so, after 14 days trading my current wealth is 1.2bn ISK (details at the bottom of this post).
The weekend was good but could have been better, i was away for much of it.
The strategy stays the same
I buy from Sell Orders in Jita and put these items up as Sell Orders in Dodixie.
I focus on low selling volume items - so there is much less competition and the profit margins are therefore much higher. Easily starting at 20% (i.e. i buy an item from Jita Sell Order for 30m and sell it for over 36m).
The reason this works is that players will not make the 15 jump journey from Dodixie to Jita to save ISK unless the Dodixie price is ridiculous. Even if they are fully aware of the ISK they can save. If they want the item now then they will pay the going price.
Alt in Jita
To help my business along i have started an Alt in Jita. Minimal trade skills: Trade 2, Contracting 1 and Broker Relations 1. Only took about an hour to get these all done. The contracting was required to operate more than one contract (see next section).
The sole purpose of this alt for now is to buy items in Jita and then have them couriered to Dodixie. Therefore, i no longer have to travel to and from Jita.
Contracting
When i log in i often find i have over 100m ISK in my wallet.
Therefore, i now courier contract all the items i buy from Jita in batches of over 100m. The days of me travelling 15 jumps to Jita and 15 jumps back to Dodixie are over.
And, might as well let someone who knows what they are doing transport the items.
I offer 5m isk reward and set the contract to the fastest time (1 day to accept +1 day to deliver). Normally, it takes a few hours from setting up the contract to delivery at Dodixie.
Corporation
To reduce the number of clicks required to set up contracts and take delivery of the items i have set up a corporation and put my characters in it.
Therefore, all contracts are done on behalf of the corporation and so when items are delivered to Dodixie they go into the corporation delivery hanger when my Dodixie player can access.
the procedure here is:
1) all funds over 1m isk are in the corporation wallet
2) Alt in Jita buys items using corporation funds. These items therefore go into the corporation deliveries hanger
3) the Jita Alt sets up a courier contract on behalf of the corporation to take these items to Jita.
4) on completion of the courier contract, these items go into the corporation deliveries hanger in Dodixie
5) the Dodixie character takes them into his own hanger and posts them for sale (again, on behalf of the corporation)
The alternative would be to somehow transfer the items from my Jita alt to my Dodixie character and then set up a courier contract.
Moving to new items to sell
When i had 10m isk, buying missile blueprints from Jita for 600k isk and selling them in Dodixie for 3m isk was a great money maket.
Today, with 1.4bn isk of sell orders in Dodixie that sort of thing does not move the dials.
Hence, i am selling boosters and implants for now instead, and still a few higher priced blueprints. The profit margins are lower but the isk profit is higher.
In all, i have 40 items up for sale in Dodixie out of a maximum of 53.
The golden rule remains to make sure as much of my ISK is invested in the market.
Current wealth is 1.2bn ISK made up from:
- items for sale 1.4bn ISK
- less a 20% provision 0.3bn ISK*
- items in storage for sale 0 ISK
- ISK in wallet 0.1bn 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. 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold. In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.
Well the day came 11 days into my trading career when i came back to find i had made sales of 130m isk and therefore i would be having to haul over 100m isk of items back from Jita to Dodixie to reinvest the proceeds onto the market.
100m isk has been my cut off where i believe i become a viable target to be ganked . . . . . . . that 100m isk boundary is very old, about 6 years old, but probably still works today.
Why would a courier fly 15 jumps for 3m isk?
a number of reasons i suspect my contract is attractive to a courier:
1) any courier worth their salt is not going to be ganked from Jita to Dodixie - so this is a question of time taken to earn 3m, not risk taken
2) my items take up next to no cargo space so it could easily be added onto a series of other contracts being hauled and the courier is merely adding a nice little 3m isk for doing a journey they were already planning to do
3) given the small cargo space required, relatively low collateral an highsec journey then presumably this contract is open to just about the widest audience possible.
Public Contract issued
Hence, i flew over to Jita, bought my items, set up a public contract to haul 130m isk of items back to Dodixie for a 3m isk reward.
Set my ship onto auto pilot to fly back to Dodixie and the courier beat me there!
In all, this was done as quick as i could have done it myself if i had successfully hauled the items. And all for a merely 3m isk.
Not using Private Courier Contracts yet - not competitive
The courier corporations PushX and Red Frog would have charged me 13m and 33m, respectively - so at this level of items to courier they are not competitive.
so, after 7 days trading my current wealth is 518m ISK (details at the bottom of this post).
The weekend was good, i have increased my wealth from 241m on Thursday night to 518m today.
Strategy the same
i scour the market for items i can buy from Sell orders in Jita and put on for sale in Dodixie for a profit.
