Alpha market trading - The First Trades

8 February 2026 - early hours of the morning

So, i start with 12m million isk.

I sit in Dodixie (in the old days you could see your cabin in the station).

What i am looking for are items with little competition that sell once or twice a day.

The Basic Rules of Regional Trading

Think of your customers as players with billions who are careful on their spending but time poor.

At this starting level, the Tycoons and big cheeses are not competing against you.  It will never be easier than this.

Players will be careful on price for items that are consumable like ammo or items used in manufacturing but wont care on items that can be bought once and rarely lost.  Like Blueprints.

As a general rule, if an item appears on someone's spreadsheet then avoid it.

Players wont travel even one jump to save on price unless the difference is outrageous.  So for us, a Blueprint selling in Dodixie for 1 million vs 300k one jump out will still sell for 1 million in Dodixie.

Blueprints for ammo - they are good to go.  Players don't care about price.  Skill books also.  Items that a player will likely buy once only - they will be price insenstive.

When i am sitting in Dodixie, how do i know the price if items in Jita?

There are a number of ways.  For now i use Eve Tycoon or the Eve Excel Addin.

My next blog post will be on Eve Tycoon

What to sell

So i am going to go for Ammo Blueprints.

I am looking for items that i can Buy in Jita from Sell Orders and Sell in Dodixie for a lot more.

I am avoiding items in Jita that are sold by NPCs (i.e. Expires in over 90 days, typically >300 days).

The initial ideas are:

Amarr Drone Specialization

Caldari Drone Specialization

Inferno Heavy Assault Missile Blueprint

Inferno Heavy Missile Blueprint

Minmatar Drone Specialization

Mjolnir Cruise Missile Blueprint

Mjolnir Heavy Assault Missile Blueprint

Mjolnir Heavy Missile Blueprint

Nova Cruise Missile Blueprint

Nova Heavy Assault Missile Blueprint

Nova Heavy Missile Blueprint

Scourge Cruise Missile Blueprint

Scourge Heavy Assault Missile Blueprint

Scourge Heavy Missile Blueprint

Venture Blueprint

I decide to try and sell:

In other words, i spend 11.3 million on buying items in Jita from Sell Orders and i put them up in Dodixie for a total of 27.8 million.

I spent 663k on Broker Fees.  My alpha character pays 3% Broker Fees.

Cash left is 510k.  So all nicely invested.  Which is what i want.

My alpha character has 17 Order slots, so 8 are now used.

Lets see how this goes.

A lovely screen shot