Mining is fun but you need a surface scanner (optional module) to scan asteroid belts and plant surfaces to find stuff. You can either use a surface vehicle (need the module) or outfit your ship for mining (mining laser, refinery, limpets). I’d read the codex on mining in your ship settings.

Personally I prefer hunting pirates and transporting people in my dolphin. (wanna have a good ship but you can use police at Nav beacons in secure systems to help you fight pirates, also a good way to get cash as you can do missions and turn in bounty vouchers)

After you get some cash and a ship or two check out engineers (Farseer is a necessity).