[DrMrLordX]

Lizard gear, selling like wildfire? Depends.

On Midgardsormr, for example, lizard trousers sold best in Bastok(I think) at about 2k each, until the market crashed. They take two lizard skins and leather trousers, which in my situation, would cost me about . . . oh . . . 1650 gil altogether to acquire, less if I farm the skins myself(booooring).

350 gil ain't bad, but it's not going to send you laughing all the way to the bank, and the market has crashed on them so that you can't get more than 1300 gil per trousers anymore. Aww, shucks.

As far as smithing is concerned, if I didn't mention it thoroughly enough in my guide, you can start making some cash blacksmithing at skill 10-11 or so. Scale mail suits sell sorta well, depending on your server, and depending on how smart you are about acquiring the necessary components. Iron ingots sell rather nicely too, so you can start making some gil once you can crank those out, IF you can find ore at the right price. Is it big money? No. But it's money.

Later on you start being able to make other things that sell fairly well, such as iron scale pieces, steel scale pieces, darksteel ingots, etc. Those have been some of my biggest sellers, if you can call them that. Yes, by 50, you can make darksteel ingots, and they will sell for a profit, even on an "economic hell" server like Midgardsormr. Not a huge profit, but a profit. And they sell frequently, in stacks and as individuals. If you do start selling darksteel, please do your part on your server to keep prices as high as possible. Thank you.

There are also 2948543903845 other smiths all trying to sell the same damn thing, in my experience, so if you aren't smart about timing and product placement, you'll just wind up selling at below the current AH value(and threatening to lower the value by doing so) or not selling at all.

I was searching for a "holy grail" item, one I could make and then sell to an NPC for more than the cost of materials, but the closest thus far has been the nodowa, and I'm still working on getting skill from those things. Needless to say, the nodawa is not "it". I can maybe make 100 gil per nodowa selling them to the Tenshodo in Jeuno, and they buy in limited quantities. Yippeee. I dont' even bother taking them there anymore.

The only thing I can tell you is that on my server, once I find something I can sell for good money, all the other smiths find out in about a day's time, and they flood the market. Jerks. They, along with dimwitted dark knights I suspect, brought mythril scythes down from 45k to 25k in about two to three weeks. GRAH.

I now dedicate much of my time either crafting or finding a way to run up the prices on goods when the AH in Jeuno empties out on a particular item, thereby giving me sole control of the market for a short time.

As far as other crafts are concerned, I have 37 woodworking, uh, 12 leathercrafting . . . and that's it. I need to get about 15-20 clothcrafting for the sam armor pieces(other than nodowa) sometime, and I need to raise my leatherworking so I can make jindachi. I need about 36-41 goldsmithing to make my own mythril. And I'll probably need bonecrafting someday. If I ever want to make bast parchment or that stupid katana that uses cermet, I'll need alchemy too . . . oy.

If I were you, I'd look into alchemy, cooking, fishing, and goldsmithing(not necessairly in that order) for money makers. Cooking and Fishing are the easiest to get into, but goldsmithing and alchemy will make you a ton of money if you work at em. Blacksmithing has the fault of producing a lot of stuff that enters the economy and never leaves unless some lazy PC sells stuff to an NPC for a huge loss. This doesn't happen very often. Chances are that armor and weaponry you sell on the AH will circulate through the AH many more times before it settles down somewhere. There may be some server somewhere on which you can sell 90-100% of the fruits of your blacksmithing labors for profit, maybe even a large profit, but I ain't on that server, so who knows?
(note: Midgardsormr is the home of the "8k gil death scythe". Yes, that's right! The price on the level 73 scythe in Jeuno was 8k gil! At least it's up to 11 now, I think. Oh joy of joys. Too bad they take around 23k just to make one.)

edit: oh, one last thing. If you gather your own raw materials, be very very careful about how quickly you transform them into armor, weapons, etc for sale on the open market. Look at prices carefully and see what would make you more money:

1). selling the item you intend to make or

2). selling the raw materials without processing them

You can safely sell raw materials, particularly frequently-used ones like iron ore, without risking market depression, and you can usually sell these faster than you can finished goods(at least in my experience). Sometimes the finished product will sell for more gil than the raw materials, sometimes LESS. Iron sheets are a hot seller on Midgardsormr right now, for example, but Altana help anyone who tries selling, oh, I don't know, baghnaks, iron swords, longswords, scimitars, iron finger gauntlets, etc on Midgardsormr.

I'd be selling iron sheets myself if I weren't busy using them for my own twisted purposes.