Did you change your text color to black? Your post is not readily visible.
There a far too many ways to start out to list. For every map there is a different course of action. It all depends on what settings you used, what race or what race abilities you have, the AI, your goals in the game....
There is no right answer.
A few things though,
Control your survey ship manually, that way your not getting sucked in wormholes and sent across the map into obscurity.
Research, and then research some more. Sell your tech to the AI (don't sell your diplo techs)
A little trick you can do with your colony ships, though it will put you into debt, but hey..what doesn't?! 
Build cargo hulls with just engines on them and send them out, then when you find a planet you want to colonize, move the ship near it and upgrade it to a colony ship. Just be sure that you have enough life support on the colony ship to be within your range. You won't need engines on the colony ship either, since the ship is next to the planet you want to colonize.
I have two classes of colony ship designed, one is pretty much default, then the other is the blank colony to do what i described above.
When you upgrade, just choose the longest lease...but beware, leasing too often can really hurt your game, so do this just to get a leg up early game.
In most game though, i don't explore....at all. I do send out the survey ship, and build others, but i will only colonize the near system to me. I will then use what diplo and tech advantage i have to get planets off the AI.
After that, i "take" planets, i don't colonize them!
