Skyrim talk:Making Money/Archive 1

This is an archive of past Skyrim talk:Making Money discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Page Content

I am not allowed to create the page, but i have a few good ideas.

1. When you first get to Riverwood do the Love Triangle quest to get a follower. After you get your follower go over to the Lumber Mill, get the Woodcutter's Axe, then go to where there are two woodcutting stumps next to each other. Then just command your follower to cut wood and then you go to another stump and cut wood. Then just keep going back and forth harvesting wood. You won't get rich this way but you can get enough to start out.

2. When you are dungeon diving use the money-to-weight ratio method to determine what you should prioritize taking. When you use the money-to-weight ratio ONLY take the stuff that has a ratio of four and up, unless you artificially leveled your Speech. The reason you should prioritize stuff with a ratio of four is because when you take, for example, Fur Shoes which has a weight of two and is worth four septims, to a merchant the price will be offset by your low Speech and will only be worth one septim making the item have ratio of .5.--JoshB1901 15:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Same, someone with some permissions needs to make this page, even if empty/stubbed.

Making money is not a huge obstacle in this game, though if you want to train high level skills to 100 you will need a fair amount of coin, or if you want to buy many houses and so on. You can function pretty well off 50k or so for casual play (one house, do not train high level skills every level, etc). A big spender will want over 1/2 a million over the course of the game -- with skills costing 4k or more to train at high levels, it does not take long at all to burn a lot of cash.

Starting out: do mini quests. Your alchemy and enchanting are no good yet, so the road to riches is to do a few of the 500+ gold reward quests, of which there are tons and tons. Vendor trash is your friend for a few levels, esp for a mage who will need to buy some spells right away.

Later, smithing, enchanting, alchemy, transmutation of iron are all very profitable and the issue becomes leveling up too fast by doing this stuff combined with vendors running out of money. The merchant perk and investor lineup are huge if you want to be wealthy, as without them you will spend untold game hours in travel from city to city and merchant to merchant, as each city probably only has about 5000 or less gold on all its basic merchants combined and one stack of quality potions or jewelery or enchanted junk will run dry every normal vendor in the game. Getting access to the wealthy merchants takes some time and may not even make sense for the character's development (guild/faction merchants).

Dragonbone etc is good money for those who do not plan to make a set (and the only reason to do that is the cosmetic appeal of it) but want to have many dragon souls for many shouts.

Wizard robes and hoods etc are easy to get in bulk in certain places and weigh little for their value. The better ones can be worth a lot, the basic ones very little, they vary a lot.

Soul gems may be worth selling for those who do not care to enchant (if such a player exists?). Enchanted junk is worth far more than the gem if the player has much skill at the art, however.

It is probably not worth learning to haggle 5/5 perks --- vendors simply do not have the cash to justify getting the best deal on every item you sell. You will have far more items to sell than they can afford regardless of what you do. 4 perks to get investor are all I would ever spend in this skill for a typical player, but the master trader perk may be worth it for a serious player who plans to buy their way to max level via training at each level.

Double nirnroot potions may be one of the best to sell but require having been to the depths where the second type of root grows. As these have invisibility on them, and 4 effects, their value is exceptional though the supply is somewhat limited and farming them somewhat tedious. — Unsigned comment by 66.18.49.84 (talk) at 20:19 on 10 January 2012

Buy Low , Sell High

• buy empty soul gems, fill them, sell them
• buy iron daggers, enchant them, sell them
• buy ingredients, make potions, sell them

Of the various ways to do this, potions is the easiest just because you don't have to leave the alchemy shop to make the potions and sell them back to the merchant who sold you the ingredients and get your money back plus theirs.

Where as the other methods require more travel and effort.

