So building in stacks of 10 has to do with material efficiency. So, if an item normally takes 5 units of trit to build, and you research the BPO to 10 ME, it would technically only require 4.5 units of trit to build. However, industry always requires whole units of production materials. So, if you only built that item one at a time, it will still take 5 units of trit to build. However, if you built them 10 at a time, it would only takes 45 units total, or 4.5 units per item. Now, you could get the same result in building in a stack of 2 in this hypothetical example, but most items require varying amounts of other stuff as well. So, building in stacks of tens always gets rid of the decimal point, and always ensures minimum production costs. Just be aware that the game will never go below 1 unit required. So, at 10 ME, a 2 tritanium material requirement would be reduced to 1.8 units, but a 1 unit material requirement would always be 1, no matter what.
Yeah, a lot of people will gladly pay more to avoid having to make a bunch of jumps to get their stuff.
Setting prices is kind of complicated, but you should consider things like the cost to you, competitor prices, the wealth of your clientele, and your strategy in order to set your initial prices, and then adjust according to what your customers do.
Make sure that you are selling at a price that is worth your time. And if you can’t sell things at a margin that you’re happy with, stop selling it. Don’t tie up your industry and market slots with stuff with a crappy margin. The only exception is if you’re trying to get people to come to your market (i.e. offer one stop shopping). In which case you might not mind a crappy margin on some stuff if you’re making it up on the other things that your customers buy.
Use other people’s prices as an anchor point. Now, do not concern yourself too much with people selling odds and ends out of random stations. Instead, set prices that are competitive with your direct competition. So, if you are selling out of upwell structure by a trade hub, you’d want to have prices that are competitive with that trade hub. If you are selling ammo/drugs/drones 10 jumps away at an incursion focus, set prices that are competitive with the other people selling stuff at that focus. And if no one else is selling there, you can almost name your price. Just be aware that if you set prices too high, players might make the 20 jump round trip rather than pay your inflated prices.
Do your customers have really good isk efficiencies? Well, their time is worth more to them, and they’ll pay higher prices. They may curse you under their breath when they see your premium pricing, but still pay it anyway because the opportunity cost of going to the trade hub is even more. For example, if I make 100million isk an hour, and it takes me 15 minutes to fly to amarr and back, then my opportunity cost of going to Amarr is 25 million isk. So it makes no sense for me to fly to amarr just to save 5 or 10 mil. I’m better off paying your stupid inflated prices, ya bastard, and getting back out there to earn.
Not everyone is looking to turn industry into a full time job. Some people like turning it into as passive an income as possible. Thus, they tend to set higher prices. They might not move as many units, but they’ll make up some of that with their increased margins, and create less work for themselves in the process. For example, lets say I had a product that cost me 1mil isk / unit to make, and I found that I could sell 100 units / day if I sold them at 1.5mil isk. This means I would make 50mil a day off of that item. But, I’d also have to keep that market slot fed with at least 100 units a day. Now lets assume that i could sell 15 units a day with a price of 2.5 mil per unit. Now, I would only be making 37.5 mill per day off of that item in this case, but I’d also only have to replenish my stock about once a week.
Figuring out the maximum amount of money you can make off an item can take some experimentation. So play with prices until (number of units sold) x (profit per unit) = biggest possible number.
And of course, don’t forget about your production bottlenecks (including the amount of time you want to spend doing this). If you can’t keep your market slots filled because your production capabilities can’t keep up, then you are losing out on money. Up your prices until sale volumes reach a point where you can keep up.
Oh, and all of this is moot point if someone is selling the same item out of the same station. In which case, the correct price is probably just below what the other guy is charging. If he’s charging a ridiculous amount, you might want to go even lower, but the nature of Eve’s market mechanics mean that you either always want to be lower than the other guy, or you don’t want to be selling that item because there’s no money in it.
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Meh. I don’t know about the spreadsheet. If I still did industry, the answer would most certainly be no. I believe that it gives me an advantage over competitors, and giving it to anyone would be kind of like a girl expecting her man not to upload naked pictures of her. Some guys would never do that, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s an awful lot of amateur porn out there -and I doubt that all of it was uploaded with the female’s consent. Anyway, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get back into industry. I probably won’t, but you never know. So, I’m reluctant to give away my advantage, even if I’m not currently using it.
However, I will answer questions about industry spreadsheets to the best of my ability.