If your main account is Cata and your toons are level 85 then you will want to be able to gather Cata herbs and ores to make gold.
You can either buy the expansion packs and bot a toon to level 85 easy enough or you can go to one of the many web sites that sell wow accounts and buy a premade account with a level 85 toon on it already for about $10 to $20 more than just the expansions alone. DK accounts are pretty cheap as are lesser geared toons or even level 80 toons (after a few days of gathering in the lower Cata zones they would level to 85 easy enough). If buying a premade account, look for them to have either Herbing or mining maxed or both if you can get it as these are the professions that will make you the most gold using HB. Even if they have neither profession maxed, a couple hours of botting will get them maxed even starting from scratch.
Make a guild bank using one of your toons on your main account and keep that toon as GM. Invite your new level 85 “Botting” toon to join that guild. I would also suggest making a few level 1 toons on your botting account to use as auction house sales toons.
Use your level 85 toon to farm, placing all your mats in the guild bank at the end of each botting cycle. Use your level 1 toons to post these items for sale in the Auction House. Don’t over do your listings. Use a few toons to do your postings if necessary to keep your number of listing down to a normal level.
Place all of the gold you receive from your auctions in the guild bank. Do this right away and never leave large amounts of gold on a level 1 toon. This is just my own personal precaution. I never leave more than a few silver on my level 1 toons before I log them off. A level 1 with lots of gold screams gold seller to me. Avoid using your main account to post these auctions because you don’t want Blizz coming down on you with some of their “abuse of the economy” crap. Again, this shouldn’t be a problem if you keep the number of auctions on each toon to a sensible level.
As the GM, you can take out as much or as little gold from the Guild bank whenever you like. The same goes for mats. I suggest you do not take out gold that you just put into the bank moments ago. This can look like you are buying gold. Let it sit for a while before taking a lot out. Do not mail large amounts of gold between accounts! By this I man do not take 50k gold on one of your level 1 toons on your botting account and mail it to a toon on your main account. It just doesn’t look right.
Going this route, the only connection you have between your botted account and your main account is a single guild and you will not be banned on your main for such a connection.
Regarding VPN, I don’t bother with them anymore, especially if you are only going to have 1 extra account you are going to be botting. That is a personal choice though. I bot several accounts from the same ip as my main and have never had an issue on my main. However, if you only have one computer, do not play on your main account at the same time you are botting your second account. I use multiple systems and will have 3 or 4 botted accounts going on my other computers at the same time I am playing on my main. Again no issues so far.