-Acaveman 23:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

(←) Okay, page has been created as a simple stub. I've only had time to actually play Skyrim for about an hour in total, so I'll let you guys add the actual content. – Robin Hood↝talk 01:53, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Smithing

When you have a high level smithing, making armour (the chest piece) and improving it works very well. I have found that Ebony Armour, improved, can earn you almost 3 times the cost of the materials for every piece, if your Smithing and Speech skills are high enough

216.59.229.234 20:16, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

External Apps

Just a note on the external applications: generally speaking, we don't put these sorts of things on articles. For one thing, it implies possible favouritism, for another, that sort of thing can quickly turn into a link farm. Exceptions have been made in the past, but those sorts of exceptions should be brought to the Community Portal for discussion before being added to an article.

We don't have any particular restrictions on mentioning them on talk pages, provided that it's just that: a mention, without any attempts to spam it in any way. Of course, you're welcome to put whatever you want on your User page, and indeed many of us ;) advertise our own mods and apps there, along with those we like. – Robin Hood↝talk 22:12, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Smithing/Enchanting section

This really isn't very good at all. Suggesting that you should use Banish Daedra is just silly, since the effect doesn't even become available until you're at a level where you already have far more money than you'll ever need. Same with "buy lots of soul gems": if you can afford to do that, this page is already no use to you. Raiding a Dwemer ruin though will get you thousands of gold worth of soul gems, and half of them will already be filled, and you can loot all the Dwemer metal in there as well at the same time. Aliana 03:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems worthless to me, too. It's also confusing to me why we don't mention anything about equipment or the Fortify Barter potion and its ingredients. Whenever I was about to sell off a bunch of stuff and really needed the money, I'd make sure to use the Masque of Clavicus Vile (or that other one that gives better prices), an Amulet of Dibella, and any Fortify Barter potion I had. It seems like a page meant to include how to make money should start off with that kind of information. Minor Edits 06:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Alchemy Method

Is it me or do court wizards not sell alchemy ingredients at all? Just want to make sure I'm not crazy. 148.168.40.4 12:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Can't it be both? But, yeah, I don't recall court wizards being a source for anything but spell books, soul gems, and the occasional random piece of equipment. Minor Edits 13:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Works for me but I have the "merchant" perk which means you sell anything but also sometimes means you can buy things that you wouldnt normally be able to.

moved: Soul Gem Method

I was annotating this, and just gave up. It's factually incorrect, and the method is not just tedious it's completely impractical, and it doesn't actually make money anyway until you have 80+ Speech, a set of Fortify Barter gear, Fortify Barter potions, and multiple perks invested in Haggling. It even advises against doing it itself, which seems like a good enough reason to remove it even without the other problems. Aliana 07:49, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Soul Gem Method

Quick Explanation: Buy empty soul gems, fill them, sell them.

Detailed Explanation:

• Buy empty soul gems (Grand & Black)
• Buy a soul-trap weapon or spell
• Fill the soul gems yourself. (see Soul Trap for more on how to fill them)
• Sell filled soul gems.
• Note: only works on Grand Soul Gem (increase from 200 to 500 gold) and Black Soul Gem (increase from 300 to 750 gold).

Pros:

• Doesn't require any crafting skills.

Cons:

• Initial purchase of soul-trap weapon may be expensive and hard to find, if you're not enchanting it yourself.

• Which you can't do until you've found/bought the initial weapon to disenchant and learn from, making the previous sentence nonsensical.

• The profit is not tremendous, depending on your Speechcraft skill level and perks - if it is too low you will actually lose money when selling the filled gem.

• The definition of "too low" here is "at any point in the game where you actually need to make money". At 25 Speech, an empty Grand Soul Gem costs 595 gold, and a filled one sells for 167 gold, for a net loss of 428 gold.

• Only works on Grand and Black Soul Gems
• Empty Grand & Black Gems are available for purchase in very limited quantity.
• Filling soul gems yourself can be time-consuming looking for and killing the largest animals that you can find.

• And none of them will have Grand souls until, again, you're far past the point of money being relevant.

• While this method is very simple, it would be best to use the resulting filled soul gems in combination with one of the other methods. Selling filled soul gems would be a waste.

Gold or Septims?

