Manufacturing - taken the plunge

At the start of May, I took the plunge and I started up manufacturing properly.

May Numbers

I made sales of 26 billion isk and profits of 2.7 billion isk.

The Business Model - Revenues

I am going to use manufacturing to generate two types of revenue streams.

Firstly, to use it in the traditional manner of manufacturing an item and then putting it up for sale either in Jita or another of my trade locations directly.

Secondly, I will use it to effectively bring down the in-price of the items that I sell with my traditional trading business. So what I mean by this is it normally I buy from Sell orders in Jita and I courier those items out to all my trade locations and I put up for sale there. In this case of using manufacturing I will be able to get closer to the Buy price in Jita and therefore when I put those items up for sale in my trade locations I will command a greater margin. And therefore the way I will think about this is the difference between my manufacturing price and the Jita Sell order price will be the revenue for manufacturing business and then my trade operations take the usual profit of the difference between the Jita Sell order and what it manages to sell in its trade location.

Business Model - Manufacturing Locations

For now, my manufacturing will be done at a low sec location close to Hek and in Jita.

I have still not really worked out how best to transport high volume raw materials or minerals to my low sec location therefore for now where the item requires high volumes of minerals I will be using Jita until I get my head around all of this.

Business Model - types of item I will manufacture

Therefore the type of item I manufacture will be very similar to the business model are using my trade operations. In other words I will not be manufacturing high volume items. I’ll be manufacturing items that aren’t for sale in my normal trade locations and where the manufacturing price is closer to the buy price at Jita.

In other words high value, low volume, low competition, slow moving items.

Keeping track of profits

Because the vast majority of my profits will be made through my normal trading activities I will need to think of a way of keeping track of my manufacturing profits that doesn’t require me putting in individual items into a spreadsheet.

The way I’ve decided to do this is I will resurrect an old character, in fact my first character called croda as it happens, and I will use that character to purchase all the materials I’ll be using. I’ll leave that character in Alpha at the moment - update, i have now upgraded this to Omega.

This character will then contract all the raw materials free of cost to my Omega characters who are high on manufacturing skills.

Those characters will manufacture the item. it doesn’t matter who manufactures the items, I will capture all the manufacturing costs through the Excel addin.

Once the item is manufactured the finished item will be contracted back to the Alpha account Croda who sell it back to my Omega accounts who can then courier it to the trade location to be sold.

Therefore, using the Excel Aladdin, I can keep a track of all the wrong material costs all the manufacturing costs and all the revenues that the manufacturing generates for me.

. . . . . . now that i have upgraded that account to Omega which also has Trade Characters in Dodixie and Hek, i will be using these characters to sell the items as best i can.

Observations to date

I am just starting up so I have a lot of items I need to manufacture to put up for sale in my normal trade locations.

So you would expect almost all my revenues in manufacturing at this point to be internal sales from my manufacturing operation to my trade operation and therefore effectively you’d expect all my revenues in these initial months to be the difference between the Jita sale price and the Jita purchase price because the manufacturing effectively means I’m bringing these items into my operation at the Jita buy price.

Manufacturing - going for it

Manufacturing experiment so far

I have been trying out manufacturing over the last few months.

The Oz Show interview with Sir SmashAlot really did it for me.

I have put a character in Low-Sec to manufacture.  And i have a character in Jita to manufacture.

I have manufactured items that have sold well and i have manufactured items that have not sold at all.

My main success have come from manufacturing items that are not popular - so i am generally the only seller.

I have not tried reactions.

I have got to understand very quickly that a fair amount of the success in this venture is being able to access cheap materials.

Overall, my profits have been in the billions though my cashflow has been negative so far (i.e. i have increased my wealth but much of it is made up of items still for sale on the market).

Going to make a real effort to make this another revenue stream

Therefore, i have decided to go for it and try and make it work.

. . . . . . from the start of May (i am on holiday for 2 weeks during April so i don't want to try and start something during this time).

And what i want to do is to be able to keep a full track of what i am doing and how i am doing.

