Another Citadel in hull

It's beginning to seem like there's a co-ordinated effort going on. My Amarr station trader operates out of a market Sotiyo in Ashab, and today when I logged on to update my orders I was once again faced with this:

Someone has put the citadel into its hull timer, and put their own up. Once again I'm going to have to tear down my orders and set up elsewhere.

These guys are the ones who've put the new hub up, and I'm guessing they're responsible for the reinforcement of the EVE-Mogul hub. Curiously, EVE-Mogul are the ones who put the Hek citadel into reinforce and threw down their own there. There is clearly an active power struggle going on for the high-sec trade hubs.

The only one that is stable it seems is the Tranquility Trade Tower in Perimeter, largely because it is a profit sharing scheme/protection racket between Pandemic Horde, TEST and Goons.

I may set up in the new trade hub in Ashab to save on broker fees, but this whole episode is making me question the efficiency of citadels for trade in high sec, if I have to move semi-regularly.

Locked Out

So I logged onto my Hek trader yesterday to be met with the following message:

Ah.

This was confusing, as being a public trade hub Citadel I couldn't see me being put on any sort of block list, my corp has never even been at war. When I undocked the reason became clear:

Someone has put the ICY trade hub citadel into its hull timer, turning off any modules, which includes the market. Another Citadel has been anchored in system, this one at 0.3% tax. Presumably they're the ones who are reinforcing the ICY citadel, or at least the ones who paid mercs to do it.

Either way, I don't want to get caught up in these shenanigans in future, as it meant I had to tear down all of my sell orders and transfer everything to a different station. I decided to go with the NPC station where most trading happens in system to avoid being locked out in future, even though it means paying 2.5% broker fee. This meant spending about 1Bn ISK in broker fees up front, but I can never be locked out of this station, and I tend to have a 10-20% profit margin on my items anyway.

If I had logged in later, when the citadel was destroyed, I would have had to pay for asset safety to retrieve my items for sale. AFAIK this is about 10% of their value, which would come to about 4.5Bn. Ouch. Suddenly the broker fee in the NPC station doesn't seem so bad.

This may mean I make slightly less money on this character, but I think from a quality of life point of view this is a worthwhile move. Not sure I can be bothered running missions to bring the broker fee down though.

July Update

A pretty good month all things considered, had a fairly normal amount of playtime, and managed to spin up a 4th account to cover off my gap of a seller in Hek.

My current position:

As things stand, I have 435.6Bn ISK. This is an increase of 36.3Bn on the 30th of May, and represents a daily average of 1067Million per day! Virtually identical daily average to last month. Hopefully this represents a new normal of just over 1Bn a day profit, which would be a fair step up in my race to the big T.

This month has been largely normal, with the exception of spinning up a 4th account to start and train up a seller in Hek, in a Tatara with 0.1% broker fee. I used a buddy invite to give myself 750,000 SP on this character, which was used to jump to accounting IV and 77 orders, a solid start. I also spent 2.2Bn on PLEX for this account, as I'm not sure I can really justify £40 a month on EVE, and I pay for my other 3 accounts with cash.

I have not included the PLEX in the monthly profits (as it's spent and gone), but I will have to factor in buying it monthly going forwards. Paying for all of my accounts with PLEX will cost me, at current prices, 8.8Bn a month. This is a bigger hit than I am willing to take, so this happy medium will do for now. The PLEX on my investment sheet is just that, investments, and won't be spent unless things get desperate.

I haven't done a "trade run" (more on that in  another post) since Sunday, which is why I have 34.5Bn ISK in cash at the moment, normally I'd carry less and more in sell orders, as cash sitting around isn't doing anything for me.

I have 4 accounts, with 9 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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 87Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~138.3 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. 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 79.3 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 79.8 Billion ISK in active sells. He also hauls my goods from Jita to the other trade hubs in a Crane.

