Friday, November 25, 2011

Project Temporary Suspended

I'm sorry to say that I will have to temporary suspend the project for a few days/week for the Thanksgiving Weekend.  I pulled all the trade orders, and stopped any training the toon was doing.  This will allow me to basically freeze the account without affecting the results significantly.  The main issue is that I caught a pretty nasty bug the week before, and now I have a lot of company over till Monday.

Honestly, it will probably be a bitch to continue with this project in December, and I may have to do a relaunch of it sometime later.  Mainly, I spent the last couple of days buying crap off Amazon's Black Friday Lighning Deals, and now I have a lot of video games to play, a lot of video games.  I ended up buying another 360 to resell, and about 5 60 buck video games for 30 bucks each.  It's going to be a great winter!

Eve-Online wise I have been pretty busy.  I enlisted the help of a few friends, and we will be completely redoing all the guides on Isk Watch. It's going to be a lengthly endeavor, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Day 21-24: Region Trading

End Of The Day
Isk: 54,298,227
Sell Orders: 137,850,395
Buy Orders: 148,112,364
Total Isk: About 339 Million
Skills Queue: Accounting 3 Marketing 4
Time Spent on Eve: 1 hour (4 separate logins)

I finally moved out of Jita to dead region around Amarr and it is much better for the limited amount of time I have to actually play the game.  I had a unexpected event happen this weekend, and I basically just logged into Eve once a day.  It also explains why my profits for the past 3 days were 9 million isk!

That is not really true representation of my profits for this weekend.  I had to spend 10 million isk on skill books, and I ran out of trade slots.  I finished retail 5 but I have not started training the next level skill wholesale.  All traders will experience this type of problem. They run out of trade slots, but they keep accumulating assets.  At the moment, I am estimating another 10 million isk in assets.  This means I made about 10 million isk a day for about 10 minutes of work a day.

That sucks!  It is the main reason behind the move to a different area of space where I am sure I can make more isk.  Trading like everything in Eve is dependent on the amount of time that a person can put into it.  It is more dependent on logging in over the course of the day then sitting down and grinding missions.  We still should be able to make a billion isk by the end of the 51 days! Stay Tuned!

Friday, November 18, 2011

Day 20: Ninja Salvaging

End Of The Day
Isk: 44,900,095
Sell Orders: 135,069,040
Buy Orders: 148,903,276
Total Isk: About 330 Million
Skills Queue: Broker Relations 4
Time Spent on Eve: 2 Hour 30 Minutes (3 separate logins)

I ran operation ninja salvage for about a total of two hours, and it was a lot of fun.  I would probe about about 5 ships and bookmark the locations with the probing ship.  Then I switched to the salvaging ship warped to the location and did some intense salvaging.  I made about 4 million isk in a hour.

There were a lot of key things that I learned, and I will likely run this operation a few more times before I completely post my finding.  My preliminary problems were my ship would run out of cap running 4 salvagers, travel time between wrecks, and finding enough mission sites.  I have to spend a lot of time scanning!

Trading for me seemed to slow down drastically, but I have a few plans to try and speed things up.  Either way, by the end of the 51 days we will have enough isk to cover a Plex, but I am shooting for over a billion isk!  Once this project is completely finished, I will be rework most if not all of the guides on Iskwatch.  I want them to be a lot more detailed and easier to follow. Stay tuned! 

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Day 18+19: 300 Million Isk

End Of The Day (2 Days)
Isk: 35,323,601
Sell Orders: 100,998,300
Buy Orders: 179,246,595
Total Isk: 315,477,496
Skills Queue: Energy Management 3, Astrometric Acquisition 2, After Burner 3. Jury Rigging 1, Astrometrics 3
Time Spent on Eve: 1 Hour 30 Minutes (7 separate logins)

I ran into a bit of a technical difficult, thus I am merging two days into one post.  To be completely fair, it was a technical difficulty, and I was distracted by Skyrm (good game). I did not get a chance to go ninja salvaging, but I did manage to get a lot of things done.

