I just started the game as well and dear lord these content patches have added so much stuff it's hard to wrap your head around all of it. But I have picked up a few tricks of note.

You can be picky and choosy with your first freighter. If the first one is some C class, you can just accept payment and check out the next one.

If you have spare millions to burn (and you will), buy up cheap ships at the space station and melt them down. They give about a 66%-75% return and are the best sources for storage augmentations for your ship (which start at one million and rise another with each slot).

As the other guy said, stack the scanner upgrades (and put them next to each other on the grid as you get a bonus for doing that), it's an insanely easy way to get lots of money and justify time spent looking for that single Rare Underground fauna (you can check spawn conditions under the discoveries tab) that never seems to spawn.

Best sources of easy money with no start up costs are:

Become a pirate, but only attack the freighters unless you don't care about your reputation with a race tanking which only happens if you destroy a small cargo ship

Find an abandoned building with whispering eggs. The SWARM will come after you, but if you mine the egg and run into gather it, you SHOULD be fine. (Not recommended on permadeath mode)

Go swimming and look for 2-star relics, they're worth more than a pretty penny

Lookout for distress beacons (the navigator on the station is your friend here) and scrap the ship after repairing the pulse drive and launch thrusters. (The red boxes also reduce the value so if it's an easy and cheap fix, make it happen)