I can't really say for sure if any one thing brought in the big bucks for me. I tend to do a little of everything in my saves. Right now though I have 47 goats so the cheese I get from them every couple of days is probably a big contributor. I also make jelly and wine on the side, in batches of 40 at a time. All different varieties. I do a lot of mining too and took the perk that makes you find a lot of geodes, so gemstone and ingot sales help out a lot too.
Pater invested heavily in stocks and a leveraged buyout of orphanages. ~ /snootyvoice Er, no, on my primary save the main source of income is a winery operation using greenhouse-grown berries and seasonal orchard fruits. Since the save I'm just starting (and procrastinating on, still in the first few weeks of the game) is going to be a slime n' snail ranch (two things not known for being high income streams) I expect to make most of my money from mining.
On unmodded saves, I'd get the greenhouse done as quick as I can and first compared to anything else. Get seed makers and ancient fruit as fast as I can. Build kegs for the ancient fruit.
Well, I've made 14.5 million on my main save, but it's taken seven years, so I can't say that what I do is terribly efficient. That farm does everything, but I believe the two biggest moneymakers are wines/jellies (one upgraded barn full of kegs, one shed full of preserves jars) and mining (deeeeep Skull Cavern runs that usually result in more than a stack of iridium ore and 10-20 Prismatic Shards as well). But my single most profitable crop was coffee before I changed my layout this year. It averaged 16-20k per day just chucking beans into the bin. Second save, year 2, practically all income is truffles with the Botanist perk and mining (same strategy as above). 14 pigs and counting.
Honestly everything contributes to my money gain. At the end of fall I shipped all my goods and got ~250k Although 50k of it was from sweet gem berries (only 15 of them!) the other 200k came from artisan goods, gems, and crab pots. However, what really sets me up for a successful farm is foraging in the mines for mushrooms. A couple days worth of mushroom foraging gives me about 100k. Then everything happens from there.
In the end it is farming and producing artisan goods, but my answer was "Farming" and "Foraging" because in the early game foraging is an important source of income. On top of that you forage lots of food which boosts your farming and mining. Although I only mine often enough to get a decent amount of quality sprinklers. I count that as an indirect source of income.
I don't do much of foraging or fishing (Still not level 10 by summer third year on fishing, just got level 9 thanks to the time I got to spend on it though), but I know what brings me the biggest income any day. FARMING! With over 900 tiles for crops getting auto-wattered everyday by my sprinkler system, I can get harvests ranging from 70 to 100k very easily. The bad side is, it takes me two days to prepare the planting area and plant stuff each seasons, but beyond that, no assistance recquired, just collect when its ready, and use this new-found time to do other things. On the 900 or so spots, 116 are strawberries in the greenhouse, which also counts 3 fruit trees of every types, and outside I also have 12 fruit trees waiting outside depending on the season, which I use notably for artisan goods. That consists of the bigger income. Although my regular income which range between 10 and 20k comes from barn animals, slime farming, and then the occasional fishing, mining, and whatever other actions I do that bring me money, but if I'd get rid of these and made everything crops, which I do have the ressources for, I could probably double the total profits, but that'd mean no regular income, still thinking of making a Junimos hut, and let them collect crops for an entire year before selling them for a big end year bonus.
Mainly Oil of Garlic and Pale Ale, until I got the greenhouse. Then it was Ancient Fruit all the way.
Definitely my artisan goods, my iridium star goat cheese and starfruit wine with an artisan profession to increase their value by %40 is what really brings in the gold.
Fishing made me comfortable in the early going (got to level 10 fishing before I got to level 10 farming) but there's only so much money you can make spending an entire day fishing. With farming now (year 2, headed into year 3), my income is between 200k and 500k per season, depending on the season in question. And this is without any animals. I haven't even fulfilled the "build a coop" mission yet. EDIT: Artisan goods and especially flower-powered honey though. Thousands for virtually no real work once the hive is built. Every time I get maple syrup I build another bee hive. I forge iron bars and mine coal just to keep up with that, now that I have so many maple trees tapped on my farm. I currently have 23 hives. (But I only had one maple tree tapped for a long time. Now I have seven.)
I sold sooooooo many cranberries in my second Fall on my original save, basically eliminating money problems until I blew it all on the cellar yesterday.
Well on one save I used some exploits. On another I just grew crops you could get multiple harvests from or produced more than one crop during the one time harvest. So like potatoes, cranberries, blueberries, grapes, hops, etc.