First of all, I reached over 300 million isk! That used to be the low cost of a plex before the prices skyrocketed.  That is under 21 days, meaning that in theory it used to be possible to earn enough isk to plex an account for people just starting out.  I guess it could still be possible if the new players understand trading from day one and run missions like crazy for seed money.  I highly doubt that will happen.

I set up everything needed for ninja salvaging.  I have two frigate ships ready to go.  I will be using a Heron with a probe launcher to do my scanning, and a Merlin to do the actual salvaging.  I think I will do it for 3-4 hours as soon as possible and post my earnings.  This will give everyone a chance to compare the earnings of this profession to trading.  To give ninja salvaging the best opportunity I will not include any of this set up time in the calculations.  I will fly to my target system, undock with the Heron, and then start the clock.  Once everything is all send and done, I will put up a new detailed guide on Iskwatch. Stay Tuned.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Day 17 - Operation Ninja Salvage in Two Days

End Of The Day
Isk: 38,305,050
Sell Orders: 90,276,200 (26/53)
Buy Orders: 154,541,447 (28/53)
Total Isk: 282,962,426
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (14 hours left)
Time Spent on Eve: 32 minutes (3 separate logins)

Operation Ninja Salvage will begin in about 2 days, I just need to finish training some extra skills.   I need to finish training up Astrometrics 4 so I can toss in Astrometric Acquisition and Astrometric Pinpointing.  It should be fun and exciting!

Trading wise nothing new to report.  I made about 25 million isk, which is not to shabby.  I received a few questions about where I am trading, and I figured I would take a minute to explain it.  I am trading in Jita, and other to run some of the tutorial missions, I haven't left the station.  I am pretty much only dealing with ship modules, but I do buy a few things just to reprocess them.

Otherwise, this will just be just a short quick update.  Stay tuned for more exciting things!

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Day 16 - Quarter of A Billion Isk Richer

End Of The Day
Isk: 40,579,768
Sell Orders: 114,569,800 (11/53)
Buy Orders: 95,812,858 (28/53)
Total Isk: 250,962,426
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (1 days 14 hours left)
Time Spent on Eve: 25 minutes (3 separate logins)

It took 2 weeks to turn 5,000 isk into just over 250 mil isk.  It has been a pretty slow ride, mainly because of how busy I've been at work.  It goes to show you that anyone with even a little bit of extra time can make a lot of money trading.  All they need to do is update their trade alts orders a few times a day, then log back over to their main to go pew pew!

My greatest enemy at the moment is my lack of trade slots.  I hit my skill level limit hard and it is severely limiting my actions.  I've been thinking about what sort of things people want to learn about, so if anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment.  I will start doing some ninja salvaging hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday.

I figured I would do something new for the official 250 mil thread, so here it goes.  This is the EMMA report for the last week.  It includes how much money was made per item, with some of the actual names blocked out.  I will release the names of everything I trade in at the end of this experiment, but be advised that it will just be a list of most things in the game. Here you go, Click to zoom in:

As you can see I made 150 million is this past week (about), but some of this is incorrect.  The trading program does not know that I reprocessed certain things to get the minerals that I sold.  It is assuming that I got all those minerals for free.  Anyways, lets shoot for 500 mil profit next week! Stay Tuned.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Day 15 - Reprocessing Power!

End Of The Day
Isk: 31,948,223
Sell Orders: 65,432,986 (15/53)
Buy Orders: 134,438,986 (28/53)
Total Isk: 231,820,195
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (2 days left still)
Time Spent on Eve: 35 minutes (2 separate logins)

I opened up a new revenue of profit, buying useless stuff to reprocess it for the minerals.  It's an easy way to nearly double or triple your investment.  Look for ways to buy up certain items in large amounts for cheap, and then reprocess.  I don't bother putting minerals up for sale, instead I just sell it to buy orders.

This method of profiting can be doing really easy as a region wide buy order.  There are a lot of items that you can just buy at 1 isk in dead regions, or for just a fraction of their mineral value.  The hard part is putting all the stuff together, but those that do not mind a day of hauling can profit greatly.

