Help needed! :)

[Failia]

But the guy above said crafting is essentially like doing dungeons but you get to customize stats... so if you're correct then how would crafting give you any money?

That's not quite true. The only stats that you get to customize are the pieces of gear that you can add materia to. If there's no materia slots, you can't customize the equipment.

Also, you can't meld materia to equipment until your crafting level is the same level as the gear you want to craft. So, if you're level 25 and looking to meld a piece of materia to a level 25 piece of equipment, for example, you have to be a crafting level 25 in order to be able to meld materia to that peice of equipment. There's also a failure chance for melding as well, where you will lose the materia you want to use and materia itself can be expensive depending on what you want to use (if you don't have any from spiritbonding).

I also forgot to mention that not all gear comes from the same craft. You said you were a mage, and a lot of the gear from that may come from weaving but there are other items that are required to be made that come from other craftskills (for example carpentry or goldsmith).