Eve-Online: Any traders out there ?

I haven't had much time to play in the last weeks; I am working 16 hour days. Sucks to be me.

So, most of my playing has been revolving around Trading; day-trading to be exact. Eve's economy is mostly user-driven and every station has a trading centre. Since there is about 3 to 5 stations per solar system and there are thousands of solar systems, that makes for a lot of trade centres. On the other hand, 99% of these have very low volumes flowing through them, so they are not interesting for selling items, but they are great for *purchasing* items.

In Eve, someone with the proper Skill can put a purchase order for items through the whole region (a region can comprise dozens of solar systems). When a user docks at a station with loot he/she has accumulated while fighting, they can elect to sell it at that station at the regional purchase order price. Most don't bother warping to a trading hub (such as the Jita trading hub) to sell their items to get a much better price.

In the flip side, many capsuleers will do 2 to 3 jumps to purchase a needed item for their ships at the best price.

That means that regional "arbitration" is not only possible, it is common. That's where you can make the big bucks.

I find regional items that are popular and have a very high regional volume. If this item doesn't have a regional purchase order, I put one in at 10% of the going regional sale price. Wait a few days and you will find that you now own hundreds of these items waiting for you in the regional stations. You have now made your profit :-)

You make the profit when you purchase. Let me explain by telling you the second part of this:

When you are warped in the region, you can view your list of assets in each station, and you can do one of two things:

- You can sell the item at the station it resides in by setting a sale order on the item. If anyone wants to purchase your item at your price, they will send a purchase order for your item, and then they can pick it up.

- You can go to the station, pick up your item, jump to a trading hub and sell it at the trading hub.

If you sell at the station the item resides in, you will have to set a lower price than if you sell the item at a trading hub. If you sell it for low enough, your clients will happily do 5 to 9 jumps just to go to the station to get it.

Here's why you make your profit when you purchase: when you purchase for 10% of the regional selling price, you will easily be able to sell the item at their residing station for 75% of the regional selling price.

For example, you see a popular item currently selling for 10,000ISK/unit. No one has a regional purchase order. You put in a regional purchase order for 1,000ISK/unit. When a pilot comes back from a hunting trip, and docks to their closest station, they will just start batch selling whatever l00t they accumulated. Typically, they will just blindly sell the small l00t. For a lot of senior pilots, a 10,000ISK item is small l00t. They won't care if they only get 1,000ISK for it, they just want it out of their cargo hold.

So you are now the proud owner of this item, but at a station that is maybe 10 jumps away from a trading hub.

If you have the time and the inclination, take your ship, do the jumps, grab the item from the station, come back to the trading hub and sell it for 9,999ISK. That's a 8,999ISK profit. You've made more than 8 times your money, but you had to spend the effort of going to the station and back. You even have had to do quite the milk-run to grab multiple items waiting for you at all these regional stations.

Or, you can set a sell order on each of the items at the station for, say, 6,000ISK. When it sells, that will still be a 5,000ISK profit. Not many pilots reside at the regional hub, and they may easily be 4 to 5 jumps away from the regional trading hub. That means that in reality your item may not only be cheaper than the one selling at the trading hub, but it may actually be *closer* for them. You will have made 5 times your money without having to leave your little regional home. You can do all of this while blissfully residing in the regional trading hub. One thing to keep in mind also is that many pilots make their living by doing milk-runs in-region and pick up 6,000ISK items, bring them to the regional trading hub and sell them for 10,000ISK. The cool part is that *you* still make the biggest profit out of the whole setup :-)

Even when I only have about 10-20 minutes per week to play, I can still easily make 1,000,000 ISK per week while I am logged off.