We're playing an MMO. what's the hurry with the leveling? Is'nt the point of these games to play them for a while? Why would you want to be max level for everything in a week? I don't know about you all, but after i master skills in a game and am all powerful, the game starts to get a bit boring because there are no longer any goals or new activities.
Gathering in this game has made me loads of loot. I've made over 60 gold at lvl9 just form selling things to people and im not even in the second tier of any gathering or crafting profession. having a blast doing it too.
The problem with crafting (lw, bs, tailor, ws) is the incentive. As I've said in a multitude of threads, look at the time it takes to quest and run dungeons, then look at the time it takes to craft. Now compare rewards. When it takes about 10x as long to work on something and only gain a fraction of the reward than if you were to run easy dungeons, there is a problem with balance and scale.
You said you made 60g. My best guess here is you made that selling gathering components for people leveling crafting. No one in their right mind would touch something actually crafted considering the fact that doing quests is 10x more rewarding. Those people who bought gathering components, do you know what they get out of it? A loss. The market is terribly one-sided in favor of people selling materials instead of products. Even in the later crafting levels, dungeons are still more rewarding. Just because you are making a killing doesn't make the system right.
To be clear, the time it takes someone to craft isn't the problem. These people complaining about the time it takes need to stop and look at the big picture. Crafting isn't very rewarding. Even when it may become rewarding, leveling it is still too tedious due to the lack of reward at low levels when compared to dungeons at low levels.
If you try to level crafting at lower levels, you will often end up out-leveling the quests in your inventory. This is especially true as a skinner / leatherworker. The idea of crafting is to gear yourself, but what is the point of leveling it if you can level your character to 40 just through crafting, never making the most of the gear you're making? There is no problem if you want to level like that, but a lot of us don't. There should be a feature to turn off character xp while crafting / gathering for the people who actually want to craft and still get a chance to do all the quests, without being over-leveled.