It’s a skill that you develop over time. It helps to stick to a few products - you develop a “feel” for them over time. You know what it costs to make them and what the market considers a reasonable price - no spreadsheets required.
A commodity market will fall slowly for a while .01 at a time, then people get impatient and prices drop rapidly until the products are unprofitable. The under priced product clears and the price bounces - sometimes spectacularly. After you’ve participated in this cycle a few times you get a feel for it . I believe it’s easier in the smaller hubs - a more leisurely pace and margins tend to be better than Jita.
The deciding factor should be whether you enjoy it. PVP pilots need time to master their tade - it’s no different for industrialists.
I enjoy it to a point, it’s just when your spending an hour trying to work out if a single product is worth doing and what price point you should set it at that it becomes frustrating. I will take another look in a few days (away from work till Friday afternoon) then see if I can find a couple of items with the pattern that you mention and try again. I know one thing for sure is that the 3 alpha characters I have are just too much so I will biomass those and just use the 6 alpha characters I have.
Alphas are deliberately nerfed to prevent them from having a significant impact on the markets. I started with T1 rigs, Mobile Depots and MTU’s. I think Alphas can make them and they’re still quite profitable. You used to be able to get salvage inexpensively by putting buy orders in mission hubs. I’ve been focused on T2 for years so no guarantees!