If you prefer to work alone, then exploration might be your favoured option. Fly solo through system after system, scanning for the abandoned structures that can be looted for valuable materials. It’s a great chance to really hone your solo skills; in low or nullsec, avoiding gate camps and explorer hunters will teach you the importance of the d-scan and how to avoid the bad guys, and the occasional big score will make up for any losses.
Read the Brave Dojo's Guide to Exploration, which contains detailed explanation of the skills you'll need, the types of ships and fits you should use, and how to perform the two key aspects of exploration: scanning and hacking. For another, more personal look at exploration in nullsec, you can read Brick Hunter's guide to exploration.
If you're starting off in High Sec, you will have less to worry about in terms of random encounters with other players, but correspondingly smaller rewards from the exploration sites.
When exploring it is best to use a tool to help you record where you've been and what you've found. In Brave Empire we use Eveeye. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've surfed it, the value of the tool reveals itself. Ensure you select to share data with the "Cloud Service" and "Shared with Alliance" when setting up the tool. Ask leadership or a mentor for help if you get stuck.
When using corp bookmarks for Wormholes in conjunction with Eveeye. Please use the following simple standards.
Examples:
You can also add notes to signatures in Eveeye, also very useful to share information on things.
NOTE: Make sure to Bookmark the actual wormhole and not the Wormhole signature. Bookmarking the wormhole means people can warp to 0 avoiding a lot of danger. Bookmarking the sig leads to deaths as it will bring you ~10km from the wormhole.
Everywhere! Exploration is probably the activity that will see you roam the furthest in EVE, as you search through system after system for elusive data or relic sites to loot. In a small, nimble ship outfitted with a cloak, you can easily dip into low-sec and nullsec with ease, increasing the possibility of finding a big score to bring home.
The materials you obtain from exploration are used in the manufacture of items like rigs, so will fetch a good price on the market (if you don't want to start manufacturing yourself). You can either sell them to one of the alliance's buyback services, or haul them to a market hub system.
Sometimes, one may stumble upon a good farming wormhole system while exploring the w-space.
This section demonstrates steps to safely scan and determine if you have found a farming wormhole, a temporary playground in relative safety.
Remember there is no absolute safety in a wormhole system. Regular use of the direction scanner and a cloaky ship are a must.
If all of the conditions pass, you can assume that the system is good for farming, whether that is mining, huffing or ratting.
Note that the safety of a wormhole system that is connected to another high traffic system can be compromised very easily. If you can put a scout on the only entry you have searched, you can manage the risk easily.
*There are multiple schools of thoughts on how a wormhole opens up to the other side. Some believe it will have a chance to open to the other side once the wormhole has less than fixed life left, while others think it will not open if it was never interacted by warping to it. This guide is written based on an assumption that the wormhole will not open by itself if it was never interacted with (e.g. initiating a warp to it).