A Good Week Trading

It has been a better week, perhaps one of my best.

My research into items to sell from Dodixie and Hek took a major step forward.  I am now selling more fittings and sub systems.  My prior ideas of trying station trading have now given away to selling these additional items.

In all, this week i increased by wealth by 2.2 bn ISK and so far i am making profits of c173m ISK per night this month and this rate is increasing.  I suspect that this rate may plateau out for now given my trader in Hek is now using all its active order slots, perhaps it will rise further as my trader in Dodoixie further finds items to sell.

I am starting to contract haul on a daily basis 1.8bn ISK of products which if sold for the target 20% margin after all broker / selling / Rush job hauling contracts would make me enough to buy a Plex if i managed to sell it all without reducing my prices (big if).  On a daily basis i am now spending c45m ISK contract hauling items from Jita to Dodixie and Hek.

Of the list of 165 items i have built up since i started two months ago that i sell in Dodixie c15% i now never sell as the prices are too low.  The least competitive items remain blueprints and the most competitive are the subsystems.

Now that i contract out to haul from Jita to Dodixie and Hek on a daily basis i am finding that i am spending my entire 45 minutes per weekday logged.  Hence i don’t feel that i can launch a third trader alt unless i was to update the sell orders and contract haul for 2 of them a day.


Trader in Dodixie: Not yet running at full speed.  Can post a maximum of 141 sell orders but not yet finding enough items to sell to use this all up.  So continuing to do research to find new items to sell.


Trader in Hek:  Doing well and using all sell order slots.  Main constraint to making ISK is the number of sell orders it can post.  Currently training Retail to level 5 which completes on 28 July and will allow me to train Wholesale to increase the number of sell orders i can post.  Currently has Trade 5, Accounting 4 and Broker Relations 4.  Hence, can post a maximum of 57 sell orders whilst paying Broker Fees of 0.80% and Sales tax of 0.90%.  i am hoping that the combined traders in Dodixie and Hek can make at least 8bn per month once the Hek trader is up and running in under a month – we will see.


Manufacturing Alt: Remains at Jita as my buying alt whilst it trains up in manufacturing.  So far, has trained Industry to Level 4, Mass Production 4 and Production Efficiency 4.  Currently training Production Efficiency 5 which will complete on the 28 July.  Then i intend to take Mass Production to Level 5 so that i can start Advanced Production.  Hence, still a month away from starting any manufacturing though when i do, i suspect i will be starting a new account and moving this alt to a new location.  In the new account i will start with a buyer alt in Jita.


Surplus ISK: I am now regularly sitting with 550k ISK in my wallet uninvested - has come down since I found the new items to sell in Dodixie and Hek.  The one thing i know about that 530k is that it will remain at 530k when i log in the next day.  I need to find items to buy in Jita to sell in Hek or Dodixie.  If i find that this surplus ISK keeps on growing then i may as well start a new account and start training up a new alt.


Corporation: I am mainly using my Corporation as a central location to deposit the ISK from the traders so that the alt in Jita can buy items using the Corporation wallet.  i am looking into seeing if the corporation can contract out the hauling of the items from Jita to Dodixie and Hek to save on mouse clicks – though i need to understand more how Corporation hangers work.




Current wealth is 9,149,479,219 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 8,902,467,294 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,780,493,459) ISK*
• Buy orders 560,800,206 ISK
• Items in storage for sale 248,900,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 1,271,805,178 ISK

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex 530,000,000 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.

Hek trader starting to ramp up

13 days into the month and i am up 1.5bn ISK which includes buying a Plex for 530m ISK to allow Dual Training.  So about averaging 150m ISK per night profits before Plex purchases.  At this rate i am on track for 4bn ISK increase this month (4.5bn ISK less the Plex purchase for 0.5bn ISK).  I would hope though that my trader in Hek continues to improve and so i am aiming to do better than that.

It has been noticeable that as i move into more higher priced items to sell (over 200m ISK) then i start to have to take big write downs as competitors come in and knock 20m or so ISK off the lowest price at a time.  To mitigate against this risk i only buy 1 or 2 of such items at a time – hence if i need to take a write down to undercut new competitors.


