Well.. cost me 3,800g, buying herbs on the AH.
Did 0 to 450 Alchemy today.

Well, that includes the last six points of Jewelcrafting on my JC toon.
I had enough JC tokens to buy eight epic cuts.

Checking auctioneer historical data vs current average pricing.
It looks like 150-200g (assuming no transmutation procs) per cooldown is the profit after buying the mats for the transmutes, and having my JC cut the epic gem.

I've got 22 toons, high enough and with an open trade skill slot, to reach 450 alchemy.
It is roughly three sets of my daily route (@45 mins each), to pay for the alchemy leveling.
But I have three sets of 80's, who can run dailies if I want to run them in a day.

At 150g, it's basically 25 days of transmutes per toon, before they recuperate the cost of training them.
But, have the gold/income, to add an alchemist each day, or at least every couple of days.

Down the road, doing transmutes on 22 toons, sending to the JC to cut, and then placing on the AH...
Will be much less time then running dailies...
I'd imagine over time, the transmutes will gradually go down in value.
But still, 20x 100g... which is a drastic drop from 150-200g profit per transmute/cut at the moment... is basically as much gold in 10-15 minutes, as 90 minutes of dailies is currently.

And chances are good, there will be 75 pts of alchemy to do in Cataclysm, and then new transmutes.
And those will start off at a much higher profit then transmutes are making now.