At the end of my third full month, my wealth is 16.6bn ISK after paying 1.4bn to upgrade Omega for another 30 days. My wealth increased by 9.4bn in November.
A good month, i thought. Helped by the US holidays - i did good trading around that time.
Onwards to the next aim
This time in Eve, i don't want to purely focus on trading by having characters in each trading hub. I want to experience as many of the isk making ventures in Eve that i reasonably can.
So, the aim with trading is to get to 10bn monthly income after buying the Plex to extend the Omega account.
To that end, the increase this month of 9.4bn (10.8bn pre Plex) was encouraging on one level. Though i will have to admit i took advantage of some items in high demand and short supply to boost my income in November. I wont be able to repeat this in December.
But, i am in a hurry so i will finish off getting my trading characters up to the desired skill level and then hit manufacturing, or something other than pure trading.
In other words, i will now start doing something other than buying from Jita to sell in Dodixie or Amarr.
Analysis of Trading Profits
In all, i made sales of 54.6bn isk (vs 37.0bn in October) which created income of 10.8bn (1.4bn was used to buy Plex, 7.8bn invested back into the market and 1.1 of items i bought but not yet for sale) vs 5.6bn in October.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. I am now selling from Dodixie and Amarr.
In Dodixie, sales were 38.0bn isk vs October sales of 37.0bn isk . . . . . so, Dodixie did not grow at all.
In Amarr, sales were 16.8bn isk in its first month and therefore, arguably, the entire growth in revenues came from the new market in Amarr.
Purchases of items from Jita cost 37.0bn isk (vs 27.1bn in October), so my pre-tax margin was 32.2% (54.6-37.0)/54.6 vs 26.6% in October..
That sharp increase was due to the items i referred to above which were in high demand but short supply - and so allowed me to charge very high prices. More below.
But then i need to take a whole series of costs off:
Courier Fees: i aim to pay 2% of sales value to the Courier = 2% x 54.6 = 1.1bn
Sales tax cost me 1.4bn ISk (=2.6% of sales), as expected given i am Level 4 Accounting Skill on both characters.
Broker Fees costs me 4.3bn (=7.9% of sales). Now, i can break this down into the initial listing fee of 3.78% (because i am Level 4 Broker Relations on both characters) and therefore the rest is the cost of changing the price which is 1.14% a shot (actually, my Amarr character has not trained Advanced Broker Relations so the rate will be a bit higher).
So, i know the listing fee = 3.78% x 54.6 = 2.1bn and therefore the price change fee is 2.2bn (4.3 - 2.1). This 2.2bn is 4.1% of sales.
So, the post-tax margin is 32.2% - 2.0% - 2.6% - 3.8% - 4.1% = 19.8%.
Fees and Taxes take 12.4% off my margins (2.0+2.6+3.8+4.1).
19.8% is very good, i would normally aim to get a respectable 15%. i can improve on it if i train Accounting and Broker Relations / Advanced Broker Relations to level 5 . . . . . which is on the "to do" list . . . . . but, as i detail below, i have benefitted from some great sales of items where demand was very high vs supply very low.
Dodixie Seller character
This remains my main character and is the biggest seller.
The skills relevant to Trading that i have are:
Accounting: Level 4; means i am charged 2.80% of the sales price on completed sale vs the normal 5%
Broker Relations: Level 4; means i am charged 3.78% to list an item for sale
Advanced Broker Relations: Level 5; means i can reduce the cost of changing the price of items i already have for sale. I decided by train this rather than go all for Plex. With no skill i would be charged 1.89% to change every price. Level 5 has brought this down to 0.94%.
Trade: Level 5; increases the number of items i can list for sale by 4 per level.
