March Update

Despite being away from Eve for 2 to 3 weeks in March my wealth increased by 8.9bn ISK to 92.8bn ISK, which is an average of 289m ISK per day.

I had expected nearer 7bn but my holding in Plex generated a further 1.9bn increase in wealth - more on that further down.

I expected February, March and April to be slow given real life commitments.  Indeed, i did not log in much during March until the final week.

Therefore, during these months i am only selling the T1 items i manufacture and only trading other items where i make at least 15m ISK profits and 20% margins - though in the week here and there that i am around i am willing to drop my profit target to 10m ISK.

My strategy is to focus on low volume but high margin items that i either manufacture or buy (off sell orders) in Jita to sell in Dodixie / Hek / Rens / Amarr.

I don't have any standings of note.  To reduce my costs of trading i have trained all my alts that post sell orders to Broker 4 and Accounting 4.

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 6 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, Hek, Amarr and Rens 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, Hek, Amarr and Rens; I have an alt that is skilling up in Invention which currently sits in Amarr to sell the items manufactured by my Lonetrek manufacturer; and i now also have an alt that sits in Rens to also sell the items manufactured by my Lonetrek manufacturer.

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.  All my hauling is "Rush Jobs" and generally takes no less than 5 hours (often in under an hour) to haul from Jita to my four locations in Dodixie / Hek / Amarr / Rens (which are also the other trade hubs).  On average i pay 25m ISK per haul but it is well worth it given i can get those items bought in Jita onto the market in the other trade hubs very quickly and the hauling costs make up 1 to 3% of my sales price.  Not much given i aim to make 20% margins before all costs (hauling, broker fees, sales taxes).  I wrote a post on Rush Jobs which details why it is more profitable paying up.

I am now buying 2 Plex a month to finance my two accounts.  Up until December 2013 i had only needed to buy 1 Plex per month.  So, 1.4bn ISK per month costs going forwards.  I do occasionally benefit from some kind soul upgrading their account having used the link to the right >>>>>>>>>


Plex: my next post will look at why i hold Plex.  But as of the end of March i held 44 Plex at a cost of 28.9bn ISK which at 690m per Plex was then worth 30.4bn ISK.  In other words, the rise in the value of Plex increased my wealth by 1.5bn ISK.

My biggest headache was that i was sitting on too much ISK which was not invested in the market.  I had up to 35bn ISK in my wallet which was dead money.  At most i need to hold 10bn ISK to finance my business, the other 25bn or so is surplus to requirements.

I know two things about that ISK.  Firstly, it will be there tomorrow with no chance of making a profit (or a loss).  Secondly, there is inflation in Eve so in effect it is not keeping up with the cost of living in Eve - in other words, its value to me in the future is lower than its value to me today.

So far, Plex is the best item i can find that (in the medium to long term) is the best asset to keep up with inflation in Eve - as i hope to detail in my next post.  I expect to continue to invest all profits made each month into Plex from here.


Dodixie trader: Life remains good and consistent

Items for sale fell back from 22bn ISK to 20bn ISK which more reflected some sales made on the last day of the month.

I sell T1 manufactured items that my manufacturer makes in Lonetrek, and any item i can find that makes profits of over 15m ISK, has a profit margin of over 20% and is a slow seller.  I.e. ship equipment, implants, ship modifications, a few skillbooks and a few blueprints.

The alt is currently using 76 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 – for now i will focus on the manufactured items from my alt in Lonetrek and selling expensive items hauled from Jita.


Hek trader: Life remains good and consistent

Items for sale rose to 15.6bn ISK from last months 14.2bn.

Much like the Dodixie trader I sell manufactured items that my manufacturer makes in Lonetrek, and any item i can find that makes profits of over 15m ISK, has a profit margin of over 20% and is a slow seller.  I.e. ship equipment, implants, ship modifications, a few skillbooks and a few blueprints.  Other than the manufactured items, there are very few common items i sell in Dodixie and Hek.

I use 74 of the 129 available sell slots.

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


Amarr Trader: Going well though slowing

Only really fully started up in mid December and focuses solely on items manufactured by my alt in the Lonetrek region.  During February this alt's sales were 4.8bn ISK vs prior months 5.6bn ISK and i suspect the profits were 2.4bn ISK vs prior months 2.8bn ISK.  The decrease is because of competition reducing the profit margin on some of my manufactured products and so i no longer sell several of these items in Amarr.

Items for sale at the month end rose to 10.9bn ISK vs prior month of 9.7bn.

I now use 23 of the 45 available sell slots - when i have time i am looking for a few other items to sell in Amarr.

Pays 1.0% broker fees to post an order and a further 1.1% sales tax on a successful sale.  Currently training Accounting to Level 4 and Broker Relations to Level 4 to bring those fees down further.

The main aim of this alt is to train up for Invention, and here the training goes on.  Needless to say, with being busy in rl this whole invention thing has been on the back burner!


Rens Trader: third full month and getting better

Started just before xmas and also focuses solely on items manufactured by my alt in the Lonetrek region.  During March this alt made sales of 4.5bn ISK (2.1bn prior month) and i suspect profits of 2.2bn ISK vs prior month of 1.0bn.  Items for sale at the month end were 7.7bn ISK, up from prior month of 6.7bn.

Rens is a slower trade up so i did not expect to see great things - but this is much better than i thought.  I was hoping for this alt to earn the Plex per month for this account but is infact earning 3 Plex per month.

I have no plans to expand into selling other items - i will stick to selling the items my manufacturer produces.

I trained this alt to give me 53 open sell slots and currently i use 39 of them.

Pays 0.8% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.9% sales tax on a successful sale.

No longer in training.

Manufacturing alt: This alt does all my manufacturing from the Lonetrek region which is within easy access to Jita.  Not much has changed since November.

This alt sells its items in Jita and contracts to Push Industries to haul items to the traders in Dodixie / Hek / Amarr / Rens to sell.

I have a list of 59 items i focus on to sell, currently selling 27 of them in Jita and 40 in Dodixie, Hek, Amarr and Rens - though perhaps less now in Amarr given competition has increased.  The other items that i watch have too low a profitability.

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

This alt may have plateaued at 6 to 8bn ISK sales per month for now.  During the month it made sales of 6.7bn (vs 7.9bn ISK in the prior month) and estimated profits of 3.3bn ISK.  It currently has 7.3bn ISK of sell orders.

My expansion into manufacturing has been a great success so far.  I am now training this alt up to manufacture T2 items and i am in the process of manufacturing my second T2 item - lets see how it goes but so far T2 items are not as profitable for me as the T1 items.

And all this takes is 15 minutes update time a day.

The current near term goals is to find other T1 items to sell as well as expanding into T2 items.

I have seeded a new market in Lonetrek - lets see how that goes.  It is slow at present but so far i believe i have made sales in March of 700m ISK leading to profits of c400m ISK.

Outlook: April is going to be busy for me in RL, hence i suspect i will be back to making 7bn ISK per month.  The month of May could perhaps be better though June back to being busy again in RL.


Current Wealth:

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex x1 = 0.7bn 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.