Should we be saying "gold" or "septims" when we refer to money in Skyrim? I know I started the money making guide and wrote most of it myself using the term "gold" but wouldn't "septims" be more correct? Acaveman 19:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

It's called Gold in the game, and other articles seem to use that term as well, so I'd stick with that. Arcanist 19:58, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, NPCs refer their money to "septims" and gold. Whichever one they use is written in their dialouge. Rychus shuflr

What about raiding giant camps?

Would the value in raiding giant camps be worth noting? Giants carry loot that works for the other money making methods such as pelts, armor, soul gems, and most importantly Giant's Toes which can be combined with easily obtainable Blue Butterfly Wings and Blue Mountain Flowers for extremely valuable potions. I know the inherent difficulty in taking down giants and mammoths are a drawback, but their respective pages have some useful tips, and the potential to train skills further only makes the method more valuable. 70.26.143.254 19:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

moved: menial labor, hunting and fishing

Although these are technically "ways to make money", the return is absolutely miniscule. The article should be helping characters make *useful* amounts money in *reasonable* amounts of time, to help out at the start of the game or for "major" purchases like houses. If it just lists every possible revenue source regardless of how pitiful, it just forces readers to sort the wheat from the chaff themselves. At this point, I'm surprised it doesn't have a section on doing a favor for an NPC and then looting all the clutter in their house.

These two sections are also excessively long, and generally provide BAD advice from a financial perspective: selling ore is less profitable than selling ingots, and much less profitable than making something with them; selling ingredients is massively less profitable than using them for Alchemy (a Sabre Cat Eye is worth *2* gold); and players who are in a position to hunt Trolls or Sabre Cats will make far more money from "dungeon crawl" loot with the exact same skill demands than they will wandering around in the wilderness for hours on end. — Unsigned comment by Aliana (talk • contribs)

Labor Jobs

Quick Explanation: A profitable, but boring way to make money is by chopping wood, farming, and mining.

Detailed Explanation:

Woodcutting:

• Obtain a woodcutter's axe.
• Find a NPC that's willing to pay you for firewood. (Hod in Riverwood is one)
• Cut wood by activating a wood-chopping block.
• Bring firewood back to the NPC for profit.

Mining:

• Obtain a pickaxe.
• Find a NPC willing to buy ores.
• Mine the ore.
• Bring the ore to the NPC for profit.

Hint: Dual wielding pickaxes and "attacking" ore veins is faster than activating an ore vein.

Farming:

• Find a NPC who is willing to pay for farm products
• Farm the product.
• Bring product back to NPC for profits.

Pros:

• Costs little to no money
• There's no combat
• People to sell your goods to are usually very close by

Cons:

• Very time-consuming
• Little profit
• Doesn't train any skills

Hunting & Fishing

Quick Explanation: Hunting involves going out into the wild and killing any animals you run into and then harvesting them for their goods. Fishing involves going out into any of Skyrim's waterways and catching the fish that swim in them.

Detailed Explanation:

Hunting: Just find a nice area with animals, kill the animals, then sell:

• Venison
• Small and Large Antlers
• Pelts
• Sabre Cat Eyes and Teeth
• Bear Claws
• Troll Fat

Fishing: Go into any body of water and catch the fish that swim in them. These include:

• Salmon
• Abacean Longfins
• Cyrodilic Spadetails
• Histcarp
• River Betty
• Silverside Perch

Pros:

• Cheap, especially fishing
• Food that is caught can be used to heal yourself
• Yields numerous hard-to-find alchemy ingredients
• Can capture souls for the Enchanting skill (Hunting)

Cons:

• Very time-consuming
• Only somewhat profitable
• Likely to run into a dragon, which can be dangerous to an ill-equipped hunter

Notes:

• For maximum profit, empty your inventory other than a few potions, weapons, and armor. Don't go to the meat market until your almost overencumbered.
• Beware of any Slaughterfish that may be in the water. (Fishing)