More use of Corporation Mechanics: My alt in Jita that does all the buying now uses the corporate wallet to make the purchases from – therefore this alt need never spend some mouse clicks taking ISK from the corporation to make purchases.  Saves me some time.

Almost daily my alt in Jita is now sending 2 Rush Contract jobs to my alts in Dodixie and Hek.  Hence, spending c43m ISK per day to have items hauled from Jita to Dodixie and Hek.


Surplus ISK: I am finding that i can have over 1bn ISK in the wallet and yet be struggling to find items to buy in Jita to sell in Dodixie or Hek.  I continue to do research looking for suitable items to sell – but this is slow work.

However, i have decided to try Station Trading.  In summary, that is when i place orders to buy items in a station with the intention of then selling those same in items in the same station and so making my money on the spread between the buying price and the selling price.  I plan to stick to the same slow moving, high value items.  Therefore, my Buy Orders could in effect suck up ISK as dead money as they wait to be filled.  I will see how it goes.


Dodixie trader: Business as usual really.  Is using 73 of its 141 spare slots to sell items.  Not much change, implants and fittings still the major sellers.  Blueprints quite a small amount now.  Typically having over 750m to 1.2bn ISK of products hauled each day.


Hek trader: Skilled up to Retail level 4, Trade level 4, Accounting level 4, Broking Relations level 4 and Contracting level 2.  Currently learning Trade level 5 so that can start on Wholesale training to increase the number of active selling slots.  At present, using 26 of its 53 slots leaving room for more items to be sold as i discover them through comparing prices at Hek and Jita.  The alt pays 0.80% to put a sell order on and 0.90% in sales tax once it is sold.  Starting to make some good ISK though i don’t really have a feel how much given ISK from the alt in Dodixie and the alt in Hek gets all mixed together.

I would hope that the combined alts in Dodixie and Hek can get to 6bn ISK per month after purchasing a Plex for Dual training.


Industrial Alt: Currently my buying alt in Jita whilst skilling up the industrial skills needed for manufacturing.  Has trained Industry to level 4, Mass Production to level 4 and Production Efficiency to level 4.  Currently training Production Efficiency to level 5.  Hence, this alt can currently run 5 manufacturing jobs at once.  I next plan to level Mass Production to level 5 which will allow me to learn Advanced Mass Production to add additional manufacturing slots.  Hence, still really a month away from starting any form of manufacturing.



Current wealth is 6,989,869,330 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 7,264,928,420 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,452,985,684) ISK*
• Buy orders 560,800,203 ISK
• Items in storage for sale 15,400,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 601,726,391 ISK

Expected business purchases in the next 30 days

• Plex 530,000,000 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.

a few steps forward and a mistake

New manufacturing Alt up and ready: My new manufacturing alt completed its training, again took 2 sessions, and is now back at Jita to be my buyer for my traders in Dodixie and Hek.  I seem to feel compelled to do the starter missions for all new alts.

I will be purchasing a Plex in the next day or two so that train both my trader at Hek and my Manufacturing alt at Jita.

I don’t expect to be doing any manufacturing any time soon but the training is in full swing.

Initially i will train up the skills in:

• Industry: reduces the time to manufacture an item by 4% each level.
• Production Efficiency: reduces the materials required by 5% each level.
• Mass Production: allows an additional manufacturing line to be run each level.
• Advanced Mass Production: allows an additional manufacturing line to be run each level

I suspect that this character will be transferred to a new account once it starts to do manufacturing for real.  But i don’t expect to do that within the next 2 months.  We will see - I may in fact leave it on this account and start a new account with a trader at Jita to train up.

I know that trading brings in the ISK, and indeed other ISK makers have said that they went down the route of trying other forms of ISK making but found trading the best ISK maker - but I am really excited about manufacturing.  I am hoping it will allow me to experience more of the game (though I appreciate without the PvP).

 

 

Traders doing their bit: My traders in Dodixie and and Hek have settled down to their usual routine of selling items hauled to them from Jita.  I am currently making between 100 – 150m per night though i am hoping this will increase as the trader in Hek comes on stream.

