being broke does really svck cant buy anything and unliek oblivion stuff isnt cheap! or im really bad at getting gold ...

so at level 3 whats the easiest / safest way to make a decent amount of gold and then stay that way while purchasing what i want to because it seems liek would be helpful

as of currently my biggest invest ment has been on an necromancer robe for 75% magicka regen rate

There's an unlimited supply of the Doors of Oblivion skill book to be found close to the dragon wall, near Azura's shrine. You can take as many as you can carry, sell them, then return whenever you want. If you want a better description, i'm sure there will be plenty of guides around the net.

Don't use the Doors of Oblivion exploit. There's no reason to exploit game bugs to fill your coffers, money is easy to obtain legitimately.

Just start doing the quests with the gear you can get. Quest rewards range from 100 to 1000 gold. Bleak Falls Barrow (with the quests from the Jarl of Whiterun and the Riverwood Trader) is the ideal spot to begin. Once you've cleaned that place out, you'll have a substantial amount of loot to sell, plus the proceeds of two lucrative quests for your seed money.

yeah having some trouble gettign to the bleak falls keeping getting ambushed by things and killed ... 1 path is goblins another giants 3rd = random group of soldiers that demand money that i dont have so they slaughter me and appear to be immune to magic ...

1. Become thief.
2. Level up Pickpocket.
3. Steal EVEREYONES jewels and money.
4. Sell it all to a fence.
5. PROFIT?

IMO crafting is the best way to make money in the game, but there's some initial investment cost in it. Instead of selling the cheaper pelts, turn them into leather and use that to improve the random armor and weapon loot; make and sell potions; mine and use the Transmute spell to turn iron to silver and silver to gold, then craft jewelry from the gold ingots to sell.

I always use an Amulet of Zenithar when selling and take a haggling perk early on.

Get the Steed Stone so you can carry a lot of stuff and keep an eye on weight to value ratio. If you have to dump something, dump the stuff that gets you less septims per pound.

If you don't plan to make dragonscale or dragonbone armor, sell the pieces. With smithing perks, the other armors are just as good if not better.

Here's what I do:

1) Loot selectively
Divide the weight of an object by its value and call it your LVR. I try to keep my LVR around 10. That means I practically never loot iron weapons or armor unless they're enchanted.

2) Be a walking jewelry factory (warning: this will level up your Alteration, Smithing, and enchanting skills)
- Go to the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Halted_Stream_Camp and find the "transmute" spell at the bottom of the mine.
- Mine and buy every piece of iron ore you can find (important: just ore, not ingots). Constantly cast transmute so you're converting iron up to gold.
- Periodically smelt your gold ore into gold ingots
- Smith jewelry with your newly smelted ingots.
- Buy all the filled petty and lesser gems that you can.
- Enchant the newly smithed jewelry, then sell it.

3) Be an alchemist (warning: this will level up your Alchemy and Speechcraft skills)
- Collect every ingredient you can find. This includes nailing elk and deer for the horns
- Use about 2000 gold to buy out an alchemist shop inventory
- Keep track of your inventory and enter it into http://www.alchemyplanner.com/. That tool will output all the potions you can make, sorted by highest value. Sell these back to the alchemist you bought out, plus any pawnbrokers in town.
- Rinse & Repeat
- For even better effect, start buying or crafting +Alchemy gear. That will really ramp up the value of your crafted potions.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
- Always carry around an Amulet of Zenithar for the trade boost.
- Finish "http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:A_Daedra%27s_Best_Friend" quest as early as you can. The reward is a heavy armor helm with (among other things), a 20 boost to bartering.

What is all this advice on going to near Azura's shrine or getting the Steed Stone? The person is level 3, for Talos' sake.

If you're having trouble completing Bleak Falls Barrow (or even getting to it), there are a couple of followers you can get for free. Faendal in Riverwood will follow you if you complete the letter quest- just talk to Sven, and when he tells you to lie and say the letter is from Faendal, just tell the truth. Camilla will ask you to talk to Faendal as well. After you do, he will follow you.

If you'd rather have a tank follower, go to the Bannered Mare in Whiterun, and challenge Uthgerd to a brawl. Beat her, and she'll follow you- you'll also earn an easy 100 gold. If you are having trouble beating her, try hitting as fast as you can. Having a follower should make beating the dungeon much easier.

A note about getting there- I've never run into anything tougher than bandits on my way there. Are you sure you're taking the right path? Go across the bridge in Riverwood, and straight up the path from the other side. You should encounter a wolf or two part way up, then two sets of 3 bandits as you get closer. Nothing else.