To that end, i have decided to resurrect an old account that was one of my first when i stated playing Eve Online.  I know that one of the characters is well trained in the manufacturing skills (with the other 2 characters being fully traded in Trade).

I will station this character in Jita and use this character to buy all the materials and make all Jita sales.  And i will station the other two characters in this account in two stations that i will also sell the manufactured items from - likely Dodixie and Amarr.

I will likely use existing characters to manufacture in Low Sec (and Jita) but all buying and selling will be done by this old account.

This will allow me to keep a proper set of accounts and so determine the wealth generated or not.

It will cost me an Omega each month - so that is the near term target to recover.

The strategy

I have not decided if i want to start with zero ISK like Stranathor did in this blog I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... when he started Industry or just finance it from my existing isk.

I like the idea of starting from zero isk - that will keep it interesting for me and allow me to move along the learning curve.

But, i know there are items i can manufacture for a few billions from time to time that will sell and make me a nice profit.

So, i think i will go for a mix.

How to fit this into my daily routine

The one thing i have found hard is to fit the manufacturing into my daily routine.

Therefore, i am likely to either do manufacturing every other day or every three days.

Manufacturing Taxes / System Index

It is worth having a post on this for those players who don't do manufacturing.

There are four types of "taxes" directly related to Manufacturing: System Index; Facility Tax; SCC surcharge; Alpha Clone Tax.

To put it in context, manufacturing in Jita at the time of writing this post will add 24% to the cost of your item vs somewhere in Low Sec and it will cost only an additional 5% plus the courier fees if you use third party couriers.

Therefore, I will be manufacturing in Low Sec.

System Index

This makes it more expensive to manufacture in a system where there is much manufacturing occurring.

Technically, the System cost index = (Work hours done in system in past 28 days / Work hours done in universe in past 28 days) ^ (1/2)

at the bottom of the post is the Excel Add In formula to use.

In Jita, for example, the current System Index is 20%.  That means that it effectively costs an additional 20% to manufacture an item in Jita.

(technical point, Eve Online uses what is called the "Effective Item Value" to measure the cost of the item being manufactured.  it is this "Effective Item Value" that the System Index is applied to.  The Effective Item Value is a sort of measure of the sum of the cost of the materials used to manufacture the item.

A useful chart that shows how it has changed over time for a given system can be found at Adam4Eve.  This link shows Jita Cost Indexes.

Not really a tax in the true form but in substance it is.

Facility tax

Fixed at 0.25% of Effective Item Value for NPC stations. Set by the owner for player structures.

SCC surcharge

Fixed at 4% of Effective Item Value.

Alpha clone tax

Only applicable to Alpha clones, set to 0.25% of Effective Item Value.

Eve Excel Add In formulas

The Excel Add In to determine the Effective Item Value is 

=SUMPRODUCT(SORT(EVEONLINE.BLUEPRINT(EVEONLINE.INVENTORYSEARCH(B2,1).id).manufacturing.materials).quantity,IFERROR(SORT(EVEONLINE.BLUEPRINT(EVEONLINE.INVENTORYSEARCH(B2,1).id).manufacturing.materials).type.[Adjusted Price],0))

where B2 is the Item name.

The Excel Add In to determine the System Index is

=EVEONLINE.INDUSTRYINDEX(N3).manufacturing

where N3 is the System id.

or if you only have the system name then it is

=EVEONLINE.INDUSTRYINDEX(EVEONLINE.SEARCHSOLARSYSTEM(M3).id).manufacturing

where M3 is the system name

Starting Manufacturing

I am going to retry Manufacturing.

In Eve, manufacturing is the process whereby raw materials are taken and combined to form new items which either are the final end product or components to combine further to make the end product.


There were three drivers of this renewed attempt at going into Manufacturing:

1) A blog i follow I wanna be a Trillionaire, so frickin' bad... recently started manufacturing

2) The Eve Excel Add In makes creating spreadsheets so easy

3) The Oz Show interview with Sir Smashalot (podcast version)which i found to be an eye opener on manufacturing.  It is literally the only podcast i have saved to listen to again and again.

