The worst thing about being new is wandering around in ugly default clothes trying to scrape enough money to get armor, a first weapon, and enough money for heals and ammo. I share your pain, been there many times.
Here are just a few of the ways to get rich quick. Er...ok, afford basic implants.
1. Your first two levels: spend these in the backyard. Don't bother with training missions at this point, especially if you can't yet afford a lockpick. Hunt and look for gems and rings. Save any implants that you think you will be using later. Sell any not appropriate for your profession. SAVE the monster parts. Sell the robot junk. If your weapon seems to be pretty lame, remove it and use brawl (B). Ideally do not use an ammo weapon yet. At such low levels you can't afford the ammo and the weapon won't benefit you enough to justify using anything other than your newbie weapon or fists.
2. Now you're level 2. If you've been lucky you have a piece of armor or two or a weapon. Time to leave the backyard. Don't bother with training missions. Why? Because the reward for those is always the same, a first aid kit. Once you leave the backyard you can choose what you mission for, and what you want is armor, weapons, and basic supplies. Important. Before you leave the backyard, buy a lockpick. You will need the lockpick to greatly increase the amount of loot you can get.
3. Now you've left the backyard. For the next few levels, do missions for items you need, and make sure you do missions that give you two items. How to do this:
There are several ways to get 2 reward missions. I recommend these settings, personally, but you can play with the sliders.
Setting#1: all good, all chaos, all hidden, all stealth, all money
This gives you 3 missions that let you keep the item you find. They will be the first 3 listed. If you get two missions at once, you will notice the next mission only the first 2 listed give two items. You can only take on 3 2 item missions at a time, and the 3rd mission only the first mission listed will be a 2-item mission.
Setting #2: All bad, all money. Also gives 2 items but doesn't give you as many locked chests for exp and extra goodies.
Mission for items you need to protect yourself: armor, weapons, and implants which help you get better nanos, evades, etc. Also buy yourself a bio-comminutor when you can and convert monster parts to plasma before selling for more money. Depending on your profession, it may be worth it to polish gems to get a better price for them. You can get the items required to convert parts and polish in the trade section of the general stores/fair trade stores. Better yet, ask on the ooc chat if anyone can polish/convert parts for you and save yourself a little money.
4. By this time you will get missions that take you out of your startup town. This is the time you can really begin to increase your wealth. How? By getting missions at locations that are far from your mission destination.
If you are Clan...go to Avalon and get 3 missions to somewhere safe like Newland City, Borealis, Old Athen, West Athen. When you are done, go back to Avalon to get more.
If you are Omni, go to Rome. Get missions to Trade and occasionally Lush Fields (Harry's).
If you are Neutral, get your missions in Borealis. Go to Stret West Bank or wherever the biggest money reward is and go back and forth to Borealis.
5. You may notice eventually that your old mission runs are becoming less profitable. It's probably time to head for the great outdoors on missions, and at this point you should be able to survive the journey. This is a good time to learn about teaming. Your first few excursions out of the cities, try to go with a team. Team missions will get you some nice items like back armor that you cannot get in solo missions.
More tips: It's often possible to skip the ql 20 premade professional implants and buff into ql 30 ones. You will need to get some of the general nanos to accomplish this. i.e. self buff your str/agi or other basic stats. These are found in the nano section of the general stores/fair trade stores.
Keep brawling as long as you can do so without having to put points into it and str. If you are in a profession that uses str and brawl anyway, you can keep this up for quite some time before you have to buy any weapons or attacks.
Resist the temptation to buy social armor, sunglasses, etc. They are fun but they offer you NO protection. Save that for later when you have the dough.
Get yourself into a guild or org that does not tax members. Most orgs give old armor and weapons to their own members, saving you a lot of money.