As at the end of June 2022 my wealth is 414bn ISK after paying 4.7bn to upgrade to Omega for another 30 days for three accounts. My Wealth increased by 24bn in June.
In some ways a poor month, sales were down 23% on May to 153bn ISK but profits were up 18% (from 20bn to 24bn ISK) and this was because i was making a strong item margin of 30% (i.e. buy an item for 700m, sell it for 1bn, makes 300m profit = 30% margins). This is my strongest ever profit margin.
What was going on in June was that competition fell because there were less players around - so lower sales but at much better prices.
So, a good profit result off a poor sales result.
It feels like we have a slow summer coming up like last year.
In the last 12 months i have made sales of 2.2 trillion isk and profits (after everything including Plex) of 324bn isk having spent 40bn on Plex.
The overall aim of what i do is to increase my wealth by at least 10bn per month. So far i have beaten that in 15 / 22 months i have been running this venture and indeed in all of the last 11 months.
Things i talk about below:
- summary of my activity
- the 1bn daily profit target which i missed in June
- Review of the aims i had for June which were mostly missed
- reminder of how i do this
- manufacturing efforts being almost nil this month (again)
- Alts in other secondary locations
- normal discussion on Sales in my main trading hubs of Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek, Sobaseki, Tash-Murkon Prime and a quick review of the alpha alt accounts
- the Outlook and Aims for July
Activity
I continue to come on once a day to update Sell orders and replace items sold. About 30-45 minutes.
June was slow but much less competitive.
Sales fell 23%: in my main trading locations sales were down everywhere except Hek (so down in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens, Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon); in the Alpha accounts sales rose around 50% in total driven by Delve and Arnon.
For the alpha account locations - Arnon (Essence), Motsu (The Citadel), Agil (Khanid), Alentene (Verge Vendor), Orvolle (Placid), Delve (NPC station) - there is still now sign of combining any two to upgrade to Omega.
Manufacturing was nil - i did not have enough time to devote to it other than manufacture a couple of items which have not yet sold. I suspect it will remain this way until i stop expanding into my current trade locations.
Planetary Interaction was also nil - same reason, not enough time.
In all, i did an average of 5.1bn sales per day making 1.0bn isk per day before buying the Plex.
I had no days were sales were over 10bn in June.
Target 1bn profits per day after all taxes and plex costs
I have been talking about this aim though in the back of my mind i need to be sure i am not merely benefitting from elevated market activity following the changes made last year.
However, in June i missed this target as i did in May. I suspect i will miss over the summer. The summer months do look like they will be slow, much like last year.
Target sales to achieve 1bn profits per day
On the new taxation levels to make 30bn ISK per month i would need to cover:
- Plex costs of 1.4 x 3.9 = 5.5bn
- 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 per month)
- Transaction Taxes 3.6% of sales
Bottom line is that assuming i make my 25% profit margins then each 1bn of sales creates profits of 164m 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 55bn and assuming i make a 25% margin then sales of 220bn. Or, in other words, daily sales of 7.3bn are needed.
Review of the June aims
1) Plex the three omega accounts - aim number one all the time - achieved
2) Hold sales in Dodixie to at least 90% of May - missed, sales fell 35%
3) Hold sales in Amarr to at least 90% of May - missed, sales fell 20%
4) Hold sales in Rens to at least 90% of May - missed, sales fell 19%
5) Hold sales in Hek to at least 90% of May - achieved, sales rose 4%
6) Ramp up Sobaseki to at least 90% of May - missed, sales fell 45%
7) Ramp up Tush-Murkon Prime to at least 90% of May - missed, sales fell 22%
8) Develop the alpha alts to see which can be upgraded to Omega - ongoing
In all, the June aims were mostly missed because they are focused on sales which i consider to be the medium term driver of profits.
Reminder of my Current Business.
For now i do inter-regional trading - buying from Jita to sell elsewhere.
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 profits of 10bn ISK per month after paying to Plex my account. given i now have six Omega alts in Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek, Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon i am hoping that this 10bn aim will be easily achieved.
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.
