What is your fastest way of making money/silver?

[Shub-Niggurath]

I've always wanted to set up a colony that is essentially a manufacturing plant, but I never got the time to. In between managing my farm colony, and my main colony, I just didn't get enough time to make a manufacturing colony.
I've been brainstorming ideas to make bank fast, and the only things I've come up with are.
-Slave Trade
- Cotton Hydroponics
- Mass cotton fields
- Devil Strand
- Thrumbo Hunting
In between trying to figure out ways to mass produce silver, what are your guy's best ideas for massive amounts of money fast.

[Anxarcule]

I just finished a tribal game and I used a few ways to make money:

Try to start your colony in an area with a good amount of rich soil and plant corn over every square.  Build a good sized freezer and when harvest time comes around have everyone haul it in (only 10+ growers should harvest so you don't lose).  I end up with my tribe of 5 something like 2k corn which sells for $1.70ish per corn to bulk traders.  The same can be done with meat, although I find this only happens with manhunter packs/thrumbos as it's too much work to go out and actively hunt.  This also has the added benefit of having lots of skin to sell, but be sure you have a colonist with a high butchery efficiency do the work to yield the most meat and skin.

Devilstrand is another good way - I usually save all my devilstrand until I have a crafter(s) that is 18+ and have them churn out dusters, button down shirts, and pants.  After my colony is geared up I sell the remaining clothes which also sell for a good amount (superior/excellent sells for 500-700 IIRC).

Another great sale item is chemfuel, but you'll need to have drilling.  Chemfuel patches are relatively common and they sell for $3.00 per unit.

Later in the game when I'm rolling in resources I have an artist make platsteel grand statues (only at skill 20, before that I stick to steel). 

To be fair though, you'll only start making money once you have a comms console and are able to trade with passing ships (and to a lesser extent call in other colonies).  I use the more trade ships mod too as it keeps the game more interesting for me.

[DanielCoffey]

Don't forget beer and drugs too.

[XeoNovaDan]

Flake is a nice gradual source of income. Requires research, but it's the most valuable drug per material, even being more valuable than smokeleaf.

[b0rsuk]

You can also just... drill for silver. I wonder how effective it is compared to other methods. Silver veins are around 6-8 tiles.

Selling art has the advantage that chunks are everywhere, with possible exception of Sea Ice.

In warmer biomes, you can raise animals and sell them. But really, it's about soil (stockpile hay). I remember a colony in tundra where I was selling grizzly bears.

[Anxarcule]

I find silver highly ineffective to drill for - it costs too much to set up the drill and it is a slow process to get what will likely amount to a few thousand.  Better to drill for gold or chemfuel if you want a cash mineral

[grinch]

Smokeleaf. Dont research required and not investment required. However, flake its the best drug to sell. Armchairs its a good source too i always end with tons of cotton

[Beider]

I would say don't specialise, if you do you can't drain every trader for all their silver.

What I usually produce (in the order I produce them from a new colony)
- Meals for colony with freezer / pemmican for tribal (You need them anyway, mass produce)
- Clothes and parkas. Also needed, so might as well make a surplus, get them from hunting anyway.
- Furniture. Got a lot of material, make a lot of double beds, tables, armchairs or whatever.
- Drugs / Beer. Worth a lot and relatively easy to make.
- Art. Can easily be made from wood or stone depending on what you have a lot of.

Eventually you learn which traders to trade what goods with and you can drain all their silver. Not that you really need it unless you play with silver drain mods (like enhanced prosthetics)

[Limdood]

I would say don't specialise, if you do you can't drain every trader for all their silver.

What I usually produce (in the order I produce them from a new colony)
- Meals for colony with freezer / pemmican for tribal (You need them anyway, mass produce)
- Clothes and parkas. Also needed, so might as well make a surplus, get them from hunting anyway.
- Furniture. Got a lot of material, make a lot of double beds, tables, armchairs or whatever.
- Drugs / Beer. Worth a lot and relatively easy to make.
- Art. Can easily be made from wood or stone depending on what you have a lot of.

Eventually you learn which traders to trade what goods with and you can drain all their silver. Not that you really need it unless you play with silver drain mods (like enhanced prosthetics)

except you can mass produce joints and every trader buys them

[Beider]

...

except you can mass produce joints and every trader buys them

Never really tried smokeleaf joints for mass production (only sold a bit on tribal start) so wasn't aware that every trader buys them, if that is the case then there really is no point in making much else.

Then again just mass producing smokeleaf every game would get boring quickly.

[Hatti]

pemican > all on jungle, boreal forrest, temperate forrest

[WhiteGoblin]

I've always made all my money in this game selling drugs. Start with food as your export, go to cannabis, go to cocaine, expand your coke fields until every trader is maxed out taking home flake/yayo. Anyone who doesn't want to buy drugs, well you'll have 100k+ pile of silver to handle them with, no biggie. 

[Trigon]

... go to cocaine, expand your coke fields until every trader is maxed out taking home flake/yayo.

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

[Zhentar]

High quality human leather button-downs come within spitting range of drugs for $/kg (great if you're sending out caravans), and you generally receive free shipments of the raw material on a regular basis.

[travin]

For me it's animal husbandry. Ones that I can pretty much ignore and don't unbalance my biome and force me to farm to feed them. Muffalos and Alpacas are my go tos. I do almost nothing and they provide me with wool and milk and I can get a reasonably high price per head if their breeding threatens my biomes' sustainability. You can rack up a pretty penny by doing not much more than one-time building a pen for them. Shearing and milking tasks are quick and negligible.

After that it's things like psychoid leaves, tobacco, smoke leaf/joints and honey. They produce fast, don't take much work and almost every trader will buy them.