I almost hit a quarter of a billion isk, and that is no laughing matter.  I will make enough isk to purchase a plex in the next week or so.  Trading wise I am still doing the exact same stuff, but I finally hit my trade slots limit with two days left on retail 5.  This is going to be annoying over the next few days, but it shouldn't pose any significant problem.  Stay Tuned!

Friday, November 11, 2011

Day 14 - Escrow Scam or Ninja Salvage

End Of The Day
Isk: 16,273,612
Sell Orders: 92,284,197 (16/53)
Buy Orders: 96,019,675 (28/53)
Total Isk: 204,577,484
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (3 days left still) + Astrometrics 3 + Astrometric Rangefinding 2
Time Spent on Eve: 1 hour 45 minutes (4 separate logins)

First things first, I want to try to cover some new method of making money, and I am not sure what to commit to.  I could try escrow scamming next, but that would require a lot of things.  I would NEED to break one of my rules, and use some of worthless but rare inventory from my war-chest on my main.  I sorta do not want to do that, but it would be an interesting project. 

I think I might try some ninja salvaging after the weekend.  It could be a fun way to piss off some mission runners!  Ninja salvaging, for those who do not know, is the act of scanning down a mission runner and salvaging/looting there stuff. This requires a bit of practice and a fast ship.  I will keep a detailed time sheet for this mini project, because I want to post exactly how much money a player can average doing this.  I will start recording time when I reach the target mission hub, but before I launch even a single scan probe. 

Trading wise, I have nothing new to report.  I started trading in groups of ten for some items, because the margins suck in Jita on the more expensive things.  Basically, what this means is that I take a item with a buy/sell order of 300k/600k, and I put up a buy order up for ten of them, 3 mil isk. Then I try and sell the ten as fast as I can for 600k or 6 mil.  This trade would end up with a 3 million profit minus trade fees.

The problem with this kind of group trading is that I have to turn over 10 of one item, and depending on volume that can take a long time.  Ideally, it would be better to find one item at 3 million and turn over just one at 6 mil.  I found a few of these, but the volume is too slow.  I can turn over 10 of the fast moving cheap items faster then one of the 3 million item.  Actually, tomorrow will be a lesson in opportunity cost! Stay tuned!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Day 13 - Baby Sitting Orders

End Of The Day
Isk: 11,898,433
Sell Orders:54,576,701 (16/53)
Buy Orders:  118,946,059 (31/53)
Total Isk: 185,421,193
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (3 days left) + Survey 3 + Salvaging 2 + Acceleration Control 2 + Evasive Maneuvering 2
Time Spent on Eve: 1 hour 25 minutes (5 separate logins)

I started moving into some of the more competitive areas, and now I have to play the .01 isk game with people.  The profit is a bit better though; I've made about 35 million isk yesterday! It gives me a chance to catch up on any tv shows that I missed though! One thing to remember while trading is that it can be boring, but addicting.  It really is something watching your wallet grow to new heights, but to pass the time you should have something else you can do between updating trade orders, make a pew pew account, watch tv, or even play some other video game!

I also started training a few of the base skills to do some ninja salvaging, but now I have to look up what probing skills I need to find people. It will probably take me about 3 days of training to get all the Astrometric Skills, and I really need to finish up retail 5.  I'm down to 6 free trade slots at the moment.

I think that I will work on those skills after I finish up retail 5.  Once I get some experience doing it, I will throw together a detailed guide on Isk Watch for anyone that wants to try it themselves. It is going to be very tempting to use an alt to kill anyone that does try and kill me for ninja salvaging their mission.  It would be mainly for the kill mails, but I guess that would be against the rules. Stay Tuned.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Day 12 - 150 Mil isk Later

End Of The Day
Isk: 1,116,558
Orders:85,349,958 (17/53)
Buy Orders:  67,515,531 (17/53)
Total Isk: 153,982,047
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (3 days left) + Finished Training Refining 3
Time Spent on Eve: 40 Minutes (5 separate logins)


I figure I might cover some other ways to make some isk soon, like ninja salvaging.  So I started training some of those skills.  Figure it would be a good idea to give a taste of other low skill point methods of making a bit of extra isk.


