My Sales Strategy within my Regional Trading Business

My Sales Strategy within my Regional Trading Business

Regional Trading is about 80%-90% of my Eve Online business.  Other Revenue streams are growing faster but Regional Trading remains my bread and butter.

It is how i started and i would expect will easily never fall below two-thirds of my revenues.

The Eve Excel Addin and the item identification process

I redesigned how i operate each evening now that i use the Eve Excel Addin fully within my business.  This was a game changer.

I have a spreadsheet that means it takes 10 minutes to go through my trading locations to work out what needs to be bought from Jita to be sold and also what Sell Orders need to be updated.

It takes 2 minutes to buy the items from Jita and set up courier contracts - the items to buy are given by the above spreadsheet and then using the multibuy (discussed as part of the tips in taking an account from Alpha to Omega) function speeds all this up.

And then using the sell orders identified as needing updated i spend 10 minutes to adjust all the noted Sell Orders.  Longer if competition is high, shorter if lower.

And then 5 minutes to put the couriered items up for Sale when they arrive later.  And most of the time is taken logging characters in and out!

What used to take 45 minutes now takes around 25 minutes.

And then once a weak i do a deeper dive into each trading location to see what new items i can sell.  That can take a full hour as i ponder the wider issues in what i want to sell.

Overall Strategy

My overall strategy remains to Buy from Sell Orders in Jita to sell in the trading hubs in other Regions.  This has not changed since 2012!

Within Regional Trading 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 10-20% of what i had to sell at the start of the month.

Some side rules

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.  For example, i can post an item for sale in the main Rens Trading up for 300m, and even if one jump away the same item is for sale for 250m the item in the main Trading Hub will still be the item sold.

Therefore, i mostly sell Implants, Blueprints, ship equipment and some structure modules.