I don't know that Blizzard would require the majority of mats to come from another crafting profession like enchanting or alchemy. The closest we get to that is tailoring/enchanting, where tailoring doesn't need a gathering profession and enchanting is dependent on disenchanting items for materials. Still, the tailoring almost acts as a gathering skill for enchanting at that point. What you're suggesting would require gathering skill and a crafting skill in order to support an additional crafting skill. That seems unlikely. Blizzard has stated that they prefer a highly solo-able game and a 3-profession necessity would negate that (unless Blizz bumps us to 3 professions, which I'm also doubting).

I suspect that it will be something more along the lines of drops off mobs or possibly use herbalism. It depends on the implementation. You can always boost lower level skills with lower level Inscriptions. Then boost them again later. Like Enchanting, not many will bother until the characters are at their intended end-game level. Thus, I would expect something else to keep Inscription going. Scrolls might work, but it could put them in direct competition with Alchemists.

At this point, we're really just speculating. It will be interesting to see what actually does happen.

Dusts on my server average only 1.5g per, its not profitable when the fel iron bar costs 1.6g on my server.

Illusion dusts however are ridiclously valuable. I wish there was something cheap (IE NOT REQUIRING THORIUM) from jc to convert.

That's why they're so valuable though, there's no real way to manufacture them other than disenchanting boe world drops.

[Pattern: Wicked Leather Headband] is actually an option, though you'd still need to farm the Rugged Leather and you'd need to have a Leatherworker with the recipe available.

What about tailoring Cindercloth Pants (or other 295-300 skill tailor recipes that don't need too much for mats) and disenchanting for illusion dust and eternal essence? I'm at work now, but I'll try and get on and see what's on the AH for prices and stuff.

This works. Atleast until tomorrow when everyone figures this out and essence of fire skyrockets. Oh well, kudos to people that read this thread early!

Illusion Dust is worth about 2.5g each on my server, and 6 bolts of Runecloth, 1 Essence of Fire, and 1 Rune Thread would cost 5 - 5.5g. If a pair of Cindercloth Pants DE into 1-2 Illusion Dust, that's a loss at those prices, but there's also a chance it will DE into 1-2 Greater Eternal Essences, and those sell for 11-12g (on my server). It's probably a profit if you make enough to get some GEEs out of it, but ymmv if making stuff like that is a profitable endeavor.

Looking over this thread, I have noticed that there is a premise involved in each strategy: namely, that there are enough potential buyers out there to make it worth selling these items.

What would the group recommend as a money-making strategy for those of us who play on smaller, less-populated servers? I have the JC/enchanter/tailor/miner quartet, and I have the means to produce most of the recommended items at a profit. What I lack is a buyer base willing to buy anything, even at reduced costs. Short of a server transfer of all 4 toons, what can I do?

If the supply base is low, corner a market completely and just resell everything in that sector. A good example of this would be what I did to the large prismatic shard market on dragonblight one month ago, you can read that post about 10~ pages back. Regarding your buyer base: be patient, if you're the only player, or one of two or three, your items will sell no matter what, even if it takes two days. If the real issue is that the server is not mature enough (even low pop servers with "mature" populations demand a considerable amount of raw/cut gems/enchanting mats every day), you can stockpile the rarer stuff for future market share considerations and just unload your less groovy items for slightly less profit to keep you going.

The other thing to note about smaller servers is crafted items are generally worth lots more, just because there are fewer people with recipes/nethers and so it's more of a cabal or gentlemans agreement type deal with the good stuff (spellstrike etc.) where all the suppliers tend to sell at a similar range rather than furiously undercut eachother. Look into diversifying your portfolio and you will flourish.

Edit: Re: Skyhoof: I believe the whole point of listing 100s of green gems is that they are insanely cheap to buy/produce, and their profit % is comparatively high (50% return on average). The issue is that you need to find the sweet spot price-wise, you can afford to take a few days to do this since listing costs for greenies are so cheap for the 12 hour option. I imagine a 30-40% sell-failure rate is still profitable if your marking up greenies for 1g or more (easily done with 9stam/7dmg/6crit etc.).

Further Editing: It's been mentioned before, but cross-ah trading (buying on one faction, selling to the other) is something I just got into this last week. I won't divulge the markets I delved into, but I will mention that it has been incredibly profitable due to population imbalance. There's a huge alliance population in comparison to the horde on proudmoore (at least at 70), and a tremendous amount of items are availible for 30-50% markdowns (and conversely, markups) on their auction house. Arbitrage is expensive (15+5% tax), but since I'm looking at 50% pretax profit margins, this has been a nobrainer for me. The key to this endeavor has been finding a group of trustworthy alliance characters to help me out. I'm really happy to say I've found a couple of people who are straightforward, no-nonsense, wheeler dealers who have helped me tremendously, while getting rich themselves. I basically bet all of my liquidity in the past week, and have seen my initial costs(a considerable amount) recovered while having an inventory that is literally half again the worth of my initial investment. Disclaimer: this is from cross-AH trading only and does not involve any direct person-to-person business I may have with other alliance characters.

