End of month update

ISK wise it has been a good first full month.

My wealth has risen to 5.5bn ISK, a rise of 4.2bn in June.  More than i thought it would given i was away for a perhaps a third of the month.

Trading continues to gather momentum: I am using 87 of my 125 active sell/buy order slot limit.  I monitor 114 items to buy from Jita to sell in Dodixie.  Implants and fittings are currently my main ISK makers.  I remain focused on the high margin but slow moving items to sell.

My average profit margin after all costs is remaining above 20% and i am selling c15% of my sell orders that i post each day.  Hence, my daily wealth increases by [sell orders] x 15% x 20% = [sell orders] x 3%.  Given i am now posting 6bn ISK of sell orders i am expecting my wealth to increase by an average of 180m per day at least.  It is early days but i believe i am finding myself with 1bn of ISK to reinvest everyday from sales made overnight and during the day.

Trading skills almost complete: i have almost finished Wholesale 5 which will add 16 extra selling slots to my capability and allow me to start on Tycoon which adds 32 slots a level.  Given i don’t plan on doing station trading in the future i feel my skills are adequate for the current trading strategy i am adopting.

Contract Hauling a worthwhile expense: I continue to use Pushx Industries to haul my items from Jita to Dodixie  I am now using the Rush Job feature as standard which means i am spending c21m ISK at haul.  This month i have contracted Pushx Industries 34 times and paid them 413m ISK to Haul items from Jita to Dodixie.  Whilst the cost is high and indeed represents 1.7% of my typical sales and so stands at the highest individual cost in my Regional trading strategy it does allow me to spend more time researching items to sell instead of doing a 40 minutes round trip.  It is also safer and the Rush Jobs are often done within 6 hours, often 3.

Wallet centralised: I have trained some Corporation skills and indeed i have started the corporation – more on that in another post – but the aim is to provide a centralised wallet to speed up transferring ISK around my alts.  I may extend this to the centralisation of moving items, not really decided yet.

New Trading Alt ready to start: I am going away for 24 hours.  Spare character slot ready – i have fully deleted my Amarr alt.  When i return on Monday evening i will start the training of the new alt in the starter missions and then place it at Hek.  Once the starter missions are done i will start the Dual Training by spending a Plex.

Manufacturing Alt next: once I have completed the starter missions for my Trading Alt and installed it in Hek I will then do the starter missions for my Manufacturing Alt (which is the current Jita buyer) and re-install it back in Jita.  I suspect the first month or longer will be spent levelling the skills required - which is fine by me given I need to do much more reading around manufacturing to see where the most profitable strategy lies.


Current wealth is 5,519,232,106 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 6,697,962,342 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,339,592,468) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 76,700,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 84,162,232 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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 cost is or at least the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.

Change of thought

update: I came back from my business trip to find just over 1bn ISK waiting to be reinvested.
 
So I bought 72 items from Jita (spread over 21 products) for 1.0bn ISK for which I hope to sell in Dodixie for 1.5bn ISK giving me a 32% gross profit margin.  After selling costs, including a "Rush Job" contract to PushX Industries I hope to make a 29% operating profit margin, though that is before I reduces prices as competitors undercut me.
 

 

In all, with 2 days to go before the end of the month my wealth has passed 5bn ISK and my Main has only been playing for 1 month and 15 days.
 
my wealth has increased by 3.8bn ISK this month - with a fair wind tomorrow I may get the increase to be over 4bn for the month of June.  I would be impressed with that for my first full month given several days of it were spent away on business.


change of thought: I am away on Sunday / Monday but on Tuesday I intend to start training a new character as a trader and another one as a manufacturer.  I was planning to start a new account for the trader alt.  However, MoxNix made a good suggestion that I make use of Dual-Training to train up two alts on my account.

Dual-Training allows me to train two characters at once on one account though at the cost of a Plex a month.

I like that line of thinking.  The training on my Main is almost done - though I may have to train up some Corporation skills to make transferring ISK around my characters more efficient.  So, with Dual-Training I can train up my new trader and train up my Manufacturing alt.

Also, I only need to use the additional Plex whilst I need to train the two characters at the same time.  Once my trader is done (say in 1-2 months) then I can stop using Plex.  If I started a new account then I am committed to using a Plex a month (=540m ISK) to keep the account open.

Of course, if I wanted to move one of the alts to another account that will cost me Plex just to do that.  But at this stage, keeping them altogether feels more sensible.

Hence, I have deleted my alt at Amarr and the timer to complete the deletion will be done in 10 hours.  On Tuesday I will then start a new alt, have it do the Training Missions and then put it in Hek and start training it up in Trading skills.

