You can make a couple thousand denars every so often but it really is just a starting point. I have discussed the other day about my trips up north to farm the Sea Raiders. So my more short-term goals are just having a business which I have managed to acquire. Running a kingdom can be rewarding but wars get expensive. Landownership and a bunch of villages, castles, and cities under my control are the long-term goals. Some of these tasks never earn much while the big earners are more time sensitive or require something to happen to be able to do them in the first place.
For a number of days now I have been doing a few different things in the game to earn the in-game currency denars with the goal of buying a different business in the game and making them my short to the midterm economic backbone to pay troop payroll, food, and buy equipment upgrades.