Just experimenting at the moment.  Rigs for now.  Manufacturing a bit in Jita and just trying out a low sec location - which makes serious savings in the Manufacturing taxes.

In the first few days, as i experiment and get used to it all, I have spent 9 billion and made 100 million profits.  Low margins so far but i am not fussed.  This is a learning part for me.

youtube videos - Eve Online: Building my industrial empire

Eve Online: Building my industrial empire 

I came across this youtube channel "Gaming since the '70s" that has a weekly 10 to 30 minute video by a player who is following his progression from the start titled "Eve Online: Building my industrial empire - EP XX"

Really enjoying it.  Finding it inspiring.  i am listening to each episode from the start in the background and loads of time i find myself stopping what i am doing to listen more carefully.

Easy listening voice he has also.

The background

He is playing Eve for the economy side of it - or at least that is his prime desire.

As i write, he is on episode 51 - so not yet a year in the game but you would not know it.

The player, Thanak, starts with no experience in Eve and decides that Manufacturing is the way forwards.

The weekly video takes us through his mining, processing and missioning at the start to seed his business, and then incursions.  His entanglements with competitors, how he deals with it all and progressing onwards.

. . . . . . and discovers Planetary Interaction, low sec mining along the way.  And a lot more.  Loses ships, gets ganked, fights off pirates, the works.

He discusses what is working and what is not.  and his desire to the the industrial mogul in his part of space.

I am on episode 20

I don't want to spoil it but by episode 20 (week 20) he has set up an industrial corporation, structures and all, in low sec with 35 members and discusses all the politics of operating in low sec and their encounters with pirates who shoot first and ask later.

And is setting up a system to get large scale ship production underway.  Ore buyback programmes are up and running.

It is an all round Eve industry narrative.

And this is all through the eyes of someone who is new to Eve which brings its own excitement that we all had when we started the game and reminded me of the third party tools to use.

Inspiring

Actually, it just reminds me that i am a high sec merchant at best and i really need to branch out to enjoy more of the game.

February Update

As expected, a slow month with profits of 10.0bn ISK.  I had expected nearer 7bn but my manufacturing business is really going well.

February, March and April will be slow given real life commitments are taking over.  Indeed, i don't expect to log in much during March at all.

Therefore, during these months i am only selling the T1 items i manufacture and only trading other items where i make at least 15m ISK profits and 20% margins.

My strategy is to focus on low volume but high margin items that i either manufacture or buy (off sell orders) in Jita to sell in Dodixie / Hek / Rens / Amarr.

I don't have standings of note.

Despite being away from Eve for 2 weeks in February or so my wealth increased by 10.0bn ISK to 83.9bn ISK, which is an average of 321m ISK per day.  I made a blunder which cost me 800m ISK.

For those able to devote much more time to Eve, one way of reading this blog is to see how little time is required to generate sufficient ISK to plex your own account.

I have 2 accounts with 6 alts in total.

• One one account: I have a trader at Dodixie and a trader at Hek which sell items that have been hauled there from Jita; and I have a manufacturer in the Lonetrek region that sells items in Jita and sends items to the traders in Dodixie, Hek, Amarr and Rens to sell.

• On the other account: I have a buyer in Jita that is is only there to buy items in Jita to send to the traders in Dodixie, Hek, Amarr and Rens; I have an alt that is skilling up in Invention which currently sits in Amarr to sell the items manufactured by my Lonetrek manufacturer; and i now also have an alt that sits in Rens to also sell the items manufactured by my Lonetrek manufacturer.