Hek Seller

My new character. Like the other high sec seller characters, he sits in a trade hub (the ICY Tatara in Hek) and sells items brought to him by the Rens seller. Deals primarily in Rigs, faction modules and implants. I started this character off with 16Bn "seed" money and he's currently got 24.5Bn in sell orders. Needs to pay for his own PLEX every month, which shouldn't be too difficult.

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 9.9 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, 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.

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 50.8 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.

Horde Seller

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 BWF-FF. 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 2.1 Bn in sell orders.

I largely stopped updating this character this month whilst the staging was ongoing, but I'll start him up again now that Horde are back home and it's business as usual.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 3.3Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably.

Adding another account

Yesterday I did something I've been resisting for years... I added a 4th Omega account.

I have always tried to keep my in game and out of game money separate, I've been paying for my 3 accounts with cash for years now, and I can quite happily pay £30 a month for the entertainment EVE provides me (not like I go clubbing anymore, so beer money is now EVE money).

At the same time, there has long been a hole in my high sec trade operations. The 5 main high sec trade hubs in the game are Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek - in that size order. I have traders at all of them except Hek.

I've long been considering adding a seller there, particularly as my sellers in Amarr, Dodixie and Rens have been plateauing a bit lately. However, all of my accounts have 3 characters, that are all utilised, and so I cannot dedicate one of them to moving to Hek. So I finally decided to take the plunge and create a 4th account.

I actually created the account at the weekend, using a refer a friend link from myself to create an alpha account, create a minmatar character, and fly straight from the tutorial system to Hek. I didn't PLEX the account then, just wanted to get the lay of the land.

Now, there are restrictions on trade hubs that do not allow you to anchor citadels in them, to cut server load and prevent spam, but for some reason in the case of this restriction, Hek is not considered to be a trade hub, despite being almost the same size as Rens from a trade point of view. So there are citadels there. Specifically, there is an ICY (IChooseYou) Tatara in Hek that has a broker fee of 0.1%. This is brilliant, saves the requirement to train broker relations (though I'll probably do it anyway) and I don't need to worry about standings. So I set my shiny new character up there.

As I don't want to pay real money for a 4th account and this account should easily be able to PLEX itself, I decided this will be my (for now) only account funded by PLEX. So when doing a trade run last night I transferred this character ~18 Billion ISK, bought 500 PLEX for about 2.2 Billion, and went Omega. When you activate a refer a friend link you also get 750,000 SP to inject, which is great. So I bought a bunch of trade skills, queued it up, and injected. As things stand this character has accounting IV, 77 orders and is working on accounting V. I then bought items and put them up for sale for ~24 Billion ISK, and went to bed.

Despite picking a bunch of items that sell at least once per day, faction/deadspace modules mostly, when I logged on this morning to have a quick check, absolutely nothing had sold. This is disappointing, but it was a Wednesday evening, so I'll give it the weekend. Most of the items I'm selling though are up for sale in an NPC station in the system, so maybe people are buying their items there instead of the Tatara, despite my orders being the cheapest? Who knows. If I have to move I will.

Once this character is trained up, I will probably use the other slots for other characters, maybe another regional trader and either someone to trade exclusively skill injectors, or possibly a manufacturer. Feels strange having a 4th account though, weirdly feels like a big leap.

Early June update

I'm going to be away this weekend, so I'm making my update a couple of days early. Leaves a weekends worth of sales for the next month!

My current position:

I currently have 399.3Bn ISK. This is an increase of 29.2Bn ISK on last month. A pretty good month by all accounts, even with a slow start. This makes an average of 1064 Million ISK per day, finally broken the 1 Bil a day average!!!

This month has been all about my investments. As you can see my investments character is overseeing an extra 9Bn this month compared to last month. A lot of my investments, particularly my ships, experienced a sharp jump in value. This is probably due to the outbreak of a war in the north. I've plowed as much as I can back into investments. This seems to be a very scalable way of making money, even if it takes patience.

I would have broken 400Bn this month, but I experienced a boo-boo, where I entered a sell order for 123 mil rather than 1.2 bil. Woops. Fortunately not something happens very often, but a days worth of work gone in an instant is annoying all the same.

