Welcome to EcoCityCraft!
Firstly, I wouldn't recommend building a house through the mining portal, as the mining world gets reset once a month, and grief is also legal there. So I would say that you should ask in /ch tr to buy a plot in a protected town.

The goal of ecc, is to proceed through the ranks, earn money and once you get to the mayor rank develop your towns :)

To start with earning your money to get the resident rank (15k) I would recommend voting on all 4 of the voting sites (/vote) And selling the nether stars at /market (Not /sell hand) And that should get you about $1500 per day, and then I would say mining is the best way to earn money quickly, I can give you some enchanted tools when I see you in game if you want :D

Feel free to ask any more questions :)

(Also, I don't think there is a tutorial on YouTube, but I am sure everyone on the server will be happy to help you out if you need any thing)

 

You can get a plot from a mayor by asking in /ch tr (2 messages every 3 minutes).
Those are protected plots, so if someone griefs you they get punished. It's a much better option than building in the wild. They cost anywhere from $0 to $1000.

 

@JaymeisterJay Do you mean you bought 10,000 ecd (in game money) from the store with $10?

If so, the payments usually take 5-10 minutes to go through, and I would say if you still haven't received it within about 1 hour from your purchase, I would recommend you forum pm andrewkm with the screenshot and transaction ID, and he should be able to get it sorted for you :)

Also, just for a future reference, it is better to instead of buying in game money from the store, that you sell donation features to other people. As the going rate for that is about 6k per USD atm, so $10 would have got you about 60k in game if you sold someone else a feature by typing in their name instead of yours when you go onto the store.

 

You're correct that mining is generally the best way to make money to start, as once you have an efficiency 5 / fortune 3 pickaxe it will generally give you 7-8k an hour. Also - voting is a bit closer to $2200 than $1500 :p
Also, if you don't like having towns, you can always sell your next town in exchange for the next rank - generally this is far more common with Mayor as it is significantly cheaper. After President, towns are purchasable and don't influence your rank.

 

Though you can sell features to other people you don't just buy it for them you need to work out an agreement and maybe a contract to ensure safety for both sides