My laptop decided to go on the fritz, so I took a week-long break from EVE while waiting for my new desktop to arrive. I didn’t get anything fancy –no oober gaming machine or anything like that. But it’s the first time I’ve played EVE on a desktop with a fairly big screen. And now that I know what it’s like, I don’t know how I ever played EVE before.
My inclination toward ignoring all things ISK-bearing, and jumping full throttle into the business of spending and pvping was short lived. In many ways, trading is more of a habit to me than an activity. Or perhaps it could be better described as a way of thinking that has settled in over the years.
When I go places, I look at the market in that region. I have certain items I check out and keep tabs on price fluctuations. I keep lists. While I’m fitting a ship, I keep tabs on what I thought was expensive and what I found to be missing. I experiment with small amounts of items to see how they’ll sell and whether there is a need for them in various places.
I’m constantly poking and observing. And, it’s often a subconscious thing. I don’t sit down and think ‘I’m going to trade now.’ I do it in all the white space between everything else. While I’m chatting and planning with corpmates, preparing for ops, or running somewhere on an unrelated errand.
I have a small number of items setup in Sujarento. I consider that to be my most relaxed market since Sugar Kyle already stocks a lot of the important stuff. I can dabble and experiment and not worry about whether the basic necessities are kept in stock. Between the two of us (and the handful of others I’ve noticed are also trading here) we’re going to have ourselves our own little low-sec Jita. In fact, I’ve already had people comment in passing at how easy it generally is to find things they need in Suj.
And, I’m thinking about setting up another low-sec market. This will take more time and research. And it will probably be quite a ways from Suj, so I will have to learn how to operate things in multiple regions.
I personally think that the hardest part about low-sec trading is figuring out the logistics side of it. Hiring people like Black frog can be way too expensive if you’re trying to make a decent profit on your runs. So, you’re typically stuck dealing with things yourself.
And, have I ever mentioned that I really, really hate logistics?
Thankfully, I have a corpmate who both needs isk and has the ability to handle some of my logistics for me. And, he is someone I trust. So, I created a scheme with him where I pay him quite well to move things for me--especially high-value loads. It’s a win-win situation for both of us. He is able to make some fairly easy ISK off me, and I can make runs I would never make with an outside logistics group.
I like ‘hiring’ my corpmates and I wish there was more reasons to 'hire' more people for other aspects of my various projects. I have always gravitated toward hiring people to do things I don’t like to do. But it’s much more gratifying when you’re paying that ISK to people you fly with. It’s much more satisfying when you know you’re not just padding your own wallet with your various endeavors –but that you’re also padding your friends’ wallets as well.
You can use Black Frog; just pad your prices accordingly to cover time & ISK for logistics. There is absolutely no reason to try to sell something in low-sec for the same price and slim margins as in Jita, Rens or Dodixie. There isn't anywhere near as much competition and it is easy to establish a local monopoly.
ReplyDeleteAnd, always keep in mind that most game players are generally lazy. In RL, quite a few people will drive miles to save a couple of dollars on groceries; but players often will not even bother to undock and warp to another station to save millions of ISK. I routinely sell items in one station which are 2x, or more, the price of the same items in another station in the same system. And, price scaling according to distance to the next system with the same stuff is also appropriate - 1-2 jumps is usually good for at least another 2x bump in price.
As for how things work between regions... well... you can sell many things for 10x in one region what you paid for them in another region; currently, I'm selling a few items for 100x what I paid for them.