 

It is interesting to see items that once made me good profits but now have seen their profits shrink to zero.

• I used to be able to guarantee 2 -3m ISK per day on 650mm Medium 'Scout' Artillery I, would buy it from Jita at 480k ISK and sell in Dodixie for 1.5m ISK.
• Likewise i could buy the Inferno Heavy Assault Missile Blueprint from Jita for 600k ISK and sell in Dodixie for 2m ISK.  These were great ISK makers for me in the beginning but now not so.

 

 

Too much ISK: I have 1bn ISK sitting in my wallet.  c540m is reserved to by a Plex so that leaves c500m ISK spare.  The one thing i know about that 500m ISK is that at the moment it has no chance of increasing my Wealth.  It is dead money that should be earning a return.  Hence, i need to find more items to sell, most likely in Hek.

 

 

A question of accounting: I know that i will be purchasing a Plex again in 30 days or so and indeed i suspect i will be purchasing Plex every 30 days after that.  Hence, given i know i have a c540m ISK liability every month the question becomes how do i recognise this in my Wealth statement?

 

One method would be to deduct a months worth of Plex from my Wealth in recognition that i will need to purchase it.  But then where do i stop, do i also deduct the purchase after that?  And indeed, should i not just wait until i get to the point of purchase and then make the deduction from my Wealth as i pay?

 

This will also become a bigger issue when in the future i have other known purchases i must make at a given point in time.

 

I have decided that i will not deduct them from my Wealth but merely make a disclosure of known purchases that must be made.

 

 

And a mistake: I managed to update a sell order from 330m to 330k by mistake and of course it sold to a lucky buyer who of course now has me marked down as a plank.  Darn.  Was going to happen one day . . . . and doubtless will happen again . . . . a casual 330m ISK gone, equal to about 2 – 3 days work.

 

 

 

Current wealth is 6,220,112,358 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 6,487,818,288 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,297,563,658) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 19,500,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 1,010,357,728 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.

New trading Alt started in Hek

It has been a slow week, my wealth has only increased by c900m ISK in the first 5 days of July.  Trading picked up on Thursday night as is now often the case.


Main continues its normal work: My main has stopped training and remains my seller in Dodixie.  It can post up to 141 sell orders and is currently using 80 of them.

As i start selling the higher priced implants i am finding that i am undercut quicker and occasionally by large amounts – hence the main reason why this week has been slow.  It is not unusual to loose my entire 20% profit margin on an item as competitors undercut.

Otherwise, implants and fittings are now my main seller.


New alt started in Hek: Undertook the training missions, took two nights, exploration was much easier this time.

Trained Retail to level 4 and Trade to level 3 giving the alt 45 trade slots of which i am currently using 19 to sell items in Hek.  Started training Broker Relations to reducing my costs of putting on sales orders and trained Contracting to level 2 which allows this alt to place up to 9 contracts.

I am currently training Accounting and Broker relations to further reduce my sales taxes, and Retail to increase the number of sell orders i can post.

The items i am selling in Hek are completely different to the items i am selling in Dodixie.  Only one blueprint, the rest are implants and fittings.  The NPC blueprints that made me my first few millions in Dodixie don’t sell for a profit at all in Hek.

I currently have 849m ISK of sell orders by this new alt.


Daily hauling contracts: Both my Main and this Alt are having Pushx Industries make daily hauls from Jita to Dodixie and Hek using Rush Jobs, hence paying c43m ISK per day to Pushx Industries.


Starting the new manufacturing alt: I have terminated my alt in Jita and i will start a new alt this weekend to train up in manufacturing and for the time being be my buyer in Jita.  Once i start its training i will need to buy a Plex for dual-training which will cost me c530m ISK for 30 days training.


New corporation started: Which i am using to hold the ISK centrally making it easier to transfer ISK between my characters.  As i get to understand how a corporation works i will start to make it do all the contracting with Pushx Industries.




Current wealth is 6,400,187,258 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 7,436,113,799 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,487,113,799) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 18,400,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 432,896,219 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.

End of month update

ISK wise it has been a good first full month.