All my hauling is done by third parties, namely PushX Industries - the time required to haul items from Jita to my traders in Dodixie and Hek would take up too much time.  Better to let these third parties do the hauling (for a fee, of course) whilst i am offline.  All my hauling is "Rush Jobs" and generally takes no less than 5 hours (often in under an hour) to haul from Jita to my four locations in Dodixie / Hek / Amarr / Rens (which are also the other trade hubs).  On average i pay 25m ISK per haul but it is well worth it given i can get those items bought in Jita onto the market in the other trade hubs very quickly and the hauling costs make up 1 to 3% of my sales price.  Not much given i aim to make 20% margins before all costs (hauling, broker fees, sales taxes).  I wrote a post on Rush Jobs which details why it is more profitable paying up.

I am now buying 2 Plex a month to finance my two accounts.  Up until December 2013 i had only needed to buy 1 Plex per month.  So, 1.2bn ISK per month costs going forwards.  This month i benefited from some kind soul upgrading their account having used the link to the right >>>>>>>>>

I biggest headache was that i was sitting on too much ISK which was not invested in the market.  I am sitting on 25bn ISK which is dead money.  I know two things about that ISK.  Firstly, it will be there tomorrow with no chance of making a profit (or a loss).  Secondly, there is inflation in Eve so in effect it is not keeping up with the cost of living in Eve - in other words, its value to me in the future is lower than its value to me today.

I decided to invest 8.5bn ISK in 10 Plex and indeed have increased this investment into a further 20 Plex.  As of writing this post, i now have 30 Plex worth 19.1bn ISK.  At some stage i will write a post detailing my thinking behind this - but i expect to continue to invest all profits made each month into Plex from here.


Dodixie trader: Life remains good for this trader.

Items for sale rose back to December's level of 22.0bn ISK from the prior month's 17.7bn ISK.

I sell manufactured items that my manufacturer makes in Lonetrek, and any item i can find that makes profits of over 15m ISK, has a profit margin of over 20% and is a slow seller.  I.e. ship equipment, implants, ship modifications, a few skillbooks and a few blueprints.

I am now completely out of station trading.

The alt is currently using 80 of the 141 trading slots - that may go down in February.

This alt pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

There are no medium term goals for this alt – for now i will focus on the manufactured items from my alt in Lonetrek and selling expensive items hauled from Jita.


Hek trader: Life remains good.

Items for sale rose to December's level of 14.2bn from the prior month's 12.8bn ISK.

Much like the Dodixie trader I sell manufactured items that my manufacturer makes in Lonetrek, and any item i can find that makes profits of over 15m ISK, has a profit margin of over 20% and is a slow seller.  I.e. ship equipment, implants, ship modifications, a few skillbooks and a few blueprints.  Other than the manufacturer items, there are very few common items i sell in Dodixie and Hek.

Following this move i now use 63 of the 129 available sell slots - this may fall as i focus on the more expensive items to sell.

Pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.


Amarr Trader: Going very well.

Only really fully started up in mid December and focuses solely on items manufactured by my alt in the Lonetrek region.  During February this alt's sales were 5.6bn ISK (7.3bn prior month) and i suspect the profits were 2.8bn ISK.  Items for sale at the month end were 9.7bn ISK.

At present, i have no plans to expand into selling other items - i will stick to selling the items my manufacturer produces.  Amarr, being the second largest trade hub, can be very competitive.

Following this move i now use 23 of the 37 available sell slots - i am increasing the number of available slots and looking for a few expensive items to sell.

Pays 1.0% broker fees to post an order and a further 1.5% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

The main aim of this alt is to train up for Invention, and here the training goes on.  Needless to say, with being busy in rl this whole invention thing has been on the back burner!


Rens Trader: second full month

Started just before xmas and also focuses solely on items manufactured by my alt in the Lonetrek region.  During January this alt made sales of 2.1bn ISK (3.7bn prior month) and i suspect profits of 1.0bn ISK.  Items for sale at the month end were 6.7bn ISK.

Rens is a slower trade up so i did not expect to see great things - but this is much better than i thought.  I was hoping for this alt to earn the Plex per month for this account but is infact earning 3 Plex per month.

I have no plans to expand into selling other items - i will stick to selling the items my manufacturer produces.

Following this move i now use 37 of the 37 available sell slots.

