MCT deal from June 2024 - now paid off leaving 6 months pure profit to come

The June 2024 Omega and MCT Deal

Back in June 2024 i took advantage of what was a brilliant deal to buy 12 months of Omega (the game ticket to allow premium play) and 24 MCT (allows me to train the other 2 characters in an account) for all my 6 accounts.

I actually upgraded 2 of my Alpha accounts to Omega to participate further in this.

My view at the time was that i could take part in this and through the skill farming from all the characters i did not need to train anymore i could pay for the cost in 6 months and then make good profits in the final 6 months.  And therefore get the 12 months of Omega for free.

The result to date (actually to mid January 2025)

The cost was 130bn isk - that was the catch, you had to have c22bn or so per account lying around.

In 6 months I have covered all the costs amd made profits of 4bn isk after all costs including taxes.  So the 130bn is now covered.  Inline with expectations.

Therefore, i have 6 more months of pure profit making to come from skill training.  Not unfair to assume i can make another 135bn in that time.

So, this deal in June got me 12 months of Omega for free and i will make total profits of 135bn.  Fantastic.

Profit vs Cash

Worth noting that i am still buying Skill Extractors to cover for the next 6 months.  Therefore, although i am in profit the net cash spent (sales less all costs) is still 181bn isk.  As is the case in real life, profit is not cash but they do converge over time.

How does this reconcile?  Well, I have 149bn of Skill Extractors in inventory and 36bn of Skill Injectors in inventory, and then the cash spent of 181bn.  Hence, 149+36-181 = 4bn profit.

The 36bn of Skill Injectors are valued at lower than the bid price of Jita - so i am comfortable there.  The 149bn of Extractors reflects the price i paid for them and they will be converted into higher value Skill Injectors anyway - so i am comfortable with the value of these.

The maximum net cash i had spent during all this was 261bn.  That reflects the 130bn initial cost and then buying Skill Extractors at good prices to get the Skill Farm flowing.

The Accounting of this all.

For the Accountants here, the below shows the Profit & Loss Account, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement of this venture.

The narrative above discussed the Balance Sheet.

Tbe Profit & Loss Statement shows 280bn of sales, 13.6bn of Gross Profits and then after Transaction Taxes and Broker Fees gives the Profits of 3.8bn.

The "Cost of Sales" is made up of isk spent on extractors and startup less items i have in inventory.  i.e. what is going on here is that if i spend 100bn on extractors but still had 80bn of them in inventory then for the purposes of this profit calculation i recognise that as 20bn spent as costs.

The Cashflow statement shows how the profits of 3.8bn ends up being cash spent of 180.6bn.  The answer is that i have spent 148bn on skill extractors that i still hold in inventory and i have 36bn of Injectors still to sell.  In the Accounting world that is known as the "movement in working capital".

Another 12 month Omega for Free + 24 month MCT - still a good deal in the New Eden Store

The same deal we saw in June 2024 which i wrote about here is back.  The bottom line is that if you are willing to commit at least 2 of your characters in an Account to skill farming with maximum skill point generation then you will get 12 month Omega for free.

Ends on 28 January.

You will need 26bn per account to get the 12 month deal (unless you already have the Plex) and then some more to buy some skill extractors.

That said, it is not as good a deal as June 2024.  The Profits have halved.  And if you only have 2 characters in an Account Skill Farming you will break even (=you get 12 month Omega for free, so that's still a good deal).  If you have 3 characters skill farming then you will get the 12 month Omega for free and make a profit of 16bn over 12 months,

So, right now in the New Eden Store you can buy 1 mth / 3 mths / 6 mths / 12 mths of Omega and enough MCT certificates to keep all your characters in the Account training over the period of the Omega you buy.

Lets do the Maths for a dedicated Skill Farming Account

The below is for a dedicated skill farming account.  Assumes going for the 12 month deal, the Plex cost 5.3m, 45 skill points per minute, cost per skill extractor 535m and cost per skill injector 830m (these are after tax numbers).

Total Set up costs 26bn, profits from buying skill extractors and selling skill injectors 42bn.  Therefore total profits 16bn which is just over 1.3bn per month.

