Generally speaking you'll get better gear faster by buying it in EC than by camping it yourself. You can make money as you level by selling stuff you get from monsters (research components, gems, weapons, armor) to merchants, and by selling the occasional useful drop in EC (you'll find these by going into dungeons). If you want more money more quickly, you can farm some up e.g. as described here:
http://wiki.project1999.com/Players:Newbie#Platinum
The first thing I'd recommend you get is some kind of decent weapon; not that your job is doing DPS, but a good weapon is so much better than whatever you'd be using by default that it's worth looking into. The second thing would probably be a pair of jewelcrafted 5 AC 55 HP rings; they cost a couple hundred platinum each.