For skinning you will be needing a skinning knife, which can be bought from a merchant who sell profession-related items. Leather is also used for some blacksmithing, engineering, and tailoring recipes.

Leather and hides are used for leatherworking. Skinning – Skinning allows players to gather leather and hides by skinning animals. Your second profession can be a crafting profession if you like to (some may want to create their gear in level 80), but a second gathering profession is pretty much preffered if you wanna get the best income of money. You must have atleast one gathering profession, the gathring profession makes a benefit difference of the outcome if you wanna make money. The first one is gathering professions, the second is crafting professions. You can only have two professions, so you have to choose wisely. Professions is one of the most important things while making money.