Yep Machines make money moreso than crops. If you want more money early, the answer is definitely not "more crops", it's the machines to process them, especially while you're stuck without good sprinklers.
That being said, the key to even More money early, in my opinion, is fishing. I can earn thousands of gold per day reliably if I'm fishing all day in Spring year 1. Your mileage certainly Will vary, by significant margins, as I've spent many many hours fishing and actual IRL skill at the fishing minigame is significantly more important than your in-game fishing skill. However, that doesn't change the fact that in game, time pauses while you're playing the minigame, it's very energy efficient, and very profitable early on.
You get the same price whether you sell stuff via the shipping bin or sell them directly to vendors, the reason to sell to Pierre or Willy your crops or fish respectively is if you want to get the money Immediately to reinvest same day. Early in the game I make it a point to do so since it's so valuable to be able to reinvest right away, later in the game when I've generally got more cash than I'm spending on any given day everything goes in the shipping bin.
The Pale Ale you need to craft, which is another reason to make machines ;-)
For best gifts, I'm going with Shane. He's the most annoying person to make friends with imho, but he gives you a VITAL recipe at 3 hearts, something you'll be munching on all day long for the next year+ if you're anything like me. Caroline, Willy and Linus also give some great stuff, but not as absolutely critical as what you can get from Shane, and I don't have to remind myself to be nice to them ;-)
Some random fishing tips:
Biggest thing to remember, and I think the biggest thing which throws people, is that pressing the button does NOT make the bar go up. Rather, pressing the button adds Upward MOMENTUM to the bar. The bar has downward momentum accumulating at all times while the button is not being pressed.
So, if you want to "hover" in place, you should be 'tapping' the button more than you are holding it, adding upward momentum to cancel gravity, but not too much. It's not a button spamming minigame or anything, you don't need to tap that fast, but just alternating press and release. I'd practice that until you can hold a given position on the bar other than the top or the bottom without trouble.
The other key is to not add too much upward momentum and overshoot your desired position, or to go too long without pressing and having the bar falling like a rock. You can do some fancy tricks with a lot of momentum, for example catching a certain wintery terror basically requires you to shoot up to the top and "bounce" off the top to follow him back down half the time, and some fish like to shoot down to the bottom and then just hang out down there, so you need to know how to kill the bar's momentum right before it lands so it doesn't bounce off the bottom. However it's far more useful to practice controlling your momentum and learn how to be less erratic in your movements, how to avoid overshooting, than it is to worry about that stuff early.
Other helpful stuff not directly related to the fishing minigame, but good to know for fishing in general:
You don't have to wait as long for a fish to bite if you cast into bubbles, so early on go for them whenever you see them. Otherwise, you're typically best casting as far away from shore (in all directions) as you can, you'll get better fish that way.
You get 2.2x the XP if you get a treasure chest, or 2.4x the XP for a perfect catch, so the key to massive XP early is to either get a perfect catch or to get a treasure chest, but you get a TON of XP if you manage to do both. So don't go for the treasure chest when it first appears, see if you naturally get the chance to pick it up during the catch, and only beeline for it if either it's apparent it won't otherwise happen or you already missed out on the perfect catch.
I hope at least some of that helps at least somewhat!
