Agreed.
Sometimes decryptors aren’t a good idea. But they often are. It’s generally worth running the math on them.
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AS with most things in EVE it’s best to jump in and have a crack. Start mining/reprocessing/buying minerals cheaply (the market graph is GREAT for this!) and start looking for cheap BPC’s (this might save you time and initial expenses of having to research your own BPO’s, but definitely start doing that too) for items that you can make.
I’d heavily suggest trying to start in an ‘area’ of manufacturing skills (some equipment/ships/charges/etc require specific skills, so pick one category of these and start skilling in to those areas.
You don’t have to manufacture in ONE place, you could have a few slots working in a local EC building ammo/consumables in a mission running area, you could have some slots building ships/modules in/near a factional warfare area. Working with T1 stuff for both of those is great as you can haul compressed ore easily and refine on-site, or transport the goods.
You can set up near a trade hub and mass produce a huge selection of different things and have an alt in the hub that sells things when the price is right.
The main take out here is: Just start. You might start small, you might start with lots, either way you’ll learn more than here and it will give you a feel better for what you can make for profit.
Good luck! Hit me up in game and I’ll give you some 10/20 T1 BPC’s and can show you some cheap places to build/research!
My advice is to choose a variety of non-related products whose anticipated volumes and margins net you about a 8% margin when averaging across the portfolio for a target market(s). Through the benefit of diversification and the smoothing effect of time you will will get the average real performance of your portfolio. As the market changes over time just watch the long-term performance of each product and shuffle out the ones that become CRAP (Can’t realize a profit).
Tips
- Buy orders for supplies.
- Sell orders for products.
- Vertical integration. Seize your suppliers profit by building intermediate components yourself.
- Don’t produce your own mats. If you can math leave the rock pounding to others and instead focus on product and market selection along with optimization production.
- Buy BPOs, not copies. Profit covers the cost of ME/TE research and BPO will almost certainly sell at or higher than original market price. This only applies to products your planning to be long term Staples of your portfolio. Use BPCs for short term opportunities.
- Production cost such as industry taxes and logistics need to be controlled. Build close enough to your market and supplies but away from other producers.
- Once you have necessary market skills for reducing tax don’t fret over it. Your competition has to pay the same tax hence 4. should be your focus.
- Set your orders and leave them be for a while. If you’ve done your research and math right time will resolve vast majority of your orders.
- If you have money in your wallet that isn’t needed for fun or as insurance then invest it. Worse thing that will happen is you walking away without the money, but you’ll have learned something.
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This point is really important. As a manufacturer isk sat in your wallet (beyond your immediate gameplay needs) is useless isk and may as well not be there. Make your spare isk work for you at all times.
@Gaive_Shayiskhun @Dashiel @Corraidhin_Farsaidh @Steve_Ronuken
Thanks for all the advice everyone. I do have a few BPOs that I have purchased and a lot of them are already researched to 10/20 (even though I know you don’t necessarily need that for T2 production).
I have 6 toons over 2 accounts that are at various stages of training under the science and production skills so whilst not 100% efficient I can make items. On a few things that I investigated it was apparent that the margin was so small (or even a loss) that it was pointless even trying. This was trying to sell at Jita, I know that the market is busy and saturated but I figured that because of the liquidity of the market there the items would move quickly and whilst less profit per unit it would be made up by sheer numbers.
However having thrown some items up on market there (some purchased from LP, some from exploration and some from manufacturing) it would seem that that idea is flawed because the items have for the most part not sold (they are generally popular items with decent sales per day).
I have 2 thoughts at the moment:
1: Move somewhere else, sell some of the BPOs I have (especially ships which seem to have pretty much no profit) and try and make more money there, may FW space as someone mentioned
2: Do something else as the whole manufacturing and selling skill set seems to be very skill point and time intensive especially if looking to get sales taxes down to the minimum too.
There is a lot of great advise in the replies and I thank you for that, but I am feeling overwhelmed by the scale of what is needed, skills for the invention, skills to reduce tax, skills somewhere else, knowledge of the market, knowledge of locations… I am finding it a lot to take in for someone who is never going to be that big in the manufacturing game.
So as I do a fair amount of exploration, I am just going to sell those items on market directly rather than using them in my own manufacturing. I will do the odd thing here and there as I came across a BPC in exploration maybe, but I think that would be a more enjoyable experience for me.
Thanks for all the advise people.
Hi Giddy,
Manufacturing is all about research. I probably spend a great deal more time researching than manufacturing.
How will you run operationally and logistically?
What will you make?
Who will you market to and how?
The answers to these questions are dependent mostly on capital and capabilities and should be answered seperately, it is no use producing a high volume item for a limited market.
Use tools, eve isk per hour and the fuzzworks industry tools are all epic.
