New additional account started

Well, here it is.

My Jita alt that is currently buying items to sell in Dodixie and Hek has now enough Industry skills to start manufacturing items for sale – nothing big at the moment, but lets get the ball rolling to learn the ropes.

Hence, i am starting a new account to replace the Jita alt as it seeks pastures new to manufacture from.

My first account has:

• an alt selling items at Dodixie
• an alt selling items at Hek
• and an alt that is about to go down the manufacturing route

For the new account, the new alt did the starting tutorials – took 2 nights, came away with 6.9m ISK (this time i reprocessed all the spare ships and items and then sold them).

It joined my corp  (Ironforge Commerce Guild) to give access to the corp wallet – makes managing ISK and contract hauling easier.

And then fly off to Jita to resume its role as the buyer of items to contract haul to my sellers in Dodixie and Hek.

I upgraded the account with a Plex bought in the training station which cost me 550m ISK.  And given i took the 21 day trial on offer on this blog my main char gets a free 30 days extra time.

After that I am now committed to purchasing a Plex every 30 days.  Furthermore, once my main account time runs out at the end of October I will be committed to buying 2 Plex's every 30 days to play Eve for free (which is what every business player in Eve should be able to do).  Hence at present I will be spending 550m ISK per month and then 1.1bn ISK per month from November onwards.

Every player that wants to play Eve for free and starts an additional account should use the "buddy invite" system to themselves free extended game time.  Quite simply:

• from your account on the internet send a buddy invite (its a url linked to your account that can be sent by email or copy and pasted much like the link on my blog to the right)
• use this url to start your new account (do not start your new account first) - that gets the 21 day free trial
• when the new account upgrades with Plex (which it has to buy in game) for the additional 30 days your main account will be awarded a Plex which can be used for an additional 30 days for your main account
• depends how you want to look at this - either you have 51 days free game time on the new account or 21 free days and 30 free days on your main account

And of course i can multibox – Eve parlance for having both of my accounts open at the same time – i.e. two characters playing at once.  Does make my computer work for a living though!

At present, I plan to train this new alt in the role of Inventor - but plans can change easily!

Someone has blundered

 

Below is a common example of a blunder I see:



above is the buy and sell orders for Medium Hull Repairer II.  The are selling for just under 5m ISK and the buyers have set buy orders for 1.1m ISK.

. . . . . and also, in the sell orders, as can be seen, is a seemingly cheap sell order for 1,125,000.71 ISK.

well, not quite.  Clearly, it was meant to be a buy order overcutting the last buy order by 0.01 ISK but was entered as a sell order by mistake.

so I bought it.  Easy money to be made there.

Needless to say, I make my fair share of mistakes entering trades!
 

Copying the quickbar from one account to another

Copying the quickbar from one account to another in 4 easy steps . . . . which is something I needed to do when I set up a new account this weekend.  I wanted all the quickbar items from my current account to be seen on the new account without me having to manually update this.

Worth noting: The method below will copy all settings not just the quickbar.

I have Windows 7 Professional.

The aim is to take this file: C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\c_program_files_(x86)_ccp_eve_tranquility\settings\core_user_1234567.dat

Where <user> is your user name on the computer and <1234567> is the seven digit identifier of your account . . . . . . . and copy the file from one account to another.

In the folder C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\c_program_files_(x86)_ccp_eve_tranquility\settings\ there will be one core_user_1234567.dat file per account.


Hence, the steps i used were:

Lets assume the file with the quickbar i wish to copy over is core_user_1122334.dat and the file that i wish to overwrite is core_user_7788990.dat

The easy way to tell which seven digit number is which is to log in to an account and then log out – the latest updated file is refers to the account you logged into.  However, step 1 of the below method ensures we have a backup just in case!

Also, if you have a new account that you are copying the file into then core_user_7788990.dat will have the size of about 1kb vs the file to copy which will be much larger, mine was 54kb.

1. Get to the folder C:\Users\<ser\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\c_program_files_(x86)_ccp_eve_tranquility\settings where <user> is your user name on the computer.  You may have to unhide folders or do what i did which was to search for CCP Windows Explorer
2. Play safe and copy the core_user_7788990.dat and rename it to core_user_7788990-copy.dat.  Best to play safe in case something goes wrong
3. Delete core_user_7788990.dat
4. Copy core_user_1122334.dat and rename the copy to core_user_7788990.dat

You should now have 3 files in the C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\CCP\EVE\c_program_files_(x86)_ccp_eve_tranquility\settings\ folder

• core_user_7788990-copy.dat which is a copy of the old file
• core_user_1122334.dat which is the file in one account that you wanted to copy
• core_user_7788990.dat is a copy of the above file in the new account

job done!

