How to Make Money in Skyrim

There are several strategies for making money in Skyrim early on aside from exploring dungeons and spelunking that one can use without resorting to cheats.

1. Smithing and Enchanting Iron Daggers and Jewelry

One method to make money is to create iron daggers or jewelry at a blacksmith's forge, enchant them and then sell them.  This method has the added benefit of building up smithing and enchanting skills.  Finding the transmutation spell can help by more easily allowing the creation of gold jewelry. One limitation at least early on is the difficulty of procuring good soul gems for enchanting.

2. Chop Wood

At a lumber yard like the one in Riverwood one can chop wood and then sell it. A consistent but slow and repetitive way of making money.

3. Create Potions

If one knows the recipes for certain potions one can collect the ingredients, make the potions and then sell them for profit.  Alchemy skill is improved and if one knows how to make fortify smithing and fortify enchanting potions, one can take those potions to significantly boost the results of the smithing and enchanting method.

4. Hunt Giants, Mammoths, and Dragons

When one is strong enough, hunting down giants, mammoths and dragons may be an attractive way to earn coin.  These large beasts respawn after around 20 days and leave behind respectable loot.  One will also have to find the various locations where they can be found first though.

How to Beat a Skyrim Dragon

To kill a dragon in Skyrim can be an exciting experience the first time around but it can also become a tedious exercise if approached haphazardly with no strategy.  Here are some tips to help take down a dragon quickly and easily.  If your character is at a low level try to get near non-player characters. They will help to inflict damage to the dragon and may serve as alternative target decoys.  Early in the fight against a dragon when it has a lot of hit points and is swooping around, ranged weapons and spells are what you need, so bow and arrows is likely necessary or spells like fireball and chain lightning if you have them.  Usually the dragon circles then comes to a stationary position where it can be more easily hit.  Often the dragon follows a fixed pattern with the dragon favoring a particular position from which to hover and attack.  This makes it predictable.  Prepare one's best attack while it circles then unleash it when the dragon pauses. It can be time-consuming whittling the dragon's health down at lower levels so patience is necessary. When a dragon is weakened enough, however, it will stay on the ground where it is vulnerable to stronger melee attacks which can finish it off quicker.

Once one learns the Dragonrend shout it therefore becomes much easier to defeat dragons.  The strategy is to prioritize keeping the dragon down with Dragonrend and only then attacking it in earnest.  For example one Dragonrend shout to bring the dragon down, then another to keep it down,  followed by strong melee attacks immediately after to inflict damage while keeping an eye on the shout bar to unleash another Dragonrend shout the moment it is possible while the dragon is still on the ground to keep it there and prevent any further opportunity for it to fly.