im not an expert at this stuff by any means, however i feel confident in my knowledge about botting for personal gain, here is my experience so far:
Botting on your main account is ok, but you must do things a little differently than on some extra account used purely for farming. rule number one: dont but what you cant lose. rule number two: DONT BOT WHAT YOU CANNOT LOSE. if the thought of losing your T10 raider and three level 80 alts makes you shudder, buy a second account or just stop now. if you could deal with it, continue reading.
I starting botting with Nesox's MrFishIt (amazing program, major props to Nesox on this one <3 ) and through Nesox i discovered the honorbuddy and gatherbuddy bots. i use these regularly after i am done playing for the day. usually i set up and run the bot from 11pm to 7am pacific time. This time is important because it is when most servers have lower traffic, people are less inclined to make the effort of reporting a bot, and blizzard office is closed so anyone with real GM powers is unavailable.
I ALWAYS run the bot with the setting of closing down once my bags are full. no mailing, no guild bank deposits, just fill the bags and log out. You are getting your materials for zero time invested by yourself, there is no reason to get greedy and possibly attract attention. If you feel like you arent getting enough in a single bag filling, invest in the 32 slot profession bags and swap out with your normal bags before you farm.
before i started botting i had enough gold to get by on and even pay for an epic flyer or two. now i have more gold for less effort, and i have to say yes it is totally worth botting simply for personal wealth. i do not sell gold at all, except to close people such as guildies that know i bot. I never sell to gold sites because it just feeds the system that encourages account hacking and the botters that use speed and wall hacks.
just read your last post again and understand it better, no i do not think a second account is worth having purely to bot for personal gold. however you might consider asking a friend to go in with you on a GatherBuddy Lifetime account, like i did. we share the three instances, and the third on is traded back and forth depending on who needs it. sometimes he bots two accounts at once, to farm faster or to level on one and farm on the other; sometimes i use it to double farm or to farm on my account and level an alt for my girlfriend. just depends on what works best for you.
