Returning From A Hiatus

So, in my last blog I said I was going to be blogging more...didn't quite work out like that.

There's been a few changes to my situation but nothing to particularly prevent me from playing other than I basically had a break from EVE altogether. I guess it could be attributed to burnout, but everyone takes breaks from games occasionally.

With that said, I've returned enthused, and having re-read part of Croda's excellent blog I've come back to my trading operations.

I've not updated my orders at all in the last few months, but I've done a pass of all my characters tonight and my position currently is:

One nice thing with being away for a while is I came back to a lot of ISK in my wallets, my Amarr seller alone had over 6 Billion waiting to be used. Whilst I was away my wealth grew 3 Billion, always nice.

I've been through all my sellers and bought from the lists of items I tend to trade, there has been no new research, which is why I still have 7 billion still sat in wallets. I will be doing research over the next few days to try and utilise this money, as it is doing nothing for me just sitting there. As always I am using New Evolution Express to haul my items from Jita to my selling locations, but most of my characters do not have any contracting skills, so they can only make 1 contract at a time. Hauling contracts are also limited by this corporation to 2 Billion max collateral per contract. My Amarr seller bought 5 Billion ISK of items tonight, and the a combination of these factors means that he would need 3 contracts to haul the stuff, so a lot of it is still sitting in Amarr. This will be rectified as things are delivered.

Manufacturing

I had a brief foray into manufacturing when I last played, but my Rens trader is the one who is skilled in manufacturing. Rens is also the slowest trade hub that I operate in. These 2 factors means that manufacturing wasn't the most lucrative with this character, so I've stopped doing it.

However, what I am thinking of doing is starting a 3rd account. Or more precisely, re-activating a 3rd account. Years ago I had the idea of creating a self reliant character who wouldn't use the market except for blueprints, and would survive on it's own. Turns out this mostly meant mining a lot, solo, and I got bored. However, this means I do have a character with some manufacturing skills.

My thinking is to activate this third account and round out his skills, then set up shop somewhere near Jita and try manufacturing there. Buying from and selling to Jita, or shipping out the end product if it's profitable to do so. Having a dedicated character for this will mean he's not pinned to a particular location like my Rens trader, so he can go where needed without me worrying about long trips back to a selling location to do 2 jobs at once essentially. I'll need to investigate this, but I think it would be a good endeavor, and I'm sure there's money to be had along with a bit of variation from the market window.

Citadel Tax changes

I am now back from my holiday, and whilst I was away, the "Citadel" patch went live on TQ.

This release was massive, releasing new citadel structures, capital ships, hundreds of capital mods, capital NPCs, changes to wormholes, and amongst a plethora of others, a massive tax hike. From the patch notes:

• Market: markets currently have two taxes, transaction's tax, applied for sold items, and broker's fee for non immediate orders, which are set at 1.5% and 1% respectively. To create an environment more competitive for Citadels, we plan on increasing the transaction tax to 2.5% and the broker's fee to 5-6%. Players trading in citadels will still receive the transaction tax, but the broker's fee will be at the complete discretion of the owner. To avoid confusion for the owner, the broker relations skill will not affect player set broker's fee in Citadels.

Until someone creates a "Jita 4-4 Citadel" which I can't see happening any time soon, or possibly ever due to high sec war mechanics, we can safely ignore the broker fees in citadels, as I won't be using one.

However, this does mean that buying from a sell order (with no skills or standings) and setting up a new sell order in a different hub used to cost a total of 1.5 + 1 + 1.5 = 4% of an items value in taxes. Under the new system this would cost 2.5 + 2.5 + 6 = 11% of an items value in taxes! This is HUGE!

In reality, all of my trading characters have broker relations/accounting of at least 4, which brings the Broker Fee to 3% and transaction tax to 1%. This still leads to 5% cost lost to taxes, much more than before. What this means to me is an immediate loss in profit, as the margins on items have not immediately changed, and it will likely be a while before they do (existing stock sitting around etc.). It also means that a lot of my items I was trading with a profit margin of 10% or sometimes less will no longer be profitable, or will be but not much. I try to stick to items with 20% profit margins, but as prices swing this is not always possible, plus an item that costs 400 million with a 10% profit margin is still 40 million in profit, minus taxes. This will no longer be viable, so I'll likely have to have a wholesale rethink in what I buy and trade.

