My usual method of making money goes like this:
--Travel to a dungeon
--Clear our dungeon
--Loot dead bodies
--Travel to Riverwood
--Sell loot to Riverwood Trader

Of course, that gets old. Fast.

At the moment, I am chopping lumber in Riverwood, while I surf the web. I don't know if it is profitable or not, but I'll continue doing it for the time being... until I find a better way.

I've heard of enchanting daggers and selling them.... but to do that you need a good bit of money to begin with.... right? Or am I doing it wrong?

Farming isn't very profitable... nor is mining - or at least from what I can tell.

So... any money-making tips?

Quests. Lots of quests.

Radiant quests are good, not necessarily quests in general though. It's sometimes best to wait before doing quests because the rewards are often scaled. At level 74, I get ridiculous amounts of gold for doing the most trivial task, but at lower levels it's chump change.

Do the rewards for bounties from a Jarl's court ever increase? Seems like I took one of those late in the game a couple characters ago, when I was routinely getting a couple thousand septims from other NPCs for helping them out with even simple stuff, and all I got from the steward was the same piddling amount I got for doing bounty work when I first started out.

I guess maybe that makes sense, it being a gubmint contract and all, there's probably a set amount the local authorities will pay for something and it's not like they ask you special, a bounty's out there for any idiot to handle who wants to earn the reward.

The easiest way is to learn the transmute spell, find any iron mine, collect all the iron ore then turn it into gold ore, then smelt those into gold bars. Sell. Repeat. Profit.

Easiest place to find the spell book is Halted Steam Camp.

To get started I chop wood for a few hours while watching DVDs then I use the house buying exploit.

Alchemy can be very lucrative. You can make expensive potions out of very common ingredients.

Some recipes that I use often enough to remember:
Damage Magicka Regen: Blue Butterfly Wing + Blue Mountain Flower = 500 gold
Slow Poison: Salt + Deathbell = 300
Invisibility: Chaurus Egg + Luna Moth WIng
Paralysis: Swamp Fungal Pod + Canis Root

Go to Haelga's Bunkhouse in Riften and tell em' Barnaby sent you.

That sounds like its not going end well or at least you won't be wearing any close by the end of that...

The easiest way to get started is to either find a soul trap weapon or invest a few perks into bound weapons and get the soul trap perk. empty soul gems are fairly cheap and necro dungeons you find lots. Enchant everything you find not just the daggers (but if you want to build smithing then make lots and use them) you will have money in short order

The Dwemer Ruins under Markarth + Follower + Solid Dwemer Metal = 300 Dwarven Metal Ingots...i will let you figure out the rest

Not to mention all the soul gems of various sizes to be found in every Dwemer ruin, both filled and empty. Killing Dwemer constructs is very profitable.

Between the Dwemer ruins under Markarth, the museum and the samples around Calcelmo you have enougth material for over 600 Dwarven Metal Ingots.

A pair of daggers and a bag of lockpicks are your tickets to all the coin you can handle.

Crafting dwemer armor, or at low levels i do bounty letters and radiant quests from whatever guild i joined.

I.... messed up.

So I did some Forsworn quests and dungeons all around the Reach. I made a hefty profit.

Bought as much Iron Ingots and Leather Strips as possible, and spammed the hell out of the Iron Dagger selection.

Then I realized - I got the patches installed. Which means it took absolutely forever to level up smithing. The problem? Now I have a high level, with low attack attributes (power-leveling, as they call it). Unbalanced as hell.

I done got to the point I always get at - start from scratch. And I might just.

All I want is a full set of Ebony Armor, and an Ebony Sword, and I'll be good to go.

EDIT: It's just that.... I don't understand how you're suppose to level your Smithing/Enchanting/Alchemy skills up... it's so tedious and time-consuming, and you'd rather be off doing other things... like leveling combat-related skills up.

i thought smithing now leveld up by item value?

Having Prowler's Profit is extremely useful, provided that you have finished finding all 24 Stones of Barenziah (list of locations can be found on internet). You will literally be swimming in all sorts of gems, both their regular and flawless varieties after dungeon crawling several times. Use the Transmute spell to create gold, create some jewellery with the gems and the gold ingots, and then sell. If you want even more profit, use some soul gems to enchant those pieces of jewellery with Fortify Carry Weight or Fortify Regeneration or whatever you have on hand and then profit. I do this all the time and it's a great way to get more money,although it can get tedious.

Hope this helps someone, at least.

I don't understand how that happens. I power leveled my Smithing up on both characters and was maxed by like level 20, but didn't have any issues. On my first character I had the full set of Legendary Ebony and on my second her Sneak was high enough to backstab.

You can still power level smithing its just best down with dwarven equipment. Take metal from dwarven ruins, make igots then make dwarven gear.
For enchanting buy cheap soul gems (common or less) go kill animals and monsters. Enchant dwarven gear you made.
Did you patch to 1.5

You're going to have to have patience. As far as I know you can't just make Ebony gear happen at low levels.

But I have to agree about selling enchanted gear for profit. I found soul trap early on (in the Midden), (any enchantment will do) and enchanted every iron dagger/steel sword/hunting bow I could find and sold them.

My method, early in the game, was to convert iron daggers (found everywhere), petty soul gems, and craft enhancements on them. The monies made on enchanted items is pretty good, and I bought Breezehome at level 5 or 6 (it's been a while LOL) with this method. I had 5000 gold faster than I've accumulated it since, but only because I had to have a place to store goods I'd be selling.

Don't fret money, honestly. Aside from houses, there's really nothing to buy from shops aside from health potions early. I've never bought weapons/armors from shops. I figured if the shop has them, so does a cave/dungeon.

Note: I did buy the Elvish gleaves of archery, because, you know, archery.

Then I disenchanted them. Biggest mistake I ever made in the game. I've yet to recoup any bonus of 30% or higher since, regardless of soul gem used.

I suppose this is because my enchantement level's still pretty low. Who the heck has time for enchantment when archery and sneak demand all perks and leveling!

No, I haven't. It only changes the Iron Dagger exploit, right? I just meant that by getting my Smithing to 100 when I was like levels 20 and 15 I didn't find myself nerfed against enemies as many people have warned. Since I've done it on the only 2 characters I've created maybe I was nerfed, but didn't notice since I have no baseline? Also, I play on Adept so maybe it's not as noticeable at that difficulty?

It enitrely changes how smithing levels, its now based on the value of the item. Dwarven works good for grinding, because the ingots can be gotten in vast numbers for free and the equipment has a nice value.

I understand the Smithing changes in 1.5 (it's the main reason I haven't patched yet - just in case I want to make a 3rd character). I just didn't notice my combat/armor skills being too weak after I leveled my Smithing to 100 and went out into the world.