Update after 7 weeks in the challenge - Change of strategy

  Where did I start from?

7 weeks ago I started a challenge with the goal of making enough ISK to be able to plex a completely fresh account in the MMORPG Eve Online by only doing regional trading as single source of income. 

I started with a total wealth of 75 million ISK, one character in Jita, one in Amarr and one in Dodixie.

After 11 days I reached my first milestone by having a wealth of more than 1 billion ISK.

Now, after 7 weeks I finally reached my next milestone: Wealth of 3 billion ISK

Learnings:

In the midth of last month I already encountered a ceiling of my strategy.
While generating the wealth of the first billion ISK was done in quite a short time frame, the progression afterwards was very slow. 

With only a maximum of 17 market orders per character I had to let go items where I made profits of 5 or 10 million ISK.
Instead I needed to climb the ladder into price areas where trades now would make a real difference for me. So I started buying items in the area of 20 to 50 million ISK with the goal of selling them with a margin of at least 35%, preferably 50% or more.

This came with a lot more competition, as this seems to be an area where a lot of players are trading. As a result I was forced to update orders more frequently. Broker fees started to cut heavily into my profits, much more than I had hoped for.

Maintaining the original strategy would certainly bring me to the point in time where I would finally reach the short-term goal of generating the ISK worth of 1.000 Plex. 
At current Plex prices this requires an additional wealth of 2 billion ISK. Depending on the average daily profit this would take 30 (with 65 million ISK) to 40 (with 50 million ISK) more days to achieve.

The mid-term goal requires a wealth worth of 2.400 Plex. At current Plex prices this requires approximately 12,9 billion ISK. Having a current wealth of 3 billion ISK I need to grind another 10 billion ISK. Using the numbers from above it would take me between 154 and 200 more days to reach the mid-term goal. 

I could grind my way on. But doing this would not give either you or me additional value reading this blog. 

So I decided to change my strategy.

To speed up the process I began to use the available market orders of my Jita alt.
This lets me gain in two ways - hopefully.

I put up buy orders which 

1. allows me to generate higher profit margins for items I buy in Jita and sell in Amarr or Dodixie
2. - and this is the real change in strategy - allows me to generate additional profit by margin trading (= station trading) in Jita itself  

Not using the available market slots my Jita alt has got limits my ability to generate profits by a lot. 

Why did I change the strategy?

The underlying idea of this blog is to show if plexing an account doing this kind of ingame activity is a viable way to play the game. 
From a pure mathematical perspective we already can say it is possible, even if it takes several months. But as time has a value, too, we should try to find ways to reduce the time needed to reach this goal. 

I see several possibilities, all of which require a combination of ingame activities.

1. Combining regional and station trading (which is the way I want to go) 
2. Combining regional trading with PVE activities (Exploration, running missions, incursions, abyssals).
   Added benefit = collecting loot that can be sold.
   Disadvantage = requires a lot more time dedicated to ingame activities
3. Combining regional trading with PVP activities (Faction warfare, ganking (difficult, if not impossible as solo alpha clone))
   Added benefit = collecting loot that can be sold.
   Disadvantage = requires a lot more time dedicated to ingame activities
   

As I don't want to spend significantly more time ingame the combination of regional and station trading will be my choice. Let's see where it will lead us.

What has happened during the last 12 days?

Development was twofold.

1. Turnover the first week was very slow. So I changed my strategy as described above.
   
   
2. Last week I decided to not exclusively buy from Jita sell orders anyomore.
   Instead I put buy orders in Jita as well. Or more precisely, I put the buy orders in a player owned station in Perimeter where I save A TON of fees when updating orders.
   Interestingly a lot of these buy orders have been fulfilled. This way I was able to increase the profit per sold item significantly during the last week. 

How are my numbers?

Since beginning of the month:

• Revenue:
• In the last 12 days I made sales of 5,76 billion ISK for a total of 55 orders.
  That makes an average sell price of 104,7 million ISK per order. 

• Amarr generated 1,965 billion ISK revenue with 16 orders for an average sell price of 122,8 million ISK.

• Dodixie generated 3,702 billion ISK revenue with 37 orders for an average sell price of 100,1 million ISK.

• Station trading in Jita just started and generated 95 million ISK revenue with 2 orders.
  
  

• Costs:
• I paid  432,1 million ISK in Sales Tax which comes down to the expected 7,5% for an alpha character.

• I paid 601,4 million ISK in Brokers Fee which now includes fees for buy orders as well. My total effective broker fee rate (broker fees / (broker fees + market escrows)) comes down to 11,5%. 
  As my base broker fee is 2,38%, the difference of 9,1% means I had - on average - to adjust prices 3,8 times before an item was bought and sold.

• I paid out 86,60 million ISK in rewards for courier contracts.
  I pay 1% reward on the collateral which finally comes down to 1,5% of total actual revenue.

These are my current numbers:

I take a provision of 25% against sell orders and contracts to reflect the fees and potential price adjustments I have to make before finally selling an item. 

My inventory has a relatively high value due to a mistake I made by bying too many items, but not having enough spare order slots to put them up for sale. 

Happy trading and manufacturing to you all. Enjoy the game! o7

Update after 4 weeks in the challenge

 Where did I start from?

4 weeks ago I started a challenge with the goal of making enough ISK to be able to plex a completely fresh account in the MMORPG Eve Online by only doing regional trading as single source of income. 

I started with a total wealth of 75 million ISK, one character in Jita, one in Amarr and one in Dodixie.

After 11 days I reached my first milestone by having a wealth of more than 1 billion ISK.

