desperate, although I still trade manually, I'm sure autmoated trading system should be profitable as there're a lot of traders, fund managers etc. who are using them to trade. One good example is pros use trading system to scalp and arbitrage. It can't be done so fine without the help of an automated system, although there's always a risk manager who will step in if the system goes wrong.
I'm still learning how to create an automated trading system - I have no idea how to code my trading methods. I suxks at coding. That's the real problem to me.
As to what you should base on when building an automated trading system, I think there're existing yet profitable trading strategies available which you could make use of: moving averages, MACD, CCI, to name but a few. You can build some simple trading systems on them. You should gain overall.
However I do think automated trading system cannot make you earn big. It's especially true if your trading strategy involve subjectivity, pattern recognition, wave counting, and so on. That's why we involve in manual trading which is much more rewarding than automated trading.