If you are new to the MMO world of Rift, you should know that you can choose three different professions in Rift. There are a total of nine different crafts to choose from. Out of these nine Rift professions six are crafting and three are Rift gathering skills. You will need materials from two of the gathering skills in order to make everything in one crafting profession. The idea is that you can choose up to three so that means the typical gamer choose one crafting and two gathering professions to support it.
If you are not the typical gamer you may have thought about changing this up a bit. For an example a new gamer might choose to take all three gathering professions. This means they will have a lot of materials to sell in the auction house. Selling raw materials in the auction house can get a lot of money quickly. New players find this helpful in order to obtain gear and level faster.
Once a player has become more experienced he or she might choose to drop the gathering skills and take on three new crafting skills. Because you can not gain raw materials from rift crafting skills alone such as armorsmith, outfitter etc., you will need to buy your materials. This can be countered by stock piling materials before you switch your rift professions. Often times higher Rift adventure level characters can gain more money through creature killing than selling raw materials since they are doing so already for daily quests and raiding. Being able to make some of your own items is really advantageous if you have the time/money for it.
Another choice you have is to choose two crafting professions and one gathering profession this would allow you to gain half of your needed materials for each crafting profession and allow you to make your own items at the same time. I have noticed that this build is becoming more and more popular in Rift crafting guides.
Crafting in Rift is all-in-all pretty easy. You just need a good Rift butchering guide or Rift Runecrafting guide and a few hours of play time. Many people report to being able to go from 1-300 in just two hours with enough money or stock piled crafting materials piled up. If you are still struggling with the crafting professions you may just want to focus on the gathering ones until you have enough money and materials to throw at your skill.