What has happened during the last week?

Simply put: Competition is getting tougher where I sell (Amarr + Dodixie).

• For many items in the price range between 20 and 200 million ISK I see now 4 or more competitors updating orders at least daily.
  To stay competitive I need to update more often which cuts a huge chunk into my estimated profit.

• For items in the price range above 200 million ISK there is less competition. Nevertheless, these traders are active traders who update daily as well. And these updates are often not only one tick downwards but often times 10 million ISK or more at once.
  (Guess I found some items where I'm directly competing against Croda. Ouch!)

• I changed my requirements how often an item is being traded.
  For now I removed items that are traded on more than 80% or less than 20%.
  I calculate trading frequency by the formula: days where trades happened / specific time frame.
  An item which has 80 days with data of completed trades during a time frame of 100 days has a trade frequency of 80%.

• I experimented with different margins for initial sell prices, down to 35% (which is my absolute minimum required margin).
  Sometimes there are simply not enough items with a high enough margin to sell. Especially when looking for ones with few active competitors. 

• I also recognized I was competing against my Omega account in some items. So I stopped updating these items on my omega account. 

How are my numbers?

Past week:

• Revenue:
• In the last week I made sales of 3,34 billion ISK for a total of 45 orders.
  That makes an average sell price of 74,2 million ISK per order.

• Amarr generated 1,748 billion ISK revenue with 26 orders for an average sell price of 67,2 million ISK.

• Dodixie generated 1,591 billion ISK revenue with 19 orders for an average sell price of 83,7 million ISK.

• This is surprising as my feeling throughout the week was that Amarr is running a lot better than Dodixie.
  It was in terms of completed sell orders, but as we can see, number of completed orders is just one part of the equation. Average price is the other one.

• Costs:
• I paid  250,5 million ISK in Sales Tax which comes down to the expected 7,5% for an alpha character.

• I paid 341,7 million ISK in Brokers Fee which comes down to 10,2% of my inital sell order price. 
  As my base broker fee is 2,38%, the difference of 7,82% means I had - on average - to adjust prices 3,2 times before an item was sold.

• I paid out 55,0 million ISK in rewards for courier contracts.
  I pay 1% reward on the collateral which finally comes down to 1,6% of total actual revenue.

Since the beginning of the challenge (4 weeks):

• Revenue:
• I made sales of 8,413 billion ISK.

• Amarr generated 4,705 billion ISK with 109 completed sell orders for an average sell price of 43,2 million ISK.

• Dodixie generated 3,707 billion ISK with 84 completed sell orders for an average sell price of 44,1 million ISK.

• Costs:
• I paid  629,1 million ISK in Sales Tax which comes down to the expected 7,5% for an alpha character.

• I paid 850,7 million ISK in Brokers Fee which comes down to 10,1% of my inital sell order price. 
  As my base broker fee is 2,38%, the difference of 7,72% means I had - on average - to adjust prices 3,2 times before an item was sold.

• I paid out 139,4 million ISK in rewards for courier contracts.
  I pay 1% reward on the collateral which finally comes down to 1,7% of total actual revenue.

These are my current numbers:

I take a provision of 25% against sell orders and contracts to reflect the fees and potential price adjustments I have to make before finally selling an item. 

Week over week my total wealth grew by 3,9% or 88,4 million ISK. Less than expected and less than what I made on average in the past. 

Let's see if my adjustments will generate a higher profit in the upcoming week.


Happy trading and manufacturing to you all. Enjoy the game! o7

Alpha to Omega by regional trading - Milestone 1 reached after 11 days

Milestone

I reached the first milestone. 
Having a wealth of more than 1 billion ISK. 

What has happened the last couple of days

Due to a mistake I made while using the spreadsheet where I identify items to buy I double-bought some items. 

This led to the unfortunate situation that my inventory is way bigger - in terms of ISK - as I would like to have it.

My problem now is simply not having enough spare sell orders available as I'm restricted to a maximum of 17 sell orders per character.
There are some items currently contracted. For these items spare sell order slots are already waiting.
But for the items in inventory, I need to wait for existing sell orders to be fulfilled. Then I can clear my inventory and put it on sell orders.

Another challenge I face is that my wallet size grows faster than my opportunities to invest.
Sometimes only 1 or 2 sell orders per market hub are available for me to fill with new items.
As my wallet size increases so much, buying and selling items for 20 million ISK or below does not accomplish my goal of having as much ISK as possible invested in the market.

Strategy:

My current strategy is identifying items that trade at least every 2 days. 

They need to show at least a gross profit margin of 50% when comparing prices between Jita and the trade hub I plan to sell it. 
My third criteria is that the Buy price in Jita needs to be below the 60 day average price. This is simply to avoid getting sucked in a price bubble where I eventually might not able to sell the item with a profit or at all. 

To be able to invest my growing wallet size I will need to adjust some criteria. Either by reducing the required margin, or mabye by expanding the search to items that trade only every 3 or 4 days on average. 

I try to update my prices at least once a day. 
To avoid scrolling through all orders I copy/paste from my spreadsheet the names of items that need price updates and then I import them in the Quickbar. 

Items I trade

For the moment I sell few blueprints, and they are moving very slow.
Most of the items I sell successfully are implants and modules, mostly deadspace and faction modules.
Some of them have very little to no competition while others are showing 4 or more active sellers.

Next milestone: 3 billion ISK = equivalent to 500 Plex

If you'd like to try out Eve Online, please click my referral link. It gives you a million skill points and it helps my characters progress as well. Thank you.

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 …