Smuggling as a New Player: Nobody Loves Me

So, to preface the situation; today I got Elite: Dangerous. Right from the get-go I had a base idea of what to expect having played EVE in the past, and knew straight away that I wanted to be a Smuggler flying around in aa shitty triangular Millennium Falcon.

At first, all went well. I made 250,000Cs in what felt like 30 minutes but turned out to be just under 3 hours. I don't know how sizeable this amount of money is, but hey it was enough to buy a new Adder for bigger smuggling runs. (And in that time my friend managed to lose ~850Cs and rum out of fuel in the middle of bumfuck nowhere)

However, I then hit a problem. In every system I went to, it seemed as though I was either deemed too incompetent or that the faction who wanted things smuggled didn't trust me enough. As such, despite my newfound ability to carry 16 tonnes of slaves, drugs and rock and roll, I'm now just say on my arse while all the space drug-dealers watch me with distain.

Am I just being unlucky in the missions around me, or is there some sort of aspect to gaining faction trust that I missed? I'm loving the game, and it would be a shame to have to spend the whole of tomorrow flying around the galaxy praying for work in which people trust me.