Pays 1.0% broker fees to post an order and a further 1.5% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

Manufacturing alt: This alt does all my manufacturing from the Lonetrek region which is within easy access to Jita.  Not much has changed since November.

This alt sells its items in Jita and contracts to Push Industries to haul items to the traders in Dodixie / Hek / Amarr / Rens to sell.

I have a list of 59 items i focus on to sell, currently selling 27 of them in Jita and 33 in Dodixie, Hek, Amarr and Rens.  The other items that i watch have too low a profitability.

I own 44 blueprints worth over 1bn ISK, most of which have already comfortably paid for themselves.

This alt may have plateaued at 6 to 8bn ISK sales per month for now.  During the month it made sales of 6.7bn (vs 7.9bn ISK in the prior month) and estimated profits of 3.3bn ISK.  It currently has 7.3bn ISK of sell orders.

My expansion into manufacturing has been a great success so far.  I am now training this alt up to manufacture T2 items and i am in the process of manufacturing my first T2 items at present - though this has not made me much so far.

And all this takes is 15 minutes update time a day.

The current near term goals is to find other T1 items to sell as well as expanding into T2 items.

I have seeded a new market in Lonetrek - lets see how that goes.  Very slow so far!

Outlook: March and April are going to be busy times for me in RL, hence i suspect i will be back to making 7bn ISK per month.


Current Wealth:

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex x2 = 1.2bn ISK

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.

* 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 until i finally hold it as ISK.  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 cost is or at least the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.

November Update

My best month ever.

As a reminder, i spend 30 to 45 minutes during the weekdays on Eve.

Despite being away from Eve for over half the month my wealth increased by 12.1bn ISK to 42.7bn ISK, which is an average of 404m ISK per day

I was lucky in that another player's blunder earned me 1.5bn ISK - so reversing out this luck i saw an increase in wealth of 10.6bn ISK which is an average of 353m ISK per day.  Still, not bad and still would be my best month ever.

The time constraint of spending 30 to 45 minutes only per day that i am around forces my businesses to focus on high value but low volume strategies.

For those able to devote much more time to Eve, one way of reading this blog is to see how little time is required to generate sufficient ISK to plex your own account.

I have 2 accounts with 5 alts in total.

• One one account: I have a trader at Dodixie and a trader at Hek which sell items that have been hauled there from Jita; and I have a manufacturer in the Lonetrek region that sells items in Jita and sends items to the traders in Dodixie and Hek to sell.

• On the other account: I have a buyer in Jita that is is only there to buy items in Jita to send to the traders in Dodixie and Hek; and I also have an alt that is skilling up in Invention.

All my hauling is done by third parties, namely PushX Industries - the time required to haul items from Jita to my traders in Dodixie and Hek would take up too much time.  Better to let these third parties do the hauling (for a fee, of course) whilst i am offline.

I am now buying a Plex a month to finance my second account and from January i will be buying two Plex per month as my Main account will need financing.  I have been fortunate enough that some people have been using the Buddy Programme link to the right >>>> which has financed my Main account to the end of the year.

As ever, i sit with too much surplus ISK which needs to be invested.  Current surplus is 14.2bn ISK – it is dead money.

The main drivers to my improvement in November i suspect were:

• Firstly, finding more expensive items to sell which, whilst lower margin, make me very high ISK levels of profits.  I.E. if i sell an item for 800m ISK that i bought for 700m ISK it is only 12.5% margin ((800-700)/800) vs my target 20% but is still a good 100m ISK profit before taxes,

• Secondly, my manufacturer is now selling its items in Dodixie and Hek, as well as Jita - i.e. is now selling in 3 trade hubs instead of 1.

Dodixie trader: Life remains good for this trader.

Items for sale have risen to 16.4bn ISK from the prior months of 11.3bn ISK.  The addition of items manufactured by my manufacturing alt and the inclusion of more expensive items to sell has boosted the value of the sell orders.

