It can be done but you would need to indy basically all of your characters and master the program Eve Isk Per Hour to scan the market and analyze all the items you can produce.
Scanning the market manually takes too long and the prices fluctuates wildly from week to week.
IMO there is more money with trading than doing the actual industry (which is sad) but that is how I made my big money. I make about 1b per day profit trading. Trading scales much better since you can have 300 order slots per character. But some find it very boring.
Industry is dominated by T2bpo holders, massive multi account players servicing tiny margins & of course the āmins I mine are free & the plex I sub is freeā crowd. Margins tend to be dire unless you n+1 them.
I started with industry only a short while ago. Did some basic research, watched a bunch of YT guides and read the wikis, and chose to ignore all the folks going āweāre doomedā and āthese mineral prices are all wrongā (instead of realising that those prices are the new right and to adapt to it).
Doing the math, checked different websites to make sure, you can make profit on things just fine. I only checked a select few things (partially because of being new and because I wanted to stick to Amarr related things) and it turns out that on the few things I checked I could make profit just fine, about 12-15% and that accounts for buying the minerals. But only if I didnāt sell them in Jita but in Amarr.
So yes you can make profit but not if youāre going to do what everyone does meaning that a small producer, who can adapt and move fairly easily, CAN do fine. The older ones who are set in stone and start screeching whenever a change happens, those might have more issues.
Iāve been doing industry profitably in highsec for the past 6 years. Mostly T2 modules, drones and rigs. I am self-sufficient in PI (8-10% export tax) and make all my advanced components. Other materials, including minerals are purchased using buy orders. I am comfortably plexing 4 accounts.
The recent price instability, particularly the sharp increase in Morphite has been challenging but the market is adjusting and it is once again profitable to make most of the products I usually sell.
I did send a few characters to nullsec for a couple of years - PI was wonderful but markets were too fragmented and thinly traded so I brought them back to highsec around 3 years ago.
I am an exclusively high sec based manufacturer, Omega paid with real money on an annual subscription, specialising in making T2 items - I am, effectively, a single person operator for industry - one character. I operate out of Amarr. Iāve been to Jita very rarely. I donāt run multiple accounts and I donāt bother trying to Plex my account.
I am making typically in the region of 750m-1bn ISK profit per month. Reasonably solid engagement - so keeping high utilisation of manufacturing and science slots across the character.
Thoughts:
Understand the costs within your activities and supply chain. Understand how that relates to turnover, and understand how the market operates and how demand varies and cycles. Thereās a lot to learn.
It will be reasonably capital intensive - you will tie up materials, and especially blueprint copy costs, waiting for the sweet spots in the market. Width helps rather than dealing with a single line.
Your time has a cost to it - use it profitably. But make sure you are enjoying this game play. Eve is not a job - my RL job is hugely more profitable than anything I can do in Eve.
Skills count - T2 is quite skill intensive, as is going for volume manufacturing. That is an additional investment.
Watch the Installation Costs - there is a trade off between the time/hassle cost of manufacturing away from a trade hub and just swallowing the high costs of manufacturing in Amarr. The balance point is personal.
Donāt obsess about āIāll be out competed by T2 BPO holdersā. For example, one module I make has a cost to me of 2.1m each, they sell for 2.8m each. Of my costs: 1.9m is materials, 0.15m is Invention, 0.05m is Installation cost. I make batches of 10 or 20 of them at a time and feed them to the market. I can shave more off the material costs in the supply chain than Invention costs me.
@Terak_Romaller thanks for sharing, that is an intereting statisitic, so you have just one character? not even 3 characters on one account?
I never used to plex my 2 accounts, but as eve is more like an amusement park these days and the prices increased recently i didnt want to give CCP any money, as it stands i only give money for one account and I am able to plex one with lots of change left over for other things
F- all that. If Iām not allowed to mine and manufacture out of what I mine than screw it all together. Iād rather buy ships directly from CCP, on Steam or on CCPās website. I at least I wonāt be giving lowlife gankers the opportunities to gank an unarmed vessels just to get the jollies between their innerthighs-attached vermicellis and call themselves " real big men" for hitting on the defenseless.
I have three characters on the one account. Only one of them gets used for the T2 industry work - the others do different things in different places in the cluster. Being a steady industrialist and managing the slaves in the factories prevents you doing a lot of running around exploring, fighting, having fun and so forth.
Do what you enjoy, ignore people telling you different. I would suggest making more alpha accounts, using the 1 mil SP referral, to try different/more things.
This is only true for additional accounts that youāre plexing for extra industry profit.
If you pay for a yearly sub to have fun with your Omega ships and fight in PvP, while doing a little industry on the side, then it is ridiculous to take āplexing the accountā into account for the profitability of your industry, especially when that industry is not the main source of ISK income. And yes, this means the āplex I sub is freeā crowd is competing with your silly measures that 'all industry needs to make 1.2b isk turn over to break evenā. Not their fault, your fault.
Youāre right about the other thing though, ores you mine are indeed not free.
@Gerard_Amatin - i used to pay monthly, now plex 1 account and pay 3 mnthly on the other, loathe to get a year account asā¦ well not sure I like CCPs handling of eve so dont want to commit for that long.
Iāve never been a big player in industry, just trying to find some gems within the shite, but whilst I dont class my minerals as free I consider them more buyers price rather than sellers price.
People told me to mine, tried it hated it stopped doing it.
People told me to do missions, tried it, didnāt like it much so looked for alternatives.
Started doing anomalies, people told me to fly specific ships (mostly caldari or Gallente), I created a new account/char, tried it in a Caracal but disliked it due to not enjoying Caldlari looks/lore (I care about that stuff).
I upgraded to doing combat sites over anomalies, people told me there are no good Amarr ships for this and I should just conform to the norm (effectively)
That is where I created my final/real account (this one) with an Amarr character I knew before hand Iād end up with (RP/lore/looks wise). Combined all the info and started doing combat exploration in an Arbitrator, then someone showed me an Amarr ship thatās pretty much perfect for what I wanted to do and I upgraded to that. Which shows that most people who had been giving me answers werenāt only conformists, they were also uninformed.
I now make 60-100 mil/h in high sec doing this stuff, I enjoy it a lot for various reasons and Iām using a ship/faction that I enjoy too. Iām now up to two omega accounts (I donāt plex them, see no reason to turn a game into a job), partly for industry and partly to act as support although Iām still learning about what options there really are.
All this funds all kinds of extra activities on new alpha accounts. So far Iāve tried ganking just to get an idea on how it works, Iām training up 2 more for FW and zero space. The 1 mil SP referral option is great for trying out new things unless theyāre omega locked of course.
The industry I donāt really do for the profit, just to learn about it and possibly for future RP reasons. Itās just that when people rage about something I want to figure out the facts and details instead of just believing their rage. My production doesnāt make a lot because I only just started and am still adding more blueprints to the mix (research takes time) but Iām making some profit with it so far.
I ask a lot of questions, I read the wikis and I watch a ton of youtubes. Then I combine all that info and come to my own conclusions and assess afterwards if it was right, wrong, interesting or boring.
Done that too. Picked up some Ark ore but frankly I didnāt think the profit was anything to cheer about, especially given the risks of wh space. I can do almost as well in hi sec with a load of massive scord.
