Can you profit from crafting / alchemy?
Crafting price of an item is about 1/10 of the purchasing price (assuming the crafting components were looted or picked up), so, it is clearly profitable to craft.
But again, selling prices are also very low compared to purchasing prices of the same item, so it really does not bring too much money. All in all, you gain something by crafting and selling, but it just does not compensate for the time and effort put into collecting of the material.