Manufacturing in eve is quite exciting at the moment. Opportunities arise all of the time. 2 weeks ago thrashers were profitable with a 10/20 BP in a highsec station, so yes T1 stuff can be profitable (and is in certain cases).
T2 is about to get a massive shake up resource wise so there will be opportunities there also.
My last tip is that a small producer you have a significant advantage.
This is your agility.
Large scale manufacturers producing high volumes cannot respond in the same way a small manufacturer does. Markets are cyclic, when profits are high people enter the market, when they dip people leave and price recovers. Just because something is not profitable now it may be in the future, read the market graphs and you will see.
Have fun 07
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Any manufacturing I’ve done has always been as an aside to the other things I do in game. I’ve been in null sec and WH corps etc and enjoying PVP (albeit at the cheaper end of the scale).
I very much enjoy seeing that wallet level tick upwards and enjoy the act of seeing some thing made but I fail in the most important aspect which is the research and knowledge of markets. But that aside, as I mentioned in the last post, the skills needed for someone to manufacture and trade are great (although Ill admit I am thinking across the board as opposed to specializing in one area).
On an isk plevel I think i’d make more by selling the exploration loot, bottom line is i dont know what to do to see market trends to determine what to buy, in fact although I DO consider this just a game it stresses me out somewhat. and now my alts are moving into a C4, I think realistically it will be PI and exploration to me
If you’re only profitable with buy orders, look to make something else.
It’s a way to increase profit, but not to subsidise manufacturing.
I would be very hesitant about stopping this considering that you’ve done a lot of the grunt work. Make sure that your toons aren’t all skilling in the same specialised things (certain invention/research activities need specialised skills like High Energy Physics) but otherwise you should be fine.
I would hold on to those BPO’s too, they’re always useful and you might find that you don’t get a lot for them if they’re some of the more common ones.
The scale is only as big as you think/want, if you want to start small you can and should, it’s the best way to learn.
In actual fact, exploration ties in well anyway as you can get datacores and rare BPC’s from sites. So maybe work the two in conjunction!
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I use a rule of thumb on decryptors for modules.
Modules under a million - never use decryptors
Modules over four million - default to using cheap decryptors (Symmetry etc) that add ME
Modules over 50 million (entisis, capital modules) - default to using Parity.
Larger numbers of runs I will run the numbers.
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@Gaive_Shayiskhun - yeah you may have something there. I’ll admit I was trying to get my toons to have ALL the science skills but as you and others have said concentrating on a small area first makes much more sense, I have kept all my BPOs and have nearly 800 BPCs of various kinds. Most of the BPOs are 10/20 too with a few researching now. I’ll take another look at it tonight as it is Friday and I can dedicate a little time to it.
@Sabriz_Adoudel - thanks for the tips on this, I was only really using Parity when I was inventing frigates, but there do not seem to be many ships that are profitable (in Jita at least)
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Frigate hulls I use Symmetry or Accelerant on.
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Just do the opposite. Buy stuff already made and reprocess it. One night I made a billion at Dodixie by buying all of the shuttles and just reprocessing them.
No joke.
Now that is a novel approach, I guess there are tools that show you were reprocess value is more than the item price.
Well if you’ve got a bunch of BPO’s/BPC’s it’s often a good idea to just make them as soon as the material prices drop or when you have some free slots, especially for commonly used/destroyed items.
I’ve got a stock of stuff ready and when the prices rise I put them up on the market. Or sometimes I just put them on the market for the price that I want to sell them for and leave them be. Sure, it doesn’t allow you quick ISK turnaround but it means that you maximise your profits by taking advantage of the low prices for materials and then the high prices for selling.
One example is a certain thing that I made about a billion’s worth of. They are slow moving and so I was never going to make a lot on them quickly. The item sold at the time for around 2mill, now they are selling for 3.3mill and picking up the pace of selling them as well.
It is the waiting thing I have trouble with I think. I took a look at the numbers to other night. I think I will start with a few small bits, but all my toons will be moving into a WH soon so I don’t think it is ever something that I will get heavily into just due to the logistics of it all. Ill maybe do some ammo and see how that goes, but I think that the PI and the exploration will net more isk (and less frustration) than manufacturing.
Use your manufacturing to turn the PI into smaller to haul more profitable items. Easier logistics and more profit.
I am not seeing anything much more profitable than P4 items, I cannot do capital builds and structures seems saturated
It’s not just about profit in WH space, you also need to consider logistics. smaller items are easier to move, less items of higher value are easier to sell. It’s more about ease of life with living in an often inaccessible or distant location.
Even if you make no more net profit above the P4’s, but your moving stuff to market takes one trip instead of three that’s a win.
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With refineries coming out the price of P4 is going to skyrocket for a while. Is a good time to sell P4 if you are not going to be producing you own structures
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