Wow, yeah, I'd dance a little jig if I was making a grand a turn and had a functioning set of colonies. (well, early in the game. Usually late game I'm making around that because of the insane Terran trade money).
My main suggestion is to have a couple of specialty planets churning out cash. If I luck out and end up with a planet that has decent PQ and 1 or 2 moral boosting tiles, I usually turn that into my cash factory.
I also tend to build 1 farm on each of my industrial planets. I've found that my industrial specialized planets can afford to give up a tile for a farm and a tile for an extra moral booster and still produce ships faster than I need them.
Research colonies I keep as research colonies. These are usually my cash drains since I tend to invest heavily in research.
My biggest suggestion though, is economy starbases along your main trade routes. I try to filter all my trade routes through a central area and then surround that area with +30% trade bonus starbases. Also, don't be scared to switch out trade routes; if you have recently researched a new life support and can access foreign planets that weren't reachable before, feel free to dump that 5 BC per turn route and trade up for an 11 BC per turn route. And the final trade suggestion; build economy starbases near foreign planets. If you have 3 trade routes going to the Iconian homeworld, then build a base or two there. The freighters generate more money when near the Iconian homeworld than they do when near your own worlds.
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