8 mobs and live even after 4 more mobs where added because of runners and he wasn't even low on mana or life (much less used his divine shield or lay of hands) I have to suggest them as the next character you make Tankadin. *Note this is based on character Aonite of blackrock I solid choice of professions for this lad would be Mining and Gem Cutting. Recently if you had and Gem cutter and an alchemist you stood to make thousands upon thousands of gold by cutting gems for the New Seasons' arena gear AND the first season to be open to non-arena PvP players (casuals). Even just the profession of cutting gems from AH for profit was well rewarded... however this requires a good deal of FACTION GRINDING AND INSTANCE RUNNING in order to get all the rare aka money making gem cuts. Once you have those cuts however you are able to prospect ores from AH and then cut and resell for profit.

This one is very... interesting
Stealth Rogue With (Dis)Enchanting and Engineering (All Combat then stealth)
The reasoning behind this is the rogue is able to stealth to chest and has many abilities to get himself out of trouble... the engineering helps him with AOE stunning bombs a belt that makes him invis and many many other tricks that add greatly to his ability to get to that impossible to reach chest. The enchanting is more for the ability to "shard" BoP items that drop from end game chest. Recently Blizzard has taken many steps to stop this VERY profitable enterprise by not only making chest un-lootable in combat but by taking away many of the chest that rogues used to reset instances and visit over and over and over. Also the ability to reset instances has been changed as well. Perhaps this combination is now outdated but if blizzard has taught me anything it is that new content is the same as old. So in the lich king there may be many chest to ninja ^.^ The change to unlootable in combat will however greatly effect the ability of this. Worse case... you have to fight some gaurds at a chest before you can loot 2-3 greens ever single time you go to the place... not that bad if you ask me ;-) However the disenchanting also has another effect that you can use to your advantage and this is the ability to buy items from AH very cheap and disenchant them in order to sell the material. In essence you are paying many people silver or gold in order to sell the material and make more silver or gold then you pay them for (or enchant if you want to try that *waste of time most times since people "WTS XXX FREE Your mats"*). That strat is how places like McDonalds spread world wide.... so might be a good one?

A GREAT fifth character to make would have to be the warlock With Herb and alchemy. I have heard from a class mate that he makes a good deal of money by targeting monsters that you "herb skin" in order to collect rarer herbs that drop in the area. In TBC there are many places to not only farm monsters for herbs but in order to mine the corpse as well. If this continues in WotLK is questionable since Blizz has not been very big on mining or herb skinning in the past. With that talent build it is quite easy to grind continuously never stopping to even drink. Here are some tips on how to play a warlock.

After playing one for 3 years I would NOT suggest druid because while you might be able to heal or damage or tank you do NOT get all the nice spells and talents that other classes do. You pretty much fail at everything end game.

Speaking of falling short end-game Paladins and Shamans are fantastic to level up to 70 but once you are 70 you tend to get bunched up in one of two places... Pressing the same button a billion times in raids or playing PvP and getting cheap fast epics. Because of this I would Highly recommend one of these classes for an Alt. Paladins are very good raid healers and Shamans are very good PvPers. (And they both do everything amazingly well at lower levels) A good profession for one of these would be Alchemy and Herbalism. The reason is you can quickly produce yourself gold in moments by buying any needed primals and crafting a Primal might then go and PvP in order to gain epics. Very good casual player strat.

Numismatics--- Time is money as well ;-)
Name