Make Your First (Or Next!) Billion Isk Using One Of These ‘6’ Methods [Guest Post]

Guest post written by Eve Mogul : www.evemogul.com

For the past year almost all of the time I’ve devoted to Eve has revolved around not only trading, but  more predominantly, teaching many other pilots to successfully trade themselves.  And having had quite close contact with so many budding Eve traders I’ve noted that one of the biggest hurdles I see is simply understanding  the concepts of a good trading strategy, and this was in fact my own challenge for at least a few years after I started playing Eve in 2008.

One thing I learnt quickly back then was that buying low and selling high is pointless advice – I’m sure you’ve heard it many times before and I’m also sure you looked blankly at the screen after reading it, had another sip of Redbull, scratched at your probably awesome neck beard, and then clicked away.  The real trick to identifying, replicating and profiting from a good Eve trading system is to know what to buy, where to buy it, and at what price, and of course where to sell it and at what mark-up.

And that, my friends, is exactly what I’m going to briefly outline right now in the form of six defined methods of trading all around the Eve universe.  We’ll take a brief tour of all the trading methods I’ve learnt, tested and experimented with during my many blissfully lost nights and weekends playing Eve.  Not only that, we’ll graph them against the amount of time you have to devote to each strategy once it’s all up and running, against another interesting statistic of how inter-regional they are (or aren’t).  If you’re new to Eve trading then by the end of this post you’ll have a clearer understanding of various different trading methods and be able to choose a method that resonates with you best both in terms of trading style and any time restrictions you might have.  And if you’re a seasoned veteran you might just learn something new, or better yet be able to add you own related experiences in the comments section below for the new guys to learn from.

Caveat: everyone approaches trading differently and the following methods are simply my particular way of doing things based on my own personal experience.  

Secondly,  you can realistically spend 100% of your Eve time on trading using any method.  But my reference to how much time is taken on each strategy is based on my experience of how much in-game order management is required for a given and constant assumed profit level, and as a knock-on effect from this, for how long you can realistically leave the game and still come back days or weeks later and have continued good profits.

Let’s take a look…!

First let’s review the graph as it’s the juiciest piece of information and eye-candy in this post – run your eyes over it and then we’ll have a concise discussion about each method in turn.

Station-Trading

First we have station trading, and if I’m honest the mechanics of just how this worked eluded me for a long time.  For those unfamiliar with it, you sit in a major trade hub station and set up buy orders for items in that same station.  You baby sit those orders to make sure they stay at the top of the buyers list, and once those orders fill you relist them for sale.  In order to make good profits what you’re looking for is a suitable margin between the buy and sell price, and a corresponding suitable volume of items being traded each day, week or month.

There’s absolutely no reason to leave station, and obviously this trading method is the least “inter-regional” of them all.  It’s main drawback is the amount of focus you need to keep on the market to make sure your orders remain at the top at all times.  There’s just so much competition in the big hubs that often your orders simply get quickly lost in the crowd.  This is perhaps less of a problem once you get very well established, but I’ve never taken it that far and have personally concentrated almost entirely on more inter-regional methods.

For those of you who want a more detailed review of station trading I’ve stepped in front of the camera to give a short class of sorts on this very topic, and you can check it out on YouTube by following this link: Station Trading By Eve Mogul  (you’ll see some bloopers as well, so stay tuned to the end!)

Inter-Hub Trading

Next up is Inter-Hub trading.  Just like it says, this is trading between any two or more of the four main trading hubs (Jita, Amarr, Dodixie and Rens).  This is almost like station trading on steroids, and while it does perhaps take a little more time and effort than station trading what with all the hauling and price comparisons, the profit margins can be so much better.

This is definitely an inter-regional trading method, although of all the inter-regional methods is the least expansive of them all.  If you put the effort in you can make billions using this strategy however much like station trading, in my experience, if I go away from the game for a period of days or weeks my market income drops dramatically using this method.

