Cost efficient enchanting profession levelling

I have been using an add-on called Auctionator to quickly find materials for my enchanting profession on the auction house. It provides a button on the enchanting skill window that allows me to automatically search the auction house for materials I can buy for a specific enchantment or item.

I have been leveling my enchanting profession by setting the enchanting skill filter to "has skill up" and using Auctionator to find the materials for the enchantment that provides the strongest skill up. This works well for me, but because of the varying price of materials it can be quite time consuming to work out the most cost efficient enchantment to use.

Is there a better way to find the best deal.

When using an auctioning Addon, you can always do an entire scan of the servers market. then you should have the current price for all items you can craft.

That way you don't have to re-scan every time you select that item.

Prices fluctuate over the weekend, after Raid id resets is the best time to sell enchants, because most people get new gear on those days.

Same rule applies to potions/flasks etc.

As for Auctionator, give Auctioneer a try, i find it a bit clearer and the entire scan is quicker. Also in auctioneer you can create a "shopping list" with all the items you want to craft and do 1 scan over all those items.

Since Warlords of Draenor you can level your professions using recipes from the current expansion. This is usually more effective than looking for rare and expensive old materials. The only exception is at the start on an expansion where new materials are extremely expensive.

Pros

• less variety of required materials, just buy a bigger bunch of current mats and use them for a large amount of recipes
• as of Legion, you can even make use of the skill level system giving you the opportunity to upgrade your recipes (and require less materials and/or make more stuff using the same amount of mats)
• you can sell your stuff and even make money instead of losing it
• it is easier to buy mats of the current expansion off the auction house while older mats are usually rare or very expensive
• if you're farming mats you can circle the same zones over and over again without worrying about farming too much of some mats (and wasting time)
• excess mats can easily be sold on the auction house

Cons

• especially at the start of an expansion new mats are extremely expensive
• competition: more people sell the same stuff
• if you farmed your mats they're worth more on the auction house than the latest ones (but takes some time to sell them)
• armor (tailoring, leatherworking, blacksmithing) doesn't sell very well, but still can be disenchanted (and some enchanters buy stuff like that off the AH)

Conclusion

Maybe you have luck on some realms, but usually it is better to use recipes from the current expansion instead of going through 100s of old recipes.