What's the best way to make Echo early on?

Well... a safe run would be north to Venderblight with coffins. Make sure to either sell some recent news while you are there and pick up the local gossip. The news sells for 10 and the gossip/report will fetch a price of 10 as well from the Admiral's office. While its not much, casks of mushroom wine sell for a 2 echo profit between London and Vender. Its not much, but if you are going to make the trip anyway... You can eventually hold 20+ of them for an additional 40+ echos on top of the other 65 you are running. The main problem is that its about 30 echos in fuel to run it. You'll also want to kill a few bats/capture a few pirate ships along the way. The bats are either supplies (along with the little crabs outside London you won't need to buy food) or a little terror reduction (it adds up and is hard to quickly drop). The pirate ships can be scuttled for random loot (anything from 1 fuel to 100 echos relic to sell to the University) to various trade goods (sell for 20-60 echos). You can send off crew to sell the ship for 50 echos in London... but you have a 20% chance of losing 2-3 crew and not getting any money. If you go below 5 crew you can't sail at full speed either. Its probably best to just sink hte pirate ships for the crate.

In general, the money you get from selling reports doesn't really cover the fuel costs (if you are in port for something else/nearby you might as well, though)... I'd have to expirment with a good run, but I think to do it quick you'd need to take on more terror than its worth.

Other than that, farm pirates/lifebergs in the north. The Lifebergs can't hit you if you keep using "flee" to stay over 40m and shooting them... they are easy to outmaneuver in combat. They drop a crate like the pirates, but also give you a "tale of the zee" that the University Scholar pays 10 echos for.

Ask the admirals off if they want some specific info... The Iron/Funging to the NE and the Canal to the south are easy to get too. The mission yields 150 echos on top of the report you can normally file for the location. Be careful in the south, the galley ships are tough... just avoid combat.

In general it just seems like you have to get lucky and find relics in crates (other than supplies and fuel.. while needed can't be sold well/only cost 10 to purchase). Once I was walking along the beach of Mutton Isle (directly SE of london) and found a "Judgement Egg" that sold for 500 at the University! First time I upgraded my house ^.^