Changing course
21st January 2009 – 10.47 amAlong with the ISK rewards and bounties for my recent level three missions I also pick up a whole bunch of looted modules along with plenty of salvaged parts. Rather than selling these on the market I will hold on to them. I could refine the looted modules in to minerals for future manufacturing, but I will have to look in to whether this is profitable or if it is more worth my selling them on the market and buying minerals directly. As for salvage, I understand this is used for some manufacturing too. Again, I need to work out whether it is more cost effective to sell the salvage now or to stockpile it for when it could be useful.
There is so much more to learn and it is nearly all something that I haven't had to think about in the past. It is not just a matter of knowing which skill books to buy and what level to train the skills to in order to be efficient. Although this is important and the certificate system can provide some guidance it is just one aspect of the knowledge that needs to be acquired. Whilst my character is training many skills that are new and more that are in need of improvement, there seems to be just as much that I need to learn.
Part of me wants to figure it out whilst in New Eden, maybe finding agents in a corporation who give me instructive and enlightening missions, or through trial and error. Other people must have had to figure it out in the past and been successful, so it must be something that can be achieved. On the other hand, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If others have worked out how to be successful industrialists it would be wise to learn from them and their mistakes.
It is all part of finding a balance. I need to work some things out for myself simply to understand how the process works. If I follow guides or advice without understanding then I won't be able to improvise, or recover from problems. If I try to pick up everything myself then the process could be frustratingly slow and demoralising. I have learnt how to blow things up, I just need to work out how to stick them together in the first place.
2 Responses to “Changing course”
Very very wise to keep all loot (including salvage) if doing Industry. It WILL be cheaper than buying. However to make the loot count and improve efficiency and thus reduce refinery loss to 0%, you need to train some refining skills to level 5, so until you're getting close to 0% loss, just hoard loot. Salvage parts you need a monster pile of in order to make anything... personally I don't make them for profit, but keep them for corporation rigging needs. The good thing is doing missions increases standings with them - and the corporation owning the refinery takes 5% unless you have said standings.. so actually running missions can help industry in other ways too!
Another thing I can recommend if you don't join a corp, is you setup your own. Reasoning is the different wallets it gives you. Its a simple way to separate out profit/loss and personal isk gain from industry (and also individual items if needed) - basically you get another 7 wallets this way to use as needed.
Remember you don't have to make items to sell. Example recently some idiot in my local stn put 500 items up 10% below build cost. I buy brought the lot and then sold at usual price (35% margin). Made money back in ~ 10 days and now firmly in profit. Its just a case of spotting people like this - or moving low-priced items to places where they sell well at higher prices.
A tip is look at items you as a mission runner would use to equip a ship (t1 items). Then use MLcalc to work out what a perfect price is for said item with current mineral prices. Then work out their margin. Finally find a system mission-hub without that item for sale, or with it >200% above build costs, and sell for whatever market will bear. Remember mission runners pay for having items convenient to them - so just moving items from X to Y can be profitable especially if its an inter-region move - some regions have WAY higher prices than others.
Doing a 10 hop round trip buying/selling minerals I can for example make > 2mln a run - just by hopping around in a hauler, without even resorting to using buy/sell orders - just buying minerals in place X and selling in Y. Getting a good cheap source for minerals can also make your items cheaper than a rival, and thus allow you to still profit :)
Remember though the 1% broker fee and 1% sales tax if you don't have the skills to reduce this. Basically don't sell anything for under a 3% margin as its not in your interest.
So much to think about! All this advice is appreciated, thank you.