Don't dismiss it so quickly I'd say. My main is a balance druid with 450/450 Herb/Alchemy. I usually use the herbs myself, so I don't sell them. I could probably have made more money selling the herbs when I hit Nortrend and started herbing there, but I didn't. Instead I leveled Alchemy and made lots of spellpower elixirs and Elixirs of Mighty Thoughts for myself. The excess I sold on AH for quite some money. Again, probably selling the herbs would've made more money then.
But, now that I can make flasks, I'm pretty sure selling those outprofits selling the mats on my server. The Frost Lotuses, though they seem rare, are readily availably so they don't sell that well on AH. The rest of the mats sell average for herbs, but not nearly for the kind of money I can ask for a flask.
Flask of the Frostwyrm for instance sells for about 70G a piece. Flask of Stoneblood for about the same (Why anyone would get excited about 650 health when they're walking around with 30K is beyond me btw). And then there's the fact that elixirs and flasks have double duration on Alchemists :D That combined with the ease to get mats for flasks, makes me use Flasks for everything, not only raids. I can walk around and do daily quests, a couple for heroics and what not, and last 4 hours with one flask :) And for you, being a mage, 125 SP from the Flask fo the Frostwyrm is not trivial.
Edited, Jan 8th 2009 3:03pm by Curois