Alpha to Omega Challenge | EVE Online Regional Trading - CHALLENGE SUCCESSFULLY FINISHED

This is the summary of how I used EVE Online trading, regional market arbitrage, and Alpha Clone–friendly ISK methods to fully PLEX my account—with less than one hour of gameplay per day.

This article serves as a progress update and a as a first guide for anyone searching for:

• “How to make ISK as an Alpha Clone”

• “How to earn PLEX in EVE Online”

• “Best ISK making methods for beginners”

• “EVE Online trading guide 2025”

Let’s dive in.

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✔ Goal Achieved: PLEXing My Account as an Alpha Clone

After 86 days of focused trading:

• 400 PLEX purchased

• ~550 million ISK liquid

• ~2 billion ISK in sell orders

All done while maintaining an average playtime of 45–60 minutes per day, proving that regional trading is one of the most efficient ISK-making strategies for low-playtime players.

With the current release of the Catalyst expansion, CCP also launched two rare NES store offers:

• 400 PLEX → 30 days Omega (instead of 500)

• 7 days Omega for 10 PLEX (available to all players)

Using these deals, I secured 37 days of Omega time for only 410 PLEX, saving more than 100 PLEX (~500M ISK).

If this guide motivates you to start your own account or Alpha challenge, I'd appreciate if you use my referral link. 
You'll get 1.000.000 Skill Points, making early game progression significantly faster.

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Starting vs. Final Wealth

• Starting ISK: 75 million

• Ending ISK Value: 3 billion + 400 PLEX

    

My PLEX valuation uses the current average price of 5.226.172 ISK/PLEX, though real trading prices allowed me to buy under 5 million ISK using buy orders.

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Challenges Faced

1. Limited Playtime and Setup Overhead

Much of the early challenge time went into:

• Building my trading spreadsheet

• Integrating the EVE Online Excel Add-In

• Fine-tuning item lists and price logic

Once optimized, my daily trading routine took 30–45 minutes, split up in a morning and an evening session of 15-25 minutes.

2. Taxes & Broker Fees: The Alpha Clone Profit Killer

Alpha Clones pay the highest taxes in the game. I paid :

• 7.5% sales tax

• Up to 3% broker fees (reducible to 2.38%)

• ~14% effective broker fee due to constant order updates

This is why high-margin items are essential for Alpha Clones.

To stay profitable, you need:

👉 25–30% gross profit margin minimum.

3. Only 17 Market Orders

The Trade skill caps Alpha Clones at 17 orders, forcing a strategy that focuses on:

• High-value items

• Low-volume, low-competition items

• Maximizing ISK turnover per order

This limitation is why item selection is the single most important factor in Alpha trading success.

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My Trading Strategy

1. Jita → Dodixie & Amarr: Monetizing on Regional Arbitrage

The foundation of my PLEX-farming setup:

• Buy low in Jita, the main trade hub

• Haul (via courier) to Dodixie or Amarr

• Sell high in these less competitive regional markets

• Don't be greedy! Players may accept a 50% or even a 100% markup if they save travel time to Jita. BUT there is a psychological ceiling. This is why I usually kept my markups between 35% and 50%. The higher the item value, the lower the markup. 

This is one of the strongest EVE Online ISK-making methods for new players.

Late-Run Enhancements:

• Began station trading in Jita

• Used Perimeter buy orders (ultra-low broker fees)

• Sold high-turnover items directly in Jita for fast flips

2. Item Focus: High-Margin, Low-Volume

I specifically targeted:

• Implants

• Faction modules

• Structures and components (later in the challenge)

• ALWAYS Low-volume items

• ALWAYS Low competition items (trade volume 1 per every 3 or more days)

These items offer great returns even with Alpha order limitations.

3. No Hauling – 100% Courier Contracts

Thanks to the Haulers Channel, I outsourced all hauling.
This allowed me to scale trading while keeping my daily playtime very low.

4. Scaling Strategy With Limited Orders

To grow beyond early-game ISK levels, I focused on:

• Increasing item value

• Maximizing ISK turnover per slot

• Maintaining strong margins

• Avoiding low-value, high-volume markets

This is the only reliable way to scale as an Alpha trader.

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What You Can Learn from This Trading Challenge

If your playtime is limited—under 1 hour/day—then:

✔ Regional trading is the best ISK-making method for Alpha Clones.

✔ It is absolutely possible to PLEX your account with Alpha restrictions.

✔ A spreadsheet or structured approach dramatically boosts results.

But if your goal is to PLEX a fresh Alpha in under 30 days, you should not rely on trading alone.

