I am keeping my minimum item gross margin requirement to 20%. i.e. if i sell an item for 90m having purchased it for 72m then i make a gross profit of 18m and a gross operating margin of 20% (=18/90). In other words, a 25% mark-up.
And then of course come the other costs of doing business: a broker fee for posting the sell order = 0.80% of the sell order; a sales tax on sale = 1.05%; and the hauling fee to PushX Industries which is so far 5.8m a contract.
I am now starting to contract to PushX Industries haul over 300m ISK of cargo value at a time. If i achieve the 20% gross profit margin then i should sell 300m ISK of cargo for 375m and make 75m profits. Therefore the hauling fee of 5.8m ISK represents 1.55% on the sale.
Hence, in all my cost of doing business is 3.4% of the sales value which therefore leaves me making a minimum profit margin of 16.6%.
As my wealth rises and the amount if ISK i wake up to increases the pressure remains on how to reinvest that ISK to earn a suitable return.
To that end i am now buying items for up to 150m ISK. At this level i am finding that i am mainly buying Implants. Blueprints at this price tend to sell once every few days instead of at least once a day which is what i am looking for.
Indeed, whilst i am learning Retail 5 i am restricted to posting only 53 active sell orders and therefore i am actively having to make a decision not to sell some Blueprint items in favour of selling some higher profit Implants.
The month of June is going to see me doing a lot of travelling and therefore my time on Eve will be less leading to a lower profit progression. I suspect i will continue to move up the price of items to reinvest my ISK in until i find myself with a Plex worth of ISK + a little bit more to allow me to start a new account in another Trade Hub. So, say about 570m ISK that i find i can not readily reinvest with my current Main character.
Current wealth is 1,285,359,793 ISK made up from:
- Items for sale 1,367,397,412 ISK
- less a 20% provision 273,479,482 ISK*
- items in storage for sale 63,600,000 ISK
- items in transit 0 ISK
- ISK in wallet 127,841,863 ISK
* I take a 20% provision against the items I am selling. Eve calculates wealth by adding up the value of the sell orders hence it is possible to increase your wealth by buying an item for 100m ISK and putting a sell order for 120m ISK (in this case your wealth would increase by 20m ISK). For me, I want my wealth to be calculated at cost until i finally hold it as ISK. I know that the value of my sell orders will likely fall over time as I update my orders downwards as competition reduces their prices before my items are sold. Hence the 20% provision is my best guess as to what the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.