I finally hit the 150 mil mark after 12 days, which is not to bad.  I'm thinking that I need to adjust me strategy a bit.  I have been going after high margin trades, but the problem is that I would need to turn over about 20 of them to make a million isk.  So while I was making a 1000% return on something, the actual isk earned was not to much.


I am now adjusting my trades to more expensive items with at least a million isk in return.  Things like rigs, large weapons, etc.  Hopefully, this adjustment will let me start earning a lot more isk faster.  I want to hit 200 mil by day 14. Stay tuned.

Day 13 - Baby Sitting Orders

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Day 11 - More Isk Making Fun

End Of The Day
Isk: 15,764,521
Sell Orders: 44,880,620 (20/53)
Buy Orders:  70,466,750 (17/53)
Total Isk: 131,093,891
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (5 days left) + Finished Training Broker Relations 3
Time Spent on Eve: 40 Minutes (5 separate logins)

The day was sort of slow, but I ended up buying a few skill books like Broker Relations.  This skills helps you keep your trading fees down.  The less fees you pay the more isk you can make.  A trader without any standing or skills is looking to pay about 2.5% in broker and account fees to turn something around.

The base broker fee is 1%, which you have to pay twice.  Once when you are trying to buy an item, and once when you are trying to sell an item.  While you are trying to sell an item you have to also have to pay a 1% sales tax.  This is why its is important to train broker relations and accounting to 5.  These two skills alone helps keep more of the isk you earn in your pocket!

Since I started this project I have spent over 7 million isk on trading fees.  Just imagine on much money is going into fees when people are trading with billions of isk.  As for the project, I am thinking about possibly moving on into a bit of region trading.  I am going to test the waters a bit today, stay tuned!


Day 12 -  150 Mil Isk Later

Monday, November 7, 2011

Day 10 - Damn AutoBloggers

End Of The Day
Isk: 25,128,243
Sell Orders: 30,318,785 (11/53)
Buy Orders:  66,706,772 (16/53)
Total Isk: 122,153,800
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (5 days left)
Time Spent on Eve: 30 Minutes (3 separate logins)

This blog has been targeted by auto-blogging software.  Auto-bloggers target blogs and pull content from them to steal and claim as their own.  The site pulling information from this blog is a damn real money trading site.  It is sorta annoying seeing something you do twisted into content for a Russian RMT site, but back to trading.

A lot of my trades are now sorta unprofitable, mainly because the margins shrank into mere pennies on the dollar... err I guess technically, 100k is on the 1 million, but I can't figure out how to make that sound good.  One of my best trades was netting me over 700k-800k isk a trade, and today the buy order price rose to meet the sell order price.  Meaning, I managed to sell at a profit, but I cannot buy anymore to replace my inventory.

This is one of the nice things about being small.  New traders have the advantage of being small and nimble; they can jump on all the great opportunities.  They are able to get a higher percentage return on trading opportunities then the big players.  Established traders often have isk tided up in assets, and a short term opportunity in an item is not really that exciting or worth it. Established traders are often looking to make passive forms of income, and not jumping on Prototype Cloaking Devices because the profit margin expanded to 200k isk a trade.

I am off for the next three day, and I will finally have some time to trade, hopefully.  I have adjusted my strategy over the past week to target slow moving high volume items, since I would not have time to try and turn over something repeatedly.  It has been working out pretty well obviously, but we are only 1/10th of the way to a billion isk.  Stay tuned!


Day 11 - More Isk Making Fun

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Day 9 - Mistakes Happen

End Of The Day
Isk: 7,044,110
Sell Orders: 36,553,050 (20/53)
Buy Orders:  54,297,905 (11/53)
Total Isk: 97,895,065
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (6 days left)
Time Spent on Eve: 24 Minutes (3 separate logins)

A important and possibly overlooked rule while trading is not to do it when your extremely tired.  I made a nice profit off of some weapons, about 5 million, and then proceeded to loose it all.  While putting up a new buy order for the same item, I put in the sell order price instead.  This made me instantly buy back the same amount of weapons I just sold.

