Alright it is finally time for a Tycoon to chime in, I have found that producing as much as possible of profitable goods, in little time as possible to be the most effective solution and getting all skills that reduce the TIME, TAX,LOSS, or MATERIALS to be the best thing to do but it can take months to years to do. Here is my 2 Character Industry/Research Setup with 40 slots.
Which makes about 5 to 10 billion isk in profit a month.
Pro tips
-One, Use Buy Orders to buy materials cheaper than market sell orders.
-Two, Use BPOs to make Tech I Items.
-Three, Invent your Tech I BPCs to Tech II BPCS in bulk.
-Four, PI is very helpful in making Tech II items.
-Five, Listen to the calculations and calculate before you produce.
Profit = Sell Price - Cost of Materials
-Six, expect price wars and the item values to drop slightly as you sell large amounts.
-Seven, Find someone that uses your products in bulk and offer them a bulk discount if they buy them in massive amounts.
-Eight, Don’t lose shipments of the things you produce use courier contracts if you feel that someone may try to gank your transports to location of sale. a 30 million isk courier contract reward is nothing compared to a 1 billion isk loss of products being shipped. Leave it to the pros in this respect.
-Nine, Only use Perfect (10/20) BPO’s and BPC’s to produce Tech I items for Tech II as high of Material Efficiency as possible.
-Ten, Ferengi Rules of Acquisition from Star Trek should be followed to the letter.
For a Complete list.