Seriously, The only way I have been able to level it up is from trainers, and the occasional dialogue option (I refuse to use the glitch in riften). Am I not doing something properly? I've mad hundreds of simple items like iron daggers/hide bracers, sold them all one at a time, and gotten maybe 1-2 skill ups outside of training. What's the deal here?

You kidding me? That skill usually progresses fast for me. Speechcraft also gains new levels when you simply sell/buy with the vendors. Meaning if you constantly haul in phat lootz from caves, that skill will by flying.

The progress bar increase is relative to the value of the item you're selling. Sell expensive things and it'll go up faster. Sell worthless things and watch it snail along.

I have the opposite problem. I stopped selling loot because my speech skill was raising too much too fast and making me level up.

Snipped out the important part. Selling items will make your speech skill soar.

Whenever i take a trip to sell all the herbs i've collected on my latest excursion i seem to gain a skill.

I guess it would seem slow if you trying to get it to 100.

Id say Speech is useful to everyone and one of the best skills to use a few trainer sessions in at the Bard College.

I feel it levels just about right though it started slow.

Selling/buying.

Mine's up to 70 something without even trying. No trainers.

Alchemy though... *yawn*

Alchemy, have to make 1 bazillion potions for one level, way too many, enchanting and blacksmithing way too easy. All 3 of the skills above could use some tweaking either up or down.

Its often best done by transaction, not by amount. So sell your 100 iron daggers individually, not as a group.

It goes definitely easily for me... I didn't even put Perks into Speechcraft and it's up in the 50s already without even thinking about leveling it... I'm lvl 34.

It is painful. Unless you're roleplaying, though, I'm finding a hard time figuring out why you'd want it, anyway. I have to believe that they could've figured out how to make Speechcraft's perk tree about more than just money making.

The root of the problem is that Speechcraft is dying out in the games. Bethesda has, for whatever reason, decided to not develop the conversations in their games. I'll bet the next title drops Speechcraft all together.

Alchemy's rate of increase is directly proportional to the value of the created potions, so if you want to speed it up I highly recommend a few minutes' worth of research on the wiki so that you know which items to combine to make dual-aspect potions; as these are worth far more than single-aspect ones your Alchemy skill will skyrocket if you crank out a large number of them. As a side benefit you can sell them to cover the costs for Alchemy/Smithing/Enchanting, as they're usually worth quite a bit of money.

Speech is important to me

Cheers

It levels pretty fast for me, but I always have loads of loot to sell and have the Thief stone blessing as well

You know this for sure? Everyone I've talked to say it's the other way around. I'll have to check it out. I guess I have been kind of frugal with my hoard, guess I'll just svck it up and take the hit on gold. Thanks everyone for the replies.