Like other people have said, and it's true for most every RPG on the market... just explore. By exploring you are going to defeat enemies, find treasure chests, and otherwise find a crap-load of loot that you can't use.

So you keep what you can use, and you sell everything else. Wash, rinse, and repeat until you have more money than God.

Also what they said about quests is true. Most of the time, aside from the rewards for completing the Quests, you get to ground-pound it through a dungeon. Just like the random exploration that I mentioned above, this is sure to net you a massive amount of liquid asset to sell for pure cash. Keep what you can use, sell the rest.

Also, when exploring/on a quest and you notice some enemies ahead, stop and come up with a plan of attack. Observe their movement patterns and discern the best method and route of attack in order to take them out as swiftly as possible with minimal resource expenditure for yourself. If you can do this, then you won't face the Catch 22 situation of spending all of the coin you just got on resupplying all the stuff that you wasted on your last dungeon crawl.

Now I know that sometimes the worst happens and you get surprised by an enemy when you are least prepared to face them. It happens, and these are the exceptions to the rule.

Overall, just go low and slow with an intelligent plan of attack, and become the uber-merchant and you should be rolling around in piles of cash in no time.

There's a secret chest of goodies in dawnstar that refills itself and has a TON of loot. It's an easter egg since the stash is in a rock. Look it up to get specific details.

Another method I know is Blood on the Ice quest in Windhelm. When you have the amulet, sell it to the guy (forgot his name but just look up quest), then steal the amulet back and sell it again, repeat as necessary. That earns 500 gold per sale.

Natually though, do companion quest line (collect every single silver sword/greatswords, nothing else unless it's enchanted).
Make iron daggers, get the banish spell, enchant daggers with banish, sell for like 1500 gold each.
Do Dark brotherhood quests. At the end you could easily have like 40k in gold (assuming you don't spend any of it start to finish). Even after doing DB, can do infinite quests for 1k gold each that are super easy.
Thieves guild is great money too. Pickpocket is really easy to level and once you have 3 perks into the first skill you will rarely fail. On top of that, you get a lot of valuable jewerly to sell to fences.

Tons of ways but those are some of the best.

He won't be level 3 forever. He'll be 10+ faster than an arrow to the knee will end your adventuring career.

Take the first speech perk as soon as you can to improve your prices. Join the thieves guild, then clear out honningbrew and black-briar meadery and sell it to Tonnilia is a good, easy way to get some cash straight up (I got over 250 honningbrew bottles, ended up worth 2800 at a low level)

Make sure to ALWAYS give a beggar a coin before selling anything as this improves your prices.

Also once Jarl Balgruuf in Whiterun likes you after you tell him about the dragon you should be able to take, not stealing, almost everything in Dragonsreach. Even just the expensive crockery and books if you can be assed collecting it all up and selling it to someone. Since there's so many the books are worth a bit although they're slow since you HAVE to open them first (I hate that) He has a stash of silver ingots upstairs and 2 expensive silver/amethyst necklaces in the bedrooms (Though these you do have to steal)

And also just wander around safer areas, collect all the ingredients you can and make potions.

You're going the wrong way. Go back to Riverwood and go to the bridge on the east side of town. Follow that path into the hills by the most direct route possible. If you don't go on walkabout looking for trouble, you should only be attacked by a couple wolves and then you'll find a bandit-occupied tower, which you should have little trouble clearing out, then proceed to Bleak Falls, take out a few more bandits and you're there.

I also gather from your original post that you're a caster. Unless you're really, REALLY determined to play a caster on your first time through, don't. Casters are comparatively weaker to equipment focused characters at all points in this game.

Get a woodcutters axe, Chop wood, sell to woodmill owner.
No danger involved and its easy money for very little work.

I've never payed a septum for either armor or weapons, you will always find something in game that deals enough damage and take the blows.

Ugh, woodcutting? Really? Not only incredibly boring, but also very low reward for time spent. Just learn to navigate, avoid enemies who can kill you early on, and do quests.

The transmute spell (Halted Steam Camp) will make you a fortune. Mine and buy all iron ore, turn it to gold ore, turn them into ingots, and make the 2 gold rings.

Adding enchantments to items can also really boost the vaule, just need to fill the petty gems up yourself. Banish, Fort 2 hand, alchemy, destruction+ regen seem to add the most value. You can go through the enchants for each item and see what the value each enchantment will add.

