You get only skill and lose warcraft gold if you skill off the government, as opposed to taking up time and materials to gain money and skill if you farm your own materials. But at level 10, we need to make salted trout to get skill faster. They give you the trout, but you need to buy salt to cook the fish. This is how they keep people from simply leveling an entire skill tree for free. There are 2 ways you can level skill. You obtain a work order from the trainer of your skill, the governments of World of Warcraft Gold give you items, you craft them for them, get skill for making these items, and give back the finished product.
The second one is unheard of to me at least, and is a very nice way to level your skills without having to go back to all the low level areas to get materials if you want to level a skill at max level. There is one downfall however; the government expects you to bring your own tools to create things for them. For example, at skill level 1 we can make baked apples for the governments use. They give you apples, you use their oven, and youre done.