End of Year 2018

I will be going away to spend time with family early tomorrow morning, and I'm not going to have access to a computer for the next 2 weeks, so I might as well do my end of year update now.

My current status:

As things stand, I have 270.4 Billion ISK. That is 12bn more than on the 2nd of December. That works out to 631.5mil a day. Not bad but definitely down on last month. If I was to continue at that rate I would earn another 7.5bn by the 2nd of January, which would put me at 19.5bn so this is still a decent month of earnings. I've had, if anything, even less time to play EVE than usual. I was away the last couple of weekends and I've only have 1 proper "trade run" session a week, whereas I can usually fit 2 or 3 in. As a result I've been seriously limited to 5 or 10 mins in the morning to update a couple of characters orders, and that's it.

Looking at my spreadsheet for the 30th December 2017 for comparison:

As you can see, a  year ago I was utilising just 4 characters for trading, and had 94.8bn. Over the last year I've earned 175.7bn ISK, nearly tripling my worth. With the newer characters and methods of trading brought online I expect my monthly profits to only increase on average, and I'm into serious money now. It's amazing how it snowballs when you've got some real money to play with.

Even though I haven't been blogging this whole time, I have been keeping spreadsheets of my trading at various points. At some point in the new year I'll make a post with graphs and analysis of my profit over time, to chart my journey so far. Unfortunately I don't have time for that today, but I think it'll be cool to take a step back and see how far I've come. I may be only 25% of the way towards the Trillion in ISK terms, but it feels closer than that time wise. Indeed if I could triple my worth again next year (unlikely) then I'll be at 810bn this time next year! I can dream I guess?

I have 3 accounts, with 8 characters dedicated to trading:

Jita Buyer

This is a character that sits in Jita and contracts items to my other characters. This character has little training, and mostly buys from sell orders and contracts the items to my other characters. I tend to have this character logged in to act as a real time price comparison whilst checking my other characters orders. This character also manages my long term investments, though that doesn't take much work. I've managed to cash a few investments out for 20%ish profit this month. I'm not doing a good job of accounting when it comes to these profits, but it's definitely earned me a couple of billion for very little work.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~123.8 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. I've hit a wall on this character, it only has 129 orders and I'm using all of them. I'm training Wholesale V then Tycoon on this character to increase this, and I'm finding I have a few items just sat in my inventory unable to utilise orders to sell. I'm not sure how much I can increase the sells on this character, but it doesn't seem like I've hit my limit in terms of ISK yet. Takes implants and faction/deadspace modules delivered by my Rens character and sells them in Amarr.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar to the Amarr seller, he sits in Dodixie, takes receipt of items, then set up sell orders. Currently has 58.1 Billion in sell orders. No news with this character.

Rens seller/Hauler

Like the other characters, this character takes items bought in Jita and sells them in Rens. Currently has 63.1 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Amarr station trader

Sits in a player owned Fortizar in Ashab, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a range of 1 Jump to cover Amarr. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 1 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 4.8 Billion. Again, I barely touched this character. When I do have the time and motivation to station trade I almost exclusively use my Jita trader, as he makes more raw profit. I keep mulling this over, but I may end up cashing this character out and either setting him up as a seller in Hek (the only high sec trade hub I don't currently operate in) or setting him up to region trade in the same way as my Tash-Murkon trader. Either way this character is cripplingly under-utilised, so I need to find a way to get him making more money without adding much if any time to my existing trading activities.

Jita station trader

My latest, and more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Fortizar, with 0.3% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump. This covers Jita. Most of my items are bought and sold in the Jita 4-4 station. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 10 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 27.5 Billion. I spent the time to get faction and corp standing up with this character, and this is my attempt to take station trading seriously. I've not had time to do much station trading on this character in the last few weeks, but he's still turned 2bn in profit. Not bad for the effort involved.

