Not all players take pleasure in crafting. It can be tedious, time consuming, and the gear you produce can be replaced with drops in many cases at the same level. Hours can be spent running back and forth from auction house, to bank, to forge, to auction house, to forge, to bank, to Wowhead, back to auction house, and so on. If that doesn't appeal to you, the "Basic Income" might be perfect.
The problem many crafters run into is an age-old problem of "independent merchants and distributors" everywhere. In many cases, the stuff you can sell for the most profit is also the stuff you need to consume to make things. In many cases, professionals in WoW have to decide between leveling their profession and being able to afford pet food. One way to avoid that conundrum is to take two gathering professions. That way everything you gather, you can sell without consuming it, and you won't be worried about using up your ore to make armor or using up your herbs to make potions. You won't be able to make either!
"Basic Income" continued.
Taking two gathering professions means you just gather up what you find along your path, and then dump it in the auction house when you get a full stack of it. Many times, professionals will rake through the auction house looking for reagents, rather than farming them on their own. A leatherworker who is level 70 and has just started Leatherworking will probably be glad to buy stack after stack of low level leather, rather than riding their epic mount around Mulgore skinning cougars and wolves for a day and a half. So, you can play on the tendency of crafters to farm the auction house before they farm the wilderness, and make a lot of money from it.
I usually recommend Skinning be one of your gathering professions, if you go this route. You'll be killing a lot of beasts anyway, and it isn't like you'll need to track the corpse after you just made it. The leather you peel off your kills might not bring you piles of gold as you first start out, but there's almost always a leatherworker looking for a bushel of leather. The higher your targets' level, the better the leather you'll pull off them. Leatherworkers themselves can combine lower level leathers into higher, as well, so don't be discouraged if all you get is ruined scraps. They're not really ruined! Sell 'em to Joe Dragonscaler.
Mining is another good one to take. There is a high demand for ore at practically any given time. Mining is the only gathering profession whose resources are in demand by more than one crafting profession. What's more, that ore is in demand by three: Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewelcrafting all use the metal and stones obtained through mining. Whether to smelt or not is kind of a local decision, depending on the market. I have always had better luck selling unrefined ore than selling bars. Remember that Jewelcrafters are able to prospect raw ore rather than smelt it, sometimes getting precious stones out of it. If you smelt your ore before putting it on market, you'll lose the customer base of prospecting jewelcrafters, which can be quite lucrative.
As far as taking two gathering professions goes, my suggestion is always for mining and skinning, for the reasons I list above. Herbalism can certainly be a profitable venture, but it's not one with which I have much experience. I tend to feel mining has a little more draw than herbalism, because more crafters have a demand for ore. On the other hand, everyone has a demand for potions, so herbalism is certainly a good option.
The advantage to this system is clear. You're gathering things for free, and won't necessarily be spending a lot of time doing it. Then you sell them, and the only cost to you is the auction house posting fee. The money you make incidentally from this method will probably get you a mount as soon as you hit forty, with enough to spare to train and buy yourself a whole new set of Mail armor, to boot. In addition, if you ever decide to take a crafting profession, you'll already have a pair of gathering professions to choose from. You could gather up to level 40, get your mount, and then start saving the resources you gather rather than selling them, and be set for a full profession's training in no time.
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