My wealth has risen to 5.5bn ISK, a rise of 4.2bn in June.  More than i thought it would given i was away for a perhaps a third of the month.

Trading continues to gather momentum: I am using 87 of my 125 active sell/buy order slot limit.  I monitor 114 items to buy from Jita to sell in Dodixie.  Implants and fittings are currently my main ISK makers.  I remain focused on the high margin but slow moving items to sell.

My average profit margin after all costs is remaining above 20% and i am selling c15% of my sell orders that i post each day.  Hence, my daily wealth increases by [sell orders] x 15% x 20% = [sell orders] x 3%.  Given i am now posting 6bn ISK of sell orders i am expecting my wealth to increase by an average of 180m per day at least.  It is early days but i believe i am finding myself with 1bn of ISK to reinvest everyday from sales made overnight and during the day.

Trading skills almost complete: i have almost finished Wholesale 5 which will add 16 extra selling slots to my capability and allow me to start on Tycoon which adds 32 slots a level.  Given i don’t plan on doing station trading in the future i feel my skills are adequate for the current trading strategy i am adopting.

Contract Hauling a worthwhile expense: I continue to use Pushx Industries to haul my items from Jita to Dodixie  I am now using the Rush Job feature as standard which means i am spending c21m ISK at haul.  This month i have contracted Pushx Industries 34 times and paid them 413m ISK to Haul items from Jita to Dodixie.  Whilst the cost is high and indeed represents 1.7% of my typical sales and so stands at the highest individual cost in my Regional trading strategy it does allow me to spend more time researching items to sell instead of doing a 40 minutes round trip.  It is also safer and the Rush Jobs are often done within 6 hours, often 3.

Wallet centralised: I have trained some Corporation skills and indeed i have started the corporation – more on that in another post – but the aim is to provide a centralised wallet to speed up transferring ISK around my alts.  I may extend this to the centralisation of moving items, not really decided yet.

New Trading Alt ready to start: I am going away for 24 hours.  Spare character slot ready – i have fully deleted my Amarr alt.  When i return on Monday evening i will start the training of the new alt in the starter missions and then place it at Hek.  Once the starter missions are done i will start the Dual Training by spending a Plex.

Manufacturing Alt next: once I have completed the starter missions for my Trading Alt and installed it in Hek I will then do the starter missions for my Manufacturing Alt (which is the current Jita buyer) and re-install it back in Jita.  I suspect the first month or longer will be spent levelling the skills required - which is fine by me given I need to do much more reading around manufacturing to see where the most profitable strategy lies.


Current wealth is 5,519,232,106 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 6,697,962,342 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,339,592,468) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 76,700,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallets 84,162,232 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.

Change of thought

update: I came back from my business trip to find just over 1bn ISK waiting to be reinvested.
 
So I bought 72 items from Jita (spread over 21 products) for 1.0bn ISK for which I hope to sell in Dodixie for 1.5bn ISK giving me a 32% gross profit margin.  After selling costs, including a "Rush Job" contract to PushX Industries I hope to make a 29% operating profit margin, though that is before I reduces prices as competitors undercut me.
 

 

In all, with 2 days to go before the end of the month my wealth has passed 5bn ISK and my Main has only been playing for 1 month and 15 days.
 
my wealth has increased by 3.8bn ISK this month - with a fair wind tomorrow I may get the increase to be over 4bn for the month of June.  I would be impressed with that for my first full month given several days of it were spent away on business.


change of thought: I am away on Sunday / Monday but on Tuesday I intend to start training a new character as a trader and another one as a manufacturer.  I was planning to start a new account for the trader alt.  However, MoxNix made a good suggestion that I make use of Dual-Training to train up two alts on my account.

Dual-Training allows me to train two characters at once on one account though at the cost of a Plex a month.

I like that line of thinking.  The training on my Main is almost done - though I may have to train up some Corporation skills to make transferring ISK around my characters more efficient.  So, with Dual-Training I can train up my new trader and train up my Manufacturing alt.

Also, I only need to use the additional Plex whilst I need to train the two characters at the same time.  Once my trader is done (say in 1-2 months) then I can stop using Plex.  If I started a new account then I am committed to using a Plex a month (=540m ISK) to keep the account open.