Horde Seller

A new addition to the trading roster. In a very similar way to the other selling characters, he takes items bought by the Jita Buyer, then contracts the items to "Valhalla Deliveries" (a delivery service for Pandemic Horde) to transport the items to the Horde Keepstar in O-V. He then sells them there for a profit. He trades primarily T2 modules, drones and scan probes. I set him up with 1bn and he's currently at 1.47 Bil in sell orders with 370mil of items en route. I'm really happy with the progress of this character, as I don't do the hauling myself he takes very little work and is making good money. I can log in one morning, update his sell orders, buy some new items and set up a courier contract, and by the next morning my items are there and there is money in the wallet to buy another shipment. I should have started this character trading a lot sooner!

Tash-Murkon Region trader

Another new character, and a different strategy altogether. This character sits in a player owned Fortizar in Tash-Murkon prime, and set up regional buy orders for modules, implants and drones. When a lot of orders have been filled I fly around and collect it all to sell in Tash-Murkon Prime. I set this character up with 100mil to buy his own skills and get started, after skills he had 70mil to buy items. Currently at 335 million. Training to fly a Crane to collect items more safely. I'm really happy with the turnover and profit margins this character is making. The running around the region to pick up items is annoying, but I can leave my orders up for a week and a lot of them won't be contested, which is really nice. The margins are amazing as well. Will definitely keep this up.

December Update

I managed to play a bit more this month, and have had a few ideas on how to expand and mix up my trading activity in order to increase profits. I also have hit 25% of the trillion ISK! Now I just need to quadruple my money...

My current status:

As things stand, I have 258.4 Billion ISK. That's 23.5 Billion more than last month. This is a record breaking month, caused by a few different factors. For one thing, I have had a bit more chance to play, which always helps. I have cashed out my PLEX holding after an Omega status sale pushed the price up to 3.5 million each, and put the ISK into other investments, much more diversified this time. I have also expanded to a null sec trader, and a regional trader based out of a region without a major trade hub. Both of these ventures offer opportunities to increase my profits with very little extra hauling, and therefore little extra time. Time is my biggest limiting factor, so anything I can do to use my time efficiently is good. I tend to spend about 5-10 mins every morning before work updating orders (largely my Jita station trader). I have barely touched my Amarr station trader, something I'm looking to correct going forwards.

I have 3 accounts, with 8 characters dedicated to trading:

Jita Buyer

This is a character that sits in Jita and contracts items to my other characters. This character has little training, and mostly buys from sell orders and contracts the items to my other characters. I tend to have this character logged in to act as a real time price comparison whilst checking my other characters orders. This character also manages my long term investments, though that doesn't take much work.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~106 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. I'm not sure how much more I can continue to increase the sells on this character, I assume I'll hit a peak at some point fairly soon. Takes implants and faction/deadspace modules delivered by my Rens character and sells them in Amarr.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar to the Amarr seller, he sits in Dodixie, takes receipt of items, then set up sell orders. Currently has 55.3 Billion in sell orders.

Rens seller/Hauler

Like the other characters, this character takes items bought in Jita and sells them in Rens. Currently has 54.6 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Amarr station trader

Sits in a player owned Fortizar in Ashab, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a range of 1 Jump to cover Amarr. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 1 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 4.5 Billion.

Jita station trader

My latest, and more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Fortizar, with 0.3% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump. This covers Jita. Most of my items are bought and sold in the Jita 4-4 station. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 10 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 25.5 Billion. I spent the time to get faction and corp standing up with this character, and this is my attempt to take station trading seriously. I've had a great month on this character, thanks in large part to a lot of fluctuation with the price of Large Skill Injectors due to sales around Thanksgiving/Black Friday.

Horde Seller

A new addition to the trading roster. In a very similar way to the other selling characters, he takes items bought by the Jita Buyer, then contracts the items to "Valhalla Deliveries" (a delivery service for Pandemic Horde) to transport the items to the Horde Keepstar in O-V. He then sells them there for a profit. He trades primarily T2 modules, drones and scan probes. Currently at 1.15 Bil in sell orders.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

Another new character, and a different strategy altogether. This character sits in a player owned Fortizar in Tash-Murkon prime, and set up regional buy orders for modules, implants and drones. When a lot of orders have been filled I fly around and collect it all to sell in Tash-Murkon Prime. I'm pretty happy with the volume and margins this character is managing, and I can happily leave my orders for days at a time without being overcut, which is nice. Currently at 206 million. Training to fly a Crane to collect items more safely.

