February Update - Industry

 The picture for industry looks a lot healthier than with trading. Here are the values:

And the graph:

My current net worth is 4.97Bn ISK. That's an increase of 1.3Bn ISK, or 46Mil/day.

While that sounds pretty unimpressive, it's not the complete picture. I started the month coming off a hiatus in half of January, and a lot of what I had up for sale was overpriced and wasn't shifting. This can be seen by the small gape between sell orders (light blue) and total worth (red). In order to pull this round and increase my revenue I started fairly aggressively reducing my sell orders to try and recoup the money faster, rather than maximising per transaction profit. This lead to ~10 days of fairly static net worth but allowed me to increase my amount manufactured at any given time. From there I was able to really ramp up production, regularly having over 1Bn in build at any given time allowing me to keep slots busier and turn over products for cash faster. That lead to a second half of the month where I was making almost 100mil/day on average and you can see the amount of manufacturing and cash I have at any point in time has jumped up while sell orders have stayed around the 2.5Bn mark. This is a much better state of affairs and should allow me to continue to utilise more concurrent slots and scale harder.

With this increased revenue I intend to skill up my 2 alts that don't currently do tech2 building to be able to do it, and it opens up options. I should be able to start additional characters soon as well.

I have had revenue of 18.3Bn ISK this month, which means my profit margin is currently 7.1% after all costs. Not amazing but Worth keeping track of as I go forwards.

One thing I have noticed is that there have been several "phases" to my journey already, which I have highlighted below to a very high production quality:

Phase 1 - Getting started, learning initial skills, getting starting capital and beginning my journey

Phase 2 - Establishing a manufacturing chain with a few reliable blueprints, steady expansion.

Phase 3 - I get EVEGuru, my net worth explodes, though most of the items I build are actually overvalued due to short term spikes.

Phase 4 - Correction and slowdown. I start to pull my items back towards more sensible sale values, though my capital and revenue is limited. Relatively stagnant here and items in build rarely beats 500mil. Christmas and then a very stressful time at work meant I didn't play much over this period either.

Phase 5 - Steady growth. Sale values have been pulled into a more realistic place. I have started to get a feel for what items sell well with relatively little micromanagement and I can tailor my slots to pumping out those. I have slowed down on buying new blueprints and skills in order to get in a better place in terms of cash and revenue.

This has been a really interesting journey so far. I am fascinated as to what problems I will have to solve at further stages going forwards. The scaling in terms of profits is definitely trickier than trading but there is more variety in industry and it keeps me very engaged, which is great!

Next month my plan is to continue to scale in terms of revenue, skill up my characters a bit and maybe start another character or 2. All about scaling for now.

February Update - Trading

 A very lacklustre month this one. I've been updating my orders monday and friday as I normally do but the revenue just hasn't been there. Maybe I need to be more aggressive in how I go about things but anyway. Here's my current position:

Broken down further:

My current net worth is 1.064Tn ISK.

That means I've made 10Bn ISK or 0.35Bn ISK/day. This is another very poor month. Partly I've not updated my orders as much as I probably should, as I've been enjoying my industry. Partly there is the continuous decline in price of HyperCores AND Skill injectors/extractors (seriously, don't take investment advice from me!). There also just feels like I'm getting less revenue from a weekend of orders. This is less tangible and possibly a bit of an excuse but I'll see if I can improve some of this in March.

One thing I have done this month is buy a years worth of PLEX for 4 accounts (14400). I missed the big PLEX + MCT sale as I was away from the game but when PLEX prices dropped back I snapped them up to use, as my main trade accounts all run out in mid-April. This cost me 87Bn ISK to do and I haven't updated my sheet with the current value as I will be redeeming them in early April. So I have another month to make 23Bn to remain a trillionaire! Should be easy but then I've not done it in a little while. Will be a good motivator though.

Burned logic circuits and general null supply

 On my Null sec industry characters I build a lot of rigs. Well I do in high as well, but in Null I frequently face a problem. Not with profitability or revenue (these things are typically easier than in Jita) but with supply of raw materials. Specifically MJ- never has enough Burned Logic Circuits. These are a material that comes from Relic sites I believe, so should be something null has in abundance, but I find myself frequently limited in options because of lack of supply. 