A mistake in my favour

I logged in to a particularly large balance in my wallet and, as is normally the case, i did a quick look at recent trades filled.  Sure enough, i had sold a Centus C-Type Armor Explosive Hardener for 420m ISK . . . . . . . . . . which seemed rather a lot.

 

 

Indeed, checking on the market prices showed that they are typically selling for 97m ISK.  Odd.

But then looking at the Buy orders, buyers are willing to pay 42m ISK.

So, now it becomes clear what happened.  The unfortunate person meant to set the buy order for 42,000,313.91 but instead added an additional zero to make it 420,003,013.91 and my order was the lowest sell order at the time and so got filled.

I have done something similar myself so i feel the pain!  Sort of.

Wealth Update

Slower: It has been a slower time – at times i go two nights without updating my orders as real life takes priority.  Often when i go two nights without updating my orders i am taking big write-downs on the third night – in fact, i suspect i make over 200m ISK of write-downs.  Painful.  When i say “write-downs” what i mean  is that i am reducing my sell order prices to become the best price and so in effect “writing down” my price and hence my sell order value and hence my wealth.

At this rate I am heading for a 4.8bn ISK increase in wealth for August which is below the 6.0bn ISK increase for July but above the 4.2bn ISK increase in June.  But in all, not great given I now have 2 traders up and running.  Slow times indeed.

Exiting a market: I am finding capital systems are very competitive and if i could find other suitable items i would trade them instead.  In fact, since i started writing this entry i have decided to exit the sub-system market – it is very volatile and the constant updating of the sell orders as competitors undercut me makes this  a time consuming item class to trade in.

I am almost completely out of the sub-system market in Hek.  I tend to find these items sell in waves – a buyer will come along and buy one of each.  The trouble is that the competition is so quick in undercutting and adding new items to sell that it is hard to be the best sell order for long.

Need to find more items to sell: Therefore, top of the list is researching to find more items to sell in Dodixie and Hek instead of these capital subsystems.  As i go through  preferred list of items to buy from Jita to sell in Dodixie and Hek i am finding that many items no longer sell at a decent profit – another reason why i need to find new items to sell.

New markets: i am experimenting with a new market in Hek and Dodixie.  More to come later, but at the moment it is a slow but steady 10% profit market after all costs.

Surplus ISK: but i need a new market, i am routinely holding more than 3bn surplus ISK in my wallet which is not earning a return and hence just sitting there redundant.  Remember, increase in wealth in a month = Capital employed x number of times that capital is redeployed in that month x operating profit market.  ISK in my wallet is not being redeployed at all!

Dodixie Trader: business as normal really, using about 100 of its 141 active order slots, has about 6.5bn ISK of sell orders active which has been the case since June, is holding the 20% operating margin after all costs.  Will need to find new items to sell to replace the sub-system market it has largely exited from.  Pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

Hek Trader: now that it has almost completely exited the sub-system market its regional trading has slowed considerably and a key focus is to find new items to sell.  Has entered a new market (more on this in a later post) which is more stable but slower and lower margin.  Using about 75 of its 129 active order slots, has about 6.5bn ISK of sell orders active which i suspect could grow from here.  Margins are below 20% given the new market but above 10% after all costs.  Pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

Manufacturing alt: in Jita acting as the buyer for my sellers in Dodixie and Hek.  However, as it stands right now this alt is ready to go out and find a manufacturing base to operate from.  Hence, my next step is to seek such a base within the next week.

Skills trained:

• Advanced Mass Production 3 – allows one extra manufacturing slot per level
• Industry 5 – reduces manufacturing time by 4% per level though as importantly is a pre-requisite for learning further skills
• Mass Production 5 – allows one extra manufacturing slot per level
• Production Efficiency 5 – reduces the manufacturing materials required by 5% per level
• Supply Chain Management 3 – remote manufacturing control within 10 jumps in a region.  I will aim to get this to 5 for full region control
• Cybernetics 4 – allows me to plug in implants that speed up the time it takes to learn skills (given this alt will be learning for several months i should have done this right from the start)

Currently training Advanced Mass Production 4

New account: i plan to start my new account this weekend and move my industrial alt to a new location.  Therefore, as a matter of priority i need to work out how to copy my quickbars from one account to another.  The first character in my new account will be the new buyer in Jita whilst it learns up industrial skills.  In all, this will commit me to a Plex a month from here on forwards - I.e. 550m ISK per month.