This means instead of having a nice profit, I ended up loosing about 1-2 million isk to do taxs and stuff.  Be sure what you are doing, and double check everything.  I lost 4-5 billion isk a year ago because I accidentally added an extra 0 to an isotope purchase.  The extra 0 changed the price from a 400 mil buy order to a 4 bil buy order, way over priced.  Needless to say, I probably made a lot of people very happy.

Mistakes like this happen all the time.  Just last month someone sold me a ship in Jita for 200 mil when my buy order was at 800 mil.  It is important to stay vigilant while trading,  Complacency breeds mistakes, but as time goes on generally speaking you become a lot better at catching your own mistakes.

Trading wise I am still doing exactly the same stuff as before.  I expanded a little to cover some other ship modules, but weapons are still my major profit maker.  I only have one more day at work before my weekend, and then I'll try and do some serious trading.  Stay Tuned.


Day 10 - Damn Autobloggers

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Day 8 - 20 Mil Short of Goal

End Of The Day
Isk: 13,133,568
Sell Orders: 23,749,340 (24/53)
Buy Orders:  45,235,623 (8/53)
Total Isk: 82,118,531
Skills Queue: Retail 5 (7 days left omg)
Time Spent on Eve: 58 Minutes (3 separate logins)

I spent a little bit of time after down just baby sitting my trade orders in Jita.  Jita does have a lot of competition and sometimes it makes it annoying to try and turn a profit there.  I'm not exactly where I wanted to be after the first week because of my lack of play time due to unexpected overtime at work, and my addiction to other video games which shall remained unnamed.....ok its Minecraft...

I was hoping to be at around 100 million isk by now, but logging in three times a day to update orders is just not enough.  I would ideally want to log in every half hour or so to update trade orders, but I cant really scrounge enough free time.  Still, I'm only 20 million isk away from my goal and my weekend starts Monday (weird work schedule).

Trading wise I have expanded to other modules, but weapons are still my most profitable. I am still in Jita, but I am thinking about possibly switching to region trading in a week or two.  Mainly, so I can give everyone a example of a different kind of trading. Stay Tuned.  Any questions just comment below.


Day 9 - Mistakes Happen

Friday, November 4, 2011

Day 7 - Trading Questions Answered

End Of The Day
Isk: 4,892,157
Sell Orders: 31,553,524 (24/53)
Buy Orders:  23,009,536 (8/53)
Total Isk: 59,455,217
Skills Queue: Retail 5
Time Spent on Eve: 18 Minutes (3 separate logins)

Today sucked.  I was feeling sorta sick and lazy.  I only logged onto Eve-Online three times, and it killed my profits for today.  I ended up playing Eve-Online once in the morning after my day 6 post and then 3-4 pm, and then finally at 7-8 pm before work. 

The market sorta sucked today.  The price of a few of the things I traded in fell by almost 100,000 isk per item.  I am still in the green on everything, but the way I calculate profits for the blog is that I take the total for everything up for sale and give it as the Sell Orders figure.  This means that yesterdays total isk of 51 mil was devalued because the price of the sell orders was over priced.  This is just another example of markets volatility.


Questions and Answers
I answered all the questioned I had so far in comments, but I figured it cant hurt to repost some of them.  If their are anymore just keep them coming! Question and Answers:

Question: Alberthus99999 asked: "Do you just chose random weapons parts to sell, or since you are a veteran player you know what kind of weapons sell well?"
Answer:  Actually, that is a hard question to awnser. I guess since I know what I am doing I go to the stuff that is likely to have a nice profit margin, but I do look at everything. While looking at trades, I have clicked on single weapon looking at margins and volume.

Question: Alberthus99999 asked: "How do you know the margins you getting does it appear at market details?"
Answer: No, you have to figure out the profit margins yourself. Simply put, a profit margin is the difference between the highest priced buy order and the lowest priced sell order.

Question: Jason asked:  "With so many items on the market, where does one even start!?"
Answer: Start SMALL! Find one profitable trade, and expand till you reach a point where your happy.  One day it might reach the point where you have 4 accounts full of trade alts!  Simply pick a trade hub or region, and pick a category, say smartbombs.  Go through all the smartbombs and look at profit margin and volume, and put up any buy orders you feel are worth it.  Then when your comfortable go through another group and another.  Generally, the more items you trade in the more isk you can make, just dont overwhelm yourself.


