The one thing I regret from release is not hopping on the crafting train when everyone else was doing it at start. I'm so fucking poor now (600k) and have nothing leveled other than Fishing. Other than getting everything to 15 for the skills, IYO what's the 1 class to focus on for best profit return?
You can't really level just one class. I mean you can but you can't do that much without most classes at 50. The bare minimum is 37 CUL, 15 ALC(preferably 50), 50 WVR, 50 CRP, 15 BSM(preferably 50) and 15 LTW/15 GSM are pretty useful. The problem is catching up now is a pain. I wasn't far behind when I started and it still cost me a fuckton. You'd first have to craft and meld all the jewelry+belt+AF chest, get artisan goggles and then do what I did. That's like 5-6millions and a lot of time, and that'd be to gear a single class(though there's a lot of overlap I guess).
You can make money with basic items that people use for spiritbinding and what not though. That's what I did when I started playing again. The stuff to check are crafting/gathering jewelry/belt, the lvl 45-50 white stuff, like Raptorskin choker/ring/belt and Electrum earring/choker/wristlets and Red coral earring. Those are easy to make, you'll want LTW and GSM to 50 though, but they tend to sell for a decent bit more than what the mats are worth. The problem is, it's small differences overall so you need to move a lot of them to matter. You basically need to restock often and adjust the prices so you're always lower. But generally mats cost like 1k and the items sell for 10-15k and sell at a decent pace, kinda. Other stuff are relics, especially melded relics. I mean relic precursor, the stuff you need for the quest. Materials tend to be 10k ish but if you meld the item and HQ it(even though it's pointless to HQ since it's a turn in item, but HQ sells better and for more) you can generally sell them for 50-70k, and they're easy to make since they're only 1star stuff.
Though this is only good if you can play with the market a lot, it doesn't necessarily take a lot of time crafting, but you need to be able to check your shit regularily, so it's not good if you can only play in the evening or whatever.
A much easier way to make use of crafting for money is to craft spiritbinding shit for yourself and then break it down into materias, the materia market is ridiculous because of relics, stuff like crit and det IV materias go for 500+k. Obviously a lot of the materias you get will suck but it's still worth doing cause you can bind pretty fast especially in a group(often groups in PF for that) and if you bind like 10sets in a couple of hours you're bound to find some decent materias. The stuff you bind doesn't need highly geared crafters, basically just need 50 in the stuff you're gonna use(wvr for cloth etc). Also make sure to save all IV materias you get even the resists, since you can trade 5 materias for a random one at Mutamix, so you can sometimes salvage the garbage(it's not like you could do anything else with them anyway).
Spiritbinding is definitely the good way to make money atm if you don't already have a good base for crafting. Crafting is a massive investment, both in time and money, you basically have to spend a lot of money to make a lot of money, it's hard to get back into it unless you have a lot of time. If you're ahead of the masses you can make money hand over fist(the top crafter in my FC made like 200+millions during the first month of 2.4 for example) but for most people, you make small money over a long period of time, and only if you spend a lot of time. If I didn't like crafting I probably wouldn't bother doing it and would spiritbind instead, it's just a lot easier to deal with.