This will not be the end of regional trading as a few doomsayers on the forums suspect, but it will require a rethink, and may well hit my profits until I do.

Month 5 Review

I have been a bit complacent this month, kind of cruising regarding trading and not really investigating new items too frequently. This is probably why the number look pretty similar to last month:

Last month I finished on 18.1 Billion ISK, which makes my profit for this month just over 4 Billion for a total of 22.2 Billion ISK.

That's a very similar amount of profit to last month. Whilst a billion a week is not bad per se, I really think it can be improved. I am going on holiday tonight, but when I get back I think I need to really evaluate what I'm selling. I was initially aiming for items of at least a 20% profit margin, but a lot of my regularly traded items fall below this threshold now, and have for a while. They continue to make some money, which is why I keep trading them, but I feel my complacency it what is leading to my plateauing profit numbers.

One thing I have done this month is keep my "ISK in wallet" at any given time to 2.5 to 5 Billion at a time. This does not look like that today as I have not made a buying run in the last 24 hours, but that is what's been happening, which is a definite improvement. As I will be away, I decide not to make a buying run last night, and have updated my sell orders and will see where I stand when I return in a week. I am hoping for about a quarter of my sell orders to be filled with zero updates, we will see if that is what pans out.

One thing to consider when I'm looking at possible items for manufacture (which I haven't started yet, but will soonish) is that there is a war on. World War Bee is very widely reported on, and the battle reports and kills posted on Reddit and elsewhere give some insight into the regularly used ships and modules. I would need to buy/research some blueprints to take advantage of the situation (as my own collection is meagre at best) but I certainly think there's some money to be made if you pick the right doctrine items from the various alliances.

Still, for all my moaning it is nice to be in "supercapital money" territory, and I intend to start blogging quite a bit more often. Certainly covering my thoughts beyond these monthly reviews. I intend to look at the upcoming tax changes with the citadel expansion in some detail, as they affect my trading quite heavily, and will cover my move to start T1 manufacturing.

Month 4 Review

I have been away from home for a few days, which is why this update is slightly delayed. I try to keep my monthly recaps to the 17th of the month, but this has slipped slightly again.

Regardless, I have had a bit more chance to trade this month, and my trade numbers look better for it. My current position is as follows:

If you add my total assets plus sell orders this would put me at the milestone of 20 Billion, however I like to allow a 20% provision on my sell orders to allow for reducing sell order values to match the competition (which happens on a relatively regular basis). As such I consider my total "wealth" to be just over 18 Billion ISK. This still represents an increase of 4 billion in the last month, not bad, but definitely not close to my profit over Christmas.

One thing that does eat into my profits is that I continue to contract all of my hauling out to "New Evolution Express". I always use priority contracts, which are always completed within 1 day rather than the regular 3. This comes at an additional cost of 15 million per contract (and I have to make 3 per run, as I have 3 selling locations), but I believe this is worth it to get my good ready for sale next time I log on. I choose to contract my hauling rather than shipping it myself as a) I don't have to take the time to haul myself, which I increasingly do not have time for regardless and b) it outsources the risk of gank to someone else. As my contracts are over collateralized if the hauler was to be ganked then I would get approximately 110% of the value of my goods in ISK, rather than losing the whole shipment if it was me hauling. New Evolution Express have not failed a single contract for me though, and I consider my ISK well spent.

I also had a one off payment to make this month. My Amarr trader is on the same account as my "main" pvp character, that I keep separate from this endeavor. That character takes the priority for skill training on that account. However, this month I was finding my Amarr traders' 57 maximum orders to be a real bottleneck, so I spent 637 million ISK on one of the new Skill Injector items to gain 500,000 skill points for that character. I used this SP to learn Retail V and get to Wholesale IV increasing his available orders to 129. It should be a while before this becomes a problem again.

Over the next few days I will need to re-evaluate my items for sale properly, as I have about 7 billion sitting around in cash, which isn't earning me anything. My Rens trader is also skilled at manufacturing, and has some researched BPOs, so I may take a look at starting up some manufacturing. Some investigation required.

