Apologize for sounding naive but I tried to look at some manufacturing tools based on Jita market and it seems like pretty much everything has a really competitive price.
It’s almost like the product always sells for the same cost of making said product, with everything being a loss in profit until it’s made in an EC in null or wormhole with ME rig. Even then you need to sell the product by yourself, selling product to buy order is pretty much another loss. Worse yet some things got predicted to be a pure loss no matter what like Adaptive Invulnerability Field II, even with unreal settings like ME 10, Sotiyo in null with T2 rig, selling product at max sell price.
So is there really a profit in Manufacturing or is it actually the Trading and/or Hauling parts that make up for the profit in Manufacturing?
It’s a mix, with manufacturing you can eliminate the buy cheap part of the trader equation, and focus on selling. Consumer products usually have more direct sales from sell orders than people dumping loot to buy orders, so manufactures create the volume needed and making the profit.
There is no need to go to null, using a complex in highsec in a low index system is sufficient. Though you need to do some research on stuff to produce. Try https://eve-industry.org/calc/ to estimate profits.
There is profit in production, but not in every item.
I look for large spikes in demand and produce to fill those. Example if someone loses a Moros fleet and decides to replace it, I’d expect a sudden surge in demand for 25000mm Steel Plates II. This may or may not cause those plates to be worth building in the short term, but it is the sort of thing I look for.
I’ve never gotten deeply into it, just enough to know that industry is a sub-part of trade. With trade you make your isk by buying and selling. Industry lets you improve your margins. I generally don’t believe an industrialist can really be reliably successful if they don’t learn some know-how on the market.
There is definitely profit for manufacturers it just takes time to do the research on what to build. It also depends of the fact how do you get your minerals. You probably won do billions a day at first but within time you can make enough isk to feel comfortable
I seem to think there is a profit if you do the right items, harvest said resources from the right areas in the game, and you can safely transit said items to a hub where you can profit from a sale order or contracts which are slightly under the going price.
When I buy stuff, I find it a few jumps out of the trade hub and haul it back to sell high. or vice versa… when I make something, I usually sell just slightly higher than going rate but in areas of demand, so centralized areas not near trade hubs, but that have activity, lots of missioners, ratters, pvp ers. etc…
Retribution, Ishtar, Assoult Damage Control, build those as they are hot,
and for all those fake posers who never give accurate advice… screw you
From my perspective, everything I build have margin in range of 20-50%, when I recently suspend my jobs, some of those went to 100% margins, so there is alot of space to deal with, and for trading it self, what i found funniest is crashing prices on those 0.01 bots, they go with there 0.01 changes when i go with 1mil changes, this also learn those trade bot owners to stay away of market positions you keep hands on.
So yes, there is profit in manufacturing by itself.
How much the Manufacturing stage is worth depends on your BPO farm, the number of slots you’re trying to fill, and how much volume you need to haul.
For example, you can make about one million per slot hour net for producing battlecruiser hulls. The premium though comes from having to haul all those hulls and minerals. This is how it works in general. The pain of keeping X in stock is related linearly to how profitable manufacturing X is.
If you own 30-60 “good” BPOs you can run an accounts worth of manufacturing slots. This would theoretically pull in more then 5 billion each week. OFC you’d have to be autistic to do that but I think you can get the idea.
Hmm, I like that breakdown. Each stage of that chain pretty much covers every opportunity to profit from trade. I’d maybe make the terms more generic to cover more scenarios.
Acquisition → movement → improvement → movement → liquidation
Each step, of course, takes time. So a trader would have to decide which steps are worthwhile for a given commodity, and which steps to skip. I think that chain is gonna have to go into my EVE Bible. It seems to cover nearly everything. I’d bet even bounties could be shoehorned into it.
and the key piece is that to understand / achieve maximum possible profit one must take into account movement and competitors rather than just a simple SalePrice - (InputCosts + OtherExpenses).
Eve has a fairly complex value chain extending from raw material harvesting to selling finished goods on the market. The more links you participate in, the higher your profit margins will be but the more time you need to invest.
Eve is a game - you need to consider entertainment value when considering which links in the chain you will participate in. If you enjoy mining, it’s a good use of your time - if you don’t, buy your minerals from someone who does enjoy the activity.
Eve is a commodity market and commodity markets are cyclical. You can view the cycle for any product you’re interested in using the market history tab of the market tool. As a trader, you want to buy in the bottom half of the cycle and sell in the top half. As a manufacturer, list your product in the top half of the cycle and don’t chase the market - let it come to you. This requires some patience but, eventually people get tired of selling stuff below cost, the undervalued inventory clears and the market snaps back - often aggressively.
