In BDO, you have lots of options on how to earn income, and managing your own lifeskill costime empire is one of them. 

Pros:

• All materials can be acquired through nodes, most nodes of which are close to a town
• Fairly easy to manage
• They sell quickly
• Other resources acquired from nodes like minerals (copper ores, iron ores, etc.) can be used for other purposes like trading and are not completely useless

Cons: 

• Items do not stack, so you need quite a lot of storage space
• Some materials take a while to stack up
• Some materials require to be processed

To start, there are a total of 8 lifeskill costumes in the game that can be enhanced to a maximum of +5. You can choose to produce one or several, but rarely does it happen that a player can produce all. So choose wisely! I suggest choosing one expensive, and at least one cheap. Expensive as your primary focus, and the cheap one as a back-up just in case you're still waiting for the resources of your primary focus to be replenished.

To explain how the pricing works, the cheaper the costumes are, the easier you can get the materials. In this case, the easiest to produce are trader clothes and the hardest is either farmer and gatherer's. Before starting your own empire, you have to ask yourself: (a) Am I going to sell the costumes as it is? or (b) Am I going to enhance it, then sell it?

I personally suggest to go option A if you're new to the game, just to get a start on the flow of income, then when you become more stable, you can choose to enhance it then sell it. But keep in mind that enhancing it bears a lot of risks as failing destroys the items.

WHERE TO INVEST YOUR CP

If you've already decided on which costumes to produce, the most basic of course, is to invest your cp in one or two of the costume mills around the world. I recommend getting a costume mill outside of your home city. Below are the list of all houses that can be used as a costume mill: 

Heidel:

• House No. 2-3, 2nd Floor. Total CP to purchase: 8

• House No. 3-4, 1st Floor. Total CP to purchase: 8

• House No. 7-4, 2nd Floor. Total CP to purchase: 8

Calpheon:

• House No. 2-5, 2nd Floor. Total CP to purchase: 8

• House No. 7-6, 2nd Floor. Total CP to purchase: 7

• House No. 2-5, 1st Floor. Total CP to purchase: 9

• House No. 1-6, 1st Floor. Total CP to purchase: 9

• House No. 3-4, 1st Floor. Total CP to purchase: 8

Altinova:

• House No. 2-3, 1st Floor. Total CP to purchase: 9

• House No. 6-5, 1st Floor. Total CP to purchase: 9

Remember that after purchasing, if you're planning on mass-producing these costumes, you have to invest more CP in buying houses to expand your storage space. Decide wisely! 

NODES

You'll probably get most of your materials through nodes around Mediah, Calpheon, and Serendia. 

LOCATIONS

Serendia

For Flax, I recommend getting two nodes in the early days, then once it has stacked enough, one node should suffice.

• Moretti Plantation (Flax)
• Costa Farm (Flax)
• Northern Heidel Quarry (Powder of Darkness & Powder of Flame)
• Lynch Ranch (Wool)

Mediah

For Cotton, get both at the beginning of your empire, let them stack, then one node should suffice after. 

• Ahto Farm (Cotton)
• Kasula Farm (Cotton) 
• Omar Lava Cave (Powder of Crevice & Powder of Time)
• Abandoned Iron Mine (Powder of Darkness & Powder of Time)
• Ancient Fissure (Powder of Time)
• Mediah Shore (Powder of Flame)

Calpheon

• Rhua Tree Stub (Trace of Forest)
• Bernianto Farm Excavation (Trace of Forest & Trace of Battle) 
• Behr Riverhead (Powder of Earth)
• Keplan Quarry (Powder of Crevice)
• Primal Giant Post (Powder of Crevice)
• Quint Hill (Powder of Time)
• Glutoni Cave (Powder of Crevice)

BLACK STONE POWDER

Perhaps the hardest material that you have to get your hands on is the blackstone powder.

To get BSP, you can either:

OPTION 1: Go to Abandoned Iron Mine and farm Crystal Covered in Black Ash which gives you blue magic crystals. One hour should give you 10-15 of them. It drops drom the mobs, and is a sure drop when you kill the elites. Once you have them opened, get a character with at least Processing Professional 1 and grind them. This should give you 30-45 BSP with high enough processing skill. 

OPTION 2: Snipe the cheapest blue magic crystals off the market place and grind.

At this point, I strongly suggest that you plan it out and make sure that you get the most with the fewest contribution points before you start investing in your respective nodes.

Once you have your nodes and workers ready, sit back and relax, let the resources stack for a couple of weeks. You can take this time to farm or snipe magic crystals in the market place, process the flax, cotton, and wool you have into fabrics, or simply enjoy your time in game.

A DAY IN THE LIFE

You have all your mats stacked up. Now what? 

1. Process all your flax, cotton, and wool into fabrics. They have minimal weight so you can process them overnight.

2. Grind your blue magic crystals if you haven't yet!

3. If you need to, ship those materials to the town where you have your costume mill.

4. Start making those costumes!

5. Before you sleep and once you wake up, sell what you've made to free up storage space. Just keep an eye out. Never let your storage be full as this stops the production. 

Some other tips: 

1. I don't recomment buying anything off the market place except for the occasional blue magic crystals to grind for BSP. Other than that, it's simply just not worth it. 

2. Use the ores that you get from the nodes to level up your trading and the flax to level up your processing.

3. I really don't recommend this as your main source of income. Making every type of clothing is just confusing and drains your mats too fast, I don't really recommend it.