Some basic guidelines for cross-AH trading(this is actually something of a summary of this thread's "golden rules" too):

#1) Know the risk. It's huge, your RvR will generally seem small because of the various impediments (taxes, finding a trustworthy person in it for both fun and profit), but I believe those factors distort the true RvR of the endeavor. You will have to spend thousands of gold and move a tremendous amount of inventory in short periods of time for it to work.

#2) This is a reselling game, don't get caught, use your alts ALWAYS.

#3) Find a partner you can trust, let them know who your main is only after making sure they know the rules of the game and you know you can trust them.

#4) Research your markets. Yes, markets. This is not a profitable or fun maneuver if you're only exploiting one or two markets, it's too much effort for too little gain. Stick to prospecting or farming legion hold if you like the minimalist effort approach.

#5) Research their markets. Yes, the opposite faction's markets. This seems like a "duh!" situation, but knowing your own markets by itself won't make cross-AH trading profitable. You need to be intimately familiar with both and how the big-volume items trade.

#6) Volume. The game has always been, and will always be, about volume. People don't get rich selling one crafted epic per day for a 100g nether markup. They get rich by selling 100 LPS a day at 7G markups and 1500 green gems per week at 1g markups. This is even more important with Cross-AH trading as your markup/deals get cut by an initial 15% (Partners cut) +5% (AH cut) at minimum.

#7) The Neutral Auction House: It's nerve wracking to see level 1 alts with no guild tag just sitting at the neutral auctioneers, occasionally /waving when they buyout somebody's underpriced shit. Deal with it. Be prepared, get on ventrilo with your partner, communicate, never list items too quickly. Stackable items should be in full stacks. If you have to: Pay the Neutral AH-Cut. Yes it's 15%, but you'd rather make a 15% profit on an item (50% margin-15% partner cut-15% neutral cut -5% AH cut) than a 100% loss. Sometimes you don't even need to list an item for its full price to beat the auto-clickers, listing 1500g items for 200g will often (not guaranteed) do the same thing, and hurt you a lot less.

#8) Keep your partner happy! Pay him on time, or even better: up front, in cash, in full, no second chances. Cross-AH trading is risky enough without being a total cock. Dicking your partner over is asking to be burned on really big trades. Paying them ahead of schedule is an even better choice if you can trust them.

#9) Don't be a dick. Keep your mouth shut and your sphincter tight, don't shit where you sleep, don't be a dick to people. Use perfect grammar, be knowledgeable, be gracious, be thankful. If someone is being rude to you, be polite in return, this is the best way to stay anonymous. Remember, you're on an anonymous alt, keep it anonymous. Loose lips sink ships and all that.

#10) Use your alts. Seriously, you don't want to get caught doing this. Fame is the worst thing that can happen to you as a trader, save the fame for your main or your sisters nude pics.

#11) Shut up about it. Don't talk about Cross-AH trading. It's worse PR than being a ninja or a terrible player(let's not forget it's fucking STUPID business decision too). Don't fuck this up for yourself or the others (like me) who enjoy it and profit from it. No guild tags, no stupid "LOLMYNAMEHEREBank". Use a different style of speech than your normal one (preferrably more formal). Nobody wants to know that you're rich or how you got there on your server, save the advice for people who will appreciate it(i.e. this thread).

#12) Enjoy. It's risky as hell, but when you see the amount of volume you can move (doesn't matter which way) it's exciting. Think of that yes moment when you killed that badass boss in Naxx? This is like that, 500 stacks at a time, every day.

I have found a very good way of making gold is to mine around nagrand and pickup motes of air (if you are able to of course) through the engineering extractor. Last night alone, i picked up 11 stacks of Adamantite, 2 stacks of Fel Iron (which isnt on my priority list) and 6 Primal Airs.

You can also do the same thing in Shadowmoon Valley, but sub out the Primal Airs for Primal Shadows.

Even if i was just to sell the ore, i'd pickup 28g per stack, and 18g for the primals. Quite alot of gold for little to no effort required.

(28 * 11 = 308) (6 * 18 = 108) Which is about 416g for 2 hours work.

Depends on the relations between alliance and horde on your server, and how long you've been playing, but I know on my old server, was had decent relations with the pvp alliance guilds as horde pvpers, and we could get on their ventrilo or IRC. That was before the whole cross server queues stuff, when you'd face the same WSG team 6times in a row in the evening ^^.
If you don't have any links whatsoever, I guess it's harder tho, you might want to make an alt and /tell random people from pretty decent guilds when they're sitting in shattrath, and see if they'd be interested.