Day 8 -  20 Mil Short of Goal

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Day 6 - Important Lesson Day

End Of The Day
Isk: 11,671,010
Sell Orders: 31,400,352 (24/53)
Buy Orders: 8,134,845 (8/53)
Total Isk: 51,206,207
Skills Queue: Retail 5
Time Spent on Eve: 47 Minutes (7 separate logins)

Today is the day that I share why I can not just tell everyone what to trade in.  It is not because I am worried that you will all rush in and kill any margins.  It is not because I am selfish. It is because the market is always changing, and a profitable trade can be worthless the next day.  One of my post profitable trades turned worthless overnight.  Nanofiber Internal Structure I's made me just under 5 mil in the passed few days.  Their buy orders are around 500 isk, and they sold for more then 25,000 isk.  I could turn over high quantities of these in pretty big groups of 25-50 at a time, to people who I am assuming were using them for tech 2 production.

This morning they were selling at 1,000 isk.  I think they might recover to about 15,000 isk, but only time will tell.  This is why it is important to diversify.  People should be trading in Amarr, Rens, Jita, and all the other trade hubs, and they should be trading in everything that has a nice margin.  The more a trader diversifies, the safer they will be.  I didn't take a lose with the Nanfibers, but I stopped making a profit with them.  This had no effect on my other trades that have made 5 million isk so far as-well.

This is why it is important to learn how to find your own items.  It's like the saying goes: Give a man a fish, then you feed him for the day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.  Finding things to trade in is KEY to massive profits.  If anyone has any question about finding trades just leave a comment, otherwise, stay tuned!


Day 7: Trading Questions Answered



Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Day 5 - Now We're Trading!

End Of The Day
Isk: 6,674,105.48
Sell Orders: 9,836,912 (15/45)
Buy Orders: 6,973,436 (9/45)
Total Isk: 23,484,453
Skills Queue: Retail 4
Time Spent on Eve: 58 Minutes (9 sperate logins)

This was a pretty damn good day on the market; I managed to go from 6 mil to just under 25 mil. This is 4 times the ending balance of yesterday.  At this point, I have my few good trades mostly in ship weapons that give me about 400,000 isk a trade.  I have one weapon trade that makes 4 million isk per trade.  I am still eliminating any trades that are not profitable like Gatling Modal Laser I and Limited Ion Blaster I.

At this point, I am looking for trades that make around 300,000 isk profit for less then a 1 mil investment per trade, but I still have some of my high turn over extremely high margin trades.  For these trades I look for items that are extremely fast moving, at least 1,000 trades a day, 25,000 isk or more profit, and extremely cheap. 

One thing to avoid is extremely low margin trades like drones.  Take Warrior II as an example, in Jita the highest buy order is 347,985 and the lowest sell order is 361,984.  This is a profit of 20k, but you will pay about 10k in taxes.  This would be a stupid item to get into, especially with low amounts of isk.


The way I have my UI set up is that I have my wallet orders on the right with the market on the left, side by side.  I have the buy orders set up by price so the highest priced buy order on the top.  I have the sell orders so the cheapest is on the top.  This makes it every easy to update orders, and find new trades just by randomly clicking around.  Once I find something with a nice margin I click on price history.  I use table instead of the graph, with the most recent date on top.  Here are examples of both:
  


P.S.
I blurred out the actual orders, but I will either post a list of everything I trade in either weekly or biweekly.  I still haven't decided.  Stay Tuned!


Day 6: Important Lesson Day


Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Day 4 - Mission Day!

