As at the end of February 2023 my wealth is 868bn ISK after paying 8.2bn to upgrade to Omega for another 30 days for four accounts. My Wealth increased by 57bn in February.
Technically, my wealth is 1.053 trillion ISK but i always take a 20% provision against Sell Orders to be conservative. Hence i quote 868bn.
A pleasing month into what is normally a slower month after winter.
The target of 1 trillion ISK is coming into sight. I still reckon i can get there by the end of June.
Quick Summary
Life definitely slowed down from the strong months of November, December and January.
Overall sales were down 18% to 371bn. Nothing to be ashamed of, fourth best month ever.
Of my main Trading Hubs, only Hek was up vs January.
My new Omega account that covers Arnon and Alentene justified itself in its first month with Arnon producing a respectable 16bn of sales.
What sold well? Implants and ship equipment. Blueprints remain on the decline - whoever was selling Blueprints in Jita has woken up and is back again. So i am effectively out of that market.
My item profit margin market fell back out of the 28-30% range to 26.3% (28.2% in January). But this remains above my 25% margin target - so i am happy here.
In the last 12 months i have made sales of 3.6 trillion isk and profits (after everything including Plex) of 567bn isk having spent 68bn 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 23 / 30 months i have been running this venture and indeed in all of the last 19 months.
Plex and Omega deals
We had another deal where the Plex required to buy Omega was reduced across all time ranges (1 month, 3, 6, 12 and 24).
For now, i go for the 3 month Omega deals given i think they give me the best bang for my buck.
Therefore, since September 2022 i have used deals to Omega my accounts.
I bought a 3 month Omega with Plex back in September / October and did the same again in February.
The way i think about this is that i view buying a 3 month Omega as buying an asset that is expensed over three months. So, in my wealth i carry an "Omega" asset that goes to zero by May.
Activity
I continue to come on once a day to update Sell orders and replace items sold. About 30-45 minutes. Getting closer to 45 minutes these days.
I am experimenting with Manufacturing (ramping up slowly) and Planetary Interaction (winding this up for now).
Over 95% of my sales and profits still come from Regional Trading. So far 3% comes from Manufacturing and 1% from Planetary Interaction - more on those two in coming posts.
Target 1bn profits per day after all taxes and plex costs
I have now achieved this aim for the last eight months. Was not expecting to. As i have witnessed in 2020 and 2021, the final quarter of the year is the strongest and 2022 was no different. Lets see how the first half of 2023 goes. So far January and February have been kind to me for this target.
I could point out that for the last four months i have made over 2bn isk per day but i know that won't last as we get into the quieter months over the summer.
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 current 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. = 7.5bn daily 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.
Looking at some sensitivity analysis
- if my item margins 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 February aims
I had been realistic in my Aims after what was a strong December and January.
1) Plex the four omega accounts - aim number one all the time - achieved
2) Hold sales in Dodixie to down 40% - achieved, sales fell 35%
3) Hold sales in Amarr to down 40% - achieved, sales fell 5%
4) Hold sales in Rens to down 40% - achieved, sales fell 18%
5) Hold sales in Hek to down 40% - achieved, sales rose 15%
6) Hold sales in Sobaseki to down 40% - failed, sales fell 44%
7) Hold sales in Tush-Murkon Prime to down 40% - achieved, sales rose 80%
8) Ramp up Arnon and Alentene - achieved and ongoing
9) Hold the investment and profits in Manufacturing - achieved, sales and profits rose
10) Continue to investigate Planetary Interaction - achieved, and deciding to wind this up for now.
Overall, this was a strong month in meeting almost all the aims.
Started a fourth Omega Account
I bit the bullet and started a fourth Omega account in January with trading Alts in Arnon and Alentene. Very early days and i was not really sure about it. So far, so good.
I am stocking up each alt by effectively reinvesting the profits from my business into these locations.
As expected, there is next to no competition much like Tash-Murkon and Sobaseki. So the sales may be low but the time requirement is very low. On some days, if i don't make any sales at one of these locations then i don't bother checking the prices - i know that there will be no competition. This is as close to "passive income" i think i will get.
