I don't know if it is feasible for someone reading this and having a little gold, to embark on the brutosaur challenge. It all depends on the release date of SL/prepatch, and how active is your raid scene on your server. YMMV, but what I learnt from all of this:
- Alchemy is still profitable, even with the raid scene winding down on my server (just not as much as before). Do the Silas' math for your server prices, get a spreadsheet or whatever you need to help you in this, but know it is profitable.
- If you are not willing to fully set up TSM, babysit your auctions (a second account banker/AH alt is definitely *the* way to go here), and repost when necessary, you will either sell nothing, or miss out on huge profits from fresh resets (and you will likely heavily undercut, and crash the market, making it worse for everyone, not just you).
- Your professions are the most valuable tools here. If you've read this far, you might have noticed I kept flipping to a minimum, and only for markets in which I am actively selling (hence, markets I know). What gained me entrance to each market were my professions. Have maxed out professions (one of each, although you could make some side gold with extra alch/eng for the daily transmutes/cooldowns), get tools of the trade where necessary (alchemy, enchanting and tailoring are an absolute must), rep in order to get those sweet rank 3s, and start crafting.
- If you like farming, by all means go do it! Every node farmed is a node you don't have to buy. If you want to give multibox a try, also go do it! I actually have quite some fun farming with my druids, although I will say I got a bit tired of doing Tiragarde-Drustvar laps. If you don't like farming, that's also ok! You will just have to be careful buying mats when they are cheap, in relation to the price of the crafts.
- Eventually, someone will come and undercut you by huge margins for no good reason. It is up to you how you deal with this. If it was a one time only, I would buy him/her out. If he/she continued doing so, I ended up posting on top of him/her. Funny thing: they stopped doing it after that, so they either only repost when theirs gets bought, or they just don't care and want to watch the world burn.
- Once you are active, build a good favorite list of the mats you need to maintain your operations going, and *always* be checking it every time you open the AH. I lost count of the amount of times I bought mats for literally silvers.
Good luck on your longboi journey!