Making Currency.

i am unsure how to make currency at a good rate. all i have been doing is running dried lake on merc over and picking up all the rare items and selling them to vendor for alt's. i know that is probably not the best way i can do it but i don't know another way. i am looking to get some exalts for some uniques i need for my blade vortex build. this is also on standard.

if your character can fast farm rare low tier maps at the similar rate to the dried lake, it would be better to play them instead, quantity helps with currency and 6S item drops and rarity with rares/uniques.

in standard selling something in trade is a bit hard, most of the people there are geared already and the market is full of items, so only the very good items are being sold, or the good ones priced cheaply.

A full set of items (1 each of helm, body, gloves, boots, belt, and amulet, 2x ring, and either a 2H weapon, two 1H weapons, or a 1H weapon and a shield) between item levels 60 and 74 will net you one chaos if sold to the vendor at the same time. It's two chaos instead if all the items are unidentified. This vendor recipe is the primary means of making money for schlubs like us who aren't insta-rich streamers. Keep a tab set up specifically for the chaos recipe, collect ~3 or so of each component on it, and when you finally collect enough rings/amulets (I guarantee you those will be the bottlenecks), sell 'em off unidentified for a couple chaos per.

Beyond that? Sell the rest of what you find for alts, then use currency.poe.trade to swap the alts for chaos. Roughly fifteen to eighteen alts per chaos orb, which can actually add up reasonably quick. As Ludvator said, six-socket items that drop are also 7 Jeweller's orbs at the vendor, which is most of a chaos on the currency market. You'll want to invest in setting up a good loot filter to help you spot these suckers; I use ZiggyD's filter and find that it does its job without being obtrusive or ugly as sin/loud as blazes the way everyone else's is, but there's tons of filters out there tweaked for all kinds of different stuff. Check 'em out, slot one in. You'll never go back.

Whatever other random currency you build up can also be traded in. Vaal Orbs and Orbs of Regret are both generally worth a bit more than one chaos - build up a stack of ten and you can trade it in for twelve or thirteen chaos.

As well, Ludvator's correct - even running basic T1-3 maps can provide more currency than running Dried Lake. Not only do you get more flat currency drops, but if a Trial of Ascension spawns and you can complete it, the Offering you get is worth four-ish chaos.

There are numerous small ways to make money - keep a '1 fuse' or a '10 alts' sale tab full of not-as-crappy gear you find and make the occasional sale there; sell any Sacrifice fragments you happen across; sell higher-level maps with non-disastrous layouts. None of them are quick or worth much on their own - it's mostly a case of doing as many of them at once as you can and putting up with the grind until you finally get your payout.

Get IIQ and farm the shit out of maps. It'll take some existing wealth but this is definitely the good end game investment.

Farm the maps that you can do easily. I have found that rare marshes maps (tier 3) have lots of currency opportunities for folks beginning maps. It has lots of chests and corpses and you can skip the boss if you want.