 
 
 
Current wealth is  5,100,548,434 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 5,975,712,674 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,195,142,535) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 134,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallet 185,978,295 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

A week away

I am off on another week of business so no Eve time.

However, the following week (first week in July) i should be able to start my new account.  I plan to take the new account Main character through the training missions (so 2 days) and then decide which Trading Hub to put it in – it will be my second trader.  I am angling at Hek for now, an up and coming Trade Hub.  At this point, i suspect two traders will be as much as i can get done for 30 to 45 mins per night on week days.

I will start this Main off as i started my current Main, so with little ISK (maybe a few million) given i will need to train this new Main up in the Trading skills, notably the ones to increase the active order slots.  Though, to be honest, if i see some big trades i can do then i will do them.

In any event, it will now cost me a Plex a month to keep going, i.e. c520m ISK per month.

If all goes well, though i don’t know Hek, then this new account should be self financing within a month.

As an aside, i will use the Eve joining tab on this Blog to join and so when i use the Plex for the first time to extend my playtime then my current account should be awarded with an additional 31 days play time.

I also plan to stop the training on my current Main and start to train up an alt in Manufacturing.  Again, i will take this alt through the training missions.  I will use the Alt that is currently sitting at Amarr.  At this stage, all i have decided is not to do Mining (too time intensive) or Refining (there is no value i can add here).  Hence, it will be manufacturing of sorts.  I suspect the initial training will take a while so my Alt may just continue to be my buyer in Amarr for a while longer.

I am hoping that July will be a full month with no travel and so i should be able to see what my Main can really do in Dodixie.



Current wealth is  4,588,693,553 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 4,907,393,456 ISK
• less a 20% provision (981,478,691) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 110,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 542,000,000 ISK
• ISK in wallet 10,778,788 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

A lot of milestones passed this week.

Wealth moved over 4bn ISK.

Wealth grew by 3bn ISK in under a month – i had a good week this week.  As i move to sell items costing over 100m ISK and hold my 20% margins then my wealth moves up strongly as each item sells.  For items that sell for over 200m ISK i am willing to accept 15% net profit margins given the ISK profit amount itself is large.

Active sell orders moved over 5bn ISK for the first time.  I am using 83 of my 125 active sell order limit.

I had over 1bn ISK on one contracted to haul for the first time (collateral 1.2bn ISK for a fee of 23.6m ISK).  As ever, i continue to use PushX Industries to haul the items from Jita to Amarr.

Seems i am selling c20% of my active sell orders per day.  And assuming i can get at least a 20% net profit margin then my daily increase in wealth would approximate to <active sell orders> x 20% x 20% = <active sell orders> x 4%.  Hence, with 5bn ISK of sell orders i would hope my wealth goes up by 5bn x 4% = 200m ISK per day.

I am currently training Wholesale 5 which will give me 16 more active sell slots and also allow me to start training Tycoon which gives me an additional 32 active slots per level.



Current wealth is 4,430,078,718 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 4,212,671,813 ISK
• less a 20% provision (842,534,363) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 129,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 900,000,000 ISK
• ISK in wallet 30,941,268 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

Gross and Net Profit Margins

I have had some emails asking about what i mean by gross profit margin and net profit margins.  Hence, using a recent example i will explain what i mean.

The table below is an example of a summary of what i was hauling a week ago – or more correctly, contracting to PushX Industries to haul.

I had a small contract to haul 1 item that cost me 95m ISK at Amarr which i believe i can sell for 150m ISK in Dodixie and so generate a profit of 55m ISK.  That gives me a nice 37% gross profit margin (= 55 / 150).  I always work on profit per sales, and the gross profit margin is merely the profit margin i make on selling the product for a higher price.  Some might call it the product contribution.

However, there are other costs involved in the sale.

I need to take away 0.80% broker fee to post the item for sale (=1.2m ISK) and a further 0.90% sales tax when it sells (=1.35m ISK).  In addition, i need to account for the courier fee of 6.12m ISK.  That will leave me with profits of 46.33m ISK (and of course that assumes i don’t need to reduce the price as competitors come in to undercut).

That 46.33m net profit on the 150m sale gives me a net profit margin of 31%, which is a good level of profitability.

 

The bigger contract is for 13 items i bought in Jita.  I bought them all for 710.2m ISK and hope to sell them for 1.173bn ISK in Dodixie giving me a good gross profit margin of 39% (=463.124m ISK).  Taking away broker fees and sales tax + the 20.76m ISK it costs for a “Rush Job” from PushX Industries leaves me with a very healthy 36% net profit margin, or 422.417m ISK – though i suspect i will be reducing prices as competitors undercut.

