How do people earn money in GW2?

Dude the gold drop in this game sucks. Idk if it’s just the world I’m playing in but the trading post is so inactive. I’ve tried to sell my nodes online but only made like 1 gold.. I’ve resorted into buying gems and converging them in gold and using my left over gold for crafting my armor into 400 using gw2craft.net.

Welcome to GW2. :/

edit, as I should probably elaborate: There are ways to make gold faster, but the process you've gone through is pretty much what the game aims to get people to do when it comes to gold.

the Trading Post takes patience, and ..well.. patience. You learn over time what does and does not sell. Sometimes it's best to salvage an item and then use the materials to make something for yourself. Other methods for making gold while playing the game are more along the lines of where you choose to play. Some zones in the game are more active with groups of players because there are ways in which you can bring in more money.
On a casual, non-focused level, don't expect to bring in more than 20g per hour just playing randomly.

First.. you play for months and even years.. and then realize you have a ton of stuff that people wanna buy.. then you either sell it for gold.. or take confidence that you have several hundred gold in net woth and 2 silvers in the bank.

The game doesn't give you a lot of liquid gold. This is on purpose, to avoid rampant inflation.

The best way to "make" money is to sell stuff. Currently, a low maintenance way to get plenty of coin is to mine up iron and platinum ore, particularly from the rich nodes that are affixed to specific areas of the map. They're both worth about two silver each, and if you come away with about 200 of each after getting all the rich nodes on one character. This comes to about 800 silver total, or about 8 gold. On the way, you can cut down trees for hard wood and seasoned wood, which are also for a good price. These nodes are bound to the character, so if you have multiple characters you can mine up iron and platinum endlessly.

There are other ways of getting a lot of gold. But, they're all higher level stuff. Several fan favorites include:

(1)Silverwastes. Get a bunch of keys and shovels from doing the events, then join on a shovel train and just get a bunch of loot bags.(2)Heart of Thorns map metas. It's like silverwastes, except each meta has its own key and currency.(3)Dungeons. If you can get a group to run with, they're decent money.
(4)Fractals. These are some of the best money in the game, but you need full decked out ascended in order to get to the higher tiers.(5)The living world season 3 and season 4 maps. They have their own unified currencies, but you have to buy the living world expansions to get them(6)The events on the Orr maps can yield a lot of loot bags, which themselves can be sold for cash instead of being opened.

There's probably many more that I don't immediately remember.

Wow thanks guys this was pretty good. I’m suprised on how active these forums are!

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:The game doesn't give you a lot of liquid gold. This is on purpose, to avoid rampant inflation.

The best way to "make" money is to sell stuff. Currently, a low maintenance way to get plenty of coin is to mine up iron and platinum ore, particularly from the rich nodes that are affixed to specific areas of the map. They're both worth about two silver each, and if you come away with about 200 of each after getting all the rich nodes on one character. This comes to about 800 silver total, or about 8 gold. On the way, you can cut down trees for hard wood and seasoned wood, which are also for a good price. These nodes are bound to the character, so if you have multiple characters you can mine up iron and platinum endlessly.

There are other ways of getting a lot of gold. But, they're all higher level stuff. Several fan favorites include:

(1)Silverwastes. Get a bunch of keys and shovels from doing the events, then join on a shovel train and just get a bunch of loot bags.(2)Heart of Thorns map metas. It's like silverwastes, except each meta has its own key and currency.(3)Dungeons. If you can get a group to run with, they're decent money.

(4)Fractals. These are some of the best money in the game, but you need full decked out ascended in order to get to the higher tiers.(5)The living world season 3 and season 4 maps. They have their own unified currencies, but you have to buy the living world expansions to get them(6)The events on the Orr maps can yield a lot of loot bags, which themselves can be sold for cash instead of being opened.

There's probably many more that I don't immediately remember.

This guy has pretty much summed it up.

I only really play properly on weekends bc of work during week. Each weekend I spend casually earning gold by doing some of tbe above I tend to aim for 30-40g by Sunday evening. You get a lot more if you try properly, especially by doing high tier Fractals but i’ve yet to get enough AR and I’m not saving for anything particular so 40g a weekend is fine for me.