Month end update - September 2022

As at the end of September 2022 my wealth is 541bn ISK after paying 6.6bn to upgrade to Omega for another 30 days for three accounts.  My Wealth increased by 60bn in September.

This is my best month ever.

That said, i can break this down into normal general commerce and Plex sales:

Normal general commerce made profits of 51bn isk.  That would still be my best month ever.

Plex sales duriung the 300 Plex for Omega offer period made profits of 9bn isk.  I liquidated my Plex holdings at around 5.5m isk per plex yielding me 32bn isk which was a gain of 9bn over the month.

Quick Summary

Just focusing on the normal commerce (which is mostly trading) - i was surprised how strong September was.  There were several days where sales were over 20bn isk (which will typically mean my wealth rises by 3.2bn before Plex costs).  However, i suspect i am also benefitting from the inflation in the game whilst at the same time protecting my margins - in other words, i have pricing power.

Where as August felt slow, September felt healthier.  It did feel like i was seeing players come back or at least restocking up on items.  I don't think it was all inflation, i suspect there was some positive volume also.

For September, before Plex costs my wealth rose by 2.2bn isk per day - that is a new record.

Revenues grew by a huge 62% to a record 354bn.  All the main trading locations grew sales with Dodixie almost getting to 100bn isk fpr the month.

And again, similar to June, July and August - the item margin i was making was 28% against my normal target of 25%.  That is, the difference between the Sales Price and the Cost Price divided by the Sales Price was 25% (buy something in Jita for 750m, sell it in Dodixie for 1bn is therefore 250m profit and 25% item margin).

I suspect the item margin was again helped by the lower competition over the summer months due to less players being around.  So perhaps seeing players come back but not onto the market.

In the last 12 months i have made sales of 2.7 trillion isk and profits (after everything including Plex) of 417bn isk having spent 55bn 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 18 / 25 months i have been running this venture and indeed in all of the last 14 months.

Activity

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

I am experimenting with Manufacturing and Planetary Interaction.

Over 95% of my sales and profits still come from Regional Trading.  So far 4% comes from Manufacturing and 1% from Planetary Interaction - more on those two below.

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

It was a surprise to me that i achieved the 1bn daily profit target in July and then again in August.  I was not sure about September but in the end i need not have been concerned.  In fact, in September my daily profit exceeded 2bn isk.

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.  I suspect i will be sure if it is a realistic aim by the end of the year.

Target daily sales required to achieve 1bn profits per day

In summary, i generally need to make 7.5bn sales per day assuming my item margin is 25%

As the cost of plex rises then my daily sales requirement also rises.

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

 - Plex costs of 3 x 500 x 4.7m = 7.1bn

 - 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

That all works out at 225bn monthly sales will generate profits after all costs including Plex of 30bn isk.

Or, in other words, daily sales of 7.5bn are needed.

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.

Looking at some sensitivity analysis

- if my item markets were 28% instead of 25% then i need only make 192bn isk of sales (or 6.4bn per day)

- if Plex rose from 4.7m to 5.0m then then i need to make 228bn isk of sales (or 7.6bn per day)

Review of the August aims

1) Plex the three omega accounts - aim number one all the time - achieved

2) Hold sales in Dodixie to at least 90% of July - achieved

3) Hold sales in Amarr to at least 90% of July - achieved

4) Hold sales in Rens to at least 90% of July - achieved

5) Hold sales in Hek to at least 90% of July - achieved

6) Ramp up Sobaseki to at least 90% of July - achieved

7) Ramp up Tush-Murkon Prime to at least 90% of July - achieved

8) Develop the alpha alts to see which can be upgraded to Omega - missed, moved into manufacturing instead

9) Increase the investment and profits in Manufacturing - achieved

In all, the September aims were almost entirely achieved.  A good  month.

Reminder of my Current Business.

For now 95% of what i do is inter-regional trading - buying from Jita to sell elsewhere.  The rest is made up from Manufacturing and Planetary Interaction.

For Trading 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.  Therefore, i try also to stick to the rule of making a minimum of 100m profit per item sold.  i.e. if i buy an item for 70m then i aim to sell it for at least 170m isk.  This makes sure i don't waste my time on making low absolute profits and so preserves the 45 minute rule.

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 2021 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: Placid; Verge Vendor; Essence; Citadel and Khanid.  And i am in an NPC station in Delve and Outer Ring.

