Manufacturing, is it only for the "big boys"

@do_little ISK per hour is showing some profit in many things, I often find its pricing inaccurate though (probably me not knowing the settings properly). so it feels like just a lot of trawling through the numbers which if I ecall correctly was the reason i stopped doing industry all those years back lol

Have you downloaded the prices with the right properties on the “Update Prices” tab? You got a lot of places to pick for prices as well as several types of price, the program is Very accurate and very well constructed

Eve is a commodity market and commodity markets are cyclical. You know how much it cost you to build a product and you know how much profit you want to make. Look at the price history tab in the market tool and see if you can reasonably expect the product to sell if you list it at that price and wait for the market to come to you.

Our current scenario, we can reasonably expect a rising market for T2 product until the end of November - perhaps longer because of the moon mining changes - it makes no sense to chase the market down. Pick your price and let it come to you.

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Yes I managed to get up to date pricing, it woudl seem CCP data is accurate at the moment and eve central maybe down so Ive heard

Oh yeah almost forgot about that, yeah its down right now, lately I’ve been somewhat lazy with industry so haven’t been too bothered about it, just casually floating around and enjoying the views.

once im settled and either made money or lost loads id like to think i can float around and enjoy the views.

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Small scale tech 2 module production is definitely a good way to get started.

There is ISK to be made in making the following and all of them sell really, really fast:

  • Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
  • Warrior II (and most other drones)
  • Light Neutron Blaster II
  • Damage Control II
  • Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

All of those are cheap items to build en masse and have enormous demand, and all are built from readily available materials. Just be aware that some of the materials (such as Particle Accelerator Unit, Ferrogel and Morphite) are at historically unusually high prices now due to upcoming changes.

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When you only look at hubs, you’ll get nowhere. the biggest point of the last big industrial exlaneion was to get people to create and build things off of main routes and hubs. Everywhere.

Anyhow, relatee, even if only tangentially:

if you struggle with selling stuff, create demand yourself.

Example. You specialize on mining ships. You seek out wystems with certain miners in certain ships. you build there. you blow them up. (not the pod!), they buy it in local, from you.

this works for many ships, like exploration vessels. haulers not so much, because blowing up haulers results in blowing up the pilot’s reason for using the hauler.

i hope it helps somehow.

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Except nobody does, because the hauling is a pain (with few exceptions: rigs, blueprint stuff). You either sell in the hubs or locally to your corp/alliance, everything else in between is just regional trade on top of manufacturing.

so, you’re saying you know how everyone operates, and no one cares about selling things to residents of a system, or passers-by who don’t want to take trips to the next hub?

I stopped making

a couple of months ago when the price of ferrojel made it uneconomical, I checked this morning after reading this post and build cost still exceeds selling price - at least in Jita. Blueprint Calculator - Blueprint Display

You can probably squeeze a bit of profit by building the components and selling in a smaller hub.

I currently make most of my ISK selling T2 drones - I make my own robotics and guidance systems so the margins are excellent.

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Sure, stocking local hubs and mission systems is and was always a thing, whether you produce it locally or do a trade run. But I don’t see changes with citadels, the local hubs even lost volume. Multiple times I was not able to get me an equivalent ship replacement in Dodi, which was not a problem 2 years ago.

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The advantage with hubs is that you can sell items quicker although generally at less profit, Finding a system far away from a hub where there are miners for example would maybe create more profit per item but you would move a lot less and tie up sell slots.

I will give it a go on a small scale, but I feel that the movement of product will be so slow, that it negates the advantage of the profit made.

A lot of it is local knowledge. Does this market support mission runners or faction warfare? You can filter the market tool down to the station you are docked in and look at the market history for stuff you are planning to sell. Then look at the market data to see how well stocked the market is - is it already crowded?

It’s true that things sell slower in smaller markets but there is less competition so your stuff may actually sell faster than it would in Jita with someone undercutting you every few seconds!

Citadels have fragmented the market and increased brokerage fees have reduced inter-regional trade. As someone who sells in smaller markets I’m happy with this - I have less competition but the customers are still there!

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When i lived in a wormhole i used to manufacture nanite repair paste from PI goods. Was super profitable and also high isk oer volume which was good for getting the stuff ti jita.

Not sure if thats still profitable but keep looking and focus on the unique value of your situation and you’ll find something.

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Work with the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses, works fine for me :slight_smile:

I didn’t read the whole discussion, so much of what I’m about to say may already have been said. :slight_smile:

In a nut shell, other manufacturers are able to do it cheaper than you (or believe they are able to). There are a lot of ways to cut costs when manufacturing:

  • Perfectly trained manufacturing skills
  • Perfectly researched BPO
  • Purchasing materials for a lower price (buy orders, bulk discounts, etc.)
  • Manufacturing in a low index system
  • Using an Engineering Complex
  • Rigging and locating said Engineering Complex for better/best bonuses

Not knowing how your skills are trained or where you try to build from, any of these factors could be what is keeping you from being competitive. And even if you are perfectly trained and doing everything you can to cut costs, it may not be enough. Sometimes someone is just able to do it for less, or they are eating a loss because the market shifted and they would rather exit with minimal losses than hold onto stock in the hopes of the market swinging back in their favor. And sometimes they make a mistake and think they are selling for a profit when it’s really a loss.

But the little guy can still get in there to make a profit. Some items sell for a decent profit because they are hard to produce. Other times items that would sell for a loss in a market hub can sell for a profit in a mission hub because people will pay a premium for convenience.

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T2 modules is a good starting point. Hopefully you have alts. You generally want 10 production slots, 10 research slots (copying, invention) per alt. It takes time, isk, and SP investment to get the alts up and running. T2 modules take a bit of SP because of the different science skills you need to train (generally you need each skill to level 1 to produce, but ideally you want every skill at least 4 so your invention chances go up). Pick a group of modules that have similar skills to get your alts going (for instance you could pick lasers (Just throwing a group of modules out there as an example), train the related skills and start manufacturing lasers of all sizes, then once your alts are all up to speed, start training another T2 skill up). You’ll want spreadsheets for everything you make, make what is obviously the most profitable but then diversify. Sometimes you make a batch of a less profitable module and the price spikes by the time you get it to jita. The reverse can be true about profitable items going down by the time you get them to market.

The T2 module market is volatile for some things but other items are a consistent profit with the occasional spike. There was a good patch of a certain module that had RIDICULOUS margins (i’m talking a billion isk/day) just recently, the price is back to normal due to the availability of the datacores and T2 materials for it. So yeah just start producing something thats consistent, have the materials/datacores/spare T2 BPCs built up for spikes. Also 10/20 your T1 bpos for modules, saves a lot of isk in the longrun. Also don’t do decryptors for invention on T2 modules, save that for ships.

@Super_Chair thanks for your post. I am doing this in a certain, kinda disjointed way, but I shall review my training and go from there, I have 6 toons over 2 account so plenty of room for scope.

This is not a good advice, decryptors are very useful for all kind of things including modules. They not only influence ME/TE but also invention chance and number of runs per copy.