 

Below these numbers i also show how the net profit margin is made up.  For the Jita contact the 36% net profit margin is made up from 60.5% product costs + 0.8% broker fee + 0.9% sales tax + 1.8% courier fee totalling 64% cost of sales and so leaving me with 36% profits.

 

In general i don’t want the gross profit margin to be below 20% which will lead to a minimum net profit margin of c16 to 17%.  Though if the actual ISK profits are high i am willing to let the gross profit margin fall to 15%.

 

My strategy is to focus on slow moving items which therefore don’t attract much competition – and so are high margins but low sales volumes.  That is fine with me.

 

Note how low the “Rush Job” courier fee is in the big scheme of things, 1.77% is not much for the chance of being able to put these items on sale within a few hours of buying them vs the normal 12 to 24 hours for a normal hauling contract.  Of course, the fastest way is the haul it myself, but that is also the most dangerous way.

3bn wealth reached

My current strategy of buying in Jita and Amarr, to sell in Dodixie has seen my wealthy reach the 3bn ISK milestone.

I am currently using 76 of my 125 active order slots hence i can’t see myself getting to the full 125 unless i start placing buy orders.  However, at this point in time i am reinvesting all my ISK into buying items from Jita / Amarr to sell in Dodixie and so i will not be placing any buy orders in the near term.

I am still buying and selling some of the blueprints  i started with on day 1.  They are a steady source of income.  Not much but it is nice ISK.  But the vast majority of my sales now come from implants and ship fittings.  I have expanded into further implants to sell that cost of 100m ISK to buy.  They are very slow moving but hopefully therefore less competitive.

In all, my spreadsheet of items potentially to sell is now  up to 94 though there are several items that are no longer profitable.

So far this month i have set up 23 courier contracts with PushX Industries and paid 196m ISK to PushX Industries for hauling.  I am increasingly using “Rush Jobs” for my contracts from Jita given i am now contracting to haul over 400m ISK at a time.  Assuming i stick to my 20% profit margin then the 20m ISK fee for a “Rush Job” only takes 4% off my profits but i can post them for sale within a few hours of buying them rather than waiting 12 to 24 hours for the contract to be completed.  I suspect this larger haulage payment is making me much more ISK with my faster posting for sale.

I am training Wholesale 5 which will give me 16 additional order slots but more importantly allow me to start on Tycoon which gives me 32 additional order slots a level.

At my current rate i am making 100m ISK per day profit and this rate is still rising.  I would like to think i would be able to make 3bn ISK this month but given i will be away in the final week i suspect this will not be achieved – though to be fair, i made 1.5bn in the first half of the month despite being away for 8 days of it, so the 3bn ISK in this month may be achievable.


Current wealth is  3,276,304,088 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 3,977,473,779 ISK
• less a 20% provision 795,494,756 ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 41,700,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallet 52,625,065 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

Back from a business trip

I would have to admit some disappointment.  When I returned, updated my remaining orders I had only made a profit of 79m ISK for the 3 nights that I was away.  Part of the cause was having to mark down some orders heavily upon my return given competition had come in at lower pricing points.  But I suspect the main reason was that as I start to haul higher priced items then the competition is tougher and hence I need to update at least once every two days.

Anyway, this weekend I am mostly away hence I did a quick update of my orders and bought new items in Jita and Amarr and put the hauling contracts out to PushX Industries - hopefully I will be able to repost when I get home tonight.  The Jita contract I put on a "Rush Job" so paying 20m ISK for the haul.

In all, as we approach the halfway point this month my wealth has increased by 1.4bn ISK and so I can at least say I have doubled my wealth within 15 days.  A small comfort. 


Current wealth is  2,652,162,273 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 2,268,623,111 ISK
• less a 20% provision 453,724,111 ISK*
• items in storage for sale 89,700,000 ISK
• items in transit 690,000,000 ISK
• ISK in wallet 57,563,784 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

One month old

I am about to go on a business trip for a few days so seems a suitable time to wrap up on my first month.

Having to reinvest (what feels like serious isk to me) on a daily basis now: I got home today from work to find 750m ISK in my wallet and i need to reinvest that before i leave tomorrow.

“Rush Job” contracts may actually be the way forward: I was able to buy 680m isk worth of products at Jita and i did a “Rush Job” courier contract with PushX Industries.

For an extra 15m isk (20.8m isk courier fee vs the normal 5.8m) i can have my items couriered within a day.  In this case i checked on the PushX chat window and they suggested almost straight away.  And indeed within 1 to 2 hours it was with me.