As has been said, there are profits to be had in manufacturing, but they tend to be small and transient, as really, clicking on a button to make something takes practically no effort and minimal risk so any gap will be identified and closed quickly by the overabundance of industrial players using automated tools. However, if you can identify and capitalize on one of these imbalances before your competition, you can make significant ISK.
However, most of what people do to make their accounting show profits is actually trading (and sometimes gathering of raw materials), not manufacturing as you have identified. The industrialist will tell you their operation is profitable, but you need to sell here, or buy there with certain orders, or whatever which is actually being a trader, not a manufacturer. That’s fine and all, but don’t put too much stock in their tales of profits as most of them are terrible at tracking the time hauling, updating orders, and looking for an opportunity, and just look at the ISK/h or per production slot.
As a result, many people sell at a loss if all costs were considered, or at least seriously undervalue their time, but this is a game so as long as they are having fun they aren’t doing anything wrong. But for you, that means you have to compete with people who are willing to sell their labour too low and makes turning a profit as a pure manufacturer tough. Other than engaging in some market shenanigans (which is again trading), the best bet to make a profit as a manufacturer is to diversify as much as possibly to increase your chances of finding a transient lack of supply that you can fill.
When you producing stuff it depends on your skills and ME & TE of your BPO or BPC that is first part of profit.
When you sellin profit depends of price you want or you agree to …
Manufacturing can be very profitable. I buy materials, manufacture and sell the finished items at the same station. The only thing I don’t do there is science stuff as it’s not a lab.
The trick is to focus ruthlessly on what is currently profitable. Don’t try and supply an over supplied market. Have a wide range of stuff you can make to avoid saturating the market.
You need a fair investment in skills and blueprints to start, and a willingness to sit on something for a few months until the profits come your way
Understand your supply chain and what precursor components are worth making, or what to just buy.
Understand what is mean by “opportunity cost”, and avoid losing too much that way.
Yeah, I can’t understand the Adaptive Invulnerability Field II problem - possibly because I’ve not had a good look at it (I think I might have an idea about it). I’ve got a bunch of BPCs sitting there until it comes back to me. It will have been profitable at some point or I wouldn’t have done the invention.
The thing with manufacturing is that in the beginning it is very small margins because you still learning and you cant build loads at 1 time. You also cant research T2 and build that. T2 is where bigger profits are. That is not to say T1 has no profits. T2 is riskier and with anything in EVE. Risk means rewards. T2 is more work and so = more profit. As you gain better skills your margin improves but also your knowledge improves on the market. If you know nothing about PVP side of the game I would say you going to take longer to get your foot in the door so to say.
Items in EVE used in PVP sell faster but again a lot of people build them so you have a bigger pool of people to compete with for profit.
Location location location.
Where you sell and build is important. Do you build in a player owned engineering facility? I have and made profit. I also have made a 400 mil loss because the person went AFK and the fuel ran out 5 hours before my T2 frigs came to an end.
Do you get materials in jita haul it to your selling location near low sec and then build there and sell to FW. Sure more profits again because FW dont want to go all the way to Jita to buy. Again it is more work and so more reward and more of a chance to lose it when you get ganked at a gate.
Manufacturing has profit. Its slow to start. It takes time to get setup and know what the hell you doing but its fun and if you like to build stuff then by all means build it. If it does not sell then you can always use it in PVP.
Also I find to look at manufacturing like casino. you got to be prepared to loose it all to go into it.
You can buy your initial material at to a high price and make no profit.
You can buy it at the correct price and get ganked on route to your manufacturing system
The market could take a massive dive in profit while your manufacturing is running
You could get ganked our your way back to jita to sell it.
Any of those will means you lose your isk, this is EVE.
right now, you can make 1.83M/h buying material at sell order, crafting fullerene intercalated sheets, and selling them to buy orders
4 days ago I made 500M in 1:30 doing structure rigs. buying at SO, selling at BO. the materials were transported in a blockade runner to manufacturing plant, then built, and transported to Jita.
At the same time I was ratting.
doing invention right now would lead to a mere 30M/h for 4 lines, so meh. quad 3500mm siege artillery are worth 5.45 M/h (considering copying, invention, building) for 24h of copying/research/manufacture.
On the other hand, it is worth 16M/h buying stuff at BO and selling at SO. the issue is that this value is bad for items that are not sold on the market(gives infinite boso)