A consumer comes and purchases the guide. The person who put the site up gets a cut, the lord PDF mill company gets a cut, and the referrer sometimes gets a cut too (as soon asuming they aren't scammed by some shady business practices). The money doesn't go to the site's owner, it goes the PDF mill who spreads the wealth downward. The consumer gets a PDF file full of useless garbage that's mostly common sense and probably stolen off of a forum or WoW site while the seller has little to no overhead and rolls in the cash.

Of course, you know those shady gold sellers are involved. They join in stealing content and reposting it attempting to get people to buy their wow gold guides as well. You might stop and think to yourself how could this be? Wouldn't they lose business if people farmed their own gold? No. They don't. People who buy guides to "earn cash fast" are already desperate. If they're willing to throw down fifty bucks for a guide, then they're willing to throw down more money for the actual gold. It's a double whammy.

So, if you're thinking about buying one or have a friend talking about buying one, just tell them to drop that gold guide and get some common sense. Pick up a gathering profession, do your daily quests, and if you're good at it, play the market. Buy stuff when it's low and relist it for more. There is nothing out there that is going to make you gold faster. Sure there are prime farm spots, disenchanting, and other intricate details, but figuring that out can be done by asking your guildmates, or even posting on our own forums for some advice.

Of course, you could say I'm on a moral soapbox. Stupid people with money are often separated, right? Well, yeah. It's fine if you want to buy a guide. It's not going to hurt anyone (although the money could funnel towards bad people somewhere) and you'll just be out your cash. It's annoying, though, whenever I can't search the word "gold" without getting these websites jammed up in my face. It's annoying to go to a site and have one of the ads being a HOW TO FARM GOLD next to HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT FAST and the ads that aren't necessarily PG but involve lengthening things if you get what I mean.