Just wanted to hear what you all have to say about this subject.  I am looking to do two gathering skills because i want to make money rather than merchandise. Which two skills would be the most profitable, both at early lvls and at the end game.

Thanks

Herbalism and Mining are definately the most money. The only problem is that they both use a tracking skill to find resources, and you can not have both turned on at the same time. So if you do Mine/Herb you have to turn one on, and then watch out for the other one.

If you want the easier route then do Skinning with either mining or herbing. Skinning won't make much of anything before the outlands, but once you get into the outlands the money is decent. the value of Knothide leather is fairly stable, and there are things like Cobrascales that are fairly easy to farm and jump from 6-30g depending on demand.

I have to say that mining is deffently the best money maker in game, plentiful and much easier to raise skill (smelt).

I will have to disagree and say that the best money-maker in the game is skinning and I will tell you why.Skinning involves killing so while you are "gathering" your skins you are also getting drops such as meats for your cooking (which if you know what you are doing the cooking meats cooked by you can sell for tons of gold)you get the green drops the occasional blue drops and my favorite getting the rare and epic pattern drops.You also are getting trash drops to sell to the vendors.So in an hour of skinning lets say Clefthoof Bulls in Nagrand,you can get 30-40 clefthoof skins,and tons of knothide leather and scraps which you are going to turn into Heavy Knothide leathers because 3 different crafting proffesions use these skins consistently.So lets say you get 20 Hvy knothide leathers as well.That is 60g for a stack of each (I underballed this as my server is way more expensive selling prices)So 90g-120g for the clefthoof leathers and 60g for the stack of hvy Knot.Total of150g-180g so far now sell all your grey trash drops and vendor your greens or sell them and we can add more money to this figure,and occasionally you will get lucky and get the blues .

Continued from above,now lets look at Mining how many adamantite can you gather in one hour?I would say maybe 70-80 tops.Which the average price on adamantium stacks of 20 is 23-26g.So lets say you get 25g a stack thats 100g and add a few Primal earths whipptedo add 3g each one of those.So we are up to lets say 109g tops and that is IF YOU have an Epic Flyer,if not you could not gather this many as above.You will have no grey trash to sell to the vendors no greens with the exception of eternium ore which averages 75s each and no blues with the exception of a rare gem which is even more rare than getting a blue drop from a mob,you also will not have the meat that drops that sells for great prices now (cooked)depending on what beast you choose to farm.I am a Skinner and a Miner and I make way more cash with skinning than I ever do with mining which has every man and his brother fighting you for nodes and stealing them cause you cant mine it very well in battle,also with the new Dailies this makes it even harder to get nodes depending on your play schedule.

I agree, Skinning is very profitable all around for reasons stated above.
I also am a Skinner and Miner. Yeah, mining brings in good money, but not as good all around as Skinning.
Mining has people rushing to nodes to beat other people in the area...so if it's too busy, I just move on and not go thru the aggrovation.

Skinning has never let me down...money, meat, drops, etc.

I can make that more than both mining and skinning listed above put together in an hour using herbalizm, killing herb farmable mobs in outland. In about an hour i can get about 120 motes of life, 20 terocone, 40 felweed, 40 dreamfoil, 20 dreaming glory, 3 fel lotus, 1 black lotus, and about 30-50 g in assorted gray crap.

While individual results my vary I do have a epic'd lock that can take out about 6-8 of these farmable guys at a time.

herbalism FTW

If what you were saying above poster is true then everyone would be a herbalist.You couldnt kill enough mobs in an hour to get all what you have posted above,epiced out or not.Even if you went to zangarmarsh and killed Boglords which are skinnable by herbalists 6 at a time you would end up waiting on respawns man,and if you traveled to a different part of Zangar. then you would still lose so much time it wouldnt be possible to make all what you have posted above in ONE HOUR.Go tell that to the Herbalist forums maybe they will believe you because I sure in the hell dont.I have an Herbalist friend i take with me to Zangarmarsh so I can farm primal life and I kill stuff very fast and so does he and we together dont get all of what you have said you do above and i am full Epic and so is he.So go lie on the Herbalist forums.

Skinning bought me all of my mounts..40 up thru 70 epic. It also gave me enough gold to level a gold-sucking prof. like enchanting.  I don't know the exact percentage, but a high percentage of the mobs you have to kill while you level from 1-70 are skinnable.  You have to kill them anyways for quests, you might as well take an extra 5 seconds and make alot of gold in the process of leveling.  Questing in STV alone from 30-40 should give you enough for your 40 mount.  Then factor in the Mastery quests in Nagrand - 90 killbucks, 90 clefthoofs.....if you are 70, and you were never a skinner, don't think about the thousands of gold you've left laying around while you quested......it will make you sick to your stomach :)

skinning\mining or skinning\herb hard to loose with either, though I think mining is better than herb early. You mine copper from lvl 5 on but you don't really make money till brairthorn and you don't get that reliably till mid teens. But herbs pick up quick after that on the servers I play on 7-10 g for wild steelbloom and up to 20 g for goldthorn gets your mount money really fast.

Skinning does not have big paydays but nice steady cashflow. and at least half the time your killing something skinnable. That and I have spend lots of time following folks around skinning there leftovers!

houta, Tourett's? 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDqF8xf5Bho

I have had skinning/mining on one toon, and skinning/herbalism on another.  I had plenty of gold either way.  I like 2 gathering profs to 70 and epic mount.

I got my epic mount mixing up herbalism, skinning and dailies.  By the way, the daily "Gaining the Advantage" in Shatt is a great skinner quest.  They seem to drop more while skinning over herbing.

Never bothered with the exact math, but the gold comes fast enough either way. 

If forced to choose one, I'd go with herbalism.  Skinning clefthoof bulls are competitive, and sometimes people kill them for quests and don't loot!  It's enough to give one tourette's (I think this is what happened to houta). Mining also is competitive.  I occasionally get ninja'd for herbs (while killing mobs around the herb) but they seem more plentiful, and grinding herb-skinnable mobs is always an option. The respawn rate on withered giants and bog lords is sickly fast.  You'll be up to your knees in primal life grinding Zangar.

EDIT:  Looks like houta's post was removed, it was an unprovoked f-u post to nobody in particular (just for reference)

Ok it really depends on what server you are on, on my server Skinning and Mining would be good choices(im actually skin&herb {herb. for inscription from what i hear}) but in general mining is usually a wanted skill for $ but again it all depends on your server