At the moment, i am hauling the items myself from Jita to Dodixie but i suspect i will not haul beyond 100m ISK of items - that is when i will have to look into courier contracts. I suspect 100m is the point at which i become a viable target.
I am sticking to blueprints and implants - in other words, items that take up very little room and so i can use a small fast ship to haul them from Jita to Dodixie.
My profits remain way over 100% for Blueprints and up to 100% for implants.
Some tactical changes
when i my wealth started at 10m ISK it made sense to buy items in Jita for 700k and sell them in Dodixie to 2.5m. But that won't move the dials now. Hence, i am slowly moving out of these low price items and focusing on items that cost more than, say, 10m ISK in Jita.
The golden rule remains to make sure as much of my ISK is invested in the market.
Skills
I trained Retail 4 and so i can now post up to 53 Buy+Sell orders. I currently have 50 posted - so the number of sell orders will soon be a key constraint.
I wont have Retail 5 trained until next Sunday night. That will then allow me to start to train Wholesale which increased my Buy+Sell order limit by 16 each level.
Current wealth is 518m ISK made up from:
- items for sale 647m ISK
- less a 20% provision 129m ISK*
- items in storage for sale 0 ISK
- ISK in wallet 0m 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. 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold. In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.
so, after 7 days trading my current wealth is 241m ISK (details at the bottom of this post).
I am sticking with my daily strategy i laid down in prior posts of hauling items from Jita to Dodixie. I Buy from sell orders in Jita and put these items up for sale in Dodixie.
The trick in all of this is to make sure my ISK is fully invested on the market.
Skills
My current Skills and skill queue are below - going all out to get the Trade skills up and running.
I can currently post a maximum of 45 sell orders, within 7 hours i will be able to post a maxim of 53, and then a long 9 day run to gain an additional 8 slots.
I pay 2.68% Broker Fee to post a Sell order and 2.0% Sales Tax. In other words, every sale costs me 4.68%. Over time, i will train skills to reduce that %.
The formula for Broker Fee is: BrokerFee % = 3%-(0.1%*BrokerRelationsLevel)-(0.03%*FactionStanding)-(0.02%*CorpStanding)
My Broker Relations Level is 3, my standing with the Gallente is 0.59 (FactionStanding) and my standing with the Federation Navy is 0 (CorpStanding). At best, with Broker Relations Skill at 5 and perfect standings with the Gallente and Federation Navy i could get the Broker Fee down to 2.0
Sales taxes will only go down with the Accounting Skill.
The run down of my first 7 days
I am sticking to Blueprints. They sell slowly. Each blueprint i have up may make one sale a week. But the competition is very sleepy. No-one really moves their prices for a day or so at a time. I am making way over 100% profit on each sale. But it is slow.
My best guess is that the players posting Blueprints for sale don't have trading as their primary activity but rather some "passive" income on the side.
I have also started to move into implants. They sell at least once a day each but the competition is more awake. I am making c30% profits on each sale.
Right now, i have 35 Sell orders up in Dodixie coming to 299m ISK.
As a general rule, i don't aim to go into a market and shake it up. My Sell orders are always 1 ISK below the lowest price. There have been a couple of exceptions where the Dodixie price was so far above the Jita price that no sales were being made. In these cases i posted my item for sale at less than half the Dodixie price, still making 1000% profit, and lo-and-behold i am making sales.
In all, i make up to 20-50m sales per day and try and reinvest all of that each day.
Current wealth is 241m ISK made up from:
- items for sale 299m ISK
- less a 20% provision 60m ISK*
- items in storage for sale 0 ISK
- ISK in wallet 2m 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. 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold. In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.
so, after 3 days trading my current wealth is 120m ISK (details at the bottom of this post).
A word on how i look at my wealth
If i had my way, i would disclose my wealth as ISK + the cost of items bought for resale.
However, i cant efficiently determine the latter and so i must use the value of my Sell Orders. That is prone to a few problems, not least of which is i am likely to have to reduce the prices of a number of them before they are finally sold due to bits and pieces of competition.
So, to counter these future price reductions i take a 20% provision against my Sell Orders and so my wealth is ISK + Value of Sell Orders - 20% provision.
Alpha / Omega State
At best, Alpha will only allow me to get to 17 Sell + Buy orders per character. And i got there by the end of Saturday.
Now, i could use alts to post additional sales - but that would require tedious logging on and off.
I could also set up a second account - which i did - but CCP have thought this through and i can't have both accounts logged on at the same time (darn!).
So, i bit the bullet and took advantage of the 50% offer of 1 month paid game time for my main character account. £4.49 right there. That would not even get you half a pint of beer in London. But, to be safe, i will not have a pint next week. Not one.