If this works then i may consider using “Rush jobs” more often.  If i was to courier up to 1bn ISK then it would cost be 2.1% (20.8m / 1000m) vs the normal 0.6% (5.8/1000) but i would get it almost immediately.  Currently i generally wait a day before the items are couriered.  I suspect if i did the maths then i would discover that the extra speed at which i can put the “Rush Job” couriered items to sell in Dodixie will more than make up for the extra cost.  i.e. my isk would be reinvested back into the market 12 to 24 hours faster – that could be serious money.

Skilling up: I finished training Accounting 4 and so i now pay 0.90% sales tax.  Hence i now pay 0.80% to post a sell order and then 0.90% sales tax when it sells.

I started training Wholesale 5 to give me an additional 16 active order slots and will allow me to start training Tycoon which adds 32 active order slots per level.  It will take me 20 days to train Wholesale 5 – i was a little hesitant but i know i will be away for a week in the last week in June so i have a clear 15 days before i even consider starting a new account (at which point i may also start training up an alt on this account to do manufacturing), so no harm in starting Wholesale.  If i stop the training i will still keep the skill points and at some stage i can complete the final 5 days.  In actual fact, i don’t really need it but i do have a spare 15 days so i may as well get my trading skills up.

One month in: As i stand after one month (of which i was away for 5 days) my wealth is now 2.6bn isk – and that includes a 20% provision against the 3.1bn isk of sell orders i have to reflect the fact that i may need to reduce prices as competition comes in to undercut.

And this is the first time i have posted more than 3bn isk of sell orders.  I seem to recall that my first 1bn felt like a milestone!

I am coming close to the point where i am struggling to find items to buy – so feels like i need to do more research into items to sell.  I have started buying more of the same items to make sure i don’t lose out on sales.  But that just makes the problem worse – i don’t buy new items in Jita until i have completely sold out in Dodixie, hence i gather more isk as i wait for a line to sell out.

I am currently using 71 of my 125 order slot limit.  I may investigate some minor station trading (that is, putting buy and sell orders for the same item in one station and so just trading within that station).

Looking forward to starting an additional account: Once i get to a point where i have 600m isk that i cant reinvest then i will start a new account and have it financed with plex.  That new account will also be a trader so i can build up my isk monthly inflows to finance my other activities.  I suspect i will be starting a new account at the end of June.  Really looking forward to the other parts of business / industry in Eve though.  The ISK making blogs on the blog roll cover many of those areas very well.


Current wealth is  2,573,215,984 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 3,060,382,299 ISK
• less a 20% provision 612,076,460 ISK*
• items in storage for sale 87,300,000 ISK
• items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallet 37,610,145 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

Wealth of 2bn ISK reached

Today i reached 2bn ISK of wealth.

Entirely through Regional Trading – that is buying from one region to sell in another.  I contract PushX Industries to haul my items to Dodixie – hence i never leave the station and play 30 minutes a day.  Perhaps 60 at weekends as I research more items to sell.

For me, i have been buying from Jita and more recently Amarr to sell in Dodixie.  The reason i buy from Jita is that it is the largest trading hub and its prices listed on Eve-Central are therefore likely to be more accurate and so helping me do my research.  My Main character can sit in Dodixie and check the potential sale prices for items i plan to buy in Jita.

For non-Eve players, Regional Trading strategies work because:

• When items are bought they have to be picked up from the station they were placed for sale in
• Prices can only be seem for the region a character is in, not for other regions
• Many players will willingly pay more for the convenience of not making 15 jumps to pick an item up (1 jump = 1 minute of time)

I am still reinvesting all the ISK i make into new items to sell – hence i am not yet in a position to start a new account (which would need to self finance itself through Plex purchases).

I woke up today to 590m ISK to reinvest back in the markets.  The weekends (starting on a Thursday night) are good times for me.

It is getting harder to find high margins, slow moving and low competition items to sell.  So i have reduced my acceptable margin to 15% as long as the purchase price is over 100m ISK.

I would expect to start a new account perhaps in July – i am on a business trip in the last week of June which somewhat prevents starting a new account at that time if I want to get it off to a flying start.


Current wealth is  2,243,647,145 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 2,031,158,454 ISK
• less a 20% provision 406,231,691 ISK*
• items in storage for sale 20,200,000 ISK
• items in transit 550,000,000 ISK
• ISK in wallet 48,520,382 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

Trading update

A new buying location: I have started to courier items for sale from Amarr to Dodixie.  This will add to my current regional hauling strategy of Jita to Dodixie.

It is mainly implants that I haul (or more correctly I contract the hauling to Pushx Industries) from Amarr but there appears to be better margins than buying these implants at Jita.