I neglected the station trading side of this alt during November given lack of time, hence buy orders have fallen to 1.3bn ISK from 1.6bn ISK.  At present, updating the station trading orders tends not to happen given my daily time constraints.

The alt is currently using 130 of the 141 trading slots.

This alt pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

There are no medium term goals for this alt – i suspect i may move out of station trading and continue to seek higher priced items to move form Jita to Dodixie to sell as selling any additional items my manufacturing alt decides to produce.


Hek trader: Life is speeding up now.  My pre-xmas plan to find new income sources for this trader is coming through.

The manufacturing alt keeps this trader supplied with the high margin items i am manufacturing to sell in Dodixie, Hek and Jita.

Just after the period end i am now expanding into new items to sell which are more expensive and, at Hek at least, could carry very high margins given there is very little competition - we will see.

Following this move i now use 123 of the 129 available sell slots.  At this rate i will be dropping some of the low margin skillbooks that i am selling.

Pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

Manufacturing alt: This alt is gathering momentum.  During the month it made sales of 7bn ISK and profits of 3bn ISK, which compares to the 2.1bn ISK profits last month.  And that does not include items sold in Dodixie and Hek that it manufacturers.  In all, i suspect this alt makes profits of over 4 to 5bn ISK per month once i include the items sold in Dodixie and Hek.

I now have a list of 52 items i focus on to sell, currently selling 27 of them in Jita and 33 in Dodixie and Hek.  The other items that i watch too low a profitability.

It currently has 2.6bn ISK of sell orders and another 1.4bn ISK of items in manufacture compared to 3.4bn at the end of last month.

I now own 44 blueprints worth over 1bn ISK, most of which have already comfortably paid for themselves.

I have moved my manufacturing alt into Lonetrek.  Close to Jita but there are plenty of manufacturing slots available.  The downside is that i can’t update or see my sell orders in Jita from the Lonetrek region given Jita is in a different region.

At the moment, i believe my manufacturing alt makes 100m ISK profits per day = 3.0bn ISK per month - and that is before i include any profits i make selling the items through my traders in Dodixie and Hek.  I very much consider my expansion into Manufacturing as a success so far.  And all this takes is 15 minutes update time a day.

The current near term goals is to look for more highly profitably items to manufacture.

The new account:  I started a new account in September which will cost me a plex a month to maintain, i.e. 600m ISK per month at todays prices.

The first alt I am training up in Research skills so that it can go down the Invention path.  I thought i had trained it up sufficiently to start Invention but reading around the subject has forced me to train up the skills further.  I am hoping to at least make a start in Invention this month.

The second alt is my buyer in Jita – so he buys the items for the traders to sell in Dodixie and Hek.  As ever, the items are hauled there by Pushx Industries.  Once my Invention alt is trained up then i can train this alt up to go down another career path.

To date, neither of the alts in the new account are making, or attempting, to make any ISK.

During December i will be away for a week on business and then no holiday over xmas - hence, i suspect December will not be as good a month as November or indeed October.



Current Wealth:

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex 600,000,000 ISK

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.

* 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 until i finally hold it as ISK.  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 cost is or at least the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.

October Update

I was very surprised how well this month went given i was away for half of it.

As ever, I only spend 30 to 45 minutes online during week days - assuming I am not away on business.

Wealth increased by 7.3bn ISK to 30.6bn ISK.  Which is an average of 236m ISK per day.

I am now buying a Plex a month to finance my second account and from January i will be buying two Plex per month as my Main account will need financing.

I have been fortunate enough that some people have been using the Buddy Programme link to the right >>>> which has financed my Main account to the end of the year.

As ever, i sit with too much surplus ISK which needs to be invested.  Current surplus is 8.6bn ISK – it is dead money.


Dodixie trader: Life remains good for this trader.  Items for sale are sitting at a steady level of 11.3bn ISK whilst items for purchase have risen to 1.6bn ISK compared to 0.9bn ISK in the last month – this alt is slowly entering the station trading market.  The alt is currently using 115 of the 141 trading slots.  I have found some new higher priced items to sell which still make the 20% margin - the plan is to continue to find a few of these a month.