I think there is some value to parts of these sections, though mostly for players who are just starting out. When selling through the NPC quest dialogue (e.g. "I have potatoes to sell.") there is the advantage of not being affected by the low Speech skill of a low-level player. Incidentally, I think what was meant by the suggestion to sell ore to NPCs was to use the Mine Ore quest givers to get 100% value out of selling. So for example a level 1 Orc character could head to Gloombound Mine and mine Ebony Ore. For every two pieces of ore he collects, he could either sell to Dushnamub for a total of 120 g, or smelt both into one Ingot and sell it for ~50g with our Orc's pitiful 15 Speech since he can't get the perk to craft Ebony yet. Even up to a fairly high Speech level selling most ores through the dialogue options is going to be more profitable than selling a smelted ingot to a merchant, but worse than crafting something if you have the right perks to do so.

Picking crops is less profitable by far, and is only going to be worthwhile at very low levels, or incidentally if you happened to find a bunch of the right crops in sacks and barrels since crops are at least very light for the most part. Woodcutting kind of sucks since it requires you to haul around a moderately heavy axe and the wood is quite heavy for the value, but it isn't the worst way to get a couple hundred gold if you are at a pile near a buyer.

Hunting definitely isn't really worthwhile for money though. It's more of a method to get leather for training Smithing, or as a way to fill Petty up through Common Soul gems, or again as an incidental activity as you go from dungeon to dungeon. Fishing doesn't seem to be very profitable at all, as the most common fish seem to be Salmon, which are not Alchemy ingredients and have little value. Any ingrendient fish found should be held on to for later Alchemy.

So the labor jobs I might consider working back in at some point due to circumventing Speech skill and being enough for buying things at low levels, but for a monetary article I think the hunting/fishing can stay out for sure. Arcanist 07:06, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I concede to the removal of hunting/fishing, but labor jobs need to be left in, if nothing else for the sake of completion. Low level characters will, as Arcanist explained above, greatly benefit from the menial labor tasks. When you start the game, they are very profitable. Dungeon Delving is too dangerous to do for profit, Marriage is too permanent to do right when you start out, Stealing is very slow because you need to find fences, and anything else is impractical. I'm going to re-add the labor jobs, because not only are they very useful for a player starting out (I did them for some quick cash), but a money-making guide would be incomplete without the three in-game activities that are made for earning money. ?• JA^Talk 18:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed: I've never bothered with any of them, but if some people find them worthwhile then they definitely belong there. I would question the ordering on the page though: an entire screenful of instructions on how to make virtually no money that has to be waded through to get to methods that will let you buy the horse/house you want seems rather backwards to me. Aliana 03:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

this is a good point. The crafting (most profitable) methods should be listed first, and among them Enchanting should move up to second place behind Alchemy. If no one beats me to it, I will reorder this guide to list most helpful methods first sometime over the weekend. --A Caveman 05:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

The Woodcutting Section should definitely be re-added. When a player just starts the game (i.e. just reached Riverwood), woodcutting is the easiest and fastest way to start making somewhat significant amounts of money because the player doesn't have to even start leaving town; they can just pick up an axe and sell the firewood to the guy at the mill 20 feet away

The link is provide on this page to the First Time Players page where wood cutting is discussed in detail. The stated goal of this guide at the top of the page is "The objective of this guide is to make significant amounts of gold using methods that are not immediately obvious." -- I dont think that the money made from menial tasks is very significant, and it's time consuming. By contrast, a first-time player can go to the apothecary in Whiterun and immediately start making far more gold, in far less time, if they know what they are doing.--A Caveman