Up to this point I had resisted doing much about it. Bringing in more is something my industry chars don't necessarily have the money for (at least to be tied up for potentially several days as it is brought in by alliance courier services). I do, however, have a trade character in MJ-. And bringing the circuits in is profitable in and of itself. So I bought 50,000 Burned logic circuits on my Jita Trade char, contracted to my Null trader and had them shipped in. Putting them on the market for a small profit. 

This keeps my 2 ventures still sort of pure, this is a trade transaction that will be profitable whoever buys it. It also creates a supply of a material I need for industry at a price that is profitable for me to make rigs with. Win-win really.

There are a world of efficiencies like this I could take advantage of, which is why when I finish up my targets I intend to combine both ventures into a "money making" goliath and see where I can leverage things like this. For now though I think there are probably more places I can do things like this to help myself, but I'll take them as they come.

Player Owned structures update for EVEGuru

 So, EVEGuru have updated the tool with my biggest wish for the tool which skyrockets its usefulness long term - pulling sales data from player owned structures. So long as you have a character with access you can get all the normal sales data, demand, sell price, buy price, the works - even in Null. And it works with the industrial calculator:

With this I see no reason to have a spreadsheet for day to day null industry, at least on the scale that I'm doing it. As I scale up i might find use cases where I would like more adding but this really does make building modules in null for sale in null vastly quicker and easier.

On an unrelated note, I have managed to bring my sell orders into a more realistic position that has resulted in me having over 1Bn in build at once for the first time:

The pink is the manufacturing line and the turquoise is sell orders. I'm trying to stop buying so many skills for my characters for a little bit and just focus on throughput for a while. I've sunk a lot into skillbooks (even bought some t2 ship invention skills which are ~20mil each) and various other bits recently which opens up my options horizontally but hasn't been directly increasing my throughput. For throughput I really need to focus on getting some more cash on hand so I'll try ands let this run for a bit and focus on training up the skills I already have.

January Update - Industry

 The picture here is similar (if slightly worse) than with my trading. I've not played much this month due to real life concerns and that is visible clearly in the numbers:

And the graph:

I currently have 3.67Bn ISK. That's an increase of -90mil or -3mil/day.

Clearly this is not what I was hoping for. One thing I have done this month is aggressively chase sell orders down, so a lot of what I was building was overpriced and as I chased the sell prices down my net worth dropped. The dangers of jEveAssets taking sell orders as gospel.

Secondly, in addition to spending 200mil on a EVEGuru subscription I also spent quite a lot of money on t2 skills for some of my characters. These are around 20mil each and you need quite a few to be able to build a range of items, primarily the "<insert name here> physics" skillbooks. This should allow me to produce a greater range of items. 

The EVEGuru subscription might be about to really come into its own, as they just released the player-markets pricing feature, allowing you get prices and base your industry calculation on any structures you have access to, including null! I am very excited about this feature and will likely post more on it when I have had time to play with it. 

For now, my plan for the month remains similar to my trading, play more, invest some of the money I have lying around and check out the null market module. I think I might try playing around with building small ships in null too, as t1 modules don't keep my slots busy enough as the runs only take an hour or 2. TBD here.

January Update - Trading

January has been a very stressful month for me one way or another. I've just had a weekend off from working 12 days straight, often into the evenings, along with my family being generally ill and big decisions pending around various things in our life. All that is to say I have had very little time or motivation for games, and that is reflected in the numbers. My current position:

Broken down further:

My current net worth is 1.054Tn ISK.

That means I've made 11Bn ISK, or 0.35Bn ISK/day. That's really really poor and reflective of how little I've played in the latter half of the month, but is at least a positive number. There are a few reasons to be positive though. 

Firstly, I moved all of my goods from Tash-Murkon prime to Amarr and put them up for sale. The difference in sell prices amounted to a 15Bn ISK write down, but a lot of it has sold as is visible from me having over 200Bn ISK just sitting in wallets.

Secondly, I've started cashing out on some of my HyperCores. The price took another slight dip, people have cashed them out to cash in on the Omega + MCT deal, which unfortunately coincided with my hiatus so I missed that opportunity. Not the end of the world but would have been nice to make my Omega pay for itself for a year.

Aim for this month is to play a bit more, and plunge as much of that 200Bn into new items to trade as possible. I think I'll take a look at some blueprints in addition to the usual stuff on my list.