Month End Update - September 2025

This challenge is now going on for 39 days and I have finished my first complete month.

Learnings and tips

It makes a lot of fun. Though, I think, this kind of game play style is certainly more suitable for players who like crunching numbers and developing spreadsheets. Not the best fit for someone who prefers ratting, exploring or pvp'ing.

I like ratting, but I consider myself even more as a number's guy. So, good for me.

I certainly spent more time creating and improving my spreadsheets than being actually ingame.
Updating orders daily is tedious. But it's part of the process. And I have only 17 orders at most to update per character, so I won't complain. And as Croda showed in his excellent post it is necessary.

Tips for making this process more efficiently are:

1. Using the mouse wheel to update prices if the price differences are small (see Croda's blog entry on this topic) 
   
   
2. I created a spreadsheet where I can filter for all orders that need to be updated.  I copy the names of the items and paste them into the Quickbar in my market window. Then I work my way through the list. This way I avoid having to scroll through all active orders.
   
   
3. When setting up sell orders I used to put them up one by one and entering prices manually. This was tedious and not very efficient. Especially as I already have them listed in my spreadsheet with names and prices. I figured out I can simply copy the item names and my target selling price. Then I go into my hangar, mark all items to sell and click sell. When the market window opens I import the data and simply click sell on the bottom side of the window. 
   
   

I haven't figured out yet at what day time it's best to update orders to keep them the most competitive as long as possible. Will have a closer look in the next days.

Automatic updating spreadsheets (average prices and numbers of days an item is traded) is still an issue. I guess I do too many requests at once which results in reaching some kind of server limit. Interestingly, this happens only when pulling market history data. I'm using the free online excel version and the eve online excel add-in.

To reduce fees and contract rewards I reduced the collateral from 120% to 110% of the expected sell price, starting from October on. There is a risk of courier contracts being failed on purpose if the contractor decides (s)he can sell the items for more. But in this case I will still make a decent profit - and I get my money much sooner than if I have to wait for the items to sell on the market.

Numbers

As expected and communicated earlier, the taxes and fees an alpha character has to pay are having a big negative impact on the overall performance.

In September I had sales of 10,5 billion ISK and generated a net profit of 442 million ISK. My net profit margin was 4,2%.

I don't know if this high or low. Maybe you post your margins in the comments section below for comparison. Just remember that my characters are still alpha clones having an effective tax rate of more than 23% this month.

My wealth rose to 2.6 billion ISK which is made up from:

Next milestone: Wealth of 3 billion ISK = equivalent to 500 Plex

(As I don't have a lot of (real-life) accounting skills, I do welcome any tips and suggestions where and how to improve the way I present my numbers here.)

Items I trade

I trade almost exclusively in modules and implants.
Some of them have very little to no competition while others are showing 4 or more active sellers.

Is my goal still achievable?

While the overall goal of plexing the account is doable for sure, it all comes down to the question: 
How long will it take?

So far my average daily net profit has been around 66 million ISK.
To reach my short-term goal I need to have a total wealth worth of 1.000 Plex.
At current ingame Plex prices (5,4 million ISK per Plex) I need a total wealth of 5,4 billion ISK. 
So I need additional 2,757 billion ISK.

Making 66 million ISK per day it will last another 41 days to finally achieve the short-term goal. 
I could liquidate all assets as soon as I have the wealth to buy 500 Plex, but that would leave me with a plexed account but no ingame money left.  So no real option.

If I'm able to scale up my net profit per day by either reducing fees (updating less frequently) or generating higher margins through an improved buy-sell-strategy I could reach my goal faster. 

Let's see what the future will bring.

Alpha to Omega by regional trading! - Update after 5 days

Right before my first complete weekend I want to share the current status of my challenge.

Currently I have  16 sell orders active, 12 in Dodixie and 4 in Amarr.

My wallet allows me to reinvest the current 43 million ISK which I will do in Amarr.

An issue I run into is the frequency my courier contracts to Amarr are accepted.
As Amarr is almost 3x the number of jumps away from Jita than Dodixie, and because of my contract values (and therefore rewards) being quite low on a per jump basis, i need to post my courier contracts to Amarr more frequently before they get accepted.
I hope this will smooth out as soon as the contract values rise.
For this to happen I need to find items that I can buy with my current wallet size and be able to sell them for about 100 million ISK or more (in total).
I hope to be able to do this by the end of next week.

I created a list of about 150 items that show a 50%+ margin and trading reasonably often.
I don't trade in consumables, mostly implants, and modules. 

As mentioned before I calculate a 25% provision against my sell orders, and against my contracts as well.

Wealth at start of the challenge. 23.08.25

Current Wealth:

Let's see what the weekend brings...

Happy trading and manufacturing to you all!

Alpha to Omega by regional trading! - Update after 3 days

Start of the challenge: 23.08.25

Wealth after 3 days: 

• Wallet: 8 million ISK
• Inventory: 1 million ISK
• Sell orders: 143 million ISK
• Provision against sell orders (25%): -36 million ISK
• Open courier contracts: 98 million ISK
• Provision against contracts (25%): -25 million ISK
• Total: 189 million ISK

My main effort over the last couple of days was to improve my spreadsheets.

I created a list of items and I'm now able to filter directly for items that fit my requirements regarding gross profit margin, number of days where orders have been filled during a specific time frame and minimum gross profit in ISK. 
Still a lot to improve but it's working for now. 