And i am about to start in Venal.

Manufacturing

I am now three months into my Manufacturing project.

My strategy is similar to Trading - that is, i target slow moving but highly profitable items.

I manufacture and sell in Jita - so higher cost manufacturing and competitive sales environment.

The table below shows my Sales, Item Profits and post cost profits for July, August and September.

The good news is that in September i made enough for an Omega account.  That is the first goal achieved.

I don't do this systematically but rather keep a look out on items i can manufacture and still make a 25% profit margin selling in Jita.

I want to keep ramping this up and also move into manufacturing items in Jita and then courier to my other Trade locations.

Planetary Interaction

I am still experimenting for now, getting to understand it all.

I have the three Jita alts in each Omega account fully skilled and the one alt in Sobaseki (i jump out of Jita) almost fully skilled.

For now, i am mining from the 22 planets (3 x 6 + 4) and converting to P1 items, transporting to one factory planet and converting to P2.

I operate on 3 day cycles and would generate sales of 100m a time or 1bn per month but is also more time required every three days.

However, i prefer to use the output in my manufacturing so my monthly profit is higher.

But 1bn per month given the time taken is not good.

So, for now i will keep on experimenting and see where i can take this.

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.

The current alpha account regions so far are: Placid; Verge Vendor; Essence; Citadel and Khanid.  And i am in an NPC station in Delve and Outer Ring.  And i am about to start in Venal.

The alpha trading locations made combined sales of 17.2bn which is up from August of 12.6bn but inline with July of 17.6bn.

This has really gone nowhere for a number of months - so once i nail down Manufacturing and Planetary Interaction i will need to revisit this.

The good news is that it takes barely any time to maintain.

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 - sometimes threatens to improve but then fall back again.  In September there was only 1.7bn sales.  Over the last nine months there have been 15.8bn sales in total.  Hopeless.

Plex

I was aiming to store up to 6 months of Omega for each of the Omega accounts which would mean buying 9000 Plex.

However, during September there was an offer that allowed 30 day Omega to be bought for 300 Plex instead of the normal 500 Plex.  This drove the Plex price from 4.7m to 5.5m.

Therefore i made two decisions:

1) i bought forward 3 months of Plex in part by buying from the market (300 x 5.5 x 3) and in part using my existing Plex

2) i sold the rest of my Plex at a large profit.

So, i started the month with 5800 Plex valued at 23bn.  Bought another 1500 to get Omega for September for three accounts and then during the offer period i bought another 900 Plex to buy Omega for October for three accounts and then used 1800 Plex to buy forward Omega for November and December.  I effectively spent 15bn on Plex for October / November / December (bought from the market for October and used from by inventory for November / December).

Buying forward Omega made loads of sense - even buying Plex for 5.5m to buy Omega made loads of sense.  However, buying too far forward would take isk away from me that i can deploy more profitably into the market,

And then i sold 4000 Plex for 22bn making a profit of 9bn isk.

Finally, after the offer period i bought back 3000 Plex for 4.6m per Plex, so spending 14bn isk.

I suspect we may see this again in December.

A minor accounting point

I bought 3 months worth of Omega accounts (i.e October - December) for 14.9bn (usual cost would have been 20.3bn).

The way i account for this is to consider than 14.9bn an asset for September.  In October i will expense a third of it and so hold 9.9bn as an asset, and then 5.0bn in November.

In other words, i am reducing my asset as i use up the Omega.

Analysis of Trading Profits

In total i made 354bn ISK of sales in September which made me item profits of 100bn 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 62% in September which reflects general growth in trading in almost all trading locations.

Dodixie moved back up to be the leading sales location followed by Amarr, Rens and then Tash-Murkon.  Hek fell into fifth place closely followed by Sobaseki.

I have left Jita out of this - it was technically third but much of this was Plex sales.

From all these sales i made item profits of 100bn.

This therefore was an item margin of 28.2% (100/354) vs my target of 25%.  This is another strong month for margins.

My trading margins had been in the 25-27% range since April 2021 having before that been in the 28-32% range.  So September (and June / July / August) was an outlier to the upside.

Manufacturing sales were 19.1bn, all in Jita, more than doubling from the August 7.5bn.

