Trading sucks if what you do is buy goods at station x, move them to station y and place them on an NPC 'buy' order, like you would have done in Elite.
It's actually very profitable indeed if you're smart with your buy/sell orders - set a buy order in a trade hub, and sell the item at a small markup. Keep the orders just a bit apart, and each time someone buys or sells that item, you're making a profit. Not a big profit per transation, but actually a lot of money in a relatively short amount of time.
Direct hours:cash isn't that much fun, and ... well, grinding never has been, has it? Missions and mining in highsec are quite a reasonable return on isks/hours, but would it suprise you to find it's been 2 years since I last did either of those for profit? (I've done a few missions with an alt to get standing for factional warfare, but otherwise I've done none).
Have made money on industry and market, and in terms of 'isks per real day' it's not that great - I go do a couple of L4s and fill my wallet - but in terms of isks for time spent, it's superb - a couple of hours a week, and probably turning over about a billion a month, with a good profit margin. Enough to keep me in ships, despite being PvPing the vast majority of the time I spend online. (Not losing ships often, and thinking about cost/benefit ratios does help there too).
EVE ... isn't like other MMOs though. Lots of people hate it, because they just don't 'get' it. EVE is actually an RTS. Might not look like it, but it is. You've got resources to manage - isks, manufacturing materials, and other less tangible ones. There's logistics and supply lines. Intelligence and diplomacy. You've got 'unit' veterancy, morale and skill levels, and you've only got control of your own. And you've got leadership, and clarity of orders - and you don't automatically get to be 'commander' either - you need to inspire your troops to follow you.
In EVE, grudges, politics and diplomacy have a _real_ impact on the game, because they are the game.
To top it all off, you have a 'real' economy - market and industry are all player driven. You'll see prices on commodities and components shifting, day to day, with political changes, tactical variance on the field, and just what's 'cool' at the moment.
Which is in large part why EVE doesn't appeal to everyone - a lot of people come to it, looking for a game where they're told what the next quest is, and what to do next. EVE is not that sort of a game - to do what you think you should, is like volunteering to be the SCV in Star Craft. You gather minerals for the industrial machine, then get blown up and wonder what the point was. When what you could be doing is driving a Siege tank, flying a corsair, or a battlecruiser, or just being a Marine in a bunker screaming YEAH COME GET SOME!.
I've just passed 5 years of playing EVE, and I've still not got bored, any more than I could get bored of playing chess - each day I have a similar game framework in front of me, but I'm always playing against another player - or multiple players - and even if it's the same person tomorrow, then they can innovate, improve and just be downright sneaky, where a computer never really can.