To reflect the higher taxes and fees in my accounting I increased the provision against sell order value and contract value from 20% to 25%.
Taxes and fees have a much bigger impact for an alpha character in comparison to an omega character. 

-----------------------------

Goal short-term: Plexing the account by trading and having at least the same amount of ISK in wallet + sell orders that is required to instantly buy another 500 Plex (1 month Omega offer)

Goal mid-term: Plexing the account by trading and having least the same amount of ISK in wallet + sell orders that is required to instantly buy another 1200 Plex (3 month 20% Omega offer)

At current prices (5.8 million ISK per Plex) I need around 2,9 billion ISK to plex the account (short-term goal).
As my short-term goal is to plex the account AND having the same amount of ISK available (either in wallet or in sell orders) I need a wealth of 6 billion ISK with current Plex prices to reach my short-term goal.

Tools: The tools I will be using are the Eve Online Excel Add-in and Evetycoon.

The challenge is considered to be completed and will end when the mid-term goal is reached.

Alpha to Omega by regional trading!

Hi there,

inspired by Oz's videos about station trading and later on by Croda's blog about regional trading I tried both approaches.

I did the alpha-to-omega challenge doing station trading the way Oz describes in his videos and it worked very well.
Some time after that I switched to regional trading after seeing an interview with Croda in Oz' twitch show. I plexed my account doing regional trading as well.

What I have not tried yet was to start right away with regional trading as a complete fresh alpha character and trying to plex this account.

This blog is about my attempt to achieve that. 

Here are the rules and setup for this challenge:

• I will not send any money or Plex from my main account, so starting completely fresh.
• I use one account with 3 characters.
• A buyer in Jita, a seller in Dodixie, a seller in Amarr
• Limitation 1: Only 17 Sell Orders (max. for alpha) per character (34 in total = 2 x 17)
• Limitation 2: High sales tax (7,5) and broker fee (3%, reduced to 2,38% with skill 'broker relations') -> therefore I calculate with a minimum gross margin required of 50% for the initial sell price.
• Limitation 3: only 1 account
• Limitation 4: Play time per day max. 30 minutes

Goal short-term: Plexing the account by trading and having at least the same amount of ISK in wallet + sell orders that is required to instantly buy another 500 Plex (1 month Omega offer)

Goal mid-term: Plexing the account by trading and having least the same amount of ISK in wallet + sell orders that is required to instantly buy another 1200 Plex (3 month 20% Omega offer)

At current prices (5.8 million ISK per Plex) I need around 2,9 billion ISK to plex the account (short-term goal).
As my short-term goal is to plex the account AND having the same amount of ISK available (either in wallet or in sell orders) I need a wealth of 6 billion ISK with current Plex prices to reach my short-term goal.

Tools: The tools I will be using are the Eve Online Excel Add-in and Evetycoon.

The challenge is considered to be completed and will end when the mid-term goal is reached.

10 days every month I expect to not be online due to work, family, other real-life issues. So I expect to be able to achieve approx. 21 days active playing days per month.


First Steps I did before starting the challenge:

• Setting Up a fresh account with a referral link of my existing account
• Creating 3 characters (Caldari - Jita, Gallente -Dodixie, Amarr - Amarr)
• Doing all tutorial missions and all career agent missions in a starter area per character.
• Training up social skill and connection skill for better ISK rewards and standing for all chars
• Selling all items I collected during the career missions to buy orders in existing systems. (due to use time efficiently)
• Training all available trading skills, which - for alpha characters - are essentially only 'Trade' to level 3 and 'Broker Relations' to level 2. 
• Training corporation management on Jita character.
• Creating a corporation with 100% tax and LP rate to have a common wallet from which  trades are being done. Adding all 3 characters to this corporation.
• Placing each character in the respective trade hub.
  
• All ISK i gathered up until the start of the challenge came purely from rewards of starter missions, AIR career rewards, AIR daily goal rewards and the ISK I made from selling all items gathered throughout the starter missions. 

Start of the challenge: 23.08.25

Wealth at start: 

• Wallet: 67.million ISK
• Inventory: 8 million ISK
• Total: 75 million ISK

Wealth will be accounted by summarizing ISK in wallet, buy orders (should always be zero except for Plex), sell orders and outstanding contracts. I will deduct 20%  of sell order value as potential expenses for updating orders.

Strategy:

I will be buying to sell orders in Jita and putting up sell orders in Dodixie and Amarr.

Trading in low-volume, low-demand, high-margin items.

I don't want to haul myself, so I will be using public courier contracts right from the beginning

As my maximum combined number of sell orders (34) will probably be filled with items very quickly, the only way for me to scale up my wealth development is by bying higher priced items and selling them for at least the same margin as the lower priced ones. 

The skills relevant to Trading that i have are:

Accounting:
- not available to alpha characters, so my sales tax will be 7,50 %.

Broker Relations:
- Level 2; which is the maximum for alpha characters.
Meaning i am charged 2,38 % base broker fee to list an item for sale.
For every price change, whether up or down, i am charged xx % of the new  sales price

Trade:
- Level 3; which is the maximum for alpha characters, increasing the number of items i can list for sale by 4 per level to a total of 17.

Retail:
- not available to alpha characters

Marketing:
- Level 2; which is the maximum for alpha characters.
Allowing me to set up sell orders in stations other than the one i am in.
I won't use it as I only trade directly in the market hub.

Accounting:
- not available to alpha characters


Current Tax rates for my characters:

• Sales Tax rate: 7.50 %
• Broker Fee rate: 2.38 %

So let's get started and see where it ends …