Originally Posted by
Monsieur Sploosh
Your tools are your ships (to mine, move products, do missions, kill people), your ability to interact with people and set up lucrative social structures (corporations/scams/fleets), your ability to understand markets and capitalize on trends to make money (moving objects to buy low, sell high/research to reduce the cost of producing something/producing items with good demand to cost), setting up effective planet factory-colonies to make the right products to sell or use, player-owned space stations, high risk-reward player owned space systems... of course there's more.
One thing to keep in mind is that while there's a lot to do, not all of it is lucrative or worth your time. Also, it takes a long time to train skills deeply enough in a specific aspect of the game to make it worth the investment, so do a lot of reading before you make a decision, and then stick with it.
I wouldn't recommend mining. It's boring, missions are worth a lot more, and it's only really worth it when you can get together with a bunch of other miners and go to very dangerous areas where the best ores and ice are available.
Training combat skills is something I've never regretted. More diversity in your ability to fit ships, fly different ships, and effectively hit/damage/defend against damage in combat will help you succeed in missions and in PvP.
What I'd really recommend is trying to fall in with a PvP fleet or corporation and training combat skills. That'll allow you to do missions on the side, and to enjoy the most thrilling part of the game, which is roaming around looking for something to murder. The satisfaction and rush that you get out of grabbing enemy players and destroying their ship while all the time aware of the fact that you're outrunning death yourself is the most fun I've ever had in any game.
Be ready to invest a lot of time. Network, network, network, NETWORK with other people. While you can fly around in certain specialist ships and gank small ships solo, you'll be much better off roaming with a fleet and taking down POSs.