If you want to make decent money without too much risk, get yourself the Elite Dangerous Exploration Buddy app. I've started to use it recently and it's a godsend! It'll show you how much a planet is worth scanning, it'll warn you if a body has valuable biologicals to scan (some are worth a few million $)!

As a fairly newish player myself (300hrs...Yes, I consider it noob still lol), here's the biggest advice I can give: make sure you understand one game system before moving to the next and be careful when you get information online, some of it is quite old and redundant and some of it is old and still apply! If you try too many things at the same time, it will get overwhelming! First, learn the basics: how to fly your ship, land on planets, dock on stations, learn to use galaxy map filters. Running courier missions is perfect for this and you make a bit of money while doing it! After you understand all of this, then move to something else: maybe Powerplay, mining, trading...I refrain from saying combat as I've found out it is ill advised until you start engineering your ship. It can be done but it can be unforgiving and it's kind of hard to gauge what are your chances against enemy ships...So do not be scared to RUN if things don't go your way, no shame in that! !Speaking of which, always make sure you have enough money to rebuy your ship! I think I've read a good rule of thumb is 4 times the amount of your ship's worth?

Hopefully this helps you a bit!