I think you have to decide how you want to play the game to be honest. Personally the strategy I have adopted is a massive pre-season friendly binge! I tend to go with around 10+ friendlies to not only fill my two tactics familiarity bars but also to increase my club's wealth asap by playing as many big teams as possible.
In my east stirling save I'm already around the 500k mark for balance and I'm just into my second season. The game is a game after all and the way I look at it is if you can generate funds without using external tools like save game editors etc then its not really cheating per se.
I'm also looking at incorporating the philosophies found here:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...wanted-long-successful-career-club-reign.html
This will sound arrogant but getting teams promoted from lower leagues is easy once you know how. You build up a knowledge base of players that you come back to time and time again as well as staff which makes it easier every time you start a new game.
The problem I find is staying interested long enough to see a project through. I took peterhead to the first division in successive seasons, winning 3 challenge cups and 2 leagues along the way....problem was I made a mistake which cost me dearly and brought relegation which I hadn't happened to me in any version of the game for a **** of a long time (giving low bonuses for league and cup at the start of the season destroyed my team's morale and affected the whole season).
Good thing though is I learned from that. Now I'm aiming to stick with east stirling so I can unlock the achievement for getting them into the premiership.
The way I play the game is the way I think it should be played, maximizing every advantage possible to get your club to where you want it as quickly as possible. Is looking around forums for decent players cheating? No...why? Because in real life players are discussed through different mediums daily. If anything spending time outside the game researching and building up knowledge of players is a good thing.
Counago was a revelation for me scoring 26 goals in 36 games so far. I think its cool that I became aware of him through looking around forums etc.
For those struggling in general I would suggest learning a set routine that whichever club you manage, you put in the same solid structure that gives you the best platform to work off. Eventually everything will click and you'll start assuming that at the start of every game the team you manage will vastly improve and overachieve.
I'm thinking of writing a guide that I think will help newer players or those struggling for consistency to get better results and enjoy their game more.