Taking stock of everything though, I am happy with 15 Billion ISK profit in 4 months of regional trading, it seems to scale well and I can sort all my characters out in about 45 mins per time logged on (which is often once every 2-3 days). I doubt I could make more money another way in this timescale.

Month 3 Review, very late.

So, a combination of real life stresses (work drama, workmen in the flat etc. etc.) means that I have barely played EVE at all this last month, and is also why this blog is almost a week late. The lack of playtime is really reflected in my trade numbers.

Given that on the 17th of January I was sitting at 13 Billion, this is not good and really represents that I have hardly played. I hope to be able to play more this month and bring the numbers up to a more respectable level.

As you can see, I have really just updated sell orders here and there, and basically haven't bought and shipped anything, which is why there is 9.2 Billion sat around in wallets. ISK in wallets isn't doing anything for me, so I'll need to get that working as soon as possible.

Month 2 Review

This month was an eventful one.

I fully brought online a third seller in Dodixie, which has consistently been my biggest market in terms of profits and money dedicated to it. Dodixie seems to have more volume than Rens but less competition than Amarr, so I am liking it at the moment.

I have also changed the way I trade. Until 2 weeks ago I was flying each of my characters to Jita, buying the items, and then giving them to my Rens trader to haul in a blockade runner. In the last 2 weeks I have created a new fresh character, i.e. has no skills, and sent him to Jita.

Thus my current daily routine looks something like:

• Log on to seller, update orders.
• Buy replacement items with my Jita character.
• Create and accept item exchange contract to my seller
• Create a courier contract from Jita to the selling system, to New Evolution Express, a hauling corp.

This cuts down the time I need to sort out all my orders dramatically, as I'm not wasting an hour or so flying around. On this point, the corp I have been using "New Evolution Express" have been fantastic. Fairly cheap rates, and my priority contracts have all been completed in 3 hours or less. I use "priority" contracts because I want to guarantee that my items are there to be sold the next time I log on, if I had to wait 3 days my profits would be reduced.

All this means that my current trade position is as follows:

As ever, I factor in a 20% provision on sell orders to allow for having to reduce my prices due to competition. This doesn't happen too much, but is well worth factoring in.

On the 17th of December my "wealth" sat at 5,725,520,800 ISK. This means that this month I have increased my wealth by 7,323,425,121.60, which works out at an average of 236 Million ISK per day. 

This is a dramatic increase in last month, but there were a few special conditions (a lot of time, snowballs) that contributed to this. Regardless, I am very happy with this amount of profit and especially my new way of working.

A reflection and a slight change of plan.

So the Christmas Holiday has been productive, EVE-wise anyway!

I had almost 3 weeks off work, and though I was away from my PC, I had access to EVE on another machine. A lot of access. I was able to spend a good 2 hours a day updating orders, researching new items to trade, and hauling the items around myself in a blockade runner. As things stand my current position is:

On the 17th of December I had 5,7 Billion, so that means an increase of 5.5 Billion ISK in 3 weeks! This is above and beyond what I expected for this time, and I'm very happy with how it went. However, my daily routine took a whopping 2 hours to complete, which I simply don't have time for on most weeknights. Which brings me to my change of plan.

I am going to stop doing my own hauling, completely. It is too time consuming, plus I'm running the risk someone will play "blockade runner roulette" and gank my BR on the off chance the loot is worth it. As such I will be trying out New Evolution Express for my hauling needs. They seem reasonably priced, and are vouched for by croda in his blog. If they work for him they will work for me. As such I will no longer be running my characters to Jita to do their own buying.

Up until now I had been keeping each characters money separate to keep track of who was making profit where, but as I will be contracting out my hauling I don't want to run around. Therefore I am creating a character with no skills who will sit in Jita, buy the items, then contract them to my other characters. Those characters will then create hauling contracts to New Eden Express to deliver them to my trade hubs.

All of this means I should drastically reduce the time spent flying around, to keep my daily routine to sub 1 hour, and allow more time for researching new items for sale. It will likely take a few days to get this up and running, so I'm expecting a dip in profits until I do. Long term though this should be much more efficient than my current "do everything myself approach".

Only time will tell.