Inscription was invented by the Devil

Making Fox Van Allen over at WoW Insider the Devil's Advocate by continually pushing people to the profession. =P

His First Look at Inscription in MoP

I've had at least 1 character with every profession maxed since the end of Wrath and still to this day Inscription is my least favorite and least profitable mostly because it is the most unstable and unreliable market. DMF decks and Mysterious Fortune cards aside your only other gold maker is Glyphs and that's where the problem lies. The glyph market is completely dependent on the hardcore players who camp the AH and constantly refresh their supply of glyphs. Glyph value is completely dependent on nothing more than what those Inscriptionists willing to play the game deem them worth. The selling price of a glyph can flux +/-300% in a matter of days due to no other fact than Mr. Uber Glyph seller guy hasn't been on in 12 hours. Unless you like making the AH your own time consuming mini-game I'd avoid suggesting anyone to pursue it for raking it in.

I think Fox continually pointing out the riches he made (a year and a half ago in the first months of the expansion mind you) is doing a disservice to his readers suggesting Inscription. There will always be windows of opportunity for every profession and in the early days of Cata those DMF decks and trinkets in addition to the new Mysterious Fortune cards were a perfect storm of profitability. Let's break it down. You had tons of players leveling from 80-85. This means more herbalist herbing than at any other time during the rest of the expansion. Many of those herbalists didn't have alch or inscript and they all ended up selling them on the AH competing with each other and keeping the herb buying costs stable. Meanwhile you have this huge brand new customer base of freshly 85 who want those epics, especially considering how good the trinkets this time around were. My lock was using that Volcano trink until Dragon Soul.

Now I agree that striking while the iron is hot will net you some decent gold and in the first few months of the expansion if you have all your auction ducks in a row you can turn out a serious profit. I sold probably about a dozen decks and trinkets for 20k+ in the first couple months of Cata. I bought many herbs to help produce them even though I already had 2 herbalists. But by the time Firelands had hit I found my DMF deck/trinket business quickly drying up and barely netting a profit good enough to continue pursuing it. Mysterious Fortune cards added greatly to this early expansion money making. I think putting a lottery scratcher in a video game was a boon for income and the gold fever of the player base made sure that those cards would always sell. But after a few months and the novelty of those cards wore off I found them making roughly the same profit for me as my Blacksmiths belt buckles or my Jewelcrafters purple or orange gems. Those cards still sell today and for a decent profit compared to the mats required for making them, but it's barely a steady income, Nobody is getting rich off them anymore than any other profession crafted item. After the early expansion mania wore off and the player base dwindled and those remaining players were 'geared' what have inscriptionists been left with for the last year or more? Glyphs. That utterly maddening, time and soul sucking market that I don't even try to get in on anymore. I've read several guides and tips on how to 'break into' or 'beat' the glyph game, but in my experience unless you're willing to dedicate a serious amount of time to babysitting the AH you're not going to get rich off of glyphs. I'd rather be doing about anything else in the game than that.

"How I made 10,000 gold by level 1"

Blog reply to How I made 3k gold by level 30

I farmed all those same armor set greens on my 85 with 310% flying in about 1/100th of the time. Then mailed them to my level 1 who sells them.

Yes, xmog is in full swing on most servers and those lowbie greens you wouldn't even bother to mail to your enchanter to DE are now worth a lot of gold to the right buyers. Your server hasn't caught the fashion bug yet? Then help create it. Get to know which pieces are HOT and when you see them on the AH for pennies, snatch em up and repost. Trust me, on every single server there will be a rogue or 10 or 100 that are going to want that Scouting or Bandit set. Posting the full set at the same time helps too for the unfamiliar buyers who are just randomly looking through the AH for a new xmog set. There are many more desirable sets out there across all armor classes that are raking it in.

This is the time of the xpac where players are getting "Luxury Capped". They've got all the gear they're going to get, no more chants/gems to worry about, etc... They're buying Mammoths and Hogs and Sand Drakes and many players will pay a premium fee for not having to wait or farm for the set they want.  

Dungeons are a great place to gather up random greens, but Rare mobs are really where it's at. They guarantee to drop at least 1 and there's a half a dozen or more per zone. Go to Wowhead, look up a specific zone, click the NPC tab, then FILTER these results and click the rare and elite rare classification. Once you've mapped out the zone and know where they are you can do a full sweep in minutes on a flying mount.

Blasted Lands is a double bonus for this kind of farming. Every rare mob in the zone will drop either a Flawless Draenethyst Sphere or Imperfect Draenethyst Sphere which is a drop quest item that can be turned in for a goodie bag that contains a rare boe for the Perfect (often a green too) or a green for the Imperfect one. So you're getting at least 1 green off the mob then as least 1 more green off the turn in, sometimes you can get 2 from each. This is also the zone to find the highly sought after Swashbuckler's Eyepatch leather helm.

Start doing your research into armor sets, try to gauge your local market, see what competitors are selling what for and somewhere in there you'll see how much you can expect to make in this racket and whether it's worth it or not for you.

Enjoy farming that sexy old gear for fun and profit!