Cashing out PLEX

So, for Cyber Monday CCP is offering Omega status for 425 PLEX a month, rather than the usual 500. This represents a 15% discount when buying with PLEX. There is no corresponding sale with cash.

This has pushed the price of PLEX up, as people rush to buy PLEX with ISK to PLEX their accounts. In fact this has pushed PLEX to 3,500,000 per unit. I decided this is enough for me to cash out my holdings, and try and use the funds for other investments. As such I've set up a sell order in Jita:

I calculated that I have spent 25,729,205,120.00 ISK on 10,000 PLEX over the years, so this would represent a profit of 8,148,661,365.00 

Not too bad. Hopefully any future investments will return a profit a bit faster than PLEX though.

I got ganked

Well, this is a first.

It was my own fault really. On my Jita station trader, I sit in a Keepstar in Perimeter and set up buy orders with a range of 1 jump in order to cover Jita. Most of the time, my buy orders are filled in Jita, but occasionally they are filled in Perimeter. Most of the orders filled in Perimeter are Large Skill Injectors.

What I normally do in this situation is load the injectors into my Tayra (I know...) and make the lone jump to Jita to sell them. I used a Tayra due to my lack of skills on this character. This has never been an issue before, despite me knowing the stupidity of it.

Well, yesterday I was finally punished. Laden with a Large Skill Injector (thankfully just 1) and a few other modules, my cargo hold came to about 800 mil. I jumped into Jita, warped to station, but as I didn't use an insta-dock bookmark, I landed 2500m away from the station, unable to instantly dock. As I slowboated a tornado locked me and one-shot me. Ouch.

The silver lining is the skill injector didn't drop, so the gankers made a loss as well, but it still set me back most of the station trading profit for the week.

I had a lot of free time yesterday so I actually had my best day ever station trading, making 971 million profit according to eve mogul, but the gank means I'm only slightly better off than where I was at the start of yesterday.

Oh well, lesson learned, I now use an insta-warping frigate with an insta-dock bookmark, so I should be:
A) a less obvious target as I'm not flying a hauler, but a combat frigate
B) less likely to get ganked as I'm using an insta-dock bookmark and can't be caught on gate

Here's hoping it doesn't happen again.

November Update

I managed to play slightly more this month, and have had a few ideas on how to expand and mix up my trading activity in order to increase profits. My current status:

As things stand, I have 234.9 Billion ISK. That's 16.8 Billion more than last month. This is a slight increase on last month, but still not a record breaker. I tend to spend about 5-10 mins every morning before work updating orders (largely my Jita station trader). I have barely touched my Amarr station trader, something I'm looking to correct going forwards.

I have 3 accounts, with 6 characters dedicated to trading:

Jita Buyer

This is a character that sits in Jita and contracts items to my other characters. This character has no training, and simply buys from buy orders and contracts the items to my other characters. I tend to have this character logged in to act as a real time price comparison whilst checking my other characters orders.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~101 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. Finally, 100 Billion ISK in sell orders on a single character! I'm not sure how much more I can continue to increase the sells on this character, I assume I'll hit a peak at some point fairly soon. Takes implants and faction/deadspace modules delivered by my Rens character and sells them in Amarr.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar to the Amarr seller, he sits in Dodixie, takes receipt of items, then set up sell orders. Currently has 56.5 Billion in sell orders.

Rens seller/Hauler

Like the other characters, this character takes items bought in Jita and sells them in Rens. Currently has 59.4 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my good from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane. This is mostly implants, so high value, small volume items. This means I can fit everything for all 3 characters in a single Blockade runner, which with its current fit has about 50k EHP, and can warp cloaked. For highsec this is basically invincible, so I'm happy hauling like this, for now.

