Patch launches are historically the main time to generate profits as the economic activity is a lot higher during the first week.
Activity spikes and so do profits
Generally speaking if you want to get really rich in WoW the best approach is to play extremely actively when profits are high in end game markets. The weeks around a patch launch is prime time. Players come crashing back into the game and gear up their character and prepare for a new season of raids and M+.
Knowledge catch up
Right now you need to start working on Knowledge catch up for any characters that aren’t fully specced. I’ve lived up to my name and I’m lagging behind on a lot of characters as I didnt go all in for full knowledge builds. This patch massive profits will be dominated by volume crafting with max knowledge for consumables with the amount of knowledge available. Concentration builds are a lot worse now with profits dwindling, but will likely be profitable next week.
How do you get knowledge?
Catch up is mostly given through patron work orders. The 1 knowledge items represent the catch up and new work orders can appear every day. You want to log in every day and check work orders and do any that aren’t prohibitively expensive. For Enchanting it works a little differently as you get the catch up here by disenchanting, but you need to exhaust all the normal weekly sources first, including world treasures. Then you can get all the catch up from disenchanting, so buy or craft a ton of items and disenchant away.
Crafting orders
With a new season we will see new demand for crafted items as players need to upgrade their embellished pieces to the new seasonal Ilvl. Re crafts can be very profitable, as long as you can guarantee the maximum quality. The best slots will be weapons/off-hands and specific strong embellishments for each armor type. Since the item level caps out lower than mythic items the optimal choice is a weapon early and a lower stat budget slot for item 2 (bracers, cape, rings etc.), but it does depend on the best embellishment.
Volume crafting
For anything sold on the AH the big bucks will be in volume crafting. I’ve written about the general approach before (add link to integrated supply chains), and it is roughly the same. You want to do as many profit increasing operations as possible to ensure that the end product has the largest possible price difference between raw materials and the finished item you sell. This can involve shuffling your own enchanting materials with cheap.