End Of The Day
Isk: 2,808,287.57
Sell Orders: 2,313,823 (7/21)
Buy Orders: 1,516,049 (5/21)
Total Isk: 6,636,159
Skills Queue: Caldari Frigate 4 (finished trade 4 and science 4)
Time Spent on Eve: 1 Hour 47 Minutes (3 sperate logins)

I started the day off with the intention of doing the tutorial missions, and I'll be the first to admit I screwed up doing the very first tutorial.  I started the skills tutorial which provides you with a skill book, but I was in space in a pod when I started it.  All I got was a lovely error message about not enough cargo space (way to go confusing the new players CCP).  I reset the tutorial in the options menu, but it did not provide me with a new skill book.  I guess I am out one repair systems book, oh well.  I flew the 4 jumps back to the original starting system to do the rest of the tutorial

It took me around 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete 10 missions for just one of the tutorial agents.  It is definitely worth completing these missions, though. I even received the "retail" skill book, a badger, cybernetics skill book, and tons of other stuff.  This might take a long time to get all the tutorials done, but the rewards for new players are great.  Just doing one of the missions landed me over 500,000 isk! Also, new players can actually learn a thing or two from them, and knowledge is power in this game.

Trading wise it was a slow day; nothing new to report on this front.  I am still doing the same sort of trades, but I diversified from just weapons to other ship modules.  One of the very first things I bought, Gatling Modal Laser I, still hasn't sold and is just taking up a sell order slot.  This isn't a problem at the moment, but if they do not sell off soon I'll sell them off at a lose. Stay Tuned.


Day 5: Now We're Trading

Monday, October 31, 2011

Day 3 - Spooky Nothingness

End Of The Day
Isk: 20,515.88
Sell Orders: 2,359,297 (7/21)
Buy Orders: 1,680,123 (4/21)
Total Isk: 4,059,935
Skills Queue: Caldari Frigate 4 (finished trade 4 and science 4)
Time Spent on Eve: 18 Minutes (4 sperate logins)

Today was an absolutely uneventful day.  I wanted to start picking up some of the trading skills like broker relations, accounting, and retail.  The problem was that they were a bit out of my budget, I guess I will have to make due with just trade 4 for now.  Actually, one thing that is a lot less restrictive then I thought it would be was the trade slots.  It is a lot easier to make due with just the 21 total slots then I thought it would be.

I am mainly sticking with weapon modules at this time, and still looking for items that can double my isk. I did, however, up the amount of isk I want to double.  I am looking to make at least 40,000-50,000 isk a trade now, but I do have one trade that makes 400,000 isk per trade.  I buy some random weapon mod at 600,000 and sell for just over a million.  There really is no science to my madness when it comes to finding what to trade.  I do what every other trader does, start at the top of the weapons list and work down.  Although, I know that I can not afford to trade large weapons so I tend to stick with small and mediums.

Tuesday or Wednesday I will start releasing how much isk I made of each item so far, assuming I can find some sort of program like EMMA as EMMA appears to be shut down at the moment.  The old version may still be working. It will just require some testing, but I will find some something that I can use as soon as I can.

Tomorrow I plan to run the starting missions(tutorial missions) for Caldari.  I guess, I should have done this sooner, but it's better late then never.  The idea of this blog is to show people that they can make money too by showing them how I do it.  I already showed you can make some seed money scamming. I guess now I'll run some missions. Stay Tuned!


Day 4: Mission Day



 

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Day 2 - Scam Successful

End Of The Day
Isk: 32,123
Sell Orders: 1,089,970 (5/17)
Buy Orders: 1,122,050 (2/17)
Total Isk: 2,224,145
Skills Queue: Trade 4
Time Spent on Eve: 21 Minutes (4 sperate logins)

Well, this sorta made me feel like cheating, but I managed to scam a total of 1.2 mil total from two people.  I used a politely worded message in local once asking for a few thousand isk so I could buy something, and two kind and gentle strangers provided me with more then enough. Newer players can avoid scamming simply by doing all the tutorial missions. They will give you more then enough isk, items, and skill books.

The very first thing I did of course was to buy the trade book, and I and now up to 17 trade slots.  I ended up getting a good deal on it as well, and only had to spend 14,000 isk on it. I decided to up my trading of course and found a killer item. It let me invest over 600,000 per item, double it per trade, and the trade volume is decent enough. Sadly, I just haven't had the time to exploit the opportunity. I also decided as well that this project will need some sort of better record keeping then screen shots.