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 am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 87Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~138.7 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing. Finished training Tycoon V on this character to increase orders to maximum. 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 78 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 87.5 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 9 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, 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.

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 46 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.

Horde Seller

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 BWF-FF. 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 2.9 Bn in sell orders.

Horde staging has changed recently to SH1 to support the war in the north. This hasn't seemed to affect my turnover much, but I am considering relocating to try and make money off the deployment, rather than staying in BWF.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 2.9Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. 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.

Large Skill Injectors, trade in station or transport?

On my Jita/Perimeter trader, one of my consistent money makers has been Large Skill Injectors. These are, like PLEX, high volume, high value, and low margin items, that are directly tied to the price of PLEX (so you can usually guess which way the price will go by watching the PLEX price). I've done some rep grinding on this character to get my broker fee down to 2.1% in Jita, and as Caldari are "allied" to Amarr, my broker fee in Amarr is 2.58% (from memory).

One thing I've noticed over the course of my activities is the different price spread between Perimeter (razor thin), Jita (slightly wider) and Amarr (much wider). For example, this morning Buy orders for skill injectors were 995 mil in Perimeter. So if I were to buy one there I would have the following sell options:
Perimeter - 995 * 1.016 = 1010.92 mil (0.3% broker, 1% transaction, 0.3% broker)
Jita - 995 * 1.034 = 1028.83 mil (0.3% broker, 1% transaction, 2.1% broker)
Amarr - 995 * 1.0388 = 1033.6 mil (0.3% broker, 1% transaction, 2.58% broker)

The sell prices (approx) were:
Perimeter - 1018 - 1010.92 = 7.08 mil profit
Jita - 1048 - 1028.83 = 19.17 mil profit
Amarr - 1088 - 1033.6 = 54.4 mil profit

Seems like a clear winner right? Not entirely. The volume in the forge is 5000-7500 per day, but in Amarr it's 500-750. There is also transport time to consider (in a sub 2 second align full tank Ares, but still). I used to exclusively buy in Perimeter and sell in Jita, but recently I've been buying 20 at a time, transporting them to Amarr and putting them up for sale. Any extra I buy in the meantime I tend to sell in Jita for a fast turn around. If you can be at the keyboard for a reasonable length of time I still think Jita is the place to sell due to the volume, but as I get 5-10 mins most mornings, a quick trip to Amarr can be the way to go.

May Update

Not a spectacular month, but not a bad one either. I feel like I'm into a flow now with my different trading methods working well. My current position:

As things stand, I have 370.1Bn ISK. This is 21.5Bn more than last month, or 716 Million ISK per day. A step down from last month, and slightly less than the monthly average I need to meet if I want to double my ISK by 02/01/20, which is 22.5Bn a month. A few good months mean I'm still ahead on that target, so I still think getting 540Bn by the start of next year is very doable.

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'm not doing a good job of accounting when it comes to these profits, but it's definitely earned me a few billion for very little work. I am putting excess ISK into this venture, and watch delonewolf's EVE Talk to get ideas for things to invest in. Currently holding about 78Bn in orders and investments.

Amarr Seller

My main money maker, with ~124 Billion in active sell orders at the time of writing.  I'm training Tycoon V on this character to increase orders to maximum. 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 76.9 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 76.6 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 8.8 Billion.

Jita station trader

My more serious station trader. I have a character in Perimeter in a player owned Keepstar, 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. Test has recently declared a profit sharing agreement with Horde in Perimeter, which has lead to the KeepStar taxes returning to 0.3%. This is annoying, but I'll have to deal with it.

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 44.8 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 have recently started buying some Large skill injectors on this character, then flying over to Amarr to sell them, for a profit margin of about 40mil each. This is MUCH bigger than the spread in Jita/Perimeter, though it involves more travel time.

Horde Seller

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 BWF-FF. 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 2.9 Bn in sell orders.

Tash-Murkon Region trader

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 2.6Bn. Can fly a Crane, which speeds up my collections immeasurably. 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.