I suspect this trader makes 120m ISK profit per day at least when i am not away from the game, and i suspect this can still rise from here as i increase my “station trading” and find higher priced items to “Regional trade”.

It pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

There are no medium term goals for this alt – just sticking to business as usual whilst increasing its station trading income.


Hek trader: Life is slow here though no slower than last month.  I mean to look into what else this trader can sell but October was otherwise busy.  The main items it sells are skillbooks.  It is using 79 of the 129 trading slots.

I suspect this trader operates 30% of the level of the Dodixie trader.  Even if i log in every day i don’t always sell enough items in Hek to justify a replenishment haul from Jita every day.

Pays 0.80% broker fees to post an order and a further 0.90% sales tax on a successful sale.  No longer training.

The pre-xmas plan is to find new income sources for this trader.

Manufacturing alt: This alt is gathering momentum.  During the month it made sales of 6.3bn ISK and profits of 2.1bn ISK, which compares to the 1.0bn ISK profits last month.

I now have a list of 33 items i focus on to sell, currently selling 23 of them as the other items have too low a profitability.  I started selling Industrial ships but there is no profit in these for now -  i don’t focus on these anymore.

It currently has 3.4bn ISK of sell orders listed compared to 0.5bn at the end of last month.

I now own 39 blueprints worth just over 1bn ISK, most of which have already comfortably paid for themselves.

I have moved my manufacturing alt into Lonetrek.  Close to Jita but there are plenty of manufacturing slots available.  The downside is that i can’t update or see my sell orders in Jita from the Lonetrek region given Jita is in a different region.

At the moment, i believe my manufacturing alt makes 70m ISK profits per day = 2.1bn ISK per month.  At this stage, i am considering that a success given that i knew nothing about manufacturing 3 months ago.  Furthermore, i can honestly say that one alt which takes up 15 minutes per day will be able to fully finance both my accounts and leave plenty of spare change for a “slap up meal at Mrs Miggins pie shop” . . . . an old Blackadder quote!

If i had to have only one alt to finance my playtime, i now suspect i would go down the manufacturing route – it is takes up very little time and is quite fun.

During November i plan to add more items onto the list of items to sell and see how far i can push the profits this alt can make.

On skill training – being away on business alot has meant i have neglected a medium term plan for this alt and just left the skill training ticking over.  When i come back from business next week this alt will have completed Advanced Mass Production Level 5 thus allowing it use manufacturing slots at once.

My pre-Christmas goal for this alt is to determine its carear path which will require me to do a lot of reading up on manufacturing!

Rent a Corporation Office?

On a side note, i could rent a Corporation Office in my Lonetrek station for 3m ISK per month compared to Jita of 2.9bn ISK, Dodixie of 141m ISK and Hek of 132m ISK.  Tempting – but it would be a vanity item for now.

Mental note to self that i really need to look into Corporations. At present i use my Corporation to hold spare cash, do all the purchasing and issue the hauling contracts.  For now, it serves to streamline my business process.  It does, though, look like a lot of fun to be had with all the corporation mechanics available.


The new account:  I started a new account in September which will cost me a plex a month to maintain, i.e. 580m ISK per month at todays prices.

I am training this character up in Research skills.  Whilst it is doing this it is my buyer in Jita – so he buys the items for the traders to sell in Dodixie and Hek.  As ever, the items are hauled there by Pushx Industries.

Similarly to my manufacturing alt, the medium term plan is ticking over given i am away alot on business.  Currently training Advanced Laboratory Operation Level 5 which will allow me to run 11 Laboratory slots at once.

My pre-Christmas goals for this alt is also to determine its career path which will require me to do a lot of reading up on Research and also for this alt to start contributing to my wealth.


November will see me away from the game again for almost half of it - so it may end up being a slow month.


Current Wealth:

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days
Plex 580,000,000 ISK

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.

* 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 until i finally hold it as ISK.  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 cost is or at least the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.