So I remember back when I played the game for the first 6 months after launch I found an easy way to make money and/or mats with little to no effort. Basically its as easy as joining a circle, adding neighbors, and maintaining a plug. Sell your mats or if not keep them and use them or hoard them. Want even more gold than that and have a gathering profession? Join the same circle and farm for people. Sure its a little more effort but if you have nothing to do between dungeon or battleground queues, why not? Survivalists, Miners and Relic Hunters welcome.

Basically what these circles do is connect people who want to farm mats and who want their mats farmed. Relics, Trees, Minerals. You can get them all depending on what you have or need. When someone visits your plot and they gather your materials you get half and they get the other half (by default). Log in and check your mail and if people have visited your plot you have mats waiting for you each and every day. If you have extra time on your hands visit other people's plot and farm for them and get half of everything. No need to go out into the scary world and risk dying! Do this from the comfort of a plot. Just join the circle and set your note to say what you have on your plot (like "Mineral T4" if you have a plug or "Mineral Gatherer" if you have no plug for some reason but want to farm) then add people to your neighbors list that match what you want. BAM you have free mats.

Make sure you keep your gathering plug close to the entrance if you can as farmers will prefer that and ALWAYS keep your gathering plug at 50/50. If not you will quickly be removed from neighbor lists and even the circle. No need to worry about your garden being stolen from either as Carbine has added the ability to make your gathering plug settings separate from your garden settings. Also make sure to keep your plug repaired or you're not gonna get any mats from it if it's broken. I don't know about non signature but signature people only need to repair maybe once a month.

I know there used to be an addon called WillYouBeMyNeighbor that helped with this but its not working with finding people for you but from what I hear you can still use it to transort yourself from plot to plot easier. No idea though since I havent tried it. If it comes back that would be great but for now this is the only real option to do this. Here's hoping the addon maker or the maker of redux come back with F2P and start developing again.

I don't know about other servers but I started one of these circles recently on Entity (Exile side) to get this started again since I don't seem to be able to find these circles again. Its just started but slowly getting off the ground but sooner or later we will have a great number of people helping each other make gold. Seems mineral deposits seem to be the most abundant but as more people join more things to farm will show up. If you are interested in joining it just send me a PM with your chars name you want added to the circle or just message "Frozone Best". If there are none on your server consider starting your own. I'm sure people will appreciate it.

TL;DR Join a circle and people will farm mats for you. If you have extra time gather from other peoples plots and get even more. Sell the mats if you want for platinum.

Edit: Added the fact the one I made is Exile side.