Current wealth is 14,598,239,280 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 13,300,928,040 ISK
• less a 20% provision (2,660,185,608) ISK*
• Buy orders 90,000,000 ISK
• Items in storage for sale 249,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 3,618,496,848 ISK

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex 550,000,000 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.

Price blocks

I see this quite often in slow moving, low priced but high margin items.

Someone will put a block of 30 or more items to sell where the normal sales per week are only say 4 items.  The price of the order itself will be reasonable.

 

 

This has a number of effects.

• Firstly, everyone priced above that block sell order must either price below or wait several weeks before their sell order has a chance of being filled – therefore, everyone else is likely to re-price lower the moment they notice and indeed be in a rush to head for the exit.

• Secondly, the supply has suddenly shot materially above demand which will put downward pressure on the price anyway.

I am never quite sure what the intention of the seller is in this case though a possible strategy may be to drive the other competitors out of the market and so keep this market to themselves.

Personally, i suspect they have seen the very high margins and just shipped in a block and plan to leave it there until it sells without taking a look at the volume of sales per day.  It is when they notice the sales are not coming in and the other competitors are undercutting as fast as they can when things start to get messy and the price heads towards cost very quickly.

an example of where this has happened is nicely shown below:

 

 

 



when I started in May 2013 this was a good earner, now it has collapsed to zero profits following a high volume sell order.  In time, the sell order will clear and the price will normalise - but for now it is likely to remain at these levels, perhaps rising to 1.2m ISK in a week and then staying there for a couple of weeks or so.

the one below will, though I fear, take longer to clear given the large sell order at the current price.

 

 

 

 

Highlight orders in blue setting

Here is a useful tip for everyone that posts items to buy or sell on the market.

 

When i am going through my buy (and sell) orders to see if i am the highest (and lowest) priced item it is much easier if i have my item highlighted.

 

To do this:

 

1. Open the market page <Alt + R>
2. Select the “Settings Tab”

 

3.  Check the box “Mark my orders”

 

 



New trade route opened up

I am starting to buy items in Hek to sell in Dodixie.

Started with a haul of 400m ISK of items to sell hopefully for about 550m ISK.

Not many items, it is early days – so seeing how it goes.  A few skill books, mods and implants at this stage.

The table below shows my haul on the first night.

So, i bought 27 items (27 different items, perhaps 40 items in all) in Jita for 883.9m ISK to sell in Hek where i would hope to sell them for 1,134.1m ISK making a gross profit of 250.2m ISK = a gross profit margin of 22%.  From that i would have Broker Fees of 0.8% = 9.1m ISK + 0.9% sales tax = 10.2m ISK + courier costs of 23.0m ISK leaving me with a hoped for profit of 207.9m ISK, or a net profit margin of 18%.  That is, of course, before i reduce prices as competitors come in with lower prices.

I bought another 15 items in Jita for 806.6m ISK to sell in Dodixie where i would hope to sell them for 1,072.7m ISK making a gross profit of 266.1m ISK = a gross profit margin of 25%.  From that i would have Broker Fees of 0.8% = 8.6m ISK + 0.9% sales tax = 9.7m ISK + courier costs of 20.8m ISK leaving me with a hoped for profit of 227.1m ISK, or a net profit margin of 21%.

And for the Hek > Dodixie run i bought 7 items in Hek for 416.8m ISK to sell in Dodixie where i would hope to sell them for 554.1m ISK making a gross profit of 137.3m ISK = a gross profit margin of 25%.  From that i would have Broker Fees of 0.8% = 4.4m ISK + 0.9% sales tax = 5.0m ISK + courier costs of 18.6m ISK leaving me with a hoped for profit of 109.3m ISK, or a net profit margin of 20%.

Trading Profit Levers

The route to making ISK can useful be looked at by considering the return you get from the capital you employ in a set period.  Lets call the period a week.

And lets assume, as i do today, that i have wealth of 11.5bn ISK.