If this carries on to be a major thing then i will put another alt in Amarr.  At present i send my Jita alt to Amarr afk whilst i do other things around my apartment.  But then this alt needs to afk fly back to Jita again – not a very efficient set up.

Skills update: My main character is within a day of learning Wholesale 4 which will give him 125 available active orders.  Hence, the active order limit will no longer be the key constraint.  It will remain as the ISK i have to invest which will hold back my wealth progression.  My next skill will be to increase Accounting to level 4 to further reduce the sales tax i pay.

Selling more items: My list of items that i look to sell has risen to 77 though as i update my research c10 – 15% of these items are no longer achieve my 20% margin target.  I have started to move into deadspace items to sell.  Early days but they seem to be right in my target market - low competition, high margins, slow moving sales.

Sales value per day rising: At present i am couriering one payload a day of about 300m ISK, so that is 60m profit per day if i can get my full 20% margins, implying a full month profit of 1.8bn ISK.  Of course, that is a gross simplification and i will do worse given business trips and better as my ISK to invest increases.

I also for the first time posted over 2bn ISK of sell orders.



Current wealth is  1,823,866,079 ISK made up from:

Items for sale 2,182,068,820 ISK
less a 20% provision 436,413,764 ISK*
items in storage for sale 10,000,000 ISK
items in transit 0 ISK
ISK in wallet 68,211,023 ISK


I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

Back from a business trip

I came back from a business trip and had sold 530m ISK of items out of the 1367m ISK of sell orders posted.

So a 39% asset turnover (=530/1367) over 5 days.  Not bad though it does tell me that i need to update my sell orders at least every 2 days.  It is not the lower priced Blueprints that are being undercut, it is the higher priced implants.  Hence i am clearly starting to compete in areas where the more established market participants operate.  I would expect to see my gross profit margin come down towards the 20% limit i set myself as a result.

My skill queue had ended though i had 50k skill points to invest – Eve Online was down as i was preparing to leave so i was unable to update my skill queue.  Having competed Retail 5 I bought the Wholesale skill for 35.5m ISK and applied the full 50k skill points to it.  I now have a maximum active order limit of 109 orders.

Using my Jita alt i purchased 680m of new items and couriered them to Dodixie using PushX Industries.  My largest item shipment value yet.

I posted these items for sale for 940m ISK which, if i sell them at this price, would give a gross profit margin of 28% before selling taxes and courier costs and so a profit of 260m ISK.

From this i need to take of the broker fees of 0.80% (=7.5m ISK), sales tax of 1.05% (=9.9m ISK) and the courier fee of 5.8m ISK.  The good news is that the courier fee is now only 0.6% of the sales value (=5.8/940) – so i am starting to benefit from economies of scale.  In all, selling and distribution costs are 2.5% of the sales value.  Hence, with a fair wind i may make a 26.5% profit margin on these items (=28-2.5) and so a profit of 249m ISK.

Of course, i am more than likely to have to reduce the price of my sell orders before they are sold anyway . . . . . . .

In the next few days i plan to update the list of items that i choose to sell now that i have a greater number of active order slots to fill.

Current wealth is  1,400,073,158 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 1,506,108,158 ISK
• less a 20% provision 301,221,632 ISK
• items in storage for sale 55,400,000 ISK
• items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallet 139,786,632 ISK

I don't count assets I use in the course of my business such as ships, fittings etc nor do I add back any expenses such as skills purchased etc.  The wealth I disclose is made up of items that are ISK or are in the process of being converted to 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.

The Jita Dodixie Alt setup

The Scene

• My Main character is in Dodixie – able to post 53 items.
• My new alt (no skills) is in JIta

The Aim

• To buy items in Jita, transport them to Dodixie, and put on sale in Dodixie without my Main or Alt ever getting into a ship.

The Process

1. I look at the items I am focusing on and determine what I plan to restock to sell
2. I send the required ISK from my Main to my Alt
3. The Alt buys the items at Jita
4. The Alt then does an “Item Exchange” Contract with my Main to be collected in Jita
5. My Main (still in Dodixie) accepts the items into his Jita hanger and so that Contract is completed
6. My Main (still in Dodixie) then does a Courier Contract with PushX Industries to haul the items to Dodixie
7. Upon the items arriving in Dodixie (delivered by PushX Industries) my Main posts the items for sale in Dodixie

My Alt can only have one Contract running at a time – hence it is no use my Alt contracting PushX Industries to haul because my Alt would be unable to do any further contracts until the items are finally delivered.  My Main though can have 16 Contracts running at time hence i need to load all the Contracts onto my Main.