I am probably going to end up using a program like EMMA, but it has been a while since I used any sort of program like this.  It makes me wonder if still works, or did everyone move on to the next big thing.  The program that I am facing right now is time constraints. I am just pretty damn busy, so it will be a little bit before I have this sort of data up! Stay Tuned.



p.s.

Players who wise to mimic this guide are strongly encouraged to find there own trade items, and maybe even try out different trade hubs like Amarr. The key things to look for during this phase of low isk value trading are:

1.) MARGINS: At the very least you should be doubling or tripling whatever you invest.
2.) Price: Nothing too cheap. A player can triple 2 isk and get 6 isk, or they can double 20,000 isk and get 40,000 isk. What gives you the better profit?
3.) Trade Volume: There should be at least 100 trades of that item a day.
4.) Diversify: Don't put all your isk in one item. No one can predict when a seller will come along. It is always a good idea to trade in various things instead of waiting.
5.) Turn Over: Whatever you buy, sell it as fast as you can. The more isk you have, the more stuff you can buy. Turn over is always a key factor.




Day 3: Spooky Nothingness





Friday, October 28, 2011

Day 1 - Starting Out

End Of The Day
Isk:473.47
Assets:48,400
Buy Orders: 2/5
Sell Orders: 1/5
Skills Queue: Caldari Frigate 3 / Science 4
Time Spent on Eve: 17 Minutes (3 sperate logins)

I decided to roll a Caldari Toon for this challenge because I am strapped for time, and it is going to be close to Jita.  I looked at my skills, and I realized new toons do not start off with the trade skill.  I figured I might want to fly a industrial eventually so I quickly started training frigate 4 and threw in science 4 as a filler.  The lack of the trade skill is going to be a bit of a set back tommorow.

I realize that new players can do the tutorials for a bunch of free skill books, ships, and modules.  I highly recommend that all new players do these tutorials; it will make things so much easier.  I decided, however, to fly over to Jita instead.  My goal is to keep my overall time down on EVE down.

I looked around at different small weapon mods and found two that had ok margins and that I could afford to trade in. I was looking for the buy order by to be at least half, if not a lot less then the sell order price. The goal was to, at the very least, double or tipple whatever I invested in an item. I also made sure that the item was at least trading at 100 units a day.

I started this challenge late in the day, but I managed to get some profit over the few hours before work.  I managed to buy both items and sell one.  I replaced both buy orders with higher quantities, and I also tried my hand at begging/scamming.  I asked in local if anyone could give me some isk so I could fit a ship, but I had to run to work.  I am not sure how it turned out, stay tuned.




 

 

 Day 2: Scam Successful




The 51 Day Challenge

I was recently reading about a few people who want to get into the game, but due to the economy they did not want to tack on the extra monthly fee.  My initial reaction was that you can easily pay for the game by trading a few times a day, but that is pretty easy once you have billions and billions of isk.  The challenge is can a new player earn enough isk to play the game for free after 51 days?

New players who join the game get a 21 day free trial and 30 days when they actually upgrade to a paid account for a total of 51 days.  They do not know anything about the game, or even have a basic understanding of how the markets work.  They simply lack the knowledge to trade effectly, and there is no way to easily remedy that situation. 

New players can read all the trading guides they want, but most are vague and never reveal details (for good reason).  They simply provide an explianation of the mechanics behind trading, and I want to do something a little deferent to teach trading to the noobs. There have been a lot of different challenges in the past where people attempt to make as much isk as possible station trading, but I am going to attempt to be extremely detailed. 

I want this to basically be a blueprint that anyone can use to make enough isk to play the game for free after 51 days.  I want this to be realistic and easy.  I do not want to limit myself with any unfair rules or regulations.  I will fully disclose what I trade in and where, but more importantly I will explain my logic for every item I picked.  The goal is to make sure players can pick different items to trade in if the ones I used have terrible margins. 

The rules I have set for myself are:
  1. No use of my already trained alts.
  2. No isk from my alts.
  3. No loans.
  4. No interaction with my friends from the secret alt.
This means everything else is fair game.  I can do anything else as long as I disclose what I did.  I can haul, region trade, scam, mission run (yeah, right), and mine (not going to happen).  Lets get this started!