Begging for gold may keep you from getting thrown out. I think it negates the cost of staying in the fief?
The real goal is to get people trading -- buy from one fief, travel across the map to another fief and sell it. The further you travel, the more money you should make (there are probably more factors involved than distance, though).
So the REAL goal is to give people something to fight over: trade routes. Rather than everyone sitting in towns "working", they will be travelling around the map buying and selling. And getting jumped and beat up and looted and sparking massive clan battles the likes of which we have not yet seen.
You also earn money by playing battle and siege in cRPG. I believe it is currently:
x1 - x2 = 0 gold per tick
x3 = 1 gold per tick
x4 - x5 = 2 gold per tick
For a brief period of time, I think it was (your multiplier - 1) gold per tick, so 4 gold/tick at x5. They changed it to the above system. I had over 1000 strat gold just from playing. If your clan is around helping you get x5 a lot, you can make decent cash.