Make sure to check the NPC shops before hitting the auction house, at least up until the early teen levels. Often you can buy the lowbie gear cheaper from an NPC than the AH. If fact, that's one way I used some of my mules to get the starting capital to get into gardening. Buy lowbie gear from the AH, mark it up 200-500% and sell at the AH. This works fine with gear, but even better with spells. With some of the spells it was possible to mark them up 700-800% to sell at the AH. This isn't something you'd do once you got out of the lower levels because it's a rather slow way to make money, but a couple thousand gil per day with a mule in each nation's capital wasn't too bad.
If you're going to get into crafting (which I wouldn't because it's a huge money sink), try out gardening. Once you have the starting capital to outfit mules with pots and some tree cuttings, you're pretty much set for steady cash. You can either try to grow some ore (worth some bucks if you get lucky with the right ores) or just sell the saplings to other people who are trying to grow ore (which is what I did). I had 30 pots going at once among 3 mules, and made about 120-150k profit per week. Not a huge amount of cash, but it took very little effort. I never had to farm at any rate. I did this the entire time I was playing (up until last summer), but I don't know if it's still a valid strategy or not.