Of course, if I wanted to move one of the alts to another account that will cost me Plex just to do that.  But at this stage, keeping them altogether feels more sensible.

Hence, I have deleted my alt at Amarr and the timer to complete the deletion will be done in 10 hours.  On Tuesday I will then start a new alt, have it do the Training Missions and then put it in Hek and start training it up in Trading skills.

 
 
 
Current wealth is  5,100,548,434 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 5,975,712,674 ISK
• less a 20% provision (1,195,142,535) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 134,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallet 185,978,295 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.

A week away

I am off on another week of business so no Eve time.

However, the following week (first week in July) i should be able to start my new account.  I plan to take the new account Main character through the training missions (so 2 days) and then decide which Trading Hub to put it in – it will be my second trader.  I am angling at Hek for now, an up and coming Trade Hub.  At this point, i suspect two traders will be as much as i can get done for 30 to 45 mins per night on week days.

I will start this Main off as i started my current Main, so with little ISK (maybe a few million) given i will need to train this new Main up in the Trading skills, notably the ones to increase the active order slots.  Though, to be honest, if i see some big trades i can do then i will do them.

In any event, it will now cost me a Plex a month to keep going, i.e. c520m ISK per month.

If all goes well, though i don’t know Hek, then this new account should be self financing within a month.

As an aside, i will use the Eve joining tab on this Blog to join and so when i use the Plex for the first time to extend my playtime then my current account should be awarded with an additional 31 days play time.

I also plan to stop the training on my current Main and start to train up an alt in Manufacturing.  Again, i will take this alt through the training missions.  I will use the Alt that is currently sitting at Amarr.  At this stage, all i have decided is not to do Mining (too time intensive) or Refining (there is no value i can add here).  Hence, it will be manufacturing of sorts.  I suspect the initial training will take a while so my Alt may just continue to be my buyer in Amarr for a while longer.

I am hoping that July will be a full month with no travel and so i should be able to see what my Main can really do in Dodixie.



Current wealth is  4,588,693,553 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 4,907,393,456 ISK
• less a 20% provision (981,478,691) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 110,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 542,000,000 ISK
• ISK in wallet 10,778,788 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.

A lot of milestones passed this week.

Wealth moved over 4bn ISK.

Wealth grew by 3bn ISK in under a month – i had a good week this week.  As i move to sell items costing over 100m ISK and hold my 20% margins then my wealth moves up strongly as each item sells.  For items that sell for over 200m ISK i am willing to accept 15% net profit margins given the ISK profit amount itself is large.

Active sell orders moved over 5bn ISK for the first time.  I am using 83 of my 125 active sell order limit.

I had over 1bn ISK on one contracted to haul for the first time (collateral 1.2bn ISK for a fee of 23.6m ISK).  As ever, i continue to use PushX Industries to haul the items from Jita to Amarr.

Seems i am selling c20% of my active sell orders per day.  And assuming i can get at least a 20% net profit margin then my daily increase in wealth would approximate to <active sell orders> x 20% x 20% = <active sell orders> x 4%.  Hence, with 5bn ISK of sell orders i would hope my wealth goes up by 5bn x 4% = 200m ISK per day.

I am currently training Wholesale 5 which will give me 16 more active sell slots and also allow me to start training Tycoon which gives me an additional 32 active slots per level.



Current wealth is 4,430,078,718 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 4,212,671,813 ISK
• less a 20% provision (842,534,363) ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 129,000,000 ISK
• Items in transit 900,000,000 ISK
• ISK in wallet 30,941,268 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.

Gross and Net Profit Margins

I have had some emails asking about what i mean by gross profit margin and net profit margins.  Hence, using a recent example i will explain what i mean.

The table below is an example of a summary of what i was hauling a week ago – or more correctly, contracting to PushX Industries to haul.

I had a small contract to haul 1 item that cost me 95m ISK at Amarr which i believe i can sell for 150m ISK in Dodixie and so generate a profit of 55m ISK.  That gives me a nice 37% gross profit margin (= 55 / 150).  I always work on profit per sales, and the gross profit margin is merely the profit margin i make on selling the product for a higher price.  Some might call it the product contribution.

