yeah its so bloody difficult to make money nowadays without doing the patch day market board slaughter compared to how it used to be. Rampant undercutting, marketboard bots SE refuses to tackle, worthwhile stuff to sell to vendors being destroyed etc
not to mention there's so few markets that stay at a decent price now. The only good ones are certain dyes which range between 230k and 350k depending, at least on adamantoise where everyone is stingy or ludicrously expensive (curative logos 3k on every other server a few weeks ago, 11k on adamantoise O_O)

its took me 5 months to make enough money to afford a mansion (50m gil) this year both at the start of patches and in between them
when i first bought an fc house a few years back before all these bots and exp showers for levelling crafting, i did that between patches in about a month for 60m gil

its absolutely ridiculous and despite people continuously asking SE to do something about the issue eg limiting price adjustments per day, item has to remain on for duration, delays before item is actually on the the market etc they still haven't done anything