If you're not a full goblin sitting in the AH for several hours a day, you can't expect to make gold through the AH. Your gold will have to come from farming, or maybe occasionally you will get lucky with a flip or buying your crafting materials cheap.

The issue you're running into is that basically every server has goblins who predominantly play the AH. They're content to sit and scan every other minute for deals on materials, or items to flip, or to cancel their auctions to repost after being undercut.

The days of being able to post some items and walk away for 24 hours are basically gone. Personally I can't stomach sitting in the AH, and have resolved to just make gold from selling whatever raw materials I get from other activities, or doing callings which reward ~1800g, or the mission tables which are available from multiple expansions and can net you multiple thousands of gold/day/toon.

Lastly there are those who are selling to make bag space, or they farmed their own materials and just want to post at a 'fair price' or they powerleveled a prof and just want to get rid of the items. Others still just don't care about gold at all, and will price things to move, because they hate the cycle of AH>mailbox>AH.