My honest advice would be to watch all the videos and try and take as many surveys are you can. Start with upgrading your driver, since I think that will have the most immediate impact (shorter irons into greens, closer approaches, more birdies). There are some really good irons at L59 (Ping G25) that will serve you well until you make Legend probably. Next, as you earn credits, you could upgrade your wedges, 3W (wouldn't bother with a hybrid), and putter.
You could try entering tournaments and winning some credits that way, either the WGT ones or your CC ones. There are also Ready Gos which can provide a lot of credits, but it's very hit or miss. You need to have a great round and hopefully avoid some of the "sharks" that camp out and win a lot of these.
I'm sure others will chime in with more helpful advice from that, but as someone that relatively recently started down the "credit upgrade equipment" path, that's how I managed to do it without spending any actual cash.