April Update

 First one of these in a little while! Feels good to have come back to the game, and I'm enjoying my time without going too deep into it. Not a full month as I only came back to the game on the 5th, but here's my position as of 30th April:

I currently have a total of 841.6Bn ISK. That's an increase from the 5th of 43.5Bn ISK. Considering I've been back in the game for 26 days that means a daily average of 1.67Bn ISK/day. That's a really good result and far exceeds what I was expecting to achieve in my first month back. In fact, that might be the best monthly update I've had! That said there are a couple of caveats.

When going through all my characters, a lot of things came out of the woodwork. Most of which has been accounted for, but I also found 2 dreadnaughts on my nullsec character (a character I don't use for trading) which I had bought for investments that I decided to sell and include in my trading. Which may sound like cheating, but you could reduce 8Bn ISK from my total if you wanted to consider this a pure challenge. however, I feel this is mitigated by the worst mistake I have ever made in trading:

Yes, that is a 6.7Bn ISK broker fee, for a 451Bn ISK sell order. I honestly don't know how I did this. I was putting a implant up for sale, and clearly didn't clear the box with the default value out properly, or read the values correctly. I also frustratedly dismissed the warning box several times to force it through, so I only have myself to blame. So if you put my "extra" dreads and this mistake together that puts me ahead 1.3Bn ISK of where I should be. So I'm calling it a wash.

One major change I've made is I no longer do my own hauling. For each seller now I buy the items, contract it to my remote sellers, then create a public contract to deliver it to my sell hubs. I've been putting up a 1% reward, and over collatoralising by 10-15% and almost all of them have been delivered within a few hours. This has saved me so much time and probably has lead to improved profits counterintuitively. This is because instead of spending my time mindlessly flying around in space I can use that time to consider new items to buy or new ways to go about things. 

I have 4 accounts, with 11 characters dedicated to trading:

Rens Seller

This has always been one of my top performers, and so it is proving again. I no longer haul using this character, but he's performing well. Currently 127Bn ISK in sell orders, and he's made sales of 58Bn ISK this month. Given that I aim for a margin of around 20% this probably amounts to profits before fees of about 12Bn, which is pretty nice.

Manufacturing character

I've done nothing at all on this character. Something I want to look at over the next month.

Amarr Seller

My biggest performer, he has sell orders of 131Bn and has made sales amounting to 112Bn ISK this month! Seems that even with the change of geography making Amarr harder to get to from Jita it is still a great place to do business.

Hek Seller

A little disappointing this one. Has 52Bn ISK in sell order and has made sales of 31Bn. Essentially half the size of my Rens business. I need to take a look at what I'm selling here and maybe add or mix up some items.

Dodixie Seller

Very similar in scale to my Rens business this. Currently 99.5Bn sell orders and income of 56Bn. Given that Dodixie is a bigger hub than Rens it should probably be reflected in the numbers, so I clearly need to look at what I'm dealing in here. Still not a bad performance.

Nullsec station trader

This one is a little more interesting. I moved this alt with my "nullsec main" to PHs home of MJ-5F9, which is fortunately within 1 capital jump of the old home of R10-GN. As this character is trained in cynos I used him to cyno and my main to jump all my capitals and ships to the new home, and put a bunch of "investments" up for sale. Mainly carriers I bought anticipating a material change to increase their value, which I'm honestly not sure of the scale of. I then set about station trading, and had some success, making 3Bn profit since the 17th. I can tell exactly with this character going forwards as he doesn't need to send money to corp wallet, so his money is his own.

Jita Buyer

My main Jita buyer, and hold my investments and attempts to sell them. Currently trying to offload 29Bn in investments.

Tash-Murkon Seller

This is one I think I need to make drastic changes for. Has only made 1.8Bn ISK in sales from 96Bn in sell orders. Tash-Murkon used to be a nice little earner, but now I have a lot of items where I am the only seller, selling at similar prices to the rest of the region, but I'm getting virtually no traffic. I don't know whether it's the items I'm selling or the system itself has fallen off, but this is a high priority for a re-evaluation.

Amarr station trader

Also a bit disappointing this one. I admittedly don't watch this character closely but having only made in the region of 7Bn of buys and sells he's not making vast sums. I will keep this going for another month or so and then evaluate my options here.

Jita station trader

Acts as a buyer for my Amarr seller, and also does some station trading in Jita. Has made a respectable 40Bn in sales this month, so one to keep plugging away with, though the exact profit is a little difficult to discern here.

Sobaseki Seller

Another one requiring a real rethink. I decided to try and sell more "standard" items, t2 modules, rigs, drones etc rather than my usual high end items list, as sobaseki is not a main trade hub. This has however lead to virtually no sales. So I need to either invest more or rethink my entire strategy here.

For next month then my plans are:

• Maintain over 1Bn profit per day
• Try to come up with a better strategy for my tash-murkon and sobaseki characters
• try and get at least 1 manufacturing run done

I'm enjoying my time back in game, and hoping to approach it in a way that should avoid the burnout I've experienced previously. It's good to be back!