However, there are other costs involved in the sale.

I need to take away 0.80% broker fee to post the item for sale (=1.2m ISK) and a further 0.90% sales tax when it sells (=1.35m ISK).  In addition, i need to account for the courier fee of 6.12m ISK.  That will leave me with profits of 46.33m ISK (and of course that assumes i don’t need to reduce the price as competitors come in to undercut).

That 46.33m net profit on the 150m sale gives me a net profit margin of 31%, which is a good level of profitability.

 

The bigger contract is for 13 items i bought in Jita.  I bought them all for 710.2m ISK and hope to sell them for 1.173bn ISK in Dodixie giving me a good gross profit margin of 39% (=463.124m ISK).  Taking away broker fees and sales tax + the 20.76m ISK it costs for a “Rush Job” from PushX Industries leaves me with a very healthy 36% net profit margin, or 422.417m ISK – though i suspect i will be reducing prices as competitors undercut.

 

Below these numbers i also show how the net profit margin is made up.  For the Jita contact the 36% net profit margin is made up from 60.5% product costs + 0.8% broker fee + 0.9% sales tax + 1.8% courier fee totalling 64% cost of sales and so leaving me with 36% profits.

 

In general i don’t want the gross profit margin to be below 20% which will lead to a minimum net profit margin of c16 to 17%.  Though if the actual ISK profits are high i am willing to let the gross profit margin fall to 15%.

 

My strategy is to focus on slow moving items which therefore don’t attract much competition – and so are high margins but low sales volumes.  That is fine with me.

 

Note how low the “Rush Job” courier fee is in the big scheme of things, 1.77% is not much for the chance of being able to put these items on sale within a few hours of buying them vs the normal 12 to 24 hours for a normal hauling contract.  Of course, the fastest way is the haul it myself, but that is also the most dangerous way.

3bn wealth reached

My current strategy of buying in Jita and Amarr, to sell in Dodixie has seen my wealthy reach the 3bn ISK milestone.

I am currently using 76 of my 125 active order slots hence i can’t see myself getting to the full 125 unless i start placing buy orders.  However, at this point in time i am reinvesting all my ISK into buying items from Jita / Amarr to sell in Dodixie and so i will not be placing any buy orders in the near term.

I am still buying and selling some of the blueprints  i started with on day 1.  They are a steady source of income.  Not much but it is nice ISK.  But the vast majority of my sales now come from implants and ship fittings.  I have expanded into further implants to sell that cost of 100m ISK to buy.  They are very slow moving but hopefully therefore less competitive.

In all, my spreadsheet of items potentially to sell is now  up to 94 though there are several items that are no longer profitable.

So far this month i have set up 23 courier contracts with PushX Industries and paid 196m ISK to PushX Industries for hauling.  I am increasingly using “Rush Jobs” for my contracts from Jita given i am now contracting to haul over 400m ISK at a time.  Assuming i stick to my 20% profit margin then the 20m ISK fee for a “Rush Job” only takes 4% off my profits but i can post them for sale within a few hours of buying them rather than waiting 12 to 24 hours for the contract to be completed.  I suspect this larger haulage payment is making me much more ISK with my faster posting for sale.

I am training Wholesale 5 which will give me 16 additional order slots but more importantly allow me to start on Tycoon which gives me 32 additional order slots a level.

At my current rate i am making 100m ISK per day profit and this rate is still rising.  I would like to think i would be able to make 3bn ISK this month but given i will be away in the final week i suspect this will not be achieved – though to be fair, i made 1.5bn in the first half of the month despite being away for 8 days of it, so the 3bn ISK in this month may be achievable.


Current wealth is  3,276,304,088 ISK made up from:

• Items for sale 3,977,473,779 ISK
• less a 20% provision 795,494,756 ISK*
• Items in storage for sale 41,700,000 ISK
• Items in transit 0 ISK
• ISK in wallet 52,625,065 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 the maximum reduction I would need to make to my sell orders as a whole before they are sold.