Hotspot Trading (hisec)

Hotspot trading is my bread and butter, this is what sent me to 12 figures in liquid isk (that's hundreds of billions!), and this, for me, is by far the best and most effective set and forget method for making huge isk.  If for no other reason, this strategy worked exceptionally well for me as the time I could realistically devote to Eve was minimal, and once you’re setup a little neglect really doesn't change what this method of trading will do for your account balance.  For me, this is the holy grail of Eve trading.

Hotspot trading is my own terminology so this may be new to you; it involves creating your own market for various items in a non-market-hub system with a suitable average population, and acceptable criteria as measured by universe map statistics and a little system recon.  I usually seed between 80 and 200 specially selected items per Hotspot system for best results.

You can conduct this type of trading all over Eve making it a truly inter-regional trading method, and you have the benefit of much lower competition than the hubs, and the use of a 90 day time limit on market orders.  This means you can go away from Eve for days or weeks and come back to a sometimes significantly higher account balance.

When I finally figured out the intricacies of this particular trading method, make no mistake, my account exploded relative to the time I was putting into the game, and allowed me to run pimped out ships on many a PvP fleet while my market empire just did its thing in the background.

Want to learn the basics to this type of trading… check out the free video and info here : Inter-regional Trading Basics (www.evemogul.info)

Hotspot Trading (nullsec)

This is a natural progression from hisec Hotspot trading, and is the path I took to shoot myself into hundreds of billions in liquid isk, quickly.  You simply take the concepts of 'hisec' Hotspot trading and apply it to nullsec.

This will work well in player owned/sov systems and NPC space, and the key, as I often say, is to go where the people are.  Follow the high population systems in nullsec (make sure you have access to them first though) to make this work.  Admittedly it's a little more challenging than hisec due to the concentrated competition in certain areas, but if you get a low competition system with a high average population you will most definitely make a killing!

Buyer-Side Trading

What I mean by Buyer-Side trading is putting in lowball buy orders in many different regions all over Eve for items that pilots wish to readily sell.  It’s then a matter of collecting all of your bought ‘stuff’ and hauling it back to a market hub to sell.  The reasons behind why pilots sell what they do and where they do it is beyond the scope of this post, but rest assured that if you truly dedicate yourself to this method you will make tens, if not hundreds, of billions of isk.

It does take up a lot of time hauling so be prepared for that, but if really immersing yourself in the market is your thing then this method of trading is easily the equal of Hotspot trading, and is most definitely an inter-regional trading method which can be spread to any region in Eve.

Manufacturing -> Trading

There was a time where I spent over a year in partnership with an Eve friend putting up our own POS, manufacturing our own hulls, and selling them predominantly in market hubs (although they can potentially be sold all over Eve).

While I only played a small part in the overall operation I was staggered by what was possible once the manufacturing chain was properly established.  I did make a LOT of isk this way, although to be fair my friend, who had other manufacturing operations on the side, was making reasonably more than me.  The only drawback was the time that it took me to keep on top of everything and ultimately it was too time intensive for me in conjunction with everything else I was doing - it may not be the case for everyone, but industry wasn’t completely my cup of tea so it was a bit more of a chore to keep it all up than it was to keep my extensive market operations going.

So there you have it, six tried, tested and proven methods for making good isk in Eve by utilising the market in one form or another.  As mentioned earlier it's beyond the scope of this post to explain the finer points of each method, but hopefully this has helped to crystalize exactly how you can make isk in Eve by trading using various methods.

Now load up  Eve, and get out there and start making some crazy isk!

All the best and fly safe,

Eve Mogul

Eve Mogul (RL name, Mark) is the person behind the Eve Mogul premium set of video guides available here where you will learn the exact steps to mastering trading mechanics, Inter-hub trading, Hotspot trading, and get bonus information on Buyer-Side trading.  

If you're after the basics of Hotspot and inter-regional trading then get all the details here (www.evemogul.info)