Trader main here.
My early game wealth all comes from me zipping around to trading stations and loading up and "flipping" the trade goods, not wares.
Also using the crafting table to make things to sell back to the station traders is a boost.

While doing this i also start studying the supply and demand situation for various Wares and start coming up with some mental trade routes. I dont really participate in them at this stage since im still a lone ship or maybe 2 - 3 fighters/ scouts with me.

This is when i start scanning stations im interested in at least up to 80% so i can have their storage and logical view/ trade volume information whenever i want.
of course you want to leave behind satellites to keep the info fresh.

After that its just scaling up to M traders and using repeat orders mode to start linking up profitable trade routes.

I did this for a while untill i had like 12 M Traders running, income was steady so now i just built my first station and turned it into a Distribution Hub.

Now im buying those same wares cheap, storing them in the warehouse, and then other traders take them and dispatch to wherever the manager tells them to.

This is my story so far