bad thing about cooking is if you go off the drops you get while leveling, your kills will out pace your cooking skill, unless, you take a couple hours and level fishing and cooking at the same time.
first aid... really easy to level as you go, but i always find myself throwing away stacks of bandages i don't use. plus, it's really only necessary to level one toon to 300 to make heavy runecloth bandages. all your alts can stay at 225 as that's the skill required to apply a heavy runecloth bandage, and just mail cloth to your main who can mail bandages back.
check the official boards, professions forum, and read GeneriKB's guide to making money. read it a couple times :)
to summarize the money-making guide:
you really can't level a crafting profession as you go without grinding for mats. thus... pick two gathering professions, ie skinning/herbalism or skinning/mining, and sell everything you come across on the auction house. you will have nooo problem buying your mount at 40. then at level 40 you will have enough money built up to drop a gathering profession, start a crafting profession, buy mats, make stuff, and sell them for a profit.
alternatively, i kept both gathering profs on my main and do the following:
main - 54 warr with 300 skinning, 300 herbalism, 300 first aid, 280 cooking
alt1 - 29 warr with 225 leatherworking, 225 enchanting
this one gets all the skins and worthless green items, and can make a bit of money when i want, selling leather items, or making leather items, disenchanting them, and selling the dusts/essences.
alt2 - 39 warr with 300 alchemy, 160 mining
this one is the moneymaker... main mails all gathered herbs and this one mails pots back, or sells them on the ah. very easy to make buttloads of money with a 300 alchemist and a bankroll of about 50g. the alchemy profits from this one bought my main's >>axe of the deep woods<< imperial boots and helm... and epic mount when the time comes.
i also have 3 other alts i play from time to time... one a priest for mind-control gankingness, who will also switch to alchemy at level 35 so i can do two transmutes.
obviously, the downside to having so many alts is that your main will level much slower, however, each one is gaining rested xp... so they'll really level faster 0.o and you will truly have more gold than you care to spend lol.
that's just the short short version... check out the official board for teh whole story.
Edited, Fri Apr 14 13:20:32 2006 by axhed