Professions by Levels..

[Shang]

Right now, I'm like around level 30, and was wondering what profession I should be on right now. I was going to do skinning/mining but mining is hard. Some people loved mining but it's hard to find a vein to mine..what should I be doing to make some money right now and then for later on?

[Carnos]

Skinning/Minning

[superprokop]

Get tailoring and mining. IMO, 2 gathering is nice and all. But, having tailoring is great to make your own gear (original shadow weave set) and to have your FSW for when you ding 70.

[Turmeric]

I am a big fan of levelling your endgame profession as you level your toon. It's harder to do now with the speed increases to experience gain but it means you can use things on the way. Tailoring gives decent gear, Engineering some gear and gadgets. Throw in a gathering prof and you're sorted.

Also, at level 35 you can train 225+ in professions but thats an unrealistic goal. Skinning is easy to level, especially when you get to stv and you can skin pretty much everything. Make sure it's always 5 x your level + 10-15 so you want it at 165, ideally 175 so that you can skin everything you kill. Mining is harder to level, you often need to dedicate time spent to farm the ores. Aim for 5 x your level (150) and you should be okay to mine things as you move into new zones.

[RomaGoth]

I agree with Turmeric. Leveling up your endgame profession will save you the hassle of having to start from scratch at level 70. Trust me, I did it with my hunter and it was not pretty. I recommend you choose professions based upon 1) what you enjoy doing, and 2) skills related to your character. For example, it makes no sense for a Paladin to pick up tailoring, because he wears plate (mail prior to 40). Similarly, a Mage would be wasting time as a Blacksmith. My warlock is tailoring/enchanting. I found these 2 professions to be perfect for me. I can disenchant everything I do not need for him or my other toons, and tailoring is a no-brainer because I can wear what I make and cloth is free from the mobs I kill. I had my tailoring at 225 at level 30, so I had to wait for training until I hit 35. Enchanting has been more difficult, but between that and leatherworking from my hunter, I can put some decent additions to the gear for my toons (notably my rogue).

In the end, do what you enjoy and have fun doing it.

[vfrgurrl]

I started lvling my professions at 17 and thought that was starting late. I've got enchanting/tailoring on the main and herbalism/alchemy on the alt up to 360+ and 375 in cooking, fishing and first aid. From my personal experience, the gathering professions are best lvled with an end result profession. So Enchanting/Mining...hmmm probably not the best choice. But my little alchemist is making flasks that go for up to 50g in the AH, and we all have BIG bags from the tailor. Take a look at the lootables section on the WoW community site, and see how hard/easy the professions are to skill-up. And as RomaGoth said, if you get bored fishing, imagine how boring picking peacebloom would be...pick something you like to do!

[Carlinda]

If you don't like mining, then go with skinning. If you have any interest in tailoring, start levelling that now as well. Believe it or not, a few of the tailoring patterns require some leather, so you'll be helping yourself out, as well as making plenty of trade materials that do well in the AH.

It is tempting to carry two gathering professions to make money, but honestly, you'll end up throwing a ton of money at an endgame profession once you hit 70 - gold that you should be using for your flying mount. I levelled alchemy/herbalism together from the start and never felt like I spent a whole lot to level alchemy, even though over time I probably did. If I tried to start it now and level it, I'd be crying as my bank bled.

[vosfihalo]

I did tailoring and herbs in both leveling and endgame, and I highly recommend those two....unless you like enchanting. I tried enchanting on previous characters and wasn't very excited about it. With herbalism, you can make friends with an alchemist and have him/her make you pots. Or, you can sell them (herbs AND potions)...because everyone uses 'em :-D. Skinning and mining isn't as universal and doesn't serve locks well except selling in AH. Skinning has some uses in lower leveling tailoring, but it's easy to get by without it and very quickly becomes useless.

I plan an jumping on the Inscription train as soon as Wrath of the Lich King goes live.

[acetace]

think out of the box explanation from me
do keep existing profession and don't worry about it until you reach level 70
you'll have much easier time getting around mob and leveling your gathering profession

if you have no main and must choose, as a warlock you can't go wrong with one of
- tailoring (for frozen shadowweave set, or spell fire if you want to go fire destro)
- engineering (for the helm)

and one of the gathering profession for source of income
- mining
- skinning (personally i prefer this simply because you can created your own resource, or sometimes if you're in luck other people will create it for you =D assuming they loot the corpse clean first)

[Barkle]

I can't argue a warlock getting tailoring. The pieces you can make in your 30s and 40s easily make it worth leveling, and the endgame stuff is flat out some of the best gear you can get.

Mining can be a little tough to level occasionally, but is worth it. On my server it is the best money making profession. Blizz acknowledged they didn't do a good job on the placement of mining nodes relative to your level, and I believe they are working on some changes to it. Still, at level 57, I had no trouble getting to 275+, it just required about an hour of dedicated farming for ore every couple levels.

Herbs are good, but I find the money isn't quite as good as mining. Don't take two crafting professions unless you want to spend all your money leveling them.