For enchanting, make yourself the highest charged item (1 sec Soul Trap). It will take a long time for it run out of charges. Your companion will also fill gems for you, give them a soul trap weapon and plenty of gems.

With those in mind, go to the local tavern and ask the bar tender for work. They will give you a bounty. Go clear out the place, sell your loot, and collect the extra coin for the bounty. Repeat untill you don't have any more bounties for that area, and move to the next major city and repeat.

loot it all, even if you have to double check... quest for it, kill for it or make it for yourself... otherwise you just don't need it.
buy a house early and visit it often to drop off stuff between crafting sessions.

All of my characters are over 100,000 gold before level 30 and own at least one property and have the best armor for their level by following these easy rules. And they level fast, too.

Dwemer ruins are AWESOME for gems, metal and soul gems. Falmer tend to coincide with Dwemer and they have tons of loots and plants for alchemy. If you clear every living thing you'll quickly learn to leave armor behind if it has no enchants because you can't carry it all.

Nord burial grounds are swift money makers, just loot all the burial urns and double check the ones that are 1/2 buried, many of them also still have stuff. At the end of a dungeon think through every place you saw a cut out on a wall like there was a hidden door... almost all of them open (maybe all of them and I haven't found the levers/triggers for the few that I haven't opened yet.)

If you're playing a character who can't afford to stack stamina for carry weight, maybe check out the Steed Stone that's West of Solitude. It makes the weight of heavy armor not count when you're wearing it and adds 100 to your carry weight. It will negate any other stone you have on you, though... so if you're reliant on another stone to help you level... just make frequent stops back to sell off stuff.

Woodcutting is okay for straight out of Helgen, if you want to buy some potions before you go questing. I would only do it afterward for roleplaying.

Mining, otoh, is worth it. For those on PC, the Midas Magic mod has a glorious spell called Bound Pickaxe. They also have Summon Luggage, which summons a dwemer spider equipped with a roving Steed Stone. I know, that's kind of cheesy, but I did break down and use it. lol

just a matter of killing enemies and going in dungeons...so use a follower to help you carry stuff...also, don't buy too much early on, keep it simple, use what you find and slowly you can upgrade your gear, use the armor or clothing you find, but early on its a matter of just getting a follower for me and starting to cruise around, if you come up to fort or cave, go in it and be prepared to battle, but you'll come out with lots of stuff to sell and don't carry heavy stuff that doesn't cost much, like iron axes etc, so a good weight to cost ratio, that way once you and your follower are loaded up, you'll be able to make lots of money, also killing dragons pays off, so if they attack you make sure you stay and kill em. most potion shops will also buy dragons bones, but as you level up the gear you find will be worth more, you'll make more money etc. just don't be wastefull and you'll have houses, gear for you and your followers, all kinds of equipment and plenty of soul gems and gold etc.

The only time it can be useful would be having a follower do it while you went off to cook dinner, go collect ingredients, etc. Other than that, it is pointless.

Stick with alchemy, even with no perks in the tree you can come out on top. Just a simple potion of slow (salt pile & death bell, quite cheep & well stocked) can give you a few hundred coins. If you do plan on using the alchemy tree, you will find your self constantly draining the coin from any merchants who accept potions for sale.

Also, as Thungrim said you will want an amulet of Zenithar as well as Clavicus Vile's Masque. The boost in prices gives a nice helping hand, I would also add enchanting some gear that supports speech. A normal potion/gear that suports speech will allow you to have higher selling prices as well as lower buying prices. Major helping hand for alchemy as well as other sporting goods.

Pfft. Way to sugarcoat it for yourself so you don't feel bad about abusing a glitch. It's a glitch that lets you access the Khajiit caravan's stock.

Is also a glitch to get under Whiterun and loot the Smith's merchant chest under the Skyforge.

player.additem F $$$$$$$ is the cheating way on the PC if you are interested....

I just started out taking odd jobs for coin. Then when I got to a couple thousand I started upgrading my gear to take on the places with better/more loot. Eventually, the Septims came pouring in, especially after the bounties started coming.

I kill Dragons and sell their bones (and loot chests often found at their lairs). I consider it supporting the noble cause of Dracopaleontology.

Back onto level 3 though, if you're a caster, get the Transmute spell and make jewelry. You can also usually take down the giants and mammoths with destruction spells if you get some high ground thats at least marginally difficult for them to get up to (so you can hop down if they do)

First post I've read where someone is struggling to make money in this game, usually its the other way round. Best way to make money imo is kill stuff and sell it. Put perks in speech as well, later on you'll be so rich you could by the moons on a stick.