Some benefit of crafting from my experience.

- Can repair your own gears anytime, anywhere (you need to have respective class at least 10 lv below the gear's lv requirement)
- Saving repair cost. For example, gear that npc charge you 400-500g to repair per piece can be repair with 200g item with crafting and it will get condition +100% that can exceed normal durability (ex. 30/100 →130/100) which mean you can use it longer before needing to repair it again.
- Saving melding cost, npc melding cost atm is upto 1200g per Materia and you can also meld anywhere, anytime.
- Can craft you own Glamour stuffs. (Sometimes those stuffs are quite expensive on marketboard)
- Can produce your own foods/potions for raiding, save more gil if you also have gatherer classes.

That's it. For me, crafting is not only about making money, it's about reducing your expense.