Anyway, onto a run down of my first 3 days
Right off the bat, i have to say it was a weekend, so sales are much better than normal.
Stuck to blueprints and a few skill books. I am dropping the skill books for now until i get my head around what the coming patch means for them - thanks Aurra Jol for the heads up.
I am buying at Jita for 600k to 5m an item and selling in Dodixie for 100% and more profit. The competition is very low and sleepy. At the end of the day, the big traders don't bother with these items - they are too low ticket and won't move their dials. So, i remain under their radar. But i am on a mission so i am probably keener than the current competition. With luck, i will be out of their hair soon.
Sales came in fits and starts, but when they did start they were strong. Often i would log in to see a few million ISK in my wallet that needed to be reinvested.
By the end of Sunday, i had 23 Sell orders ready to face the Monday crowd. For now, i can post a maximum of 33 Sell orders (Trade Skill 3 + Retail Skill 2).
They key to all this is to minimise the ISK i have in my wallet - i won't grow whilst sitting there, it needs to be in the form of Sell orders on the market.
So, for now, my routine is - very similar to 6 years ago:
- I log in;
- update my remaining orders to the lowest price;
- note the new selling prices of the items that I have sold - I intend to buy these items from Jita to resell at Dodixie;
- perhaps update my search for new items to sell, mainly blueprints, using EveMarketer (that is a really useful site);
- fly to Jita (on auto-pilot, so I can be doing other things like reports etc for work);
- buy new items to sell - I try and reinvest all my ISK leaving just enough to pay the broker fee to post the sell order at Dodixie;
- fly back to Dodixie (again on auto pilot - no one is going to gank a catalyst carrying a few million ISK in high sec);
- post the orders for sale on the Dodixie market.
Oh, and i did a little mining whilst i worked in at my desk - helps pays the broker fees and requires very little input from me. That said, paint does dry faster than the ISK this brings in . . . . . . .
Current wealth is 120m ISK made up from:
- items for sale 149m ISK
- less a 20% provision 30m ISK*
- items in storage for sale 0 ISK
- ISK in wallet 1m 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. 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold. In an ideal world I would value my sell orders at the value which I bought the items for.
So, i started a completely new account and with zero ISK i have ventured back into the game to see if i can play the economy with, say, 45 minutes a day of active time. Perhaps a little more at weekends. Two young sons including a week old baby does somewhat use up a lot of time.
It took me two nights to do the training missions / story lines (i did not do the exploration one - still painful memories from way back in 2013) - so i did the two military missions and the distribution and business missions.
That left me with 10.2m ISK.
Right off the bat i noticed how the alpha vs omega works and basically i will only be able to put up a maximum of 17 orders if i remain at alpha. Lets see how that goes.
My business strategy
My strategy will remain unchanged from the first time i started Eve:
1) i will buy from Jita - it gives the best prices for most items
2) i will sell in Dodixie - it is one of the key trade hubs but not too competitive
3) i will focus on very slow moving items - they have much less competition
4) i will focus on small volume items to sell such as blueprints and skill books which take up next to no room in my hull and so i can transport as many as i like
5) i will do the hauling myself until i get to a level that it is too dangerous - back in the day that was 100m ISK worth.
Research into items to sell
So, Eve Central appears to have disappeared.
In an ideal world i would download the entire market in Jita and Dodixie and compare them both for price and volumes.
In the absence of that, i will use EveMarketer to research for items to sell.
Day 1 (or day 3 if we include the training) since starting Eve Online again
On my first day of trading i bought 7 blueprints / skill books from Jita, hauled them to Dodixie and put them up for sale.
An update: towards the end of 2016 i decided to move on - work getting way too busy and starting a family. I was still keeping to an hour a day at most on Eve but even that was proving too hard to fit in.
(. . . . . . surprised i did not put a post on my blog about this, sort of found a half completed draft lying in the blog that needed more work put into it before posting)
Hence in early 2017 I liquidated everything I had and distributed what was about 420bn in ISK, Plex and assets to a few people that i had enjoyed their services of. For example, players who produced video casts or blogs.
I have to say i really enjoyed my time. Had a few regrets, namely not joining a fighting corp but i suspect i would not have had sufficient time to devote to it.
And, to be fair, towards the end of my time i was spending too much of it wandering around null sec in my cloaked ship rather than focusing on the economy side of the game.
On and off i have kept an eye on the game and so far i have not found or heard of a better game for those who like to play the economy side of things.
I am saying this now because i have had an itch over the last few months to see if i can play the economy again, starting from zero and new characters. More on that in later posts.
