Month end update - December 2021

As at the end of December 2021 my wealth is 229bn ISK after paying 2.8bn to upgrade to Omega for another 30 days for two accounts.  My Wealth increased by 50bn in December.

This has been by far my best month on record.  The second best was October where my wealth rose 30bn ISK followed by November where my wealth rose 25bn ISK.

Clearly, i am benefitting from the new changes in Eve and the market certainly feels much stronger vs the Summer.  This may all end now but so far the going is good.

Things i talk about below:

 - summary of my activity

 - the new 1bn daily profit target which i achieved in December

 - Review of the aims i had for December which were mostly med

 - reminder of how i do this

 - manufacturing efforts being slow this month

 - opened up alpha alts in 6 new regions to see if i can tease out a third Omega account

 - normal discussion on Sales in my main trading hubs of Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek, and a quick review of the alpha alt accounts

Sales of 283bn were a new record and the fourth time over 100bn.  The rampant market in December really helped.

Activity

I continue to come on once a day to update Sell orders and replace items sold.  About 30-45 minutes.

In December i continued to ramp up Hek (Rens paused) and started a smattering of alpha alts in other high sec trading posts in Essence, Lonetrek, Citadel, Khanid and Tash-Murkon.  I want to see if i can get any two of those alts doing enough to justify putting in an account of three and being upgraded to Omega.

Manufacturing was slow - i need to think how to scale it in the time i have.  I have to nail down a process and list of items to manufacture.

In all, i did an average of 9.1bn sales per day.

Target 1bn profits per day after all taxes and plex costs

On the new taxation levels to make 30bn isk per month i would need to cover:

 - Plex costs of 1.4x2=2.8bn

 - Courier costs 2% of sales (i.e. = purchase cost + collateral)

 - Broker Listing fees 1.5% of sales

 - Broker re-listing fees 0.3% of sales (lets assume all sales changed at least five times)

 - Transaction Taxes 3.6% of sales

Bottom line is that each 1bn of sales creates profits of 180m and these go towards buying Plex for the Omega accounts and whatever is left is reinvested in the business.

So, 30bn increase in wealth means i need to generate item profits for 50bn and assuming i make a 25% margin then sales of 200bn.  Or, in other words, daily sales of 6.7bn.

I have achieved this sales target in November and December though the market was been exceptionally strong given the changes in Eve.

I now am trading in the five trade hubs and trialling other highsec locations so the 1bn profits a day is not not impossible but still a tall order.

In December, it was not uncommon to have days where sales were over 10bn ISK and indeed on one day i had 10bn sales from one alt alone.

Review of the December aims

1) Plex both the accounts - aim number one all the time - done

2) Keep sales in Dodixie flat - outperformed, sales rose 44%

3) Keep sales in Amarr flat - outperformed, sales rose 77%

4) Increase sales in Rens - missed, sales fell 6%

5) Increase sales in Hek - done

6) Expand manufacturing beyond 14bn of sales - missed

7) Expand into Tash-Murkon - done

8) Experiment with sales in Delve - done

In all, the December aims were mostly met.

January feels like it may slowdown from here.

Reminder of my Current Business.

For now i do inter-regional trading - buying from Jita to sell elsewhere.

I have expanded the business into other high sec regions.

My main business is operated with two omega accounts (paid for with plex) with six alts.

The main Trading alts sit in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens and Hek.  Rens and Hek are still slowly ramping up

The other two alts sit in Jita and buys from Sell Orders, has these items couriered to the alts in Dodixie / Amarr and Rens / Hek who then put them onto these markets for sale.

The Jita alts also serve to sell items that i can no longer sell in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens or Hek.  Sort of clearance sales.

I have also started in December to place alpha alts in other regions to see how it goes.  I just need two of them to demonstrate that they can combine to justify an Omega account.  Also, they need to take up very little of my time.

The regions so far are: Lonetrek; Essence; Tash-Murkon; Citadel and Khanid.  And i am in an NPC station in Delve.

I focus on slow moving but high margin items.  That keeps me away from fierce competition and i only need to sell an item once every 10 days to make good income.

For this side of my business, lets call it Merchanting or inter-regional trading, i want to generate income of 10bn isk per month after paying to Plex my account.  As i ramp up my Rens and Hek alts i would hope to see this 10bn comfortably beaten. The addition of the alpha alts should help as well.