Firstly, 4.2bn ISK of this wealth is sitting in my wallet with no chance of earning a return.  Hence, all the return i make comes from my current 8.8bn ISK of sell orders.

Now, the profits i make over a week come from two parts:

Firstly is what profit margin i make on that 8.8bn ISK of sell orders.  Well, i target 20% but believe i achieve about 25% from which comes 0.80% sales tax and 0.90% broker fees, so lets call it 23.3% profits.  I also spend c45m ISK per day contracting my hauling to Pushx Industries, so thats c300m ISK per week of cost which equates to c3.4% of the 8.8bn ISK of sell orders leaving me with a profit of 19.9%.  and, of course, that is before i have to reduce my prices as competition comes in – but lets ignore that for now.

Secondly is how many times i re-deploy that 8.8bn in a week.  For me, i believe of that over the course of the week i make about 8.8bn of sales as it is – i.e. i redeploy the 8.8bn ISK of sales 1.0 times.

Therefore, my weekly profits are (capital employed) x (asset turnover) x (profit margin) = 8.8bn x 1.0 x 19.9% = 1.75bn ISK.  Which will give me about 7.5bn ISK per month.  From that is taken off a Plex of c500m ISK and then comes the costs of reducing my prices as competition comes in . . . . and that could easily cost an additional 1bn ISK per month leaving me with 6bn ISK per month.

Notice though that there are two levers i can pull to increase my profits:  firstly i can attempt to increase my margins; and secondly i can attempt to increase my redeployment (i.e. increase volumes of sales).

However, these two levers are related.  High sales volumes often means low margins because there are more competitors involved whereas high margins often means low sales volumes because there are less competitors in a slow market and so allowing these high margins to exist.

The “station trading” strategy goes for the high redeployment (i.e. high sales volumes) and low margins.  Combine that with the very high capital employed then the profits can be very large, indeed much larger than my strategy of “Regional Hauling”.  The margins they achieve are wafer thin but wafer thin margins of 1.0% on 50bn of capital employed which is redeployed  7x in a week can given you 3.5bn ISK profit per week.  That is their magic.  Achieve 3% margins and you are looking at 10.5bn ISK per week.

My strategy of “Regional Hauling” goes for the high margins with the low redeployment and so far i am getting 1.75bn per week, perhaps it will rise to 2bn but that is as far is it will go unless i am willing to apply more time to the game per day.  Currently 45 minutes per week day.

Both strategies through eventually hit a ceiling dictated either by time available or items available to trade.

The holy grail is to find high margins and high volumes – and i suspect those are to be found in the smaller trading hubs outside of the main 5 trading hugs of Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek.

July Update

The last week was slow but overall it has been a good month.

In all my wealth increased by 6.0bn ISK which indicates i make an average of 192m ISK per day.

The main constraint to making ISK is alternating between finding items to sell and time available.

But at present i now have 4.2bn ISK in my wallet.  The only thing i know about that ISK is that it will be there tomorrow.  It has no chance in generating a return in its current form.  It is dead money.  Hence, i need to find a project or investment for this ISK.

However, the full process of updating my orders, buying new items from Jita and setting hauling contracts to get these items to Dodixie and Hek takes a full 45 minutes – and that is as much time as i want to allow for weekdays.  Hence, the answer will be to find higher profit items to sell and drop the lower profit items away.


Trading Strategy: 100% sticking to Regional Trading, selling slow moving but high margin items bought from Jita to sell in Dodixie or Hek.  I never buy something from Jita that i cant make at least a 20% margin on in Dodixie or Hek.  i.e. every 80 ISK purchase in Jita must sell for at least 100 ISK in Dodixie or Hek – and off that, of course, comes sales tax + brokers fees + hauling costs, and then price mark downs as competition lowers their prices . . . . hence why I stick to the 20% margin.

With both my traders i am taking big write-downs at times as i lower my prices on the sub-systems i sell.  Whilst it may make my eyes water i don’t mind this.  The only thing worse than an order that will never sell is ISK in the wallet.  That order may eventually be filled but it is as good as dead money.  Better for me to lower the price, collect the ISK and put that ISK back to work to make a return.

In all, I am finding sub-systems the most competitive and high volume of the items I sell.  The prices can move around a lot.  I suspect in the end I am making lower margins on these sales but they are making a positive contribution to my trading.

