This strat isn't as good as it was before and will continue to lose its profitability once 1.8 releases. Only SI/DI/FD apply. Either my luck has been sucking but SG used to drop like candy back then, now I only get 3 or 4 per SiE/Halu/Lava Elite (8-10 SGs maxed daily from 3/3 events including crap drops such as shields/shoulders). Doing all three events takes up 5-7 hours of my day and I really can't devote that much time anymore.
ZG cannot be botted since the past weeks (Libra), Giza Normal is a complete waste of time, Halu cannot be done easily unless 90+. World Tree is lolwut. Lava/Pit is even harder. With 1.8 patch coming, people are just going to upgrade their 45 SG onwards. I wish I had started much earlier :(
Also a warning for anyone planning to start from level 1 without buying any ZEN whatsoever... you are shit out of luck... seriously. Prices are so heavily inflated right now that you'll need to buy it unless you're willing to spend a HUGE amount of time to get your party up. For now public botting is your best option if you do not want to spend that much time playing this game, especially since the exchange rate for most servers are 280k-320k coins/zen. With prices on most items going up, everything gotten from botting is slowly rising as well, most especially soul jades.
As for private botting, it's just too much effort, too little reward. SGs rarely sell as quick as they used to since many people are quitting. My best week as of late has been 21m (compared to 45m weeks ago). If you convert that to real money, that's only 70 dollars. 70 dollars over a span of 40-50 hours is horrible. (Less than 2 dollars an hour)
On the bright side, back when it was only 150-180k/zen, using this strat earned me enough of a fortune to to buy an awesome zod+black dragon mount, thanks for everything woody.