My business model evolves over time.  As my wealth increases i focus on higher value items.  I had evolved to only buying items in Jita for over 100m isk but this restricted the items i could sell so now i am going back to 70m isk.

Manufacturing

In November, i started down the manufacturing path.  I invested 12bn into it and made profits of 1.2bn after all taxes and costs.  December was slower - i spent more time focusing on the Trading business given it was going so well.  So in December i invested 7bn ISK and made profits of 2.1bn after taxes.

So far i am manufacturing high value items in Jita that have little of no competition and then putting them up for sale in Jita.  It is opportunistic for now - the items i focus on quickly see new entrants come in and close the profit potential.

The other side of manufacturing i am looking at is if i can manufacture an item for closer to the Jita Buy price rather than the Jita Sell price.  Therefore, i will make a better margin when i sell it in Dodixie / Amarr / Rens / Hek or i can sell it for lower prices and still make my 25% target margin.

I will keep trying to make this work in January.

Other High Sec Trading Locations

I don't want to spend all my time on Eve doing Regional Trading (buying from one region, mainly Jita, to sell to another) but i do want to see if i can find really low competition but stable revenue streams of trading.

To that end, i have put alts in Lonetrek; Essence; Tash-Murkon; Citadel and Khanid.  I am hopeful of making at least two work to bring them on as an Omega account.  I am also hopeful that the competition will be so low that this will take little effort but also remain low but passive-like income.

Delve

I want to experiment with selling in null/low Sec.  Hence, i have found an NPC station in Delve and started experimenting with items to sell.

Lets see how it goes.  So far, very slowly!

Plex

I have started to invest in Plex.  In all i now have 4000 Plex.  I did not invest in December given all my efforts were focused on the regional trading which was doing so well.

My rule is to buy Plex on the day it is needed to continue with the Omega account and that i will continue to do.

That all said, i may just buy an additional 2000 Plex per month for now.

I would be nice to have store of Plex to use to Omega the accounts if i decide to take a break from Eve.

Analysis of Trading Profits

In total i made 283bn isk of sales in December which made me item profits of 77bn ISK.

(item profit is the simply difference between sales done vs costs spent buying products, so before fees and taxes.  Because i don't yet invest in items other than Plex i don't make any allowance for items still in stock - in part because i don't track the cost per item spent).

Overall, sales rose by a massive 37% in December to be the best level of sales done since, well, the last month where i did 206bn, and that comes after a decent months in September and October

Over the last 12 months i have now done 1.3 trillion ISK of sales.

The main drivers of this growth was Dodixie increasing sales by 44% to 89bn and Amarr increasing sales by 77% to 62bn ISK.  Amarr re-established itself as my second best location after Dodixie.

Typically, i have 65bn items for sale up in Dodixie and 40bn in Amarr.  This did not change in December so it was the stronger market activity that drove the increase and this activity may slow in January.

Disappointingly, the combined efforts of Rens and Hek were only up slightly at 71bn ISK - Rens was actually down 6% vs Hek up 7%.

I now have 52bn items for sale in Rens and 41bn in Hek.

I can expand the items for sale in all my main regions still but it will be harder work.  Hence, it feels like i am approaching maturity in the main Trade hubs.

In normal trading Jita did well with trading sales of 33bn vs 25bn in November and 9bn of manufacturing sales which was down a bit vs November.  In all, Jita sales rose 9%.

The alpha alt accounts, including Delve, did sales of 19bn.  Given they are alpha alts the tax rates are higher and so profit from that 19bn will be lower than normal.  But 19bn sales is not to be sniffed at and i think i can tease out an Omega account from this.

From all these sales i made item profits of 77bn.

This therefore was an item margin of 27.3% (77/283) vs my target of 25%.

Manufacturing sales were low and came in with a 22% item margin, so not too dilutive anyway.

This continues the trend of my trading margins being in the 25-27% range since April 2021 having before that been in the 28-32% range.

From this I then need to take a whole series of costs off before i get to my Business profits:

Courier Fees: i aim to pay 2% of sales value to the Courier = 2% x 283= 5.7bn

Sales tax cost me 11.2bn ISk (=2.79% of sales) - the Dodixie and Amarr characters are level 5 in Accounting, the Rens and Hek characters got to Level 5 in December and of course all the alpha alt accounts are only Level 1.

