You have to keep in mind that this game is a real cash economy and that do to anything it costs money.
It used to be a lot easier to make money mining back in the day as markup on stuff was a lot better. You need to know a lot about the mineral makeup of areas, ore markup, and price trends, and have the skills to mine certain ores and enmatters with a decent finder.
As it stands I’m down about $250 on mining since I’ve returned. At some point, I might talk about my mining activity as I’ve done an insane amount of mining (more so then I already have). Early on I was up over $100 due to a massive find I found. Things then went quietly south since. I've had nothing but bad mining trips losing lots of money.
Dam, as everything in a game, it involves luck too to get a nice drop from the mining, i thought it could be a more "secure way of grinding" but not.
While that is possible. A lot of the old miners that use to turn lots of profit have all given up on mining. There are still a couple of people who claim to be make some decent returns. It is however well known by many that are profitable that it is a small amount of profit if EVERYTHING goes right.
Those are also the kinds of people who might mine up $500 of an ore. Wait months or even all year for the price to spike and then sell that single ore off when and if it hits peak demand.
There are also some areas that are known for having a single ore that will be high markup. Some of those spots are in lootable PvP and they are camped 24/7. Other ores are rate limited how much can even be looted in an area over time with a lot of competition and many low markup ores scattered in those fields that take weeks to sell for 101% markup if at all.
Mining is quite a tricky subject. People hate giving up any info if they find a way to turn a profit doing it. As it could hurt their chances of what they know if others start flooding the market since there is often not enough demand to go around.