There are many video’s already on “how to make credits fast!” for ED… here’s my suggestions….

The starting sidewinder only has 4 cargo slots, so trying to make some money via trade or mining is extremely slow – and taking bulletin board missions is very limited at this point due to the limited cargo and combat capabilities of your ship.

I suggest :

• Get to the closest Nav beacon or resource extraction site
• Target and scan all ships in the area, once you find one that is “wanted”, attack and kill them
• At the very start, when you only have two not-so-powerful pulse lasers, you may have to be a little choosey about your targets
  • Un-shielded eagles can be quite easy to kill due to their relatively weak hull’s and can give up to 10000 credits bounty
  • Pythons and Anaconda’s are a bit too much to take on yourself at this point…. however it is possible to get some “Easy money” by waiting for all the other vessels in the area to get their hull strength down – then you can just chime in when their hull is at 1 or 2% with a couple of shots – and possibly get up to 90000 credits for it
  • Keep on using the “next target” button to cycle through targets, just because they are “clean” when you first scanned them, doesn’t mean they are now
• In all fights
  • managing your power distribution is key
    • Try to always have a full capacitor for your engines, that way if you do get in trouble, you can boost out of there immediately
    • I generally allocate 4 units of power dist to weapons and 2 to system during a fight
    • I then re-distribute while not firing (e.g. while tracking a manoeuvring enemy) to fill up the capacitors as required
  • Get in a good firing position, such as immediately behind the enemy, prior to initiating combat
  • Set your speed to the “blue area” for maximum manoeuvrability (but obviously increase if they start to run)
  • If you accidentally hit a non-wanted ship, and you become wanted, get out of there immediately. Head to the nearest starport and clear the bounty on your head
  • If the system authority vessels are attacking you and your not “wanted”, you have probably attacked someone that was friendly in the local system (even though they were marked as wanted) – simply frame-shift out of the area, then come straight back in… and they will no longer attack you
  • If you are in trouble, move 3km away from the attacking enemies. Many (but not all) weapons in elite dangerous have a 3km range
  • Once you have upgraded your ship and weapons and decide to take on anacondas
    • Get other ships involved. Bait the anaconda back to the nav beacon so the system authority vessels get involved in the fight. This simply means that the anaconda is firing on more targets, not just you
    • Shoot at it from 3km away (well, 2.99). If other ships are involved, you will cop very little fire and be able to inflict a fair bit of damage with no risk
• Once you have a little bit of cash, start upgrading your ship
  • Power generation and capacitors are the first things I would suggest to upgrade. That way you can keep firing, constantly (assuming you are using energy weapons)
  • I prefer to stick with energy weapons at this stage, as they do not run out of ammo – and recharge times are quite short if you have upgraded power
  • Gimballed beam lasers are my favourite at this stage
  • Buy/sell prices for ship components are standard. So if you buy a component and decide you don’t want it, you don’t lose anything. The same applies when upgrading ships. If you have applied 400,000 of upgrades to your sidewinder, when you move to a cobra or viper, you will get that money back
  • I prefer moving to a Cobra Mk 3 next, as they are a good balance between combat ready and hauling cargo – and can also be used for mining etc.
    • I go for gimballed beam lasers on the medium hard points and projectile weapons (multi-cannons etc.) on the small hardpoints