From this I then need to take a whole series of costs off before i get to my Business profits (and notice how they are more related to Sales rather than costs):

Courier Fees: i aim to pay 2% of sales value to the Courier = 2% x 354= 7.1bn

Sales tax cost me 13.6bn ISk (=3.84% of sales) - the Dodixie, Amarr, Rens, Hek Sobaseki and Tash-Murkon characters are level 5 in Accounting (=sales tax of 3.6%) and of course all the alpha alt accounts are only Level 1 (=sales tax of 8%).

Broker Fees costs me 11.9bn (=3.4% of sales).  Now, i can break this down into the initial listing fee of 1.5% (because i am Level 5 Broker Relations on all Omega 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 354= 5.3bn and so the Relisting Fee = 11.9-5.3 = 6.6bn which is 1.9% of sales.  That shows that i do change prices quite often, bias to Amarr.

This takes my 'Business Profits' to 66.1bn ISK for September vs 40.7bn in August.  This is what 30-40 minutes a day in September gave me.

So, the post-tax margin is 18.7% (66/354) 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 bought Plex for 6.6bn isk to extend the Omega by 30 days for three accounts.

That, therefore, is the roadmap from making 354bn of sales and seeing my wealth increase by 60bn 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 and this continued into September - they are lumpy sales and slow, but that's how i like it.  They can also be my slowest selling items and the items most likely to go 90 days without being sold.  I generally sell one blueprint at a time though i am seeing the odd occasion where someone comes along and buys all the same type out at once.

Mining equipment is slowing as more traders enter this market but is still making decent profits.

Implants are doing ok and tend to be the most competitive - 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 2bn 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.  I am seeing more instances of whole family's of implants being sold at once.

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 at present.

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 makes the most sales in most months.

I have 130bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market over 173 items (so average sales price of 751m)

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

Tycoon Level 3; increases the number of items i can list by 32 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, level 5 wholesale and level 3 Tycoon , i am able to post 241 items for sale (5 + (5x4) + (5x8) + (5x16) + (3x32)).  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 98bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market over 112 items (so an average sales price of 875m per item).

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 89bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market, over 127 items (so an average sales price of 701m).

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 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 5 Trade, level 5 Retail and level 3 Wholesale, i am able to post 129 items for sale (5 + (5x4) + (5x8) + (4x16)).  I am in the process of training Wholesale V and then Tycoon to increase this.

In Hek:

I have 73bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market, over 96 items (so an average sales price of 760m).

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 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 5 Trade, level 5 Retail and level 3 Wholesale, i am able to post 129 items for sale (5 + (5x4) + (5x8) + (4x16)).  That is plenty for now but i am still trying to expand the number of items for sale.

Lonetrek and Tash-Murkon Characters

I feel this locations are now in the optimal level range.

Both alts are now fully skilled in Trading.

In Lonetrek (Sobaseki) I have 58bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market, over 84 items (so an average sales price of 690m).

In Tash-Murkon (Tash-Murkon Prime) I have 94bn ISK of Sell Orders on the market, over 117 items (so an average sales price of 803m).

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 125bn ISK i make sales of 16bn ISK to 30bn ISK.  September was an outlier where i made sales of 56bn 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 8-11bn ISK of sales but i need 16bn to justify upgrading to Omega.  This is proving very tough to achieve.

Therefore, my plan is to focus on Manufacturing and Planetary Interaction for now.

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.

Outlook

October will have nine very conservative aims - I feel September was an outlier month.

1) Plex the three omega accounts - aim number one all the time

2) Hold sales in Dodixie to at least 70% of September

3) Hold sales in Amarr to at least 70% of September

4) Hold sales in Rens to at least 70% of September

5) Hold sales in Hek to at least 70% of September

6) Ramp up Sobaseki to at least 70% of September

7) Ramp up Tush-Murkon Prime to at least 70% of September

8) Increase the investment and profits in Manufacturing

9) Continue to investigate Planetary Interaction

 

The daily sales in September averaged 11.8bn.

For the 10bn profit target: If i assume i need to make 10bn + 7.1bn income per month (=17.1bn) and i assume i can achieve 15.0% margin then i need to make monthly sales of 106bn and so daily sales of 3.5bn.

So far i have achieved this in every month since December 2020 except February 2021, May 2021 and June 2021.

Current wealth is 540bn ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 13bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 3bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 14.9bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 0bn ISK
• items for sale 604bn ISK

• less a 20% provision 121bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 26bn 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.