But, the latest evolution of the business model is that i aim to make a minimum item profit of 100m isk. i.e. if i buy an item for 70m then i aim to sell it for at least 170m isk.
My main business is operated with three omega accounts (paid for with plex) with nine alts.
The main Trading alts sit in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens and Hek. I have also omega alts in the new Trading locations of Sobaseki (in Lonetrek) and Tash-Murkon Prime (in Tash-Murkon).
The other three alts sit in Jita and buys from Sell Orders, has these items couriered to the alts in Dodixie / Amarr and Rens / Hek and Sobaseki / Tash-Murkon Pime who then put them onto these markets for sale.
The Jita alts also serve to sell items that i can no longer sell in my trading locations Sort of clearance sales.
I 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. So far the Sobesaki and Tash-Murkon alts made the grade and were upgraded in one account.
The other regions so far are: Essence; Citadel and Khanid. And i am in an NPC station in Delve.
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 and January even slower, February was nil as was March and April.
I spent more time focusing on the Trading business given it was going so well.
Hence, for now, Manufacturing is on hold. I did manufacture a couple of items in June but i really need to work out how to make this scalable.
It seems i am addicted to the allure of making profits of 1bn ISK per day and so that leaves no time to focus on activities outside of Inter-Regional trading. That may prove to be a mistake if it leads to grind / burnout.
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.
I have 6 other locations up and running and as i wrote in a prior blog post i have upgraded an account containing two of the alts to omega at the end of January.
These two locations: Tash-Murkon Prime and Sobaseki did have a poor February but a much better March and April whilst May was ok also. June was poor but still achieved the sales needed to justify the Plex.
Tash-Murkon Prime sales fell from 9.9bn ISK to 7.7bn ISK whilst Sobaseki fell from 14.8bn ISK to 8.0bn ISK given total sales in June of 16bn iSK which i estimate generated profits of 2.6bn ISK which was therefore sufficient to cover the cost of the Plex.
The other secondary trading locations made combined sales of 14.0bn which is up on the May sales 9.6bn.
So far, no sign of any other two locations looking like they may be upgraded to Omega. I don't mind that. At some stage i may open up in other High Sec Regions and / or try and relocated to better places in existing High Sec regions.
I will now be buying enough Plex to upgrade to 3 omega accounts per month. At current prices that is 5.9bn ISK per month.
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.
It is not going well - but has improved. In June there was only 2.6bn sales. Over the last seven months there have been 9.4bn sales in total.
I may have to rethink this.
Plex
I have started to invest in Plex. In all i now have 4300 Plex.
That said, given how well my Trading is going i am investing everything back into the market leaving nothing to buy surplus plex for the last four months.
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 said, i like to store Plex for a rainy day or unless i take a break. I really need 6 months buffer. So, to cover 3 accounts for 6 months is 9000 Plex required
Analysis of Trading Profits
In total i made 153bn ISK of sales in June which made me item profits of 46bn 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 fell by 23% in June which reflects slower markets in most areas.
The best performing location remains Dodixie, followed by Amarr then Hek and then Rens. So not much change there.
Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon are about at the level i want in terms of items to be sold.
Jita, which is where i sell items that won't sell in the Regions i now also sell some Blueprints in. Trade is slow and competitive - so sales were only 1.4bn but i don't mind that. I rarely have more than 5 items for sale in Jita these days.
From all these sales i made item profits of 46bn.
This therefore was an item margin of 30.0% (46/153) vs my target of 25%. This is one of my strongest ever item margins and certainly the strongest in the last 12 months.
There were less players around in June so lower sales but that also meant less competition so i was able to charge higher prices and so get higher margins.
Manufacturing sales were nil.
My trading margins had been in the 25-27% range since April 2021 having before that been in the 28-32% range. So June was an outlier to the upside.
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 153= 3.1bn
Sales tax cost me 6.0bn ISk (=3.92% of sales) - the Dodixie, Amarr, Rens, Hek Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon characters are level 5 in Accounting (=sales tax of 3.6%), the new omega accounts are in the process of taking the skill to level 5 and of course all the alpha alt accounts are only Level 1 (=sales tax of 8%).