Riverwood Trader

Is Investing 500 gold in the Riverwood Trader store an exploit? Once you invest, the store has 10k septims to buy potions, etc, so that might be a good "hint" for the guide. But is there any way to know for sure that this is considered cheating? --A Caveman 03:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think its cheating, its just a glitch in the game. The way I see it, cheats are mad for cheating, glitches (intentional or not) are just part of the existing program. But, that is my opinion. Whether or not a glitch is a "cheat" is subjective, though. ES^{Question?•Email•Contribs} 03:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd been wondering about this a bit myself. I can't seem to find any definition or guidelines on the site for what actually constitutes a cheat or exploit, so it appears to be up to the judgment of the editors. My best idea for a definition of "exploit" would be: "Using game mechanics to the player's advantage in a manner not intended by the creators." Obviously that is a bit subjective, as it relies on knowing what the creators intended in the first place. Even then it can be unclear when you are exploiting and when you are just playing efficiently - I bet most people would agree reducing a School's spell cost to 0 is an exploit, but clearly players were intended to be able to reduce spell costs some amount. So what's the line between using and exploiting Fortify <Spell School> enchantments? 99%? 90%? 50%? It's just not clear. Arcanist 06:39, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I want to seriously reorganize this page.

Warning- I want to change this page a LOT. Here are my thoughts, please comment if you want. --- There is a time component to making money - Let's call it "gold per hour" (GPH). And going out to mine ore for transmuting is seriously wrong when you could make a lot more money by buying iron ore cheap from the various blacksmiths over and over in less time than it would take to mine it. Or the idea of going out to gather ingredients when you could spend that time going from one alchemist shop to another and turning a profit over and over again in the same amount of time is also weird. - This guide was started about making money. CAN you gather ingredients? Yes... Should you? Maybe if you're just role playing or something, but if the point is making money, then NO; you should not be gathering ingredients, or mining ore, chopping wood, or harvesting wheat. My point is: this page an been pumped with some general gameplay tips that are missing the point of the guide. The idea that dungeon delving, stealing, or wood-chopping is even on this page is kind of crazy... either because it will happen on it's own quite naturally while playing the game, or it's such mind-numbing boredom for virtually NO money... and because this was supposed to be a page about MAKING MONEY. We might as well have a section called "Doing Quests". If a player wants to play - then just play - and you'll make a bit of gold along the way. But if a player is trying to reach 25,000 septims for a house in Solitude as fast as possible and the sole focus of their activity is MAKING MONEY, then no one should be chopping wood. I would like to move the most worthless suggestions and general gameplay tips (like dungeon delving, stealing, and labor jobs) elsewhere, and reorder the remaining methods according to profitability, (starting with Alchemy, Enchanting, and Transmuting), and then add a footnote about 1) the passive income that can come from Marriage, 2) the list of dwemer items to keep if you happen to find yourself in dwarven city and in a smelting mood, and 3) the idea that if your smithing skill is already very high you can improve the sell value of loot at the grindstone before selling it. But the main money makers are Transmute - turns 4 gold for iron ore into 150 gold in jewelry, Enchating - which can make much more profit, and Alchemy - which beats them all for maximizing profit, but is also most complicated. ---- HOWEVER, I don't think a radical reordering of this page is smart without consensus from everyone who can just "undo" it.  :) So what do you guys think? --A Caveman

You do have a point there. Now I don't own Skyrim in any respects, and although you do make some points about the "making money" side of things, you also have to think about the means of gaining that money. Now yes, there are many ways to make money: selling ingredients to an alchemist and such. Some people actually want to do these things rather than the quicker, conventional way of buying ingredients then selling them back. Now I hope I didn't get any of the information wrong, but perhaps instead of changing the whole page radically, instead offer both methods: the "hard-working" method, but also the "quick and easy method". This at least give people a choice on which method they'd rather use, rather than having one over the other. Because each person is different and has different opinions on how they gain money. I hope this makes as much sense :) Helenaannevalentine 03:07, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I have also been considering reorganizing the page somewhat, though in a far less drastic manner. The problems I currently see with the page are more with the presentation rather than the content. The bulleted list format is a bit awkward for some sections, and would probably be better served by in a paragraph format (with bulleted items where necessary.) I might try to mock up what such a section would look like in a sandbox sometime soon so people can judge which format would look better.

