and the ways you can make a decent 10kish profit is insanely fucking stupid.
You're doing it wrong then
Rooftop Rumble set to Hard, 18.75K profit for a mission that can be completed in 2 maybe 3 minutes and with a decent teammate or a group of more than 2 people can be done at very little cost in ammo and with little real risk of failure.
I too was a member of the Rockstar made it way to hard to make decent money quickly in this game when they tweaked the rewards for doing races. Turns out it is very easy to make quick cash in this game you just have try different missions types.
Yeah I still play it, despite the games numerous WTF issues. I can spend a good few hours just trolling free roam in my Buzzard or doing Random Missions.