I've been a smuggler for quite some time, I'm still only 0-4-1-0, and will be as long as I can. I have no interest in mastering Smuggling, until the devs make missions/quests for us, or if it's along my "path to enlightenment."
I never shout that I'm slicing, I get more business than I can handle sometimes. Get level 4 slicing and just wear the "Slicer" title, you'll see. The pay is really good...I once made 50k "trying" to go from the bazaar to the spaceport in Coronet. This more than supports my reeally slooow grind to Master Armorsmith (first holo).
Making laser knives is easy...16 units of copper for 10 knives, or have someone do factory crates for you (400 units of copper). 250 knives go a long ways. Also, get lots of clamps, which usually cost 10k per crate of 25. Avoid the flow-analyzer nodes, which act like a clamp. They give you 75% chance of success rather than the 100% success rate of clamps.
As for pistols xp...get off the grindstone and start killin. Run missions as much as possible, and kill everything on the way out and back (not other player's missions though). Join a group for a hunt on Dant, or go to the squill caves. Once you get feign death, you can solo much harder creatures/npcs than you normally could. Use a bleed shot (or 2) and play dead. They bleed out while you look at the clouds and recover your HAM. It takes forever to kill sometimes, but it's nice to get 3k xp per kill. Once you stand up the creature/npc will attack you again, so be ready. This has significantly boosted my pistols xp, which I use in the pistoleer tree.
Lol..feign death is a great way to fool your friends, or enemies in pvp. Used in pvp, you can avoid the dreaded deathblow.