As far a ACaveman's proposal, the gist of my response is that I think the current content is a good balance of profitability and coverage of relevant activities for players of all levels and goals. Restructuring the page as suggested by ACaveman would we detrimental to a lot of players, as different players have different needs in regards to money and there would no longer be a full treatment of the topic remaining after such a change.

What you propose will basically delete large sections of the content. You mention moving existing content you don't want, but to what page? I couldn't find any pages more relevant to the information that this one. And the remaining page after removing what you don't like would consist essentially of Alchemy and Enchanting only - Transmutation has a high profit margin, but the quantity of Iron Ore available is not high enough to use as a main source of high income. I've never seen more than half a dozen pieces available from a merchant at any time, and mines vary for what they have at any particular time and are slow to respawn.

If we cut down the page to what you have suggested we also run the risk of telling players how to play their game. If your only concern is making money than Alchemy is probably the best way to do it, so why cover anything else? Because most players are concerned with more than just that and may desire alternatives for any number of reasons. Continuting with our Alchemy example, it (obviously) requires the use of the Alchemy skill. Some players are not going to want this for role-playing reasons, others will be turned off by the unavoidable leveling it will cause. Therefore, the page needs to provide enough reasonable alternatives that players seeking the page's advice will have enough choice to fit their individual playstyles.

Most methods also vary in profitability over the course of the game. When starting out almost nothing is very profitable if you have to buy materials due to the insanely bad buy/sell Barter ratio. As I had explained in the previous discussion of the Labor jobs, they deserve a place due to their unique advantages of circumventing Speech entirely, and they are going to be the best choice for some players in early parts of the game. Nobody is suggesting solely using them to save up for Proudspire Manor – at the point they are useful nobody is trying to save that much, but being able to afford some new spells, or being able to invest a moderate amount of gold in an enchanted item to learn a good enchantment from is reasonable. Perhaps we can try to create some kind of summary at the top of the article or each section giving a breakdown of when each method is useful to guide players so it is more clear when each method is most useful.

I would also like to point out that "gold per hour" is not a metric that is going to be determinable for most activities with any reasonable accuracy given the large number of variables involved. They depend on player level, skill in Speech and other relevant skills, material availablity, as well as player-dependent variables such as how quick they can manipulate menus, playstyle choices, etc. For example, players who won't fast travel will find traveling from one Alchemy shop to another to buy/craft/resell a very slow way of making money.

Didn't mean to go on for quite so long, but I hope that conveys my thoughts on the state of the page. Arcanist 09:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

You make some good points, darn it... I am (sometimes) a teacher and I hate curriculum that wanders far from the stated learning objectives. In this case, the guide is how to make money - which in my mind means: "how to seriously make significant amounts of money" - I never thought about someone not wanting to fast travel, for example - ugh. Although I can understand if someone a trying to create a character with no alchemy or enchanting skill whatsoever for role-playing reasons. Reformatting the whole page is too much work- but I seriously want to. I am just feeling blustery at the moment at the idea of mining ore when you can have unlimited amounts of it cheap by traveling back and forth between Markarth and Riften. Still, the "conclusion" section is short and could be beefed up with some practical guidance about what to take away from this guide depending on your play style. I probably could have done a better job of stating the objective when I started this page: To seriously make significant amounts of gold. It never occurred to me that entry level, general gameplay, common sense stuff would permeate the guide. I had envisioned something much more highly focused on anything that would not be common knowledge. Like stealing; everyone knows that you can steal stuff. What idiot added a section on stealing? oh, yeah that was me. Oh well, I was being dumb that day.