For the June 2024 deal, the Set up costs were lower at 22bn isk because Plex was lower and the Price is Skill Injectors was higher at 900m isk vs 830 today.  Therefore, back in June 2024 the Total profits were 30bn isk which was almost 2.5bn isk per month.

If you did the 3 month deal you would make 8bn profits over all (=0.7bn per month), if you did the 6 month deal you would make 12bn profit (=1.0bn per month).

Lets do the Maths for a 2 character Skill Farming Account

The below is for a normal account where 2 characters are skill farming.  Assumes going for the 12 month deal, the Plex cost 6.3m, 45 skill points per minute, cost per skill extractor 535m and cost per skill injector 830m (these are after tax numbers).

Total Set up costs 26bn, profits from buying skill extractors and selling skill injectors 28bn.  Therefore total profits 2bn which is just over 0.2bn per month.

So, its tights.  Too tight.  If Skill Injectors move down or Skill Extractors move up then it fails.  But . . . . . . you will still end up paying a fraction for 12 month Skill Injectors vs normal.

If you did the 3 month deal you would make 8bn profits over all (=0.7bn per month), if you did the 6 month deal you would make 12bn profit (=1.0bn per month).

Omega for Free

In both cases, therefore, the Omega effectively comes for free as long as the skill farming is kept up.

In the case of the dedicated skill farming account the initial capital is paid off in just under 6 months.

In the case of the normal account the initial capital is paid off in just over 11 months.

Final Word

The maths is worse for 1 / 3 / 6 month deal.  You really need to go for the 12 month deal to get the best outcome.

For those that want to see the 3 / 6 / 12 month data in one place

(these are before tax)

My Ground Rules of Pricing an Item for Sale

Worth saying straight away that this is specific to my strategy of focusing outside of Jita and on slow moving items that have little competition.

The golden rule is to achieve a 25% item profit margin: what this means is if i buy something for 750m then i will put it up for sale for 1bn.  Therefore the profit before taxes should be 250m which is 25% of the 1bn sales price.  This is driven by my tax, courier costs, some sort of estimate of relisting fees coming to around 9% of sales price (i need to update this given the recent tax changes) leaving me with a 16% overall margin (=25-9).  I.e. for every 1bn of sales i make 160m of profit to go towards plex / omega.

Price relative to competition: if your target price to achieve the 25% profit margin is, say, 410,000,000 isk but competition is pricing at 620,000,000 then put your order in at 599,900,000.  It looks a good deal and is clearly better than the 25% margin target.

Price relative to last Sale: again, if your target price to achieve the 25% profit margin is, say, 410,000,000 isk but the last sale was done very recently at 520,000,000 and there is no competition then put your order in at 499,900000.  It achieves the 25% margin target but still looks a good deal at the higher price.

Price one tick below the round number: if the target Sale price is, for example, 350,000,000 then put the Sell Order up for 349,900,000.  This is common retail practice.  It gives the impression that you are offering a deal, have thought about the price and that you are active.

In the Trade Hubs of Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek you do not need to compete with Sell Orders outside those Stations:  If the lowest sale price for an item is 205,000,000 in the station where as there is a Sell Order for the same item 1 jump away for 190,000,000 the you are good to price your item at 204,900,000.  Players will not travel even one jump outside a Trade Hub to buy a cheaper item.

Pricing for items that sell in 2s or more (i.e. mining lasers sell in 2s and mining drones sell in 5s): if someone is undercutting your item here for a large amount with a single item of theirs then there is no need to undercut them.  Given these items sell in 2s or more then a Buyer will look at the total cost of the bundle and therefore the competitor undercutting will merely be making the bundle look cheaper.

Always undercut competition: everyday you must update your orders and undercut the competition.  You must always give the impression that you are there every day and will always undercut.  Competition will eventually get tired and go after easy targets.  In my time in Eve Online there is only once i have been forced out of the market.

Don't buyout a cheap competitor sell order: unless it is below the Jita Buy Price; you never know if the competitor has a lot more where that came from.

Make sure you don't go to a discount to Jita Sell Orders: i use the Eve Online Excel Addon for this but over time Jita prices will rise or a competitor will try and take the price below Jita prices.  If Jita prices rise then i dont really mind, i will still be making a good profit on my purchase price.  But if a competitor is trying to take the price below Jita prices then i wont follow.