Amarr station trader

I've branched out slightly into station trading. I have a character in Amarr that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 1 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 4.5 Billion.

Jita station trader

My latest, and more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Fortizar, with 0.3% broker fee that sits in one station, buys from buy orders and sells through sell orders with a reach of 1 jump. This covers Jita. Most of my items are bought and sold in the Jita 4-4 station. This character trades completely different items to the rest of my characters. I gave this character 10 Billion to start with, and he's currently on 17.2 Billion. I spent the time to get faction and corp standing up with this character, and this is my attempt to take station trading seriously. It's going fairly well, making about 1 Billion a week on this character, but it is heavily dependant on playtime, unlike my inter-hub trading.

Another Alt

So, I have 3 accounts, divided thusly:

Account 1
Main - member of Pandemic Horde, all rounder, has the most combat skills
Amarr Seller - sits in Amarr, sells implants and modules brought by Rens trader. My most profitable seller
Jita buyer - Character with minimal skills that sits in Jita, buys from sell orders and contracts to other alts

Account 2
Nullsec dogsbody - Also in Pandemic Horde, can use cynos, fly dreads, etc. General support character to my "main"
Rens trader - Sells in Rens, does all my trasnporting in a Crane, my old highsec "main"
Dodixie seller - Sells in Dodixie, like Amarr seller but not as profitable

Account 3
Jita station trader - a newish but profitable character, sits in a citadel in Perimeter and trades, most business done out of Jita 4-4
Amarr station trader - sits in Amarr, buys and sells without undocking
spare character - the subject of this post

As you can see, 8 out of 9 characters are utilised and have a purpose. Even though some hardly do much (nullsec dogsbody hasn't had much love recently). I've been reading a lot of blogs recently and trying to think of a way of getting the 9th character to do something useful for me money making wise.

I've been reading merchant monarchy, who made well over 800 Billion ISK in about 3 years by doing "regional trading". By that I mean setting up region wide buy orders, then collecting the items and selling them, either there or in another region. This is something I haven't tried before, so I thought it might be worth giving a go.

Therefore I gave that alt 100 million ISK, bought some trade skills, and have started training up everything I need to manage trading across an entire region. At the moment I can only utilise 13 orders (this alt really had no training), so I've put up a bunch of buy orders up in Tash-Murkon, the region next to Amarr. I've based myself out of a trade fort in the system of Tash-Murkon prime.

I'm primarily looking at low priced stuff, skillbooks, a few modules, drones, and I'll use this as an experiment for a few days/a week. I'm hoping that this is something I can not log into for several days, and not have any of my orders overcut. I'm keen to see how this goes.

If I'm not getting the turnover I would like then I have a backup plan, of applying to Pandemic Horde on this character, and trading in their staging. The margins can be pretty good versus Jita and the shipping corp is extremely cheap.

Moving next door

So, this happened about a week or two ago, but I'm just getting around to posting.

TEST declared war on Pandemic Horde and decided to take their high sec monopoly on trade hubs. Goons joined in support, and against the sheer numbers of both alliances Horde decided not to challenge. As things stand all of Horde (and IChooseYou)'s market Fortizars are in their final timer or destroyed.

TEST also decided to deploy the first high sec Keepstar in Perimiter - because they could.

All this means that my station traders old home is not an option, so I had to tear down my buy orders and up sticks. Though the Keepstar is on the same grid as the old Fort, so I didn't have to move far.

The good news is that the CEO of TEST has declared that the trade hub will have a broker fee of 0.3%, which will never change. Horde had a broker fee of 0.5%, so this is good for me. It was claimed on Reddit that Horde earned 200 Billion a month from broker fees from the Perimeter Fortizar, so at 0.3% TEST can expect the Keepstar to pay for itself in under 2 months. Not a bad investment really.

I have noticed since the change though that the margins on skill injectors have entered unprofitable territory, so I've pulled out of them for now. Advantage of station trading is you can be very fast moving.