I know Eve has a bursting player-driven economy, but couldn’t find any info on how Sell Item works. What I mean is, Sell Item is instant. You click it, it shows a price and lets you sell immediately. Doesn’t seem like a market thing. If players are behind everything, how can some other player react so fast to me selling? Conversely, if I try to set a higher price, it shows zero ISK.
So what’s the mechanic behind the market? How do real player traders make a profit? Surely not by selling stuff like this, automatically?
Yes. If not immediate, the sell price is zero. So it’s a bit of a future option or something, isn’t it? What are the benefits of such an approach? Are there people that somehow know that tomorrow or in a week the price of a given commodity will soar?
The duration is how long you want to list your items for, and for how much. if it is set to immediate, then the market will attempt to sell your items for the best price (someone else’s Buy offer) available at that time.
There are 2 types of orders on the market. If you place a buy order you are offering to purchase an item at a given price. A sell order is an offer to sell at a price you specify.
If you sell immediate - the market will sell your item to the highest buy offer. If you specify a price, it will create a sell order.
Eve is a commodity market and they are cyclical. There is a price above which people will not buy and a price below which they will not sell - the market oscillates between these points. Those of us who manufacture and sell products as our in-game career study these cycles and position our sell orders at a point in the cycle where we are comfortable with the profit margin. Some will chase the market if it goes down from there, some will simply wait for the cycle to turn and let the market come to them.
In addition to producers, there are also traders who use buy orders to acquire product and then resell it at a higher price - profiting from the buy/sell spread. Some will buy in one region and sell in another profiting from inter-regional arbitrage.
It’s complex and can be a lot of fun for those who play Eve primarily for the economic simulation.
For me, market is also a supply service. If I’m ratting in the middle of nowhere, I appreciate a market which offers ammo and drones to a reasonable price (doesn’t mean cheap, can be expensive, but not ridiculously high) or perhaps some modules to refit ships. Others need mining lasers or even ventures.
Many players don’t care about the price of single modules at all, as they buy a simulated ship via multibuy. They just check the most expensive parts, and if they are ok, they just click “buy”. But that is normally done in one of the trade hubs, where competing offers result in reasonable prices.
So if you find out what is needed where, you can earn a pretty penny.