At the end of my third month my wealth is 27.2bn isk. An increase of 11.0bn isk over the month.
I also had to fund a 2.2bn Plex payment, so compared to the prior month's increase of 8.0bn this month my wealth rose 13.2bn before Plex costs.
I had a great final weak to June where my wealth rose by 4.7bn - has to be my best week ever - and all of that was done at the weekend. During the week i made some sales but i also had to reduce some items by a lot (making a small loss on some sales) given competition coming into these markets.
In my first month my wealth rose 7.3bn (no plex though), last month my wealth rose 5.8bn (which i was disappointed with). Hence, this month's increase of 11.0bn after plex costs was very satisfying.
The two lessons from May still hold true:
1) I need to visit the game once a day to stay competitive - even if only for 10 minutes
2) I need to keep selling items that sell for 70m isk as well as items that sell for 700m isk. I cant just rely on the 700m isk items alone.
The good news remains that i am comfortably playing one account for free and could happily play 2 accounts easily for free. That remains the aim.
Plex
I don't have any Plex sitting in my hanger right now - i had hoped to have bought at least 500 Plex by the month end.
My aim is to build a store of Plex such that i don't need that last minute rush to get some Plex together to finance my main account.
Hence, from tomorrow onwards i will buy Plex each day to get to the 500 Plex + the additional 500 Plex i will need to finance the account in mid July.
Strategy
No change here - i stick to 45 minutes a day, perhaps a bit more at the weekends to generate the wealth.
I currently operate my business with three characters who don't undock.
All items are bought from Sell Orders in Jita and then Couriered to the Sellers sitting in Dodixie and Amarr.
The Buyer in Jita will, one day, be my manufacturer . . . . . . i just have not got around to looking into Manufacturing hard enough . . . . . so lets not hope to see a post on this any time soon . . . . .
Profit margin structure
I focus on small cargo items (blueprints, implants and boosters) that sell once every 2 or 3 days and profit margins of over 20%.
Profit margin. If something costs 80 and i sell it for 100 then the profit margin is (100-80)/100 = 20%. I.e. it is the profit divided by the sales price.
I find the competition in Dodixie and Amarr in these items is low, slow and rational.
Big picture - i am playing on the fact that people at Dodixie or Amarr do not want to travel 15 or 9 umps to Jita to buy an item for a lower price. They are willing to pay up to save time (and perhaps the risk).
My Dodixie character is Level 5 in Accounting and Broker Relations to get the costs down
Cost structure:
I have 3 costs to cover:
1) Courier fees = 1.0% of the expected sales price (see below)
2) Broker fees = 2.48% of the expected sales price
3) Sales tax = 1.0% of the expected sales price
Hence, my costs are 4.48%.
So, if my target margin is 20.0% less the costs of 4.48% then my overall profit margin comes out at just over 15%.
Courier Contracts
All items i buy in Jita are couriered by third parties to Dodixie and Amarr.
I have settled on paying a fee equal to 1% of the Collateral. In almost all cases i get the items delivered within an hour.
It might help that my cargo size rarely goes over 1000m3 and is mostly in the low hundreds m3.
Easy money for some but a great time saving for me.
Identifying items to sell
I used to look up items on Evemarketer to find items to sell. Today, i have a spreadsheet that pulls the Sales value of items from Jita, Amarr and Dodixie so that i can readily see which items have the margins of over 20%.
Makes life easier though i still lack a daily sales volume measure which would complete the job for me.
Dodixie Seller
The main constraint to wealth generation is the amount of ISK i have to deploy. I am now regularly making over 2.0bn ISK sales per day.
Working backwards, if my wealth has increased by 13.2bn then that indicates daily profits of 440m isk.
Using my cost structure above then that would suggest i made sales of just over 85bn isk in June.
I have only trained up wholesale and so no change in the maximum orders i can post of 129. These days i have around 100 sell orders posted. Currently valued at 25.3bn isk (vs last month at 16.4bn isk). If required, i can still skill up Tycoon to give an additional 32 order slots per level.
Amarr Seller
This is newer and currently this character has 24 items up for Sale for a total of 8.3bn isk (compares to 9 items valued at 3.2bn last month)
He can post up to 65 items right now - that did not change though i suspect i may need to train up some related skills in July.
The original plan was to manufacture items near Jita and courier those items to be sold in Amarr. However, it is taking me longer than expected to get a grip of manufacturing so instead i am buying from Sell orders in Jita and couriering to Amarr to sell.
The Amarr seller started off slowly but is now doing well. I don't yet have a feel as to the daily sales and profits so that is something to work out perhaps over July.
Costs are a worse better than the Dodixie seller given this one has Accountancy at level 4 and Broker Relations at level 4.
The other part of this character is that he is training space flight to fly a covert interceptor into null sec to pick up cheaper blueprints to sell in Amarr and Dodixie.
Thank you to those who suggested fit outs for flying covert in low-sec to buy blueprints and other very small cargo space items.
Checklist of the aim for June:
Aims for June were:
1) Continue to expand the Dodixie trader sell orders - done
2) Plex the account and build up some surplus Plex - not built up surplus plex
3) Build up the Amarr trading business - done
Outlook
It may be hard to do better in July. But lets aim for 10bn increase in wealth at least, after Plex costs to finance the account.
Aims for July (same as June really):
1) Continue to expand the Dodixie trader sell orders
2) Plex the account and build up some surplus Plex.
3) Build up the Amarr trading business
Current wealth is 27.2bn ISK made up from:
- items for sale 33.6bn ISK
- less a 20% provision 6.7bn ISK*
- Plex held (0 Plex) 0.0bn ISK
- items in storage for sale 0.0 ISK
- ISK in wallet 0.3bn 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.
