I’ve recently trained an alt to begin trading with. I’ve been trying to read stuff on how to get started and have read lots of information, but everyone just seems to cover the same stuff on how to sell your items etc, which is easy.
The problem I’m having is a can’t seem to buy anything to sell, I tried earlier and it took me an hour to buy 3 warp disruptors and 2 warp scramblers playing the 0.01 isk game at jita. I was competing on 5-10 tech 2 items altogether with decent volume. How do people buy billions worth of items to sell? Because I assume they don’t 0.01 ISK on lots of orders.
I need advice on how to buy inventory as I must be doing something wrong, but I can’t see what I’m doing wrong.
You got a few factors here, lets take the example of warp scramblers here.
In order to have a supply you need people that do manufacturing and people that find them during mission runs, the way these people sell will vary, but the manufacturer will most likely set up a sell order on all his products to gain profit out of it by using materials on it. Warp Scramblers give a nice profit by buying mats and making them and setting up sell orders, however, they loose if they sell to buyers because of how low it is. The same applies to T2 variants.
Rarely there are products a manufacturer can make that will give a decent profit by selling them to buyers, because as you might know by now, the prices buyers ask are low, and if the manufacturer in question does what I do, buy minerals to produce and sell products, he is most likely to set up sell orders. That is one big source of products you got out.
The other source is the people that find them during missions or pvp and just feel like dumping it to people willing to buy it, simple as that.
How well it sells it depends on the item itself, because the majority of the items manufactured do not give a good isk per hour when making it with mats and selling it to buyers, hell in most cases the manufacturers are better off just selling the minerals rather than spending them on something that will give a negative drop on their wallet.
Not to mention that people willing to play the 0.01 isk game are going to have a much higher chance of grabbing an item before others do, and that includes to people trying to sell the item through sell orders.
If you see people with thousands of an item they either make it themselves or they buy the items through buy orders because it is a very well traded item like minerals and other famous stuff
To make a long story short, day trading in stations isn’t a great money maker for anyone. You would be much better off region trading. That being said if you insist on day trading in a station it will get better once you get a cycle going(meaning when you are selling and buying items at the same time). Your orders won’t fill faster but since something is always buying and selling you don’t really notice the slow pace if that makes any sense.
Adding to what said above: in EvE, like in life, working smarter wins over working harder.
Many work like “market bots” and face the same hardships. Others study the markets, their ebb and flow (I am disclosing even too much, here ), play smart, and then get in 30 minutes what others worked hard for 8 hours to achieve.
Basically what @Vaerah_Vahrokha said, play smart. You don’t have to be a genious to know what to do, just check the markets you are working with. A tip: what i do, is to price my buy orders using a simple calculation of certain averages and such. Not to hard to come by, i let them sit and check once or twice a day to update if the market shifted too much. The other option is go full “market bot” and 0.01isk everyone and everything.
Thank you, @Art_Vandolay, I have been in fantastic places and have done all and only what I love, for years.
I am missing several things and people, but overall, I could not say I’d end up so well, if someone would have asked me just a couple of years ago.
Plus, EvE is always in my heart, and I am actually “playing EvE” in RL now, in different ways, both as trader, as software developer (my big passion) and even as direct investor in some companies.
That was my experience as a station trader, and it’s just what the OP said… update as required 20 orders by .01 every so often, and with volume make some “important” money. Note the quotes, I quit.
5-10 buy orders as a .01 isker you’re not gonna bring in much inventory.
Train up those trade skills, get some capital the “boring” way (if you’re broke) and expand.
That said, station trading isn’t high-return especially for a new trader and extraspecially not in Jita.
My old defunct twitch page has some info. (I don’t use this channel any more but if you scroll down below the video frame there’s a bunch of text I wrote up a few years ago to field common questions. Most of it is still relevant. (twitch.tv/mothersammy)
), play smart, and then get in 30 minutes what others worked hard for 8 hours to achieve.