You can accumulate coins quite easily by having heaps of wonders of one kind for example the Stock exchange and changing all the skins of your businesses to offices. Or if you prefer another wonder just change the skins to that kind of business. You can change the skins later to make it fancy after you have accumulated coins.
Bucks are more hard to come by. And franchising is the best and quickest way. So, yes, getting good businesses is the way to go so that when people franchise you you get the 50 bucks for each franchise. From memory I think there is only one business that does that for you (but I could be mistaken).
I did read the Mytown2.net forum that sometimes if you franchise the same business over and over the person who is being franchised doesnt always get the franchise bucks. I wonder if that is what happened to all the franchises I did for you today ? UGH !
Do you know how to get the franchises for 1 buck from Booyahtopia ? Thats the cheapest way I believe to get some good ones.