I am slightly confused

Greetings commanders! I apologize for this disruption, but I need your help.

At this moment I have 79 hours played on Elite: Dangerous. I have been having a lot of fun, I purchased a Hotas and just yesterday I purchased E:D for one my friends so we can play together.

However I am set back by how to make money. I have read guides, I have seen videos, but I am still confused. Currently I have the Krait MkII. It is quite well upgraded and a nice vessel. I have enough for the insurance cost, however the majority of my income came from the so called Path to Riches where I explored systems and sold them at massive profit - easily 5mil per 5-10 systems depending on what planets were within them.At this point I wish to engage in other parts of the world but I am not sure how.

I did passenger missions before turning to exploration. They were fun and yielded nice paychecks. But I am not sure how trading works.

There are missions giving a nice reward of few million, but they are for high ranks and are recommended to be completed as a part of a wing. The rest has rewards that equal to pocket change while requiring a lot of work.

Nothing wrong with that. I enjoy the grindy nature of the game, yet I am not sure how it is in any way possible to make billions of credits using this method.

Any help regarding money making would be greatly appreciated.

o7 commanders!