To answer you question about WHERE to move basic info to, I think I'd move Dungeon Delving, Stealing, and Manual Labor to here: [[Skyrim:First_Time_Players#Starting_Out|]] in a more abbreviated form --A Caveman

Removed from Article

I've removed the following two sections from the page because they're both pretty bad strategies for making money. Reasons why they're bad strategies:

• In order to use either of them your Smithing skill has to be practically maxed out -- meaning you've already made a ton of other items using smithing, and presumably you've already made a fair bit of money from selling those items (and have already learned/used far better money-making strategies).
• The armor you make is far too valuable to be sold for what it is worth. Daedric armor is worth 3200 gold -- but blacksmiths only have 1000 gold. You'll be lucky to even make back the money that you spent buying a Daedra Heart. In order to actually sell it for anything approaching its value you either need to complete the Thieves Guild questline so you have upgraded fences (at which point you've stolen/sold a ton of other items), or else you need to have perks such as Investor (meaning you already have at least 70 Speech skill and already have a ton of money).
• None of the required materials are easy to obtain, so you can't mass produce any of the items.

--Nephele^Talk 02:20, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Dragon Armor Method

Quick Explanation: Kill a dragon, loot the corpse, take the materials to a forge, craft and upgrade the armor, then, finally, sell it.

Detailed Explanation:

• Find a dragon (outdoor Word Walls are the best place to look).
• Kill it and loot its corpse.
• Go to a forge, taking dragon scales, dragon bones, leather and iron with you.
• Craft dragon armor.
• Upgrade the armor.
• Sell it.

Pros:

• Can provide a lot of money, especially if used in conjuction with Enchanting and Foritfy Barter.
• Killing the dragon provides souls and valuable experience.
• If you are led there by a bounty quest you can gain a little extra gold by collecting the reward.

Cons:

• Dragons are somewhat hard to kill, especially if you are fighting a new type of dragon which you're only just at a high enough level to fight.
• Dragons can be difficult to find.
• Usually, several dragons must be killed in order to collect the materials necessary to create armor worth 5000 gold.
• You have to invest in a lot of perks and a lot of effort to get the ablity to make dragon armor.
• Merchants, unless you've invested in them, will not be able to afford to buy enchanted dragon armor or dragonplate chest armor from you.

Hint:

• If enchanting, try to use the most valuable enchantments.
• If your current armor is worse than what you are making, keep the the armor you make and sell your old armor to make dragon-fighting easier.
• Alchemy is a useful skill as potions will help you to fight dragons.
• Try to go to a different Word Wall each time, as you will be able to absorb more souls and learn new shouts.
• Helmets are the most money/material effecient.
• NB: If you can't or don't want to make the armor, you can simply sell the dragon bones/scales, at the cost of a lower profit margin.

Daedric Armour Method

Quick Explanation: Find Ebony Ingots, Leather Strips, and Daedra Hearts; take the materials to a forge; craft and upgrade the armour; then sell it.

Detailed Explanation:

• Find Ebony Ingots.
• Find Leather Strips.
• Find Daedra Hearts
• Go to a forge and craft the Daedric Armour Set.
• Upgrade the armour.
• Sell it.

Pros:

• Can provide a lot of money, (even more than the Dragon Armour) especially if used in conjunction with Enchanting and Fortify Barter.
• The Daedric Armour Set is the best Heavy Armour Set in the game.

Cons:

• The Ebony Ingots and the Daedra Hearts can be difficult to find and possibly expensive if purchasing from a vendor.
• Because Daedra Hearts are rare ingredients, their rarity can make it difficult for the player to mass produce the Daedric Armour Set.
• You have to invest in a lot of perks and a lot of effort to get the ablity to make the Daedric Armour Set
• Merchants, unless you've invested in them, may not be able to afford the full value of the Daedric Armor, the Daedric Shield, and the Daedric Shield.

Hint:

• If enchanting, try to use the most valuable enchantments.
• If the Daedric Quest, Pieces of the Past, has been completed, a steady source of Ebony Ingots and Daedra Hearts may be used to obtain some of the materials required for crafting. Approximately every seven in-game, the Shrine of Mehrunes Dagon resets. Thus, four Daedra Hearts may be covered from Dremora, and three Ebony Ingots can be recovered inside the shrine.
• Leather Strips can be purchased from most Blacksmiths

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