Mesmer leveling is rough all over. The weapon skills by default seem so weak and awkward compared to every other class. I died so much from 1-20 I eventually just started to not repair my armor (back in ye olde days, armor repairs cost silver) and play naked. The leveling experience will force you to get good, though, and around level 40 is when I felt it opened up and really started to feel smooth.
Eventually, Mesmer can become an absolute force. Your clone and phantasm generation becomes more acceptable (try Decoy and then Mirror Images for utility skills) and eventually luxurious with the Deceptive Evasion trait, weapon cooldown reductions and vigor. After my thief, I wanted my next 80 to be something incredibly different so I went for Mesmer not really thinking it would be a class I loved, but it is far and away my second-favorite class in the game.
There are dailies, but they're silly easy and you don't do them for gold. What you want out of dailies is Laurels (don't worry about what they're for yet).
That 8g should get you a full set of Rare level 78-80 armor and weapons. Make that your first step. In rares, you can literally do every piece of content in the game adequately.
The simplest source of gold would be the easy dungeon paths. That needs a group, and GAF is happy to oblige very frequently. In terms of stuff you can do solo, you'll want to check out the World Bosses (which each provide you a guaranteed rare item once a day, that you can then sell or salvage) and gather everything you see (Iron in particular is selling quite healthily right now).
