I have not found making money in Skyrim to be a problem in the slightest. I've got about 80 hours worth of playtime on each of my 4 playthroughs and I have an average of 500,000 gold on each one of them. If you want to earn money quickly, I'd highly recommend completing the Thieve's Guild and finishing the quest "No Stone Unturned". The fences have about 4000 a pop for selling purposes and with Prowler's Profit, you will find roughly 2-4 gems in every single chest, urn, or any other container short of barrels and sacks that is not empty. Everytime I unlock this perk, I earn more money than I actually know what to do with.

EDIT: By the way, that is 500,000 gold after buying every available house and upgrade possible in the game.

riften has 6 vendors you can sell to
thats my main home as well

Riften:

The transmute spell is a quick way to make bank.

I have over 70,000 right now so that should be enough( I thinks) if not then I follow my special money makeing steps

Kill some Dragons
Take their bones
go to a forge
forge a Dragon Dagger
put on ring,necklace, shirt, and gauntlets with fortify smith enchant
take a sip out of potion that fortifies smith by 125%
Temper Dragon Dagger to Legendary Dragon Dagger
go to Enchant Dragon Dagger
add 2 Enchantments to Dragon Dagger with any soul gem Absorb health and and other
Sell Dragon Dagger at riverwood trader for about 2000 gold
rinse and repeat


must be a master of Alchemy,Enchantment and Smiting

Make Daedric Armor? Although it takes forever to get the Daedric Hearts... hell make any high end armor and you will make lots of Septims... but I made my fortune by selling lots of Ebony or Daedric armor....

I read somewhere that you buy a small one room house and then expand on that. They are in the pale, falkreath, and I cant remember the other place.

Honestly, you do not even need to make it. Once you get to about level 40 or so, the Deathlord Draugr carry Ebony weapons and you will run into a lot of them over the course of the Main Quest and the Voices of Power side quests. Selling them will give you a killing, as will upgrading them using the Smithing skill. For a little extra bang, you can enchant them too.

Money making tip for low level characters: purchase or find weapon with damage stamina or absorb health. Disenchant weapon. Make lots of iron daggers. Buy lots of empty petty soul gems. Buy either weapon with soul snare or buy soul trap spell. Go mud crab hunting to trap souls. Use filled petty soul gems to enchant iron daggers with stamina damage or absorb health. Sell daggers. They should sell for around 200 a pop. Cost you maybe 30 to make.

Whiterun is the best place for this with 3 pure smiths with 1100 gold each, Drunken Huntsman with 800 gold, and Belethor with 750 gold.

Best places to hunt mudcrabs: south of Gjukar's monument. Pond east of Dustman's Cairn. Stream leading to Halted Stream camp. Dry stream bed south of Silent Moons Camp. Stream south of Redoran's retreat. Also consider the area between Morthal and the Apprentice stone. Other petty souls: The three skeletons in the Hall of the Dead in Whiterun. 6 spiders in mine at Shor's Stone.

Oh okay, never knew that... It has never been super difficult at making money in an ES game... In morrowind I had a character that made a couple K, (Level 1)

I stand by what I said. Prowler's Profit will leave you without a need to actually earn gold again. Sometimes, I even sell my gems for free because I have more in my inventory than I know what to do with.

By the time I get Prowler's Profit I don't need it. One of the more worthless rewards. I don't even bother to pick up the gems. Just to do the quest you have to buy Proudspire Manor for 25k. If you can do that you don't need Prowler's Profit. The only reason I do it is for completeness and to deck out the Cistern.

If I am not mistaken, you can break into Proudspire Manor rather than having to buy it. I've done that in the past. Granted, back then, you ended up breaking all of the plaques and weapon racks, but I know I've done that before.

Maybe I can do something with my 800,000 gold now...

Seriously, money in Bethesda games is an issue until mid-way through, when it becomes ridiculously easy to obtain with just a bit of effort.

just sell dragon bones etc

Weapons and armor are best since smiths will buy them and they have much more money (1100 gold) than general merchants. Only General Merchants (750 gold) and Apothecary merchants (500 gold) buy dragon bones, not smiths.

figured i'd need at least half a mil to really do everything i want to do in heartfire, so all im doing today is making iron & steel daggers and enchanting them with the banish spell. surprised at how much $$$ you can make just in windhelm buy investing in all of the shops plus maxing out on speech you can clear 15k easy (including extra supplies like ebony ore, soul gems, etc)