September Update

Wealth increased by 7.4bn ISK to 23.3bn ISK.  Which is an average of 245m ISK per day.

This has been a good month despite me being away on business for a third of it - reminds me of July.  In fact, my best month so far.

Given I took advantage of having 51 days on my new account - I did not buy a Plex this month to finance my second account.  I will need to spend c550m ISK in October on my second account.

My main account is financed to the end of the year through players taking advantage of the Buddy Programme link to the right >>>>

Hence, come January I will be funding my playtime on Eve with 2 Plex per month, or 1.1bn ISK per month.

The Highlights was the start to move into Station Trading, increasing my penetration into the Skill Book market and my Manufacturing alt ramping up.  I am now almost totally out of the sub-system regional hauling market - perhaps the most competitive I have witnessed.

I have not been playing Eve long enough to understand the seasonality of pre and post expansion effects on the Eve economy and so I don't make any ISK from speculating around content expansions.

My main constraint to growing my wealth, other than only spending 30 to 60 minutes online per weekday, is the amount of ISK sitting in my wallet.  It is often over 3bn ISK and it is earning a nil return.

An effort to deploy this ISK was the reason I entered the Station Trading market and increased my penetration into the Skill Book market.  For non-Eve players - "station trading" is when you buy and sell items in the same station, acting as a market maker.  In effect, making a return from the spread.

The Skillbook market is a low margin market (c8 to 10% after all costs including hauling costs) but it is a steady income with less competition.


Dodixie Trader: business as normal really, still feels like this alt is gaining momentum, using about 127 of its 141 active order slots, has about 11.4bn ISK of sell orders active which is up on the 7.4bn in the prior month (and 5.5bn in the month before that) and mainly driven by the entry into the skillbook market and the move into selling some higher value items.  The core trading (i.e. non-skillbooks) is holding the 20% operating margin after all costs.

This alt has also entered the Station Trading market,  Currently has c0.9bn of Buy orders up - which is increasing as I find new items to station trade.

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 – hence this alt is expanding the fastest into the Skillbook market which does have the effect of depressing the profit margins.  Has about 9.5bn of sell orders, up from the 6.8bn ISK in the prior month, driven by the expansion into the Skillbook market.  Pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

I think it is fair to say I still have someway to go to crack the Hek market to its full potential.  At present this alt is using 82 of its potential 129 trading slots.


Manufacturing alt: This alt remains based one jump out of Jita in Ikuchi.  Eventually I plan on setting up base elsewhere - but this location serves me well to learn the ropes and is a good source of raw materials with Jita just one jump away.

In my first month I estimate that I made profits after production costs + broker fees + sales taxes of 1bn ISK.  I was not constrained by ISK, my main constraint is that I am still learning this business.

I am now manufacturing and selling 10 items on a regular basis.  All Tech 1.  I manufacture the items as I need them, I don't yet keep a stock of items to sell.

I started selling Industrial Ships before the Odyssey expansion started - that was good profits but they have now falling back to become loss making, hence I no longer manufacture these.  I am now manufacturing mostly Rigs - making some good profits for now.

Part of the excitement in manufacturing is designing the spreadsheets - my current spreadsheet keeps an eye on the profit margins of 28 items I could manufacture by pulling the prices of the raw materials from Eve Central.  See my post here on how I do that - automatically pulling prices from Eve Central.

Of course, when I said I made 1bn ISK I did somewhat fail to mention what I have spent on skill books and, more importantly, in Blueprints.  I estimate that I have spend c500m ISK on Blueprints which does somewhat reduce my profits in manufacturing to c500m ISK this month.  On one hand saying 1bn ISK profits is valid because blueprint purchases are one-off (I do purchase blueprint copies at times which are included in the profit numbers given they are a running cost of manufacturing).  However, at any time the items I am manufacturing could fall to loss making and hence these Blueprints would no longer be making me any money (just sitting in my hanger gathering dust) so I think it is correct to view them as a real expense.  I am unlikely to ever sell them.  Also, at this stage I don't want to view the Blueprints as an asset in my business - how do I value them?  For sure, there are NPC values - but, again, I am never likely to sell them.

I often have to make the trip to Jita and back hauling raw materials to undertake the manufacturing – but that is a 5 minute job at most, and low risk given i don’t haul much, certainly under 100m ISK at a time.  If I need to haul more then I outsource the hauling to Pushx Industries.

Relevant Skills trained:

·         Advanced Mass Production level 4 – allows one extra manufacturing slot per level

·         Industry level 5 – reduces manufacturing time by 4% per level though as importantly is a pre-requisite for learning further skills

·         Mass Production level 5 – allows one extra manufacturing slot per level

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

·         Supply Chain Management level 4 – remote manufacturing control within 20 jumps in a region.  Now training to level 5 for full region control

·         Industrial Construction level 2 – allows the construction of advanced industrials

·         Capital Ship Construction Level 1 – allows the construction of capital ships

·         Frigate Construction Level 4 - allows the construction of Frigates and needed for other skills

·         Cruiser Construction Level 4 - allows the construction of Cruisers and needed for other skills

·         Battleship Construction Level 4 - allows the construction of Battleships

·         Science Level 5 – needed for many other skills

·         Mechanics Level 5 – needed for many other skills

·         CPU Management Level 5 – needed for many other skills

·         Power Grid Management Level 4 – needed for many other skills

·         Cybernetics level 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).

·         And also other specific skills that required to manufacture the items, such as various Rigging skills.

  

I have also trained up some Trade skills given my alt is doing the selling of the manufactured items for now.  The original plan was for the traders in Hek or Dodixie to do the selling but that is on hold whilst I learn this business near Jita.

Hence I have trained Trade level 4 and Retail level 4 to get 53 active trading slots, and Marketing Level 3 + Daytrading Level 3 to allow me to post sell orders remotely and modify them remotely.

The new account:  I started a new account last month which will cost me a plex a month to maintain, i.e. 560m ISK per month at todays prices.  I also used the “buddy invite” system and upgraded the account when i bought the plex.  That gives me 51 days of play time and rewards me with a plex – more details in the linked post.

I am training this character up in Research skills.  Whilst it is doing this it will be my new buyer in Jita – so he buys the items for the traders to sell in Dodixie and Hek.  As ever, the items are hauled there by Pushx Industries.  Therefore, i copied over all the market quickbar information from the main account to this new account – the details of how i did this can be seen in the linked post.

Relevant Skills trained:

·         Science level 5 – needed for many further skills and gives a 5% speed to blueprint copying per skill level

·         Research level 4 - needed for further skills and gives a 5% speed to blueprint manufacturing time research per skill level

·         Scientific Networking level 3 – allows me to run research operations remotely (i.e. not be in the same station)

·         Laboratory Operation level 4 – allows me to run one additional research job per skill level

·         Metallurgy level 3 - needed for further skills and gives a 5% speed to blueprint material efficiency research per skill level

Currently training Scientific Networking level 4



I suspect October will not be a good month given I am away for two thirds of it.

Current wealth:

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.