Boost your economy early game

1. New game or just stuck in colonial era? - Build rum distilleries!

In colonial era you'll be limited to a few money making options. The method I find working the best is to heavily depend on Rum distilleries at the start of a new game since rum has a high export price.

Research and activate these edicts as soon as possible

• Employee of the month (Colonial)
  Employees work double shift thus generating more goods
• Penal colony (Colonial)
  Will increase your immigration rate quickly to fill up all empty workplaces
• Agricultural subsidies (World wars)
  Will give your plantations a 25% efficiency boost

High supply of sugar

You will need tons and tons of sugar. If you haven't advanced to modern age to build hydroponic plantations then you're stuck with your plain regular plantations. Planning your  plantations is not hard but it has a few drawbacks. Efficiency on regular plantations tend to reduce over time. To reduce this problem try to plant as many different crops near each other as possible and activate the "Multi culture" work mode. This will reduce your efficiency down to 40% but each different crop type nearby will give your plantations a 10% efficiency boost.

As soon as you reach World Wars era you'll have to research the "Agricultural Subsidies" edict, this will boost your plantation efficiency by another 25%

Once in Modern era you'll be able to heist the "Temple of heaven", this will give your plantations with another 25%.

Start building rum distilleries

Once your sugar starts flowing it's time to build rum distilleries. Place them near your plantations and make sure you have teamster nearby to transport both sugar and rum. Prepare an area for your distilleries but don't build too many at once. Distilleries are expensive and they drain your sugar supplies in no time. Build a few and start monitoring how much sugar you have in store. If your sugar levels are still high and still gets transported for export then add another distillery and keep repeating this process until you have pretty much all sugar processed in your distilleries

Upgrades!

Don't forget to upgrade your distilleries. They can give drastically increase the amount of sugar that can be processed and even reduce sugar consumption

2. Canneries

After building a stable rum production you'll want to increase the profits of other resources on your island. A great way to do that is by building canneries since they can process multiple goods (Pineapple, fish, meat, coffee). Canned goods go for a higher prices than the base resources required and is a good way to boost your revenue.

Electricity

Canneries require electricity and a lot of it. Don't underestimate or undersize your electrical grid. If you loose power in early game you could turn your economy into a downward spiral and quickly end up having to restart the game.

Does not require tons of resources like your distilleries

Canaries can only process one type of resource at a time and can hold up to 4 different resources if fully upgraded. This basically means that you wont need to build too many plantations, ranches or fisherman wharfs to cover the needs for your canning business. Since they can take whatever is available.