Assassinate Titus Mede II.

Just as in real life, the best way to earn money is to profit from what you enjoy most. Adventuring, crafting, thieving, assassinating, exploring -- just not grinding. Unless, of course, you're into grinding.

One way that doesn't involve exploits or cheat codes:

Go to the nearest tavern, ask about jobs. They'll give you the local Jarl's latest bounty. Go kill the person or animal in the note, and collect a reward from the Jarl's steward- usually a few hundred gold. Repeat as necessary. You'll have enough money in no time, it's fun, and you'll pick up new locations in the process.

if you have a certain smelting mod and aren't the enchanting type, then, using the transmute spell, turn iron ore to silver ore, silver ore to gold ore, smelt gold ore into gold ingots, and then smelt gold ingots into 100g each. works great since iron ore is cake to acquire.

again, this is if you don't want to go the enchanting route. The downside is the only skill you will raise is the alteration skill, as smelting has no effect on smithing skills.

Hard, honest work.

there's the unusual gem quest, but you will run into the same problem as the dragon bones. general strategy i've found is to go to belethor's in white run. sell all your gems until he has no gold. buy 900 gold worth of potions, then sell more gems until he has no gold. buy 1800 gold worth of enchanted armor, then sell more gems until he has no gold. go next door and sell the potions. go to the blacksmiths near the entrance and sell the armors. this lets you clean out 4 vendors worth of gold. this only nets you 2k..3k gold however. the conversion is also terrible, 10k worth of gems are lost in this 'conversion' to make 2k gold. you COULD go to another town, but every dungeon is only usually good for 10k worth of gems converted to 2k. so your next dungeon, you'd head to solitude and do the same thing. then hopefully enough time has lapsed that you can go back to whiterun again. if you're coupling this with finding word walls, it's not so bad. on lucky runs you can gain as much as 20k gems, which after two towns nets you a whopping 4k. i personally live in an abandoned shack south of windhelm, my house is decorated with bloodstains and a sabre tooth corpse. glorious.

There is a merchants chest in Dawnstar. Basically you talk to a merchant (one of the Khajits) who is a general goods vendor then go to the merchant chest and everything he had for sale will be in the chest for you to take. Wait 48 hours and there will be new stock for you to take.

PS. You can take everything in the merchant's inventory, including their gold. You'll get 800 gold and a load of gems/weapons/armor every time.

Videos on how to do it are on youtube.

Chop wood and sell it.. I usually do 3 rounds.. This gives 90 gold each time. I think you get 3 pieces with each activation.. I do that three times and then sell the wood.

3 chops per activation. each chop yields 2 firewood, which, when turned into npcs who have a direct "I have firewood to sell" chat option, yields 5 gold per firewood, earning 30 gold for a single activation.

Truly the easiest way to make money. Loot and gold are leveled, of course.

1. Console
2. Enchant
3. Alchemy
....
100 Loot

This.

I hate carrying a lot of loot and trying to sell it all over. This is a very quick way to make money. One iron plus some leather makes a dagger, it's the quickest cheapest thing to make. Add banish enchant with a petty soul and it sells for more money than most merchants have. Also they are light. I carry half a dozen of them and sell whenever I happen to walk past a blacksmith, never run out of money, don't have to spend all day traveling to different shops.

A spouse also makes money easier to get. Since the spouse acts as a shop, you don't even have to leave home to sell.

Pick everyone's pockets. Lots of normal & enchanted jewelry/gems in Whiterun's population.

1. Give followers an axe
2. Take them to Riverwood and tell them to chop wood
3. Collect wood
4. Sell wood to Hod.
5. Rake in gold.

Stealing stuff. It's amazing how many people in skyrim carry around really expensive jewellery in their pockets

There are some VERY expensive alchemy potions, which get better as you get better at alchemy. Once you find the multi-effect formulas, you can practically mint money. Potions with positive and negative effects (that I would find useless) can still be fabulously expensive. Even though you will get only a small portion of their worth, you can still run the merchants out of money.

Note that giant's toe typically means killing a giant which is difficult at low level, but there are ways.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!! Alchemy is your ticket to riches!

Wow! Yeah, but that 900 gold potion will only get you 250 gold (if you are lucky) from cheat Belethor.

I made my riches by mining my own ore (iron, ebony, gold, etc.), smelting it into ingots, then creating armor for sale to merchants and blacksmiths. Also do the same with jewelry. Made my riches this way. I have so much I have to wait for all the merchants in Skyrim to get more money because I cleaned them out. Gold, ruby necklaces and orcish armor will make you rich my friend.

Titus Mede II is worth 20,000 smackers. Shadowmere? I'd leave the horse at home. Seriously. If you need to trap souls the horse will only get in the way.


Other than that, while building up your enchanting and smithing skills, daggers and enchanting them with petty souls, keep in mind that you need to get rid of these things so keep the prices reasonable. Banish is nice and all that but you can only sell one, whereas fire you can sell like 10 or more to a vendor. It's weight and quantity.

If you visit Belathor with the proper attire (Amulet of Dibella and Thieves Guild Hood) and are female you will get about 50% of value.

Easy money ideas for low levels:

Bouty Quests - Talk to your local tavern owner for jobs, these give you gold when you finish plus what ever items you collect to sell. Eventually you will run out, just move to a new hold.

Transmute Spell - Halted Steam Camp (will get a bounty for it in Whiterun eventualy), turn iron ore into gold, than smith the gold into gold rings ( 2 x 75, but sell value depends on speechcraft). Can also enchant them for extra cash.

Thieves Guild Combine Beldam and Sweep jobs for the same hold (save before asking and reload till you get them). When you steal the 3 items, you will complete both jobs. After 5 in one hold and a special job, you get a new vendor ( and a couple fences in cities) who have around 4K gold each. Most the jobs, the victim will have a time period they are also not at home, use it to clean out their home.

Pickpocket - lots of people carry exspensive gems, jewelery, and gold. If you don't mind "cheating" ...save pickpocket than reload if needed

Enchanting - Find a soul trap item, disenchant it. Enchant your companion's weapons with soul trap (works best with archer). Stock up on petty soul gems, and give them to your companion. They will fill them up fast. Use the soul gems to enchant junk equipment before selling it. If using your own items, just use the 1 sec enchantment (has most uses), I would suggest the longer one for companions.

Alchemy - Run around Whiterun area and gather lavender, flowers, tundra cotton, and wheat. Turn them into potions. I combine hunting with this also for hides and venison meat. Helps fill up petty gems, use the hides to make armor, and venison stew is VERY good for some melle (non stop power attacks)

Adventure - clear out caves and mines, collect ore and goodie, enchant (disenchant) them, sell what ever you are not going to be using. I collect everything, than drop lowest value:weight items to collect more. Another idea is to use a container (or drag a body) by the enchantce and use it as a holding container, than run back and forth till everything is sold.

Do u remeber who u got this quest from? Ive been looking for the transmute spell but cant find it

Alchemy is the best way. Go to a vendor, buy all ingredients under 50 gold. Turn into potions and sell. You'll build up a larger list of available potions and the money will begin to multiply as you discover more expensive potions. A great potion is "Slow", you only need a Deathbell and a Salt Pile, two very cheap and very common ingredients and you can sell for 200+ gold.

Also, you don't NEED the quest to get transmute ore. Just go to the Halted Stream Camp and it'll be on a table after the Chief.

I love the way the title of this thread is: "Exactly what is the best..." and people have suggested numerous ways so there is no "exact" way I guess.

Whoa! Excuse me, I'm off to join the DB.

And keep in mind you don't need a soul trap weapon. You can buy a soul trap spell and use that on a wolf or bear. Bears use up common soul gems. Wolves petty. Snow wolves lesser. Giants use grand. The spell lasts 60 seconds. The weapon usually only 5 seconds or less unless it's a really good one. Spell requires about 110 magika.

Two options:

1. Invisible Danwstar chest. Has tons of loot and is close to a couple of merchants (Kajit camp next to town and Rustleif, the town smith).
2. Get married early. There are several eligible NPC's that you will run across by going no further than Riverwood and Whiterun. If your spouse is not off adventuring with you, they will open a shop and give you $100 gold per day, which stacks if you don't collect it on a daily basis.