Newcomer / Intro Returning player: Quick ways to make credits?

Original Kickstarter backer and player at the beginning, but only just returning for another go at ED after a long hiatus...

I only have about 8 million credits and read about how easy it is to make money these days in ED. I've never been particularly great at combat, and don't have hours and hours to sink into the game. What's the best way to make good money when playing for a couple of hours at a time?

Thanks!
 
Multiple - depends on how much money you want to get. The 5 bn (plus whatever you want to fit it out) for a carrier still are a slog.

Mining - either go on your own, or fly out to one of the known and popular hotspots and sell your haul at a discount to one of the carriers there. For the popular places of the day, miner's tool still seems to be reasonably accurate https://edtools.cc/miner
If you don't wat to do combat, stacking kill missions in combat zones is out.
Passenger runs can be pretty lucrative and offer at least some variation.
But missions in general can also get you ~10 MCr./hr., once you are at allied status with the mission givers. But beware side effects - in smaller systems, doing those missions can/will have a significant effect on the BGS, so if you don't want your main faction to go into expansion, spread the love around a bit.
 
I started making better money when I bought a Diamondback Explorer with a Detailed Surface Scanner, and started exploring--just in the bubble even--scanning all of the metal worlds, Earth-like worlds, and water worlds present in a system. Systems with a few metal worlds net me a few hundred thousand to sell the maps to UC, and worlds with Earth-likes make between 1-4 million depending on how many etc.

Here's my fairly-cheap DBX build: https://s.orbis.zone/e3_6

If I wanted to invest more into it, I could A-rate more stuff, but it's not really necessary for traveling and scanning and evading interdictions.

Edit
Honestly, though, to explore and scan the bubble, you don't need to go 30 LY. It's just helpful to sell the data more easily, since you can only sell if at least 20LY away. You can easily do this in the bubble as well with a Cobra MKIII outfitted for general purpose stuff with a DSS, scanning systems that are close together, one after another.
Here's my Cobra: https://s.orbis.zone/e3_i
 
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