November Update

My best month ever.

As a reminder, i spend 30 to 45 minutes during the weekdays on Eve.

Despite being away from Eve for over half the month my wealth increased by 12.1bn ISK to 42.7bn ISK, which is an average of 404m ISK per day

I was lucky in that another player's blunder earned me 1.5bn ISK - so reversing out this luck i saw an increase in wealth of 10.6bn ISK which is an average of 353m ISK per day.  Still, not bad and still would be my best month ever.

The time constraint of spending 30 to 45 minutes only per day that i am around forces my businesses to focus on high value but low volume strategies.

For those able to devote much more time to Eve, one way of reading this blog is to see how little time is required to generate sufficient ISK to plex your own account.

I have 2 accounts with 5 alts in total.

• One one account: I have a trader at Dodixie and a trader at Hek which sell items that have been hauled there from Jita; and I have a manufacturer in the Lonetrek region that sells items in Jita and sends items to the traders in Dodixie and Hek to sell.

• On the other account: I have a buyer in Jita that is is only there to buy items in Jita to send to the traders in Dodixie and Hek; and I also have an alt that is skilling up in Invention.

All my hauling is done by third parties, namely PushX Industries - the time required to haul items from Jita to my traders in Dodixie and Hek would take up too much time.  Better to let these third parties do the hauling (for a fee, of course) whilst i am offline.

I am now buying a Plex a month to finance my second account and from January i will be buying two Plex per month as my Main account will need financing.  I have been fortunate enough that some people have been using the Buddy Programme link to the right >>>> which has financed my Main account to the end of the year.

As ever, i sit with too much surplus ISK which needs to be invested.  Current surplus is 14.2bn ISK – it is dead money.

The main drivers to my improvement in November i suspect were:

• Firstly, finding more expensive items to sell which, whilst lower margin, make me very high ISK levels of profits.  I.E. if i sell an item for 800m ISK that i bought for 700m ISK it is only 12.5% margin ((800-700)/800) vs my target 20% but is still a good 100m ISK profit before taxes,

• Secondly, my manufacturer is now selling its items in Dodixie and Hek, as well as Jita - i.e. is now selling in 3 trade hubs instead of 1.

Dodixie trader: Life remains good for this trader.

Items for sale have risen to 16.4bn ISK from the prior months of 11.3bn ISK.  The addition of items manufactured by my manufacturing alt and the inclusion of more expensive items to sell has boosted the value of the sell orders.

I neglected the station trading side of this alt during November given lack of time, hence buy orders have fallen to 1.3bn ISK from 1.6bn ISK.  At present, updating the station trading orders tends not to happen given my daily time constraints.

The alt is currently using 130 of the 141 trading slots.

This alt pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

There are no medium term goals for this alt – i suspect i may move out of station trading and continue to seek higher priced items to move form Jita to Dodixie to sell as selling any additional items my manufacturing alt decides to produce.


Hek trader: Life is speeding up now.  My pre-xmas plan to find new income sources for this trader is coming through.

The manufacturing alt keeps this trader supplied with the high margin items i am manufacturing to sell in Dodixie, Hek and Jita.

Just after the period end i am now expanding into new items to sell which are more expensive and, at Hek at least, could carry very high margins given there is very little competition - we will see.

Following this move i now use 123 of the 129 available sell slots.  At this rate i will be dropping some of the low margin skillbooks that i am selling.

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: This alt is gathering momentum.  During the month it made sales of 7bn ISK and profits of 3bn ISK, which compares to the 2.1bn ISK profits last month.  And that does not include items sold in Dodixie and Hek that it manufacturers.  In all, i suspect this alt makes profits of over 4 to 5bn ISK per month once i include the items sold in Dodixie and Hek.

I now have a list of 52 items i focus on to sell, currently selling 27 of them in Jita and 33 in Dodixie and Hek.  The other items that i watch too low a profitability.

It currently has 2.6bn ISK of sell orders and another 1.4bn ISK of items in manufacture compared to 3.4bn at the end of last month.

I now own 44 blueprints worth over 1bn ISK, most of which have already comfortably paid for themselves.

I have moved my manufacturing alt into Lonetrek.  Close to Jita but there are plenty of manufacturing slots available.  The downside is that i can’t update or see my sell orders in Jita from the Lonetrek region given Jita is in a different region.

At the moment, i believe my manufacturing alt makes 100m ISK profits per day = 3.0bn ISK per month - and that is before i include any profits i make selling the items through my traders in Dodixie and Hek.  I very much consider my expansion into Manufacturing as a success so far.  And all this takes is 15 minutes update time a day.

The current near term goals is to look for more highly profitably items to manufacture.

The new account:  I started a new account in September which will cost me a plex a month to maintain, i.e. 600m ISK per month at todays prices.

The first alt I am training up in Research skills so that it can go down the Invention path.  I thought i had trained it up sufficiently to start Invention but reading around the subject has forced me to train up the skills further.  I am hoping to at least make a start in Invention this month.

The second alt is my 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.  Once my Invention alt is trained up then i can train this alt up to go down another career path.

To date, neither of the alts in the new account are making, or attempting, to make any ISK.

During December i will be away for a week on business and then no holiday over xmas - hence, i suspect December will not be as good a month as November or indeed October.



Current Wealth:

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex 600,000,000 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.