To reach any long term goal you will have to take a lot of short term actions. In goldmaking those short term actions will change, and they will change quickly, especially when starting out.
What is your long term goal?
A lot of you who are just starting out will probably have some ambitious long term goals like the long boi, gold cap or a certain number of tokens. This can and should impact what you do, as you always need to keep your long term goals in mind when deciding what to do.
The most efficient tactics will change
What will most efficiently take you from 10k to 100k is not the same approach that will take you from 100k to 1 million most effectively. And 1 million to 10 million has yet another set of most effective tactics and markets.
To get to your multi million goal in the fastest way you should plan ahead. Make sure that what you are doing right now will support what you are likely to be doing in the future.
Material flipping into crafting
I typically advise people to start out with material flipping when starting out as it gives you a great inroad into the auction house and it works even with a fairly small starting capital. The next step is usually crafting professions. If you start out focusing your material flipping on materials you will not be using for crafting you will have two separate markets when you start crafting. This will avoid overlap and makes sure you can maximize profits from both.
Timing
Some markets take some time to ramp up. Darkmoon deck crafting for instance will take a fairly large chunk of gold to get a good stockpile of cards going before you get anywhere close to 10 cards per deck. Be aware of any markets with similar slow ramp up times. When entering a market like this you will have to keep up your activities in other markets to generate gold until it takes off.
Think ahead
Always think about which markets you want to be in in the future, and how that will impact what you do know. Is there a market you really want to be in? Then get started there.
Are you just looking to maximize gold? Then add crafting markets by checking the spreadsheet, and focus on the highest value flipping markets.