A good way of making gold is buying low and selling high. I bought a mace other day for 10k for myself but I could've easily got 80k for it. There's lots of bargains like this.
Thieving, questing, farming materials, selling some stuff on the guild trader. I find that if I do too much of one thing I get super bored even if it is good for making gold/collecting motif pages.
Don't think of it like nosy neighbors. For one thing, addons like MM make that sale available for everyone in guild to see. Its not nosy when everyone using MM selling or buying those items in the gui
Make anything purple if you want to use it anyway because it costs next to northing. Then once you know you want to use that piece of gear, make it gold. Why not, that is what the gold mats are for. T
someone selling a bunch of grapes for a million gold, questioning it so ZOS will investigate is actually rather reasonable. If ZOS gets the proof, then they decide on the consequences. If everyone ig