Broker Fees costs me 7.9bn (=3.1% of sales).  Now, i can break this down into the initial listing fee of 1.5% (because i am Level 5 Broker Relations on both main characters and lets to make the sums easier include the Rens and Hek sellers for now and all the alpha alts) and therefore the rest is the cost of changing the price which is 0.30% a shot (i may have that 0.30% completely wrong!).

So, Listing Fee = 1.5% x 283= 4.2bn and so the Relisting Fee = 7.9-4.2 = 3.7bn which is1.3% of sales.

This takes my 'Business Profits' to 53.0bn isk for December vs 29.6bn in November.  This is what 20-30 minutes a day in December gave me.

So, the post-tax margin is 18.7% (53/283) is down from the 20s when the tax rates were lower but remains above the 15% target.

Going forwards, the Rens and Hek alts are now Level 5 Accounting, Broker Relations and Advanced Broker Relations - so they are optimised as much as i can without getting better standings.

The alpha alts will be high tax payers until i decide which to Omega.

And then from those 'Business Profits' i buy Plex for 2.8bn isk to extend the Omega by 30 days for two accounts.

That, therefore, is the roadmap from making 283bn of sales and seeing my wealth increase by 50bn as a result.

Items i am selling in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens and Hek

I sell blueprints, skill books, implants and ship equipment.  Blueprints are making a come back - this may be because of school holidays and / or the end of scarcity coming.  That said the market remains slow so there are not many competitors.  For me, this was still a good market in December.

Implants are still doing ok - i am slowly expanding into more types and moving up the isk value curve.  I used to focus on implants selling for at least 150m isk but now have pulled that back to 75m.  Can be competitive at times and a very slow moving market.  I have been known to see an item not move for 90 days and so i need to repost it (i should watch for this and just change the price slightly with 2 days to go to make for lower fees).

Skill books are a low income generator for me but there are still a few nice sellers.  I suspect skills books are now my lowest income generator.

Ship Equipment is picking up again and well helped by the mining changes and remains a more opportunistic market for me.  If it looks like making a decent profit, i put it up for sale otherwise i leave it.

Rigidly sticking to the 25% margin target.  Courier fees and taxes now take 7% of that to bring me to a theoretical 18%.

Dodixie Seller character

This remains my main character and has regained its slot as the largest seller.

I have now trained all the relevant skills to Level 5.  The skills relevant to Trading that i have are:

Accounting: Level 5; means i am charged 3.6% of the sales price on completed sale vs the normal 8%.  The base used to be 5% and i used to be able to get it down to 2.25% - so Sales Tax (Transaction Tax) has gone up.

Broker Relations: Level 5; means i am charged 1.5% to list an item for sale vs the normal 3.0%.  The base used to be 5% and i used to be able to get it down to 3% - so the Broker Listing fees have gone down.

Advanced Broker Relations: Level 5; means i can reduce the cost of changing the price of items i already have for sale.  With no skill i would be charged 1.5% to change every price.  Level 5 has brought this down to 0.30%.

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 5 (increased by two levels in January); increases the number of items i can list by 16 per level

Marketing: Level 3 (increased by one level in January); this allows me to set up Sell Orders in stations other than the one i am in; it also allowed me to look to increase my Contracting skills which i will need to sell my BPO copies from invention

Given the level 5 Trade, level 5 Retail and level 5 wholesale, i am able to post 145 items for sale (5 + (5x4) + (5x8) + (5x16)).  With no Trading skills you can post up to 5 sell orders

Amarr Seller character

This is the most competitive location but the sales and profits remain good.

I have now trained all the relevant skills to Level 5.  The skills relevant to Trading that i have are:

Accounting: Level 5; means i am charged 3.6% of the sales price on completed sale vs the normal 8%.  The base used to be 5% and i used to be able to get it down to 2.25% - so Sales Tax (Transaction Tax) has gone up.

Broker Relations: Level 5; means i am charged 1.5% to list an item for sale vs the normal 3.0%.  The base used to be 5% and i used to be able to get it down to 3% - so the Broker Listing fees have gone down.

Advanced Broker Relations: Level 5; means i can reduce the cost of changing the price of items i already have for sale.  With no skill i would be charged 1.5% to change every price.  Level 5 has brought this down to 0.30%.