Reminder of my Current Business.
For now 95% of what i do is inter-regional trading - buying from Sell Orders in 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. In other words, i don't really care if an item sells once every 10 or 20 days, if have many hundreds of items for sales across Eve and so each days a few items will sell and that generates all my income.
To put this in perspective. I had Sell Orders of 906bn up at the start of February which generate sales of 371bn. In other words, i sold between 1% to 2% of everything i had for sale every day. The is slow and i like it. Not for me the cut and thrust of high volume low margin world. Slow and easy for me.
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 eight Omega alts in Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek, Sobaseki, Tash-Murkon Arnon and Alentene 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 four omega accounts (paid for with plex) with twelve 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), Tash-Murkon Prime (in Tash-Murkon), Arnon (in Essence) and Alentene (in Verge Vendor).
The other four 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 and Arnon / Alentene 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 / Tash-Murkon alts and Arnon / Alentene made the grade and were upgraded in two accounts.
The other regions so far are: Placid; Citadel and Khanid. And i am in an NPC station in Delve and Outer Ring. I have started in Venal.
I am struggling to make the Low Sec locations work.
Jita
I had a good time making sales in Jita since September. I feel these times are coming to an end now. I used to make sales of 8bn per month. By November that peaked at 100bn and in January had fallen to 75bn. I estimate that accounted for 15% of my profits. February was slower still with sales of £39bn.
I was going to come out of Jita but looking at these numbers in the cold light of day makes me reverse that decision. It is harder work but worth it.
What has caused sales to fall from 100bn to 39bn is that whoever was selling higher priced blueprints in Jita was missing-in-action and only came back towards the end of December. Therefore, i was making hay for the last three months of 2022.
I intend to ramp up my manufacturing operating slowly over time and this will then be sold out of Jita.
I also do station trading in Jita (that is - put Buy Orders up in Jita and then when those Buy Orders are executed i then put the item up for Sale in Jita at a higher price). I stick to the slow moving items again.
I had started a while ago putting cheap Buy Orders up in the Trading locations and having the items shipped to Jita to be sold - but that was too much work so it is being wound down.
I don't know what the Station Trading the shipping items in Jita did for me - but i suspect it was good money.
Manufacturing
I am now eight months into my Manufacturing project. It remains slow and i need to up my game (i know, i said that before).
In February i made 12bn of sales generating an item profit of 3.3bn and so after taxes a profit of 2.7bn.
So at least in February i made my manufacturing target of being able to cover the cost of an Omega account.
Planetary Interaction
I am still experimenting for now, getting to understand it all.
I have abandoned the idea of extracting from planets in High Sec - i just could not extract enough to make it work. At best with three alts operating six planets each i could make 1bn isk profit per month for the cost of an extra 45 minutes every three days.
I also experimented with factory planets only. So buying the raw materials, shipping them to the planet and then taking away the finished product. That only really worked if i bought the materials from outside of Jita in my main Trading locations.
It was hard work getting the raw materials to my factory planets - mainly because there is not enough on sale around the universe to keep the factory planets going at full capacity.
Also, i noticed that if i merely shipped the raw materials from my Trading Hubs to Jita and then put the raw materials up for sale then i would make just as good profits and quicker.
I had noticed that the Import and Export taxes for Planetary Interaction really hit profits.
But, even that was proving to be hard work and time consuming.
So for now, i have stopped it all.
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; Citadel and Khanid. And i am in an NPC station in Delve, Outer Ring and now Venal.
My alts in Arnon and Alentene were upgraded to Omega during January - but for the purposes of the below, lets assume they were still Alpha. It will take me a few months to get them fully up to speed in terms of maxing out the relevant Trade skills/
The alpha trading locations made combined sales of 5.3bn in February which is a decline from the 7.9bn made in January.
I have been scaling back. I don't replace the sales made anymore.
The trial has been done, i feel i know what Locations are best and which don't work.
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.
As with my other alpha accounts i am letting it wither away on the vine.
I am rethinking how to make low/null sec work.
Plex
I am aim to store up to 6 months of Omega for each of the Omega accounts which would mean buying 12000 Plex (= 6 x 4 x 500).
