Well, first of all, are you in a faction or not? As not sure for what wages work if you're not in a faction, but when you do join one, you don't have to give out any wages. As for making money, I would suggest the following:
1) Enter the arena - you go in, knock a guy with just kick him with E in the nuts and should be first around 10 money, but then after a few fights go up until you reach the 'World Champion opponent' where when you kick him enough, you get 100 money (whatever the money currency is)
2) Doing town quests for the mayor - when you improve relations with a certain city, the prices get lowered while you can sell for a higher one (not sure about selling, but buying should be cheaper) + if you get a quest to 'Save the mayors daughter' or something similar like that, accept that one and get a bigger party for yourself as you'll initially get amount of around 1000 money and then when you go to the party (that's holding the Daughter), you can just use the dialogue option to not give them the money, kill them and still get the daughter so you keep the 1000 and then get even more upon your return to the mayor!
3) Doing quests for lords - for some reasons, sometimes I'm unable to get much from this since they rarely do give me a quest, and then if they turn out they do give it, it's like, 'Train *insert number* *insert elite troop name* quest which is just time-consuming and tedious and gets rids of your elite troops but oh well... still a quest. Try to talk to Lords while you're at war with a faction as then you might get a quest to 'Capture enemy lord', which is always useful (P.S. try to pick out small enemy armies of like, 40-60 troops as they should be easy to kill early on)
4) You're at war with a faction? LOOT VILLAGES
- easy money and easy goods
Hope it helps
EDIT: Try to going to the town mayors and investing in a business when you got the sufficient cash
