I've been doing some deflation lately. I got over 1Billion inf in a month, following the standard guide with enhancements. I just got back into the game for real a couple months ago. after not playing since like 2006, so I am not a seasoned vet.
That said, what maddens me, and creates a false distortion of the markets are stale buy and sell bids. this is probably particularly bad on Torchbearer, where I play, seeing as it is the original HC server.
What I've done is buy a crap ton of recipes, converted to rares and just started selling them for 1 inf. I haven't done it with popular ones, as I still need the money, but when you add up the recipe fee, the salvage fees (minimal), crafting cost, converter (2-4) fees, I end up burning inf as the sales usually come in at a loss (not always though; a fair number of enhancements have low bids around 300k-500k, which is basically break-even/tiny-gain territory. I usually don't continue selling those when I get there).
The harder part are the stale sell bids, as those can be ridiculous, and the market has actually been deflating since the initial nostalgia rush in 2019.