I found a trick that I called "graveyard jumping", which involved sneaking a Level 1 character into a high-level zone far enough to reach the area of the next graveyard before dying, then the next graveyard, then the next.
After a couple of days of survival horror gameplay, I had a dozen of Level 1 characters in multiple high-level areas of the world. The point of reaching these areas was vendors with rare items on cooldowns -- usually recipes or trade books.
I would log into those Level 1 characters (to sheer bewilderment of higher-level locals), buy the cooldown items from the vendors, then send them via mail to my main character in the capital, who would sell the items on the Auction House at an enormous markup, collect the profits, and send some gold to the Level 1 characters so they could cover their item mailing fees.
I never raided or belonged to a guild, but I had so much money that a friend, who was a leader of a high-ranking raiding guild, sometimes came to me to borrow some gold.
Good times!