Broker Fees costs me 7.7bn (=5.0% 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 and include 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 153= 2.3bn and so the Relisting Fee = 7.7-2.3 = 5.4bn which is 3.5% of sales. That shows that i do change prices quite often, bias to Amarr.
This takes my 'Business Profits' to 29.0bn ISK for June vs 25.6bn in May. This is what 20-30 minutes a day in June gave me.
So, the post-tax margin is 18.9% (26/198) and so i achieved the 15% target.
The rest of the alpha alts will be high tax payers until i decide which to Omega.
And then from those 'Business Profits' i buy Plex for 4.7bn isk to extend the Omega by 30 days for three accounts (the cost of Plex was lower at the time due to a sale affecting the in game price).
That, therefore, is the roadmap from making 153bn of sales and seeing my wealth increase by 24bn as a result.
Items i am selling in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens, Hek, Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon
I sell blueprints, skill books, implants and ship equipment. Blueprints are making a steady come back - they are lumpy sales and slow, but thats how i like it. Mining equipment is slowing as more traders enter this market.
Implants are still doing ok - i am slowly expanding into more types and moving up the ISK value curve. I now keep to implants costing over 100m ISK and up to 1.5bn ISK. They don't sell well but when they do i tend to get a whole family sold at a time. Again, that's how i like it. A billion or so of investment can take 30 days to sell.
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 doing well though the mining equipment sales have clearly slowed as it has become more competitive and demand does not feel as strong anymore. But equipment that related to general PVE/PVP is doing well.
Rigidly sticking to the 25% margin target. Courier fees and taxes now take 9% of that to bring me to a theoretical 16%.
Dodixie Seller character
This remains my main character and has regained its slot as the largest seller.
I have 110bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market.
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; increases the number of items i can list by 16 per level
Marketing: Level 3; 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 63bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market.
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
I still think of these two locations as really the same - but i am finding they have different dynamics.
In Rens:
I have 71bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market.
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:
I have 63bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market.
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.
New(ish) omega alts: Lonetrek, Tash-Murkon
I feel this locations are now in the optimal level range.
In Lonetrek (Sobaseki) I have 37bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market.
In Tash-Murkon (Tash-Murkon Prime) I have 73bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market.
The Sales in these two locations do more than enough to justify being Omega and the competition is practically zero - though the returns are very low. That is, for total items of 110bn ISK i make sales of 16bn ISK to 30bn ISK.
alpha alts: Essence, Citadel, Khanid, Verge Vendor, Placid 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 164m 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!
The two best sellers are Alentene in Verge Vendor and Arnon in Essence. Combined they are doing around 6bn ISK of sales but i need 16bn to justify upgrading 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.
Nothing, yet, todo with my Eve Business ventures but just noting that 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.
The data inputs changed a bit in February so i need to redo the code . . . .
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
July will have eight conservative aims - I feel the market is slowing.
1) Plex the three omega accounts - aim number one all the time
2) Hold sales in Dodixie to at least 90% of June
3) Hold sales in Amarr to at least 90% of June
4) Hold sales in Rens to at least 90% of June
5) Hold sales in Hek to at least 90% of June
6) Ramp up Sobaseki to at least 90% of June
7) Ramp up Tush-Murkon Prime to at least 90% of June
8) Develop the alpha alts to see which can be upgraded to Omega
The daily sales in June averaged 5.1bn.
For the 10bn profit target: If i assume i need to make 10bn + 5.9bn income per month (=15.1bn) and i assume i can achieve 15.0% margin then i need to make monthly sales of 100bn and so daily sales of 3.3bn.
So far i have achieved this in December 2020, January, March, April, August, September, October, November, December 2021, January 2022, February 2022, March 2022, April 2022, May 2022 and June 2022. I started in August 2020.
Current wealth is 414bn ISK made up from:
- Plex held as an investment 17bn ISK
- Items in hanger for sale 2bn ISK
- Buy orders on the market 0bn ISK
- items for sale 484bn ISK
- less a 20% provision 97bn ISK*
- ISK in wallet 8bn 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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