This game is simple in some respects, but can be rather complex if you dig into the details.

Easy Start:

Create an account, log in, you will get a horse with basic horseshoes, a wagon for your horse to pull that you can keep things in, an undeveloped ranch (Basically your home), and a bit of money to get you started.

You can then go from township to township in Nebraska, looking for Trading Posts. Upon entering a trading post, each one with buy or sell each of the three main commodities: Grain, Gold, and Medicine. Grain is common, so it's cheap. Medicine is rare, so it's worth more. When getting started, you generally stick to Grain until you build up enough Bux (Which you get from buying and selling commodities.) to deal in higher priced goods.

You can also join a guild, or start your own. Members of a guild can visit each other's ranches without fear of defenses attacking you. Defenses only fire upon strangers.

In Omaha, you can pick up Pioneers and take them to your ranch to become ranch hands that will work on your ranch and help you create more commodities. You will want to build a barn in your ranch as soon as possible, as that is where the items your ranch hands create are stored. You can also store commodities you've obtained from trade posts in your barn. As time goes on and you get things built up, you can upgrade your barn for better defense and offense. Eventually you can even upgrade your barn into a fortress.

Get in and play with the game for a while and you'll learn more and more about the details of the game. There's a lot to do in this game and I could type for months before I could cover it all.