Once you find the lowest level you can invest at without angering your citizens, stick with it for a while. Tinker with how much money you pour into things like utilities or law enforcement, and make sure to check and see how much things like utilities are being utilized. Just like in real life, a helpful way to make more money for your city is by practicing shady city management tactics at the expense of your citizens. However, that doesn't mean you have to focus all of your resources on creating top-notch infrastructure and services for your residents. So counter-intuitive as it may seem, a smaller city will attract more residents and keep them there longer.

Also, you need to be sure you have enough in the way of resources to handle things like law enforcement and necessary services, which becomes much more difficult once your city gets bigger. For one thing, roads cost money to build and maintain. Tempting as it may be, don't go wild and expand your city rapidly, even once you start making more of a profit. One way to ensure the ease of movement necessary for freeing up roads and making your residents happy is by building bridges and properly implementing public transport, so citizens from your residential areas can easily travel downtown, and roads are open for delivery trucks. Like any vibrant downtown, it's a good idea to have some residential areas in the midst of your commercial district, and for your residential zones, some small commercial areas for necessities like groceries and shopping can help boost profits and keep people happy. You don't want to crowd your residential areas with businesses or industry, and your business zones need to have enough space for trucks to deliver goods. Balance in your commercial and residential zoning is key. Proper zoning is one of the most important things to help make money early on-and for making a successful city anyway.

Cities skylines guide