My Paladin ProfessionsFollow

/giggle

Hi, welcome to WoW and pally-hood. Unfortunately there are a lot of misconceptions in your post and you'd best take a look at the FAQ thread to get a better picture.

1. People recommend skinning because it's one of the easiest skills to use. You kill a beast, you skin it, and then you sell the scraps/leather/hides on the Auction House, e.g., in Exodar. There's very little effort involved, and you make money.

2. When you choose a crafting profession like leatherworking or blacksmithing, there's very little that you can sell that will make money. Almost everyone here will recommend that you choose a second gathering profession, like mining or herbalism, in order to make money. After you've reached lvl 70, after you've become very rich, you can easily drop one of your gathering professions and "power-level" a crafting profession. By that time you'll have gained more awareness about which professions are good for pallies. FYI, leatherworking is nearly useless for a paladin, and blacksmithing isn't much better.

Paladin FAQ
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/class.html?wclass=2;mid=118927665288483321;num=27;page=1

Trade Skills FAQ
http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=69;mid=117088981455461343;num=48;page=1

Good luck!! Please don't hesitate to ask any specific questions.

Crafting professions (Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Alchemy) are fun, but they are money-sinks for the most part.

As this is your first toon, take mining and skinning. Make a second toon and run it into Exodar (or Darnassus if you roll a night elf, Stormwind for a human, and IronForge for a dwarf or gnome). Park it there at the bank and leave it there. This is where you mail everything to sell once your bags fill up.

If you do this, the people with the crafting professions will buy your skins and ore to make things to level their crafting. A lot of people are doing this, so there will be a lot of those things for sale in the Auction House. Supply and demand dictates that the prices will be low. In fact, the ore and/or skins you sell to make this stuff will go for more than the crafted items do.

This means you will get back enough to buy whatever you want, and have gold left over. Never a bad thing. In fact, its really like giving someone the items to make you something, and them giving you that something back with a bit of silver thrown in.

Good luck, and for craft-specific questions you can also read through the Trade Skills forum.

Thanks for the replies. I am going to stick with mining and skinning. One last question concerning mining... To get the most money, do you need to smelt the ore into bars or does ore get alot of money itself? On the mining FAQ, it doesn't mention anything about smelting the copper, etc. into bars? Where are the forges usually located in towns? I am currently near the Exodar.

Wait what? You mocked the OP, mocked ret, AND didn't offer any useful advice. Didn't someone campaign against that sort of behavior recently?

You know, these newer paladins may get the wrong idea from you big meanie heads having fun with your posting. We can't be having any of that.

In most cases, melting the ore into bars will give you more gold for your troubles. Sometimes tho the ore sell for more than the bars.
This all depends on the current market on the auction house.

Best thing to do is to check the AH before you melt the ore(IE. copper ore and copper bar). Wich sell for the most? If it's ore, just pop your ore right there on the spot. If it's bars, head over to the nearest forge(ask a guard for directions) and melt your ore into bars, then pop it onto the AH.

Two things about mining, and one about selling on the AH in general.

The weekends, and holidays, are the best time for selling on the AH. Make sure you get everything in your bags up on Friday night, and make sure you always set the auctions for 48 hours. A mod like Auctioneer is very helpful for this and for watching pricing trends.

As someone already mentioned, check the prices of ore and bar before smelting. Only smelt at a loss if it gets you skill-ups, but I've never needed to do that.

Also, there is a dry spot in leveling your mining, and it exists between 80 and 120 (125?). This is the tin zone and tin is hard to come by. So, when you get to that point, go into the wetlands and look for the spider cave just near the entrance/exit to/from IronForge. You can't miss it - follow the signs to IF and look for the spiders in the field in front of it.

Inside that cave is a quest ore, incendicite I think its called, and you do not need the quest to mine it. If you want the quest, stop by Steelgrill's Depot and get it from one of the pilots there - its outside Kharanos (sp?). The incendicite will give you skill-ups through 125, and there are tin nodes in that cave also. I skilled up my mining in an hour or so in that cave. The spiders are L18 to L20 I think.

Good Luck.