The point of it all

Introduction
I'm creating this blog as a means of tracking my progress and gathering my thoughts concerning making gold in World of Warcraft. Perhaps eventually I will have acquired enough wisdom to impart to the rest of you, but for now I'm being entirely selfish and doing this all for myself. I need to start setting goals and accomplishing things in an organized manner, instead of the helter-skelter approach that I've defaulted to right now.

So, as a casual raider and collector of achievement points, non-combat pets, and crappy arena ratings, why am I moving into the gold-making business? Here are my reasons.

• I want to be able to afford rare pets and other toys for my main.
• I want to outfit my alts in top-notch BoE gear.
• I want to have enough cash to give generous gifts to my friends and guild. 
• I actually enjoy crafting and dealing on the Auction House.

I didn't intend for it to be that way, but that list is in order from least important to most important, now that I think about it. So, I'm going to look at that as my mission statement, or my core values that I fall back on. From here, I need to make specific goals, broken into manageable chunks, that I can shoot for on a regular basis. But first, I think I need to inventory what I've got to start with:

The Characters
85 Priest (Main) -- 525 Tailoring / 525 Alchemy
71 Warlock -- 450 Enchanting / 450 Jewelcrafting
65 Death Knight -- 450 Alchemy / 380 Herbalism
62 Shaman -- 338 Skinning / 300 Engineering
32 Rogue -- 148 Herbalism / 119 Inscription
16 Druid -- 72 Mining / 63 Herbalism
8 Mage -- nothing yet

Ideally, I think this is what I want them all to have at max level:

Priest -- Tailoring/Alchemy
Warlock -- Enchanting/Jewelcrafting
Death Knight -- Alchemy/Inscription
Shaman -- Skinning/Engineering
Rogue -- Leatherworking/Blacksmithing
Druid -- Mining/Herbalism
Mage -- Alchemy/Jewelcrafting

I plan on raiding with the Shaman and Priest, but I have no desire to play my DK, so I figured I can fill his bags with glyphs and cards. BS and LW are the lowest professions on my priority list, so they got stuck on my lowest-priority toon. I've got my work cut out for me! Now, as for which character to level first, the logical choice would be to get the Warlock capable of max JC/Enchant. However, I have a goal completely unrelated to gold making that supercedes that. I really, really want the Elder title on my shaman, so I'm going to be powerleveling him in an attempt to get to Northrend and finish all the Lunar Festival achievements before it's too late. Last weekend I got him from 52 to 59, so I'm not too worried about hitting that target.

Next blog, I'm taking inventory of the stuff that I've got spread out between my toons. Guild banks, cash on hand, mats on hand, etc. I was kind of stupid previously and put all my cash in Darkmoon Cards, so as I write this I have about 25k invested in that, and only 5k on hand. Makes it hard to do anything between now and the Faire! But, I will be better organized in the future, and make smarter investments, we can hope. That's why I'm doing this blog, right?

Goals: Shaman to Northrend by February 7. Elder title by February 12.
Blog later this weekend about stuff I have on hand.
Plan to identify which markets are most open that I can move into.