Translate this page

Some beautiful music to read the blog with

Wednesday 8 January 2014

How i use Eve-Central to find new items to sell

Right when i started i needed to find items to sell - and i did not know much about Eve let alone what items were in demand or not.  In fact, to this day i don't really know too much about the wider side of Eve compared to other blogs that i read.

Hence, to get started i used Eve-Central.  And this is how i doubled my profits each cycle to begin with.

At its simplest, Eve-Central displays all the known buy and sell prices and volumes for any item.  It sources its data from players that upload the prices / volumes as they browse the market.  And that is the key point, the data is only as complete and timely as the source players browse the market.  Any player can be a source, you just download a small piece of software.

For our purposes, what that means is that Jita prices are very complete and up to date given most players will be in Jita browsing the market.  The other trade hubs would also be ok (perhaps not as complete or up to date) and then things start to deteriorate as you go further out.

So, when looking for items to buy from sell orders in Jita to sell in Dodixie then Eve-Central does a pretty good job and below is how i go about it (and lets assume i have that 4m ISK to spend - this process that works at 4m ISK will still work well at 62bn ISK):

Firstly, make sure you alt is in the hub you want to sell into (for me, that is Dodixie) - i will need to be checking the Dodixie market to make sure items sell in a reasonable time and the prices are fair.

The first step is really easy.

Open Eve-Central >>> Press the "Trade Finder" button as shown below:




This will bring up another page called "Trade Tools", the bottom tool is the "System and Region Price Comparison Tool", fill it out as shown below and then press "Compare!":



What this will do is to compare the selling price of every known item in Jita to every known item in Dodixie and then to rank them all by the difference, starting with the highest difference first.

And now we can get to work.

There are two ways to go from here, copy it all onto a spreadsheet to analyse or merely use the webpage as it stands.  For now, we will use the webpage as it stands.

My golden rule of trading is to buy low to sell fair.  In other words, buy at a price in one market that is lower than the fair price in the market you are selling in.  That will keep you out of the way of scams.  Buying very high in one region to sell to a very very high price in another region is probably a scam and you will be left holding an over priced item and unable to sell it!

So, on the page you are on which has a list of items comparing the selling price in Dodixie to the selling prie in Jita - we are looking for items that cost under 1m ISK and have profits of at least 200k ISK (to be honest, at that level we should be able to buy for 1m ISK and sell for at least 1.5m ISK).

The best hunting ground is Blueprints and Implants for now.

So, do a search for Blueprint on the web page (tools >>> find) or (ctrl+f) and run through the first few which will be blueprints costing millions until you get to the ones you can afford to buy and which make a good profit.

The first one i came to was a Large Remote Repair Augmentor I Blueprint which i can buy in Jita for 1.5m and sell in Dodixie for 3.3m.  So, i checked the Dodixie data in the Eve game as shown below.  Yes, there are sell orders in Dodixie for 3.3m BUT there is no volume - hence, i will not be doing that trade!



In fact, making the volume check the first check often speeds things up.  I want an item that sells at least 1 every two days.

I continue to run through all the Blueprints on the page and soon i come to what is the jackpot (at least when you capital is 4m ISK!).

The Medium Trimark Armor Pump I Blueprint can be bought from Jita for 900k ISK and sold in Dodixie for 2.6m ISK.  The sell orders check out in Dodixie when i look in game, and there is good volume too!


So, i would be buying one of these from my 4m ISK pot.

And i continue going through the Blueprints:

Several false alarms latter i come across the Inferno Heavy Missile Blueprint which i can buy in Jita for 800k ISK (its a round number so looks like a NPC seller) and i can sell in Dodixie for 1.8m ISK, and the volume is good!  So, another item to buy.

The 125mm Railgun I Blueprint can be bought from Jita for 90k ISK and sold in Dodixie for 900k ISK, and sells 0 to 2 a day.  That looks good, i will buy 2 of those (very small outlay for a good profit).

The Mjolnir Heavy Assault Missile Blueprint can be bought from Jita for 600k ISK (round number so likely a NPC seller) and sold in Dodixie for 1.4m ISK, volume of sales is 1 every two days.  That is ok for me, i will buy one of those.

The Nova Heavy Missile Blueprint can be bought from Jita for 700k ISK (looks like a NPC seller again) and sold in Dodixie for 1.3m ISK, volume of sales is 1 every two days.  Again, good for me so i will buy one.

In all, that is 3.2m ISK to spend in Jita over 5 different items to make sales of 8.9m ISK giving me profits of 5.7m ISK before broker fees and sales taxes

I will have to fly there to buy them in Jita and fly back . . . . . . . with 3.2m ISK in my small cheap fast ship i suspect i could do that on autopilot.

And this process i still use to find individual items costing 1bn in Jita to sell for 1.3bn in Dodixie.  In otherwords, this process is scalable.

Get the process right and the ISK should follow!

10 comments:

  1. This is a great simple guide, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I only used EVE central to look up prices, never realized that trade finder button actually did something useful..

    Now if only it also had a filter for price or item category :P
    But I guess you only need to export results to an excel sheet to do that yourself. I should really start to make more use of existing tools as doing things manually myself.

    My way was to use log in a character parked in Hek, log in one character in Jita, and just browse randomly through a couple of dozen of the most commonly used modules or rigs and compare prices.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "My way was to use log in a character parked in Hek, log in one character in Jita, and just browse randomly through a couple of dozen of the most commonly used modules or rigs and compare prices."

      i do that too - it is useful for stumbling over some items and then i can branch out from that item into its family of products for more ideas

      Delete
  3. Hello,

    I was wondering if I could get some general trading advice. I'm not looking for specific secrets but I have started to trade using your guides and have worked up to my first 100m isk very quickly. The trouble I'm running into is do I continue with those same items I've been trading? Or do I look for more expensive items so I don't have to manage as many trades. Just looking for general guidance, thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I always tried to look for more expensive items to sell as my wealth rose - and i made sure i never put more than 5% of my wealth into one trade.

      Selling an item that cost 300k for 800k ISK is good at the start but does not move the dials when you have 100m ISK.

      Hence, it all depends how much time you have.

      If you have enough time to maintain 50 orders then each order should have an average cost of 2m ISK and still aim to make 20% margins after all costs.

      Be careful of going for that killer expensive trade - you may just make an expensive loss!

      Delete
  4. Thank you. I only read the comment just now. I have continued to trade and have worked up to well past 1b. Thank you for sharing your ideas with us.

    ReplyDelete
  5. this is reallya good guide. i have started the activity on the market with this guide.
    my only concern is...
    you are viewing only selling prices. how do you know if you will able to sell something? are you looking only for price history and by knowing this you decide to sell at a particular price? or is there something else?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes - i only look at selling prices.

      To know if i will be able to sell it, i look at the daily volumes being sold.

      I only look at the price / volume history. i am making no attempt to understand what the item does or what part it plays.

      Delete
  6. Does anyone know if Eve Central is still working? And what is the program to be able to upload the data? Used to be conteibtastic. Any info would be awesome! Also I keep reading about CREST and not sure what that is or how it works.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. as far as I can tell, Eve-Central is still working - though not picking up blueprints anymore.

      I believe Eve-Central now gets its data direct from CREST - not contribtastic anymore.

      CREST is, to put it simply, Eve data API that can be accessed. Includes market data.

      Delete