I am reading this article as I am starting to be interested in the EBank. I