When you decide what you want to mine you need to go to the area that you want to farm from. Survey the geography and look for hilly ground and mountainous areas. There is a reason for this.

It is on the mountainous and hilly areas that you will find the WoW mining nodes. It is very rare to find them elsewhere, especially flat or prairie areas. Explore around these areas and decide on an efficient route, once you do this get an addon called Gatherer, this addon lets you track items you gather in the course of your mining route, I'm thinking you can guess the value of this World of Warcraft mining addon. Another add-on you want is GathererDB, it shows you the latest WoWhead database information on known locations of minerals, as well as other valuable stuff like herbs, and treasure. Ok, now once you start on your route keep an eye out for little yellow dots on your mini-map, these are the mining nodes, go hammer them out of the ground. Keep doing this until your bags are full.

Now that your bags are full you run straight to the Auction House and put it all up for sale right? Not necessarily, this is where your selling strategy comes into play. Remember, mining in World of Warcraft is more effective if you have a plan of attack.

There will be times where the ore you have just farmed may be inflated (in demand and therefore you make more gold) and other times where it will be deflated (not in high demand and therefore you profit less). To get this info you want to get the Auctioneer add-on, this will record prices and track pricing trends. The strategy then becomes to sell whatever ore you have on hand at the right time to maximize profit.

You can see why the Auctioneer is so important, if used properly you can net a few more gold pieces if you time the market right. Another option is to find a jewelcrafter to prospect your ore. This gives you a chance at getting valuable gems. Yes, it might be a little risky but you can really make a ton of gold if you get an expensive gem.

Another gold revenue stream can be had with blacksmiths and engineers. I recommend that you find a few and offer your ore directly to them, you might find a trading partner or a network of partners that will pay you fast. This network will have the advantage of saving you time as well since you won't have to do any work at the Auction House.

As you can see, there are many methods and approaches to mining in World of Warcraft. Good luck!