Ok so these are really old but there is still profit to be made via using resources. How? Well that come comes down to your choice of skills. I’m just going to tackle optimising resource gain, so we can talk about tradeskills in comments.

https://www.wowhead.com/guides/garrisons/buildings/guide-to-the-garrison-lunarfall-inn-frostwall-tavern

Ok so:

–  Inn to level 3. This gives you the huge resource missions

– Inn to level 2. This lets you recruit followers each RL week. You want to recruit for the extreme scavenger trait. Select a green follower instead of blue ones – getting two traits sounds fun until you realise you have locked into a nonoptimal trait. Your endgoal is scavenger AND extreme scavenger as follower traits. Unless that blue follower has both (and it can be procced, just got one with both from my Inn this week!) pass over them to get more rolls at scavenger as a secondary trait.

– Also Inn: if you want transmog, you need to do the quests given here. You can complete these quests in WoD Timewalking as well as by soloing them. Timewalking makes it easy to be lazy.

– Salvage yard to level 3. This takes a quest to unlock. Worth it. This gives you a chance for drops on missions. These drops give extra resources, follower upgrades (very much needed with the push you are doing via Inn) and extra coin via DE/vendor.

– Stables to 1. You only need it at level 1 to get action while mounted, which is the huge benefit it gives. While in your garrison you aren’t dismounted while doing actions like farming herbs.

– Ogre tower to level 2+. This unlocks work orders – mage tower work orders create rush orders for your comm producing buildings. This is NOT self sustaining, and you will need to go farm ogre waystones now and then. Fortunately there is a LFR queue mob right next to where you gather your resources. Highmaul is the LFR for these tokens, alternatively go fly there and AoE for a bit. This one is an elective…build it because you have space but do a tiny bit of work now and then to keep it maintained. It basically just adds to your income.

– Trading post at minimum level 1 for alt trades. Check what is cheap, sell/craft.

– Herb garden + mines: gives xp up to level 50, so a great option for passive leveling while building gold. Can use seeds to buy a pet to resell.

-Lumber mill: a good option for raw resource generation, I only advise if on alt and actively leveling through WoD. This setup involves active collection but it can be really nice to boost early resource generation.

– Holidays: look into using Holidays, eg I have turned in Halloween tokens to spawn spiders which means I have a boss up constantly which gives a potential valuable drop.

– Trader: if you have a level 3 garrison, each week you’ll get a trader. You can move to an alt’s garrison to capitalise on this, if you have 2 accounts, eg using a herb trader instead of a fur trader. The trader will ask for resources which you can trade for primal spirits. This lets you easily exchange excess resources for primal spirits, which can be used for purchasing mats or accelerating tradeskills.

– Wandering vendors may visit you. Depending on your server, the items they sell may have resell value.

– Battle pets setup lets you farm token and stones.

I am writing this off the top of my head, so I expect I’ve forgotten stuff. Please chime in with details!