I don’t like trading very much either, but I do like doing delivery missions when I am chased by pirates.
Now that I have a fully armed/engineered Python, I make sure I have a valid bounty on me to make sure I am chased each time. This means that I can do a bit of pew, pew on the way.
1. Get yourself a ship that can land at an outpost and carry a decent amount of cargo. From being a newbie I started with a Cobra Mk III, then progressed to an AspX and then to a Python (the bigger the cargo hold the better, so the Python is the best). It should be fitted out for long range trading and/or smuggling, i.e. decent cargo space and a fuel scoop.
2. Look for a system on the outskirts of the bubble that has a mining outpost and has a market which sells high grade metals such as Gold, Silver, Palladium, etc. But important note: This outpost has to be also offering data missions to a nearby system or systems so that you can build up rep.
3. Do all the data missions you can, to build up rep with all factions. You should also be able to make a few millions doing these.
4. Soon you will notice there are delivery missions of a few tons of gold, silver, etc. for millions of credits. Stack them. They will be to the same area in the bubble, normally around 130 - 150ly away. Sometimes these are smuggling missions.
Whenever I need a credit boost I use my Python with 200T of cargo space. I normally make between 4 - 8 million per run (depending on a bit of luck with the number of missions stacked and cargo quantities).
5. Look out for nearby similar systems. Again, do the data missions and get rep there also (so if one system goes into lock down you will have other choices).