Here are the top complementary activities for Alpha players:

• Project Discovery (excellent ISK/hour)

• Exploration (one of the best Alpha ISK methods)

• AIR Career Program

• Daily Opportunities

• Sisters of EVE Epic Arc (standing gains = lower broker fees)

• Faction Warfare (competitive but rewarding)

• Ratting & combat missions

Combining these with trading is - from my, admittedly, limited point of view - the fastest path to generate sufficient ISK to PLEX an Eve Online account as an Alpha Clone at the time of writing this blog in autumn 2025.

Thanks a lot to Croda and to Oz who inspired me to do this challenge. 
Thanks as well to all the readers. Despite my linguistic shortcomings - I am obviously not a native English speaker - this blog has generated more traffic than I dared to dream at the beginning.

Let's see if I can find a new challenge to blog about.

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. 

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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.

From Alpha to Omega by Regional Trading – My EVE Online Plexing Challenge (2025)

Welcome to my From Alpha to Omega by Regional Trading challenge. This blog documents my journey from starting as a fresh alpha clone to reaching Omega using only ISK and PLEX earned in-game — with no real-money subscription.

The goal: Plex the account through regional trading only, despite severe alpha account limitations.

How I Came Up With This Challenge

The idea started with two major influences in the EVE Online trading community:

Oz’s Station Trading Method

I first tried the alpha-to-omega challenge using station trading exactly as Oz teaches in his videos. It worked extremely well.

Croda’s Regional Trading Method

After discovering Croda’s regional trading blog and seeing his interview on Oz’s Twitch show, I tried regional trading myself — and successfully plexed an account using nothing but inter-hub trading.

But I had never tried starting regional trading as a brand-new alpha clone with:

• No skills
• No standings
• Limited market orders
• High alpha taxes
• No ships or capital
• No access to Omega trading skills

So the question became:

Can a fresh alpha really plex Omega using regional trading alone?

Rules of the Challenge

• No ISK or PLEX transferred from my main account
• One account with three characters:
  • Buyer in Jita
  • Seller in Dodixie
  • Seller in Amarr
• 17 max sell orders per alpha character → 34 total
• High taxes:
  • Sales Tax: 7.5%
  • Broker Fee: 2.38% (Broker Relations II)
• Minimum gross margin target: 50%
• One account only
• Max 30 minutes per day gameplay
• I expect about 21 active playing days per month due to real-life commitments.
  
  

Challenge Goals

Short-Term Goal

• Plex the account with 500 PLEX
• Keep the same amount of wealth in wallet + sell orders

Mid-Term Goal (Challenge Completion)

• Plex the account with 1200 PLEX (3-month Omega offer)
• Again: maintain equivalent ISK in wallet + orders
  
  

How Much ISK Is Needed to Plex Omega

With current Plex prices of 5.8 million ISK, the cost to plex an account is:

• ≈ 2.9 billion ISK for 500 PLEX
• ≈ 6 billion ISK total wealth needed for my short-term goal
  
  

Tools I Use

• EVE Online Excel Add-in
• Evetycoon
  
  

Preparation Before Starting

• Created a new account with referral link
• Created 3 characters (Caldari for Jita, Gallente for Dodixie, Amarr for Amarr)
• Completed all tutorial and career missions on each character
• Trained Social and Connections for standings
• Sold all mission items to buy orders to save time
• Trained available trading skills:
  • Trade III
  • Broker Relations II
• Trained basic corporation management
• Created a corporation with:
  • 100% tax
  • Shared wallet
• Placed each character in its respective trade hub
• All ISK at this point came from:
  • Starter missions
  • AIR career rewards
  • AIR daily goals
  • Sell value of mission items

Starting Wealth

• Wallet: 67 million ISK
• Inventory: 8 million ISK

Total starting wealth: 75 million ISK

Wealth is always calculated as:

wallet + sell orders + outstanding contracts – 20% liability factor

My Trading Strategy

The entire challenge is based around the limitations of alpha trading.

1. Buy in Jita → Sell in Dodixie & Amarr

Pure inter-regional market arbitrage.

2. Item Focus

I focus on:

• Low-volume items
• Low-demand niche markets
• High-margin items

3. No Hauling

I use public courier contracts from the very beginning to save time.

4. Scaling With Limited Orders

With only 34 sell orders total, the only way to scale is:

• Move into higher-value items
• Maintain strong margins
• Increase ISK turnover per order
  
  

Alpha Trading Skills and Limitations

• Accounting: Not available → Sales tax fixed at 7.5%
• Broker Relations II: Broker fee 2.38%
• Trade III: 17 sell orders per character
• Marketing II: Remote selling (not used)
• Retail / Wholesale / Tycoon: Not available
  
  

Current Tax Rates

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

Start of the Challenge

Start Date: 23.08.2025

Starting Wealth: 75 million ISK

And with that…

The Alpha to Omega Regional Trading Challenge begins.

Let’s see where this journey ends!