Yep, earn cash.

helps if you trade to earn in new systems and not bounty hunt. That just gives you a bad rep with to many factions and you'll have to use a bribe later on to beable to trade with them. EG to get the better ships/sheilds/weapons.

I did it the wrong way and now I'm going to start again and use the trade routes and give myself enough cash to buy what I want with out having to worry about if I'm on factions kill list

Nonsense...most of the factions you hunt bounties against are pretty useless in the long run anyway, and wtf is the point of floating around the systems NOT getting into fights? I made the vast majority of my money taking bounties and exploring systems (and killing hostiles, taking their loot and selling it). I went up alot faster that way (without cheating and looking at what to buy where without having actually found out myself) than a friend who did the whole commodity trader thing. Once I had a decent heavy fighter I went to the edge systems and took bounties for 100K-200K a pop...easy money. Now I am all but indestructable in my titan (yeah...I spent a small chunk of cash to up my rep with the corsairs...but it was a pittance in comparison to what I earned killing them).

If you're like me and enjoy the action involved with fighting more than the silly commerce portion of it then feel free to take bounties and make enemies...it can easily work out for you (or you could just take the bounties on loser groups like the Liberty Rogues, the Farmers Alliance and a couple others who serve no purpose other than to die and can't fight worth a damn anyway).

But yeah, the way to level is to earn cash...the point in MP is less to level than to make money in any case. Cash will get you the cool stuff you drool over...you're not limited in what you can buy by level...just by money.

--
rmIon - Clan Recreational Malice Leader
http://www.clan-rm.org/
#rm on irc.enterthegame.com