From Fanfan on Mal’Ganis the WoW forums:

Strapped for cash? need to buy epic flying mount? Want to make 1000g in 2 hours?

2 hours of farming yeilded 840g

The method relies upon crafters needing lots of the new primal essences for many decent high-level craftables, and is pretty ingenious. There is a very strong demand for these right now as everyone is rushing to skill up their professions. I can see the price dropping somewhat if everyone begins doing it, but the primal essences have a low deposit amount on the auction house, which makes them well-suited to waiting for a high buyout.

I may consider doing this once I run out of quests, if I’m still shy of the 5k I need for my epic flying mount.

So, the news is that 30,000 accounts being banned in May for gold-farming led to a loss of 30 million gold across all realms. That only comes to 1,000 gold per banned account on average. This number causes a bit of an eyebrow raise for being fairly low, in my opinion. Considering the amount of work needed to make 1,000 gold without breaking the rules, what are players doing that is so much more efficient than just levelling up and constantly running Dire Maul or Strat? I would probably only count myself as being a casual player when it comes to playing time, and I believe that with a realignment of priorities I could make 1,000 gold with relative ease. I’m interested in hearing from other high level players and what their own hourly gold rates are when they start taking the WoW economy seriously, without trying to cheat it.