Trade: Level 4; 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 4; 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 4 Trade, level 5 Retail and Wholesale Level 4, i am able to post 125 items for sale (5 + (4x4) + (5x8) + (4x16).

Rens and Hek characters

The Rens and Hek character all now have Level 5 Accounting, Broker Relations and Advanced Broker Relations.

In Rens:

Accounting: Level 5; means i am charged 3.6% of the sales price on completed sale vs the normal 8%.

Broker Relations: Level 5; means i am charged 1.5% to list an item for sale vs the normal 3.0%.

Advanced Broker Relations: Level 4; means the relist fee is just over 0.3%

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)).  That is plenty for now but i am still trying to expand the number of items for sale.

In Hek:

Accounting: Level 5; means i am charged 3.6% of the sales price on completed sale vs the normal 8%.  The base used to be 5% and i used to be able to get it down to 2.25% - so Sales Tax (Transaction Tax) has gone up.

Broker Relations: Level 5; means i am charged 1.5% to list an item for sale vs the normal 3.0%.  The base used to be 5% and i used to be able to get it down to 3% - so the Broker Listing fees have gone down.

Advanced Broker Relations: Level 5; means i can reduce the cost of changing the price of items i already have for sale.  With no skill i would be charged 1.5% to change every price.  Level 5 has brought this down to 0.30%.

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)).  That is plenty for now but i am still trying to expand the number of items for sale.

alpha alts: Lonetrek, Essence, Tash-Murkon, Citadel, Khanid and Delve

The only relevant skills i can train are Broker Relations to Level 5 and Trade to Level 3.

Therefore, i can post 17 items for sale and pay Transaction Taxes of 8%, Listing Fees of 2.4% and re-listing fees of 1.2%.

Now, so far there is no competition so no re-listing fees.  hence, my costs of sale are the courier fees of 2% + 8% transaction fees + 2.4% Listing fees = 12.4%.

Assuming i stick to my 25% item margin target then my bottom line profit margins are 12.6%.  i.e. every 1bn sales generates 126m profits vs 180m for the Omega accounts.  That is, 70% of Omega levels.  And i am limited to 17 sales slots - so at best they are alts that are trying out to see if they are good enough to be upgraded to Omega!

Courier Contracts

Each night, i get home from work and determine what i need to sell in all the locations.

The time is taken changing prices were necessary (especially Amarr given it is competitive) and then figuring out what to sell with the ISK made from the prior 24 hours sales.

I have a list of items that feature regularly and i add to this list as time goes by.  So is a case of checking Jita prices vs current location prices.

It takes a minute to check all the alt accounts.

To look up prices in Eve I am using Eve Tycoon which seems to have more of the latest items in its market browser.  I used to use evemarketer but i just got used to Eve Tycoon.

Each night i courier about 5 to 15bn ISK of items from Jita.  Used to be 2-10bn but things are better these days.  The total cargo volume is 10-250m3 per shipment.  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.

Eve Economy Data Charts

Nothing, yet, todo with my Eve Business ventures but just noting that in December i set up a website site eveeconomy.com which takes the monthly economic data provided by CCP and visualises it in chart form.

Loads of charts and more i can add.

I need to work out how to render the charts faster - right now they are accessed from a google drive given that is the way i have worked out how to update multiple charts at once quickly.

Let me know what you think and what else i should add.

Outlook

January will have eight aims - which is more about keeping things steady if i can but realising i am very likely to see sales and profits fall:

1) Plex both the accounts - aim number one all the time

2) Keep sales in Dodixie flat

3) Keep sales in Amarr flat

4) Increase sales in Rens

5) Increase sales in Hek

6) Expand manufacturing further

7) Develop the alpha alts to see which can be upgraded to Omega

 

The daily sales in December averaged 9.1bn.

If i assume i need to make 10bn + 2.8bn income per month (=12.8bn) and i assume i can achieve 15.0% margin then i need to make monthly sales of 85bn and so daily sales of 2.8bn.

So far i have achieved this in December 2020, January, March, April, August, September, October, November and December 2021.  I started in August 2020.

Current wealth is 229bn ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 12bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 7bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 0.0bn ISK
• items for sale 259bn ISK

• less a 20% provision 52bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 3bn ISK

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 or are used to generate isk that can be readily resold back onto the market.  Any ships or skills or fittings etc i buy are counted as expenses in that month.

* 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.