I now have 4500 in stock - so no change during February. I don't plan on buying any Plex in the near term given my surplus isk is going into stocking up on the Arnon and Alentene trading locations.
That said, CCP are changing their attitude to Omega prices and there is a permanent sale on that gives a discount to the Plex required for longer periods of Omega purchases.
I went through this in this post and came to the conclusion that the 3 month deal which is 3 months Omega for 1200 plex (vs the normal 1500) was a great deal, so i went for it for my four Omega accounts.
A minor accounting point (again)
Similar to back in September 2022, i have to think how i account for buying three months of Omega for each Omega account (4 accounts). I repeated this in December.
Hence, in the December deal and in February i spent 26bn and 18bn respectively buying 3 month Omega deals for Plex.
The way i account for this is to hold the entire amount as wealth and reduce this "asset" by a month at a time.
So, the 26bn spent in December was reduced by one month in January and another month in February leaving one more month to go. And the 18bn spent on another 3 month deal is still there in full and will start being reduced in March.
The alternative accounting treatment would be to count the 26bn and 18bn as costs in the month they were expensed which means December and February would look week but January, March and April stronger.
It all adds up to the same number just the timing of recognising the cost is different.
Analysis of Trading Profits
In total i made 371bn ISK of sales in February which made me item profits of 98bn 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 18% in February which reflects declines in almost all trading locations; and down overall in the Alpha accounts.
Amarr took the top slot away from Dodixie with 93bn sales, Hek moved up to third above Rens.
The item profits of 98bn was an item margin of 26.3% (98/371) vs my target of 25%. This is another good month for margins.
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 371= 7.4bn
Sales tax cost me 13.7bn ISk (=3.69% of sales) - the Dodixie, Amarr, Rens, Hek Sobaseki, Tash-Murkon and Jita characters are level 5 in Accounting (=sales tax of 3.6%); Alentene and Arnon are training up, and of course all the alpha alt accounts are only Level 1 (=sales tax of 8%).
Broker Fees costs me 10.7bn (=2.9% 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 371= 5.6bn and so the Relisting Fee = 10.7-5.6 = 5.1bn which is 1.4% of sales. That shows that i do change prices quite often, bias to Amarr and now Jita.
This takes my 'Business Profits' to 65bn ISK for February vs 83bn in January. This is what 30-40 minutes a day in Februady gave me.
So, the post-tax margin is 17.6% (65/371) and so i achieved the 15% target.
The omega charge was then 8.2bn (see above in Plex section)
That, therefore, is the road map from 371bn sales to 57bn increase in wealth.
Items i am selling in Dodixie, Amarr, Rens, Hek, Sobaseki, Tash-Murkon, Arnon and Alentene
No Change from January.
I sell blueprints, skill books, implants and ship equipment.
Blueprints retreated in February having made a steady come back.
Implants are doing well 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.
Mining equipment is slowing as more traders enter this market but is still making decent profits. I suspect this is one of my lowest sales item group now.
Skill books are now my lowest income generator for me but there are still a few nice sellers.
Ship Equipment 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%.
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
March will have ten very conservative aims - I expect March to continue the slowdown seen in February. Hence, the aim will be:
1) Plex the four omega accounts - aim number one all the time
2) Hold sales in Dodixie to down 20%
3) Hold sales in Amarr to down 20%
4) Hold sales in Rens to down 20%
5) Hold sales in Hek to down 20%
6) Hold sales in Sobaseki to down 42%
7) Hold sales in Tush-Murkon Prime to down 20%
8) Ramp up Arnon and Alentene
9) Hold the investment and profits in Manufacturing
The daily sales in February averaged 13.3bn.
Current wealth is 868bn ISK made up from:
- Plex held as an investment 22bn ISK
- Items in hanger for sale 7bn ISK
- Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
- Omega brought forward 27bn ISK
- Buy orders on the market 13bn ISK
- items for sale 929bn ISK
- less a 20% provision 186bn 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. The only exception to this rule is Blueprint Originals i use for manufacturing. They are held at cost.
* 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.
