which means I can't really do any raids

You can pug raids since they're cross realm, you aren't limited to playing with a guild. My main is on a dead realm and I manage to raid perfectly fine, even better if you find a partial guild group and regularly join them every week. If you're consistently raiding with them and in their discord you're already 90% of a guild member.

Someone I was talking to also said that the economy on a dead realm pretty much makes it impossible to make gold,

I don't think I agree with that at all, I guess it depends how "dead" the realm is but in legion I managed to pay my wow sub with gold and I had more than enough money to spare.

I wish I didn't have to pay to transfer

You don't have too, my server is ranked 103 in the US and yours is ranked 60 so I don't think your server is that dead, at least not compared to mine.

Raid using LFG until 8.3 and see if one of the Horde guilds becomes active again when new content comes out.