 

 

Contract Hauling: I continue to contract to Pushx Industries to haul my items from Jita to Dodixie and Hek, paying them about 45m ISK per day (=1.4bn ISK per month).  I do the Rush Jobs – i.e i pay a c4x premium to get the items shipped in under 24 hours, though they always arrive within 5 hours.  I am quite sure the amount i pay is more than compensated by the faster sales i make.  The strategy of contracting out the hauling remains as sound as ever - it saves me time (at best I would need to be at the keyboard for the Jita to Dodixie and then Dodixie to Hek legs of the haul which would take me at least half an hour; and it is much safer - I don't have the experience / skills in Eve Online to be totally confident on avoiding a gank (Eve parlance for being ambushed) at this stage.

 

 

Dual training: I spent a plex (=520m ISK) to start dual training on my account.  The Hek trader is almost done – quicker than i thought whilst the manufacturing alt is still going strong.  In all, i will keep the manufacturing alt training and leave the Dodixie and Hek traders as they are to earn ISK.

 

 

Dodixie Trader: Normal business.  Does about 3bn profit per month.  Blueprints are now a very small part of the business.  The main items are now sub-systems, ship fittings and implants.  I am finding sub-systems very competitive but lucrative.

 

Currently trader skilled in:

·         Accounting 4 – hence the sales tax is 0.80%

·         Broker Relations 4 – hence the broker fees are 0.90%

·         Retail 5 – which increases the active orders by 8 per level

·         Trade 4 – which increases the active orders by 4 per level

·         Wholesale 5 – which increases the active orders by 16 per level

·         Marketing 4 – i only learned this to allow other skills to be learned

No  longer training – has enough to get along with.  Can post 141 orders of which generally has 100 sell orders active.  Pays 0.80% sales tax and 0.90% broker fees.


Hek Trader: Training is almost complete.

Currently trader skilled in:

·         Accounting 4 – hence the sales tax is 0.80%

·         Broker Relations 4 – hence the broker fees are 0.90%

·         Retail 5 – which increases the active orders by 8 per level

·         Trade 5 – which increases the active orders by 4 per level

·         Wholesale 3 – which increases the active orders by 16 per level

·         Marketing 3 – i only learned this to allow other skills to be learned

Hence, this alt can currently post 113 orders, of which about half are currently in use.

Currently learning Wholesale 4 which will increase this limit to 129 – and i think that will be this character done for now.  Its purpose will be to trade in Hek and attempt to generate c3bn ISK per month profits.

From here, it needs to find more items to sell.  Trading is good at the moment, on some nights can be better than Dodixie.  Definitely a smaller trade hub – but not so much competition either.


Manufacturing alt: Continues to sit in Jita and act as my buyer for the items to be hauled to Dodixie and Hek for sale.

Skills are now:

·         Industry 4 – which gives a 4% reduction in manufacturing time per level and also opens up other skills

·         Production Efficiency 5 – which reduces the materials required by 5% per level

·         Mass Production 4 – which adds a production line capability per level

Currently learning Mass Production 5 which will open up Advanced Production.

Hence, this character can now run 5 production lines at once, will be 6 once Mass Production is learned.

I am continuing to read up on manufacturing and at this stage i suspect i will be going for T2 manufacturing – which, in summary, will mean more training, at least a month from here.


New account: The reading around manufacturing that i have done does indicate that i will need additional characters – either for more manufacturing lines or for Research.

I suspect i will not buy another PLex for Dual Training given my Hek trader is almost levelled up.  Hence, i may instead invest a Plex a month in starting a second account to train up another manufacturing alt.


To do list: Work out how Corporation mechanics work – at the moment it acts as a central collecting point for my ISK and effectively buys the items in Jita for sale in Dodixie and Hek.  I want to see if i can also have the corporation issue hauling contracts even though it does not have an office and hence no corporate hanger.

Work out how to copy the UI from one account to another – when i start my new account one of the alts will eventually sit in Jita as the buyer when the manufacturing alt leaves to become established somewhere else.  Ideally, at that stage, i would like to be able to see the same UI to smooth the buying process.



Current wealth is 11,487,059,666 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 8,745,430,456 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,749,086,091) ISK*
• Buy orders 81,000,000 ISK
• Items in storage for sale 244,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 4,165,715,301 ISK

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex 530,000,000 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.