I notcied people who have been smithing a lot, I wanted to ask where everyone finds materials. Does everyone just mine? Where would you find ebony materials?

if you want to make smithing a major skill of yours then just go to a cave with iron ore in it. I went to one but can't remember the name of it. (stop stream camp or something) its part of a quest given to you by a male redguard in whiterun.

anyway, go there, and mine some ore, kill all the wolves you can.
smelt the ore, tan the leather from the wolves and make a ton of iron daggers, i got mine up 6 or 7 levels by making 15 daggers i think.

I can't be bothered with mines seeing as 99% of the veins are iron.

What I currently do is just check traders and smiths every day for supplies. Slowly getting myself a full Glass set.

Is there a profit if you BUY materials, and making weapons of it, and than sell them again??

Not really. Most materials are incredibly expensive, like 200-300 gold for an ingot or ore.

When I've found materials it has just been me running around the world and stumbling on a vein randomly. I've only found iron in the caves/dungeons so far but maybe I'll find better eventually.

On the far central/eastern side of the map in the hills above the hot springs and giant tribes, I found a Dwemer ruined that required a key, but it had a second building that I picked the lock to that had about 20 Dwarven metal ingots that I used to make a full set of Dwemer armor and upgrade it accordingly.

I mine everything personally, unless I'm missing a single ingot or two. The rarer materials are really only in one or two mines throughout Skyrim. However, pay attention outside as well, as I accidentally stumbled upon a quicksilver vein in the far north next to the Tower stone. I am loving the smithing.

I've been in afew Dwemer dungeons. There insanely hard for me lol. I guess I'll just have to buy from shops. I can't stand mining. Especially for something worthless like iron.

While it does not make much of a profit, doing so makes your smithing skill skyrocket. Two bouts of forging and grinding around 6 iron daggers took my smithing skill from 21 to 35 in about 15 minutes.

Instead of making a new thread, I want to ask where to find a lot of health potions. I barely find any in shops. Smitihng materials and health potions are so hard to find for me.

Yeah I only find the ocassional few when in a dungeon or something, but otherwise they seem pretty rare. I thought about picking up alchemy for the purpose of making them.

There's some locations where it's easy to get materials that are bound to end up in guides. As mentioned earlier in this thread, there's one dwemer ruin that you can't get into because you need a key, but next to it is a storehouse without enemies that has enough dwemer stuff to get upwards of 30 dwarven metal ingots. Also there's an orc encampent on a hillside with an ebony mine. I'm pretty sure you can mine there without getting attacked by them. Again, upwards of 30 ebony ore.