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Sell shards.
Each grinding hotspot should provide you with mats for a specific craft. Although its not necessary to make a living, it helps when you can make use of those mats to make gear to sell.
Selling shards, though, is effective.
My best advice is to level weaver and leatherworker, sub blacksmithing and armoring. Take up either Botany or Mining to subsidise.
EDIT:
Crafting actually makes sence now as far as being a level 20 armorer means you can make level 20 armor, and being a level 20 blacksmith means you can make level 20 tools and weapons.
It's not a stupid question at all. The selling process is convoluted and will probably stay that way until they revamp the UI.
First, you should look at the prices in the item search menu. That way you have a general idea of whats a good price to ask for a specific shard. Then, you summon your retainer (in the correct ward- crystaliers), and exchange your shards and crystals through the menu dedicated to it. Then, you go to a different menu ("manage bazaar contents" or something similar), click on the shards and select "sell item". Then you can choose whether to sell the shards as a unit or a stack. Unit is good. Then you just input the price of the single unit and press OK. Your Retainer is then listed in the Item Search menu as a seller.
With the current prices, it's not that difficult to gather enough shards to sell for 50k or so by killing the specific mobs outside the city (which is what you'd do to level up either way).
Cross-classing helps alot.
Level Pug for Second Wind.
Level Conj for Protect, Shell and Cure.
Level Thm for Sacrifice.
Level Mrd for Bloodbath.
Once you have most of these, leveling will be easier, Lv10 leves reward much higher.
Do your story quests as they come up, those will pay for your low level gear.
Do side quests, they will give you more gil and gear.
Crafting leves pay you to level a craft.
I think as soon as I get my crafting up to where it needs to be and a better understanding of the system, I'm just going to start making and selling low level armor like crazy, but at what should be normal prices. I think the more people do this, the quicker prices will go back to a decent level.
Hit me up on Selbina and I'll pearl you for Rust linkshell, we have crafters who will be able to make you gear and we have a few new low lvl players in the linkshell you can play with.
Char name is Charlemagne Ifrit, I'm on most days.
Do you craft more quickly when you're in hyper mode? :D
Edit: Back on topic, you should be able to use the starter gear for classes comfortably up until about level 10. At that point, you should have enough gil from leves and drops to pick up a few things. I went on a shopping spree yesterday and spent perhaps 50k gil on 7-8 items. The economy may be more stable on Besaid, however.