How to increase my reputation?

[Rooster]

This may be a noob question, but I cannot figure out how to increase my reputation for the life of me. I'm in the "Humble Merchant" story. I've racked up millions from the Teladi stock exchange. But I can't spend the money on anything because I have no reputation with any groups. I can't figure out how to increase the reputation either! I'd love to be good buddies with Argon federation or the teladi either one. I desperately need to in order to be able to by stations and other ships and stuff. What do I do? I have read online that there are quests/missions to do but I can't find anywhere to start them. I'm searching all over. Please help!

[Fedora01]

Missions, trade, and killing baddies (usually pirates/Xenon) are the main ways of building rep. Missions appear randomly on stations, just look for the markers (I don't remember what they all are at the moment). Trade is pretty strait forward, setting up some stations or sector/universe traders will slowly build up rep with whatever faction they're trading with.

[Harrison]

As a merchant, trading with them increases your standing. That means buying and selling with that factions stations. Best way, is to get some sector traders going and just sit back.

Or do that while running missions and other assorted things.

[Rooster]

How do I get sector traders? and what type of stations do the missions randomly appear on?

[Rooster]

Also I've got one more question: I've been trading back and forth between some stations within the Argon sector. My rank was stuck at like 35% for a while and didn't move at all. I came back and checked it a while later and now it's at 77% but stuck again? I'm not sure what exactly I did to get it to jump up by such a large amount and I'm trying to repeat the action to get it up again. Should I just keep trading?

[DrSuperEvil]

Sector traders require the trade command software MkIII brought from teladi space equipment docks.

Missions appear on all stations and even some ships. Fight missions have a red crosshairs, think missions have a light bulb, trade missions have a yellow credits symbol and build missions are some green bricks.

The amount of race rank gained by trade is dependent on the amount of profit made relative to the average price and there is a bonus if the player ship does it.

With the humble merchant start use the M5 discoverer to do taxi and personnel transport missions once you have a cargo life support system equipped.

You can continually go through the same jump gate to force missions to spawn in two sectors.

If manipulating the EBC stock price you can accept fight missions to defend stations in belt of aguilar and grand exchange before ignoring them and letting the local military win them for you (only works at low fight rank).

[FourGreenFields]

Note on taxi-missions: The mission description may say something along the lines of "will nto accept sub-par transportation" - do not accept those, you need a TP-class ship to do them.