Double-clicking in the Station opens the Inventory Window

This is one of those useful-to-know tips that speeds up your gameplayer.

If you are docked, then double-clicking your left mouse button will open the ship's cargo hold.

If you then set the "settings" on the cargo window to "Always show the full tree" then the double-click will always open the normal Inventory window.

Month end update - December 2024

I made 136bn profits in December 2024 from which i utilised 28bn of my skill farm (more of that below) and distributed 17bn (more of that below).  Therefore, my wealth rose by 90bn to 2.111 trillion isk.

If i just focus on the 136bn profits then this was my best month ever.

Furthermore, i suspect in January i will have finished paying off the Omega-MCT deal and therefore after that every skill point extracted will be sold for pure profit.

Distributions

These days, the aim is to distribute my profits to the Oz Tank Show or other ventures.

So far i have given 323bn to other Eve shows:

260bn isk to the Oz Tank Show

42.5bn to The Oz Show

5bn to the podcast Declarations of War to sponsor it.

13.2bn to the Nth_Dimensional Twitch show

1.6bn to the Raff_About_It show

The Oz Tank Show started in July 2023 and i have generated profits of 1.181 trillion in the July 2023 - December 2024 period and distributed 323bn.

So that leaves 858bn isk to distribute to some venture(s).

It is early days but the Oz Show is considering having some of its tycoons sponsor a new Corporation.  Lets see.

Six Omega Accounts to pay for / Skill Farming

In June 2024 i went for the MCT / Omega deal and have now pre-funded 6 accounts (so the 4 omega accounts and 2 alpha accounts) for 12 months.

This also took me into Skill Farming for the first time.

I spent 130bn isk on all that - and so how to account for this?  Basically, i could either say that was 130bn spent in one month or i could spread the cost of the 130bn over a timeframe (which is how i have always accounted for Omega bought that lasts for longer than a month).

Accounting for the MCT / Omega Deal

I went for the option of spreading the cost of the 130bn over a time period.

The 130bn bought me a 12 month Omega for 6 of my accounts and 12 months of MCT for 2 characters per Account.

As i skill farm i will generate revenues by selling Large Skill Injectors.

The way i have decided to account for this is to:

I will hold the 130bn on by Balance Sheet and as i sell the Skill Points into the market will will reduce the 130bn by the profits made.  This will mean i will not earn any profits from my Skill Farming until the 130bn asset is exhausted.

Hence, in August i made 17bn profits on my Skill Farms and so the 130bn asset reduced to 113bn and then in September i made 20bn profits from Skill Farms and so the asset was reduced further to 93.3bn and then in October i made 26bn profits from Skill Farms, in November i made 28bn and in December i made another 28bn.  Therefore the asset on the Balance Sheet is 130-17-20-26-28-28 = 9bn.

I expect it will take 1 more month to reduce this asset to nil by which time the profits made on the Skill Farming will then be taken as pure profit.

So, thinking this through by the end of January i should have recouped the investment leaving 4 to 5 more months of pure profit from Skill Farming, and of course, the 12 months of Omega all paid for each of the 6 accounts.

This was a brilliant deal.

The basic numbers for December

In December i had sales of 516bn isk vs November of 401bn.  So a rise of 29%.

That is my best month of sales ever (my second best was 408bn in April 2024) and above the long running average 330bn isk though helped by Skill Farms.

This comes to average daily sales of 16.6bn isk.  In other words, each evening i expect to see across all my accounts an additional 16bn isk (less transaction taxes) sitting on the characters to be reinvested back into the markets.

Item profits were 178bn isk which is a margin of 35% (178/516).  So above the 25% target.  There will be an upwards distortion from Skill Farming in here which one day i may attempt to reverse.

Two of my courier contracts i issued failed which generated a "profit" of 3.6bn isk.  As always, if a courier contacts me if the contract fails i will almost always re-imburse them the surplus collateral.

Taxes and Courier fees came to 47bn isk.  That takes the Trading Profits to 136bn isk and so a trading margin of 26.3% (136/516).  Above the 16% target.