Retail: Level 5; increases the number of items i can list for sale by 8 per level
Wholesale: Level 3; increases the number of items i can list by 16 per level
Marketing: Level 2; this allows me to set up Sell Orders in stations other than the one i am in; i don't use this really
Given the level 5 Trade, level 5 Retail and level 3 wholesale, i am able to post 113 items for sale (5 + (5x4) + (5x8) + (3x16)). With no Trading skills you can post up to 5 sell orders
It would take me 38 days to train Accounting, Broker Relations and Advanced Broker Relations to Level 5. And i still have to train Wholesale and Tycoon to increase the number of Sales Orders i can have up
As i write this i am using 55 sales slots up - less than normal but i am choosing to sell higher value items now.
Items i am selling in Dodixie (and Amarr)
I sell blueprints, skill books and ship equipment.
With the strategy is to focus on blueprints that are not seeded in Dodixie. Likewise for skillbooks. In both cases, i am selling items worth from 100m to 1.5bn. These are nice steady earners. One or two will sell each night. Sometimes i get home from work and see 2bn isk in the wallet and i know a couple of the big ones have sold.
Rigidly sticking to the 25% margin target as the lower time.
Similar story in Amarr, some items are the same but the main groups are all the same: blueprints, skill books and ship equipment
In November i did really well with the Disintegrator Specialisation skillbooks. Over the US holiday i could not get them onto the market quick enough. Their supply was dried up - i posted on this - but coming back as demand remained very high. It will be a tall order to replace this high revenue stream in December.
Amarr Seller character
Started in November and has grown very quickly. I gave my initial views in a prior post.
The skills relevant to Trading that i have are:
Accounting: Level 4; means i am charged 2.80% of the sales price on completed sale vs the normal 5%
Broker Relations: Level 4; means i am charged 3.78% to list an item for sale
Advanced Broker Relations: not trained yet, so i am charged 1.9% to change the price of an item. And that is 1.9% of the new sales price!
Trade: Level 4; increases the number of items i can list for sale by 4 per level.
Retail: Level 4; increases the number of items i can list for sale by 8 per level
Marketing: Level 2; this allows me to set up Sell Orders in stations other than the one i am in; i don't use this really
Given the level 4 Trade and level 4 Retail, i am able to post 53 items for sale (5 + (4x4) + (4x8)).
This is not enough therefore i am training Retail to level 5 which will then allow me to trade Wholesale which will give me an additional 16 slots per level.
And then of course i still need to train Advanced Broker Relations - but as i said before, i want to start trying out other things in Eve. So, i may go down the route of buying skill injectors to do this, we will see.
Courier Contracts
Each night, i get home from work and determine what i need to sell in Dodixie and Amarr. I tend to focus on one location per night. So Dodixie one night, Amarr the next.
i find evemarketer very useful to find new ideas. But, i am now using Eve Tycoon which seems to have more of the latest items in its market browser.
Each night i courier about 2 to 4bn isk of items from Jita. The total cargo volume is 50-160m3. So small but valuable items. But this allows the couriers to use small, fast ships with much less chance of being ganked. So there is always someone willing to pick up the contract quickly.
I pay a generous 1.5 to 2.0% of collateral as fees. I am more interested in getting my items onto the market quickly than penny pinching on distribution costs.
Outlook
December will have four aims to it.
1) Plex the account - aim number one all the time
2) Increase sales in Dodixie - being flat in November was a poor show
3) Increase sales in Amarr
4) Start a new venture in Eve. Could be manufacturing, could be getting cheap blueprints from null sec to post for sale in highsec.
The daily sales in November averaged 1.82bn. If i assume i need to make 10bn + 1.4bn income per month (=11.4bn) and i assume i can achieve 15.0% margin then i need to make monthly sales of 76bn and so daily sales of 2.5bn.
I am, getting there
Current wealth is 16.6bn ISK made up from:
When i add up my wealth, 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. Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.
- items in hanger for sale 1.1bn ISK
- items for sale 18.6bn ISK
- less a 20% provision 3.7bn ISK*
- ISK in wallet 0.7bn 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.
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