Then we have 28bn Skill Farming Asset amortised to take me to 107bn profits

I then distributed 17bn isk as described above to take the increase in wealth for December to 90bn.

A good month.

What is needed to get wealth to rise to 100bn in a month?

In some ways, i am there now.

Once i get to the situation where the 130bn Omega is paid off and the Skill farming goes to profit then i have generation over 100bn profits per month in the last 4 months (September - December).

But lets assume i only get the 25% item profit margin that i target . . . . therefore to get 100bn isk of an increase in wealth before distributions i would need to make daily sales of 18bn isk.

I am pretty sure i wont get there sustainably on the current strategy (pre skill farms) so i am putting my mind to how else to earning isk.  Skill Farming is one idea.  May need more.  Alternatively, i could just become more profitable which is what is happening now.

My Sales Strategy

I am putting more effort into designing spreadsheets using the Eve Excel Addin to both make my online time more efficient and find those items to sell in the Regions quicker.

This is allowing me to move faster each night.  Currently, i can now see which of my trades need updated and go straight to them rather than cycle through all trades.  I can also see which sales have been made so i can see if i can replace them.  I can also see what items i can buy from Jita Sell Orders to put up for sale in the trade hubs and make my target margin.

My strategy is to Buy from Sell Orders in Jita to sell in the trading hubs in other Regions.

I don't sell consumable items such as ammunition given they tend to be high volume and very competitive.  That includes ships.

I rarely sell items used as components in manufacturing because the end buyer tends to be cost conscious (and armed with spreadsheets) and able to manufacture the items themselves if market prices are too high.

I sell items that are in low supply and sell very slowly.  These items tend to have very low competition - sellers want to get cash quickly and so don't bother in these items.  If i put an item on the market and it sells in 15 days that is fine with me.

These items also tend to be price insensitive - players will buy the item almost whatever the price.  The Buyer is much more interested in getting the item to use now rather than setting off to Jita to get it cheaper.

I sell items that are typically bought to kit a ship as a player progresses or has to replace a destroyed ship / pod.

Each month i sell 20-30% of what i had to sell at the start of the month.

I have a rule that the minimum profits have to be 100m isk.  It is no use me buying items for 5m to sell them for 15m.  The profitability may be great but that won't move the dials.  That said, it is surprising how many items i can buy for 120m from Jita Sell Orders and sell for 220m in the other trading hubs.  At that isk level, players re-equipping don't care about spending an additional 100m isk to save time.

And in the secondary trading hubs Amarr / Dodixie / Rens / Hek buyers will not travel even one jump to buy a cheaper item.

Therefore, i mostly sell Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment and some structure modules.  And more recently Large Skill Injectors.

What is selling well in December

Felt like most things did well in December.  Can't say any one group took off or fell away.

The market was better in September, October, November and December!  Back to the good old days for me after a quiet July and August.

Blueprints: these continue to plod along and generate good income for me; mostly ship blueprints and some other capital items.  Whilst they are a nice source of income they are also the slowest sellers.  Every week i am updating a price of blueprints to prevent them getting over 90 days old on the market.

Implants: still do well though i have noticed a keen competitor or two in the main trading hubs.  My experience with Implants is that they sell by the family - i.e. the alpha / beta / delta / epsilon / gamma / omega implant all sell to the same buyer at once.  So they can be good earners when they occur.  This is definitely a slowing market for me.

Mining equipment: almost nothing sold other than a few high priced items.  The competition is all over this.

Ship Equipment: doing better over a right old range of items - afterburners, armour repairs, shield repairs, weapons are the main staples.

Manufacturing

I do this opportunistically and i don't keep track of it.  I don't (yet) do it systematically but i need to get a grip.  I am sure there are many items i sell in the Trade Hubs that i could manufacture in Jita and so get a better in price vs buying them from Jita Sell Orders.

But so far i manufacture items that sell for over 1bn isk.  My favourite items are where the Blueprint Original costs >10bn and there are no Copies in the Contract Market.  Sort of makes me feel i have the market to myself.

That said, the Oz Show had a great interview with Sir SmashAlot where he talked about his manufacturing activities to the tune of making over 1 trillion profits per month!  And the author of the blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... has moved into manufacturing and is making a good job of it.

That has made me think more about giving manufacturing a shot and so i logged back into old characters to bring them into the fold and so that i can start again on manufacturing.

Planetary Interaction

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Research

For now, i have stopped trying to make this work.

Station Trading

All in Jita.  And i am not focusing on this for now, so only 15bn sales.

I don't really have a process up and running that is scalable.

My idea of station trading is not buying items when they look cheap.  For me, station trading is about sticking to the slow moving items and quite often i am the only person in Jita trying to sell an item.  Almost always Selling for over 1bn isk.

What i don't do is Investing.  I.e. i don't buy an item now i think is cheap and hold onto it to sell it a few months later when the price has risen.

Alpha Accounts

I have 1 Alpha account with a character in Venal left.  All the others were upgraded to Omega last summer to start Skill Farming.

I also added another character to that account and am training it up to 5m skill points.  The idea here is to get another set of Alpha Accounts ready for Skill Farming sometime in the future if needed.

Plex

At the start of September i bought 8000 Plex at around 5.3m each.  The main reason for doing this is to have a store of plex ready in case of any deals on the NEX store that comes along.  I now have 18,300 Plex.

Items in hanger for sale

There are a number of items that i sell that can only be sourced from Regions outside of The Forge (the home of Jita).

I used to have these items couriered directly to the trading location to sell but that has proved to be tedious over time.

Therefore, i now have the items couriered to Jita and stored.  When i a trade location needs one of these items to be sold i can then courier them from Jita - a much easier process to handle.

In effect this means i am couriering these items twice - once to Jita and once to the trade location.  Therefore, i add the additional courier cost to the Sale's price.

I also hold some BPOs + minerals + other items in inventory.

All that comes to around 151bn.

Furthermore, i am buying Skill Extractors all the time and i hold Large Skill Injectors for sale.  Currently, these come to around 185bn.

And finally, the old characters i logged back into came with around 110bn of items in their hangers.

What it means is that items in Hangers used to be 20bn but is now 417bn (this also now includes Skill Extractors and Large Skill Injectors).

Buy Orders

Buy Orders have varied over time and peaked at around 80bn as i was also buying Skill Extractors.  However, i now have enough Skill Extractors for a few months so i have slowed down and so the Buy Orders are declining also to 57bn.

Once i get a grip, Buy Orders will also increase as i ramp up the Station Trading in Jita.

Currently Buy Orders sit at 57bn which is part Skill Extractor Buy Orders and Jita Buy Orders to station trade items.

ISK

I have 118bn spare ISK kicking around.

For the last 12 months the average ISK in wallets has been over 100bn compared to around 50bn before this.

The reason for his is purely real life being busy and so not having the time to make sure everything is invested.

It feels a waste - i should have as much as i can invested.  I have Plex ready for any NES deals that come along.

2 trillion wealth

Before i got to 1 trillion wealth, 2 trillion was the next aim.

But, it just got boring watching my wealth rise so i set myself the task of giving everything above 1 trillion away.

However, my wealth is now 2 trillion despite giving away 323bn and taking a provision of 324 bn.  If neither of these things had been done then my current wealth would be 2.8 trillion isk.

Current Wealth

Current wealth is 2.111 trillion ISK made up from:

• Plex held as an investment 114bn ISK
• Items in hanger for sale 417bn ISK
• Items in hanger for use in business 11bn ISK
• Omega brought forward 9bn ISK
• Buy orders on the market 57bn ISK
• items for sale 1.73 trillion ISK

• less a 20% provision 346bn ISK*

• ISK in wallet 119bn 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.

Twitch - my subs, gift subbing and related charities donations + Patreon fees = £15,000

Almost £15,000 gifted

I am a late arriver to twitch.  I think i started watching content in around 2022.  I focus almost purely on Eve Online.

And my first gift sub was in May 2023 to ContempoEnterprises who is still going strong.

Since then i now pay monthly subs to some content creators i like, get involved in gifting subs, donate to Charities fronted by Eve content creators on Twitch and contribute to Patreon fees.

So, i wondered how much in total i had spent in total since then to 31 December 2024.

The answer is almost £15,000.

. . . . . . and its all in my budget, so no worries there.

Monthly Subs (=£370)

I currently have monthly subs for 7 content creators.  They come at about £5 per month.

contempoenterprises (20 months subbed)

oz_eve (19 months subbed)

eve_university (14 months subbed)

funinc (13 months subbed)

bigglesworthxd (4 months subbed)

theoneandonlysidar (3 months subbed)

nth_dimensional (1 months subbed)

Gift Subs (=£8,620)

I have gifted 2,155 subs.

This is where i gift a monthly sub to a specific or random member of the audience.  I can gift anywhere from 1 to 100 subs at any one time.  And i suspect i have done the complete range.

(I had to recall the content creators i had gifted to work this out, the Twitch Wallet Payment History page stops working quite quickly).

I suspect the average price is £4 per sub - it varies with discounts for volume and seasonal discounts.

I will say right now, Twitch do it well and they know what they are doing: starting or sustaining a hype train is exhilarating; gifting with less than a minute to go on the hype train is great fun; taking content creators to new records puts me on a high.

oz_eve - gifted 1597 subs

raff_about_it - gifted 152 subs

theoneandonlysidar - gifted 147 subs

contempoenterprises - gifted 117 subs

dangerous_d666 - gifted 50 subs

nth_dimensional - gifted 45 subs

schadsquatch - gifted 19 subs

funinc - gifted 10 subs

crashnaps - gifted 6 subs

sniperkrizz - gifted 6 subs

asuralite - gifted 1 subs

imperiumnews - gifted 1 subs

milkonedge - gifted 1 subs

moon_wolf83 - gifted 1 subs

spacedoutblonde - gifted 1 subs

uedamascout - gifted 1 subs

Charities (=£5,070)

Eve players often have 24 hour charity streams for their favourite causes which i donate to.

schadsquatch / ExtraLife $1570

spacedoutblonde / ExtraLife $1185

sokaars_legions / ExtraLife $3207

contempoenterprises / Cancer Charity £300

I know there are one or two others i have done but can't find the records of.

In the (UK) tax year to April 2024, i spent another £7,400 on non-Eve Charitable donations (so not included in the £15k here) which will only include £300 of the above - donations to overseas charities does not get any tax relief so i don't record this on the Tax Return.

In the UK charity donations are paid out of gross income and therefore when i donate to UK charities the first 20% of the overpaid tax goes to the charity and then the following 25% comes back to me.  Hence, if i donate £80 to a charity then the charity gets an additional £20 and i get £25 back.

Patreon - Eve related (=£794)

I also contribute to Patreon for the following Eve Content generators, some monthly and some annually.

Xre Sloracknor for 51 months, ongoing =$510 (since 2020) (this is evetycoon)

The Oz (Oz_Eve) for 1 year, ongoing =£224

Declarations of War for 4 months, ongoing =$60

What for 2025?

Well, this all depends on my year end bonus at work which i will know in January.

Jita - my central distribution warehouse

I would say 90% of what i sell is bought from Sell Orders in Jita.

10% of what i sell i buy outside of Jita.  These are typically Blueprints that come from NPCs in other Regions.

How this worked historically

If one of my Trade locations needed one of those Blueprints that are not found in Jita to sell i would Buy it at source from the Sell Order and have it couriered.

That was quite a tedious mechanical operation requiring my spreadsheet to remember where these items could be sourced from.  And made for tedious couriering of say one item for 500m collateral from the back of beyond and so only 10m of fees,

Jita is now the central warehouse

The aim now is for 100% of all items to leave from Jita.

This is much easier to manage and avoids all the issues of multiple clicking to open to characters to buy these items.  Loads of clicks.

Therefore, what i now do is buy up a stock of these non-Jita items and courier them to Jita to sit in inventory and wait to be couriered to the eventual Trade location to be sold.

So, every so often i buy up several billion isk worth to courier to Jita.

Of course, these items are couriered twice in their life cycle vs once for items sourced in Jita.  I typically pay 2% courier fees.  Therefore, what i do is add this 2% to the cost of the item so that when i sell it i recover the cost of this additional courier leg.

But it is well worth it.  Life is much easier now.

The downside is that i have isk tied up in inventory.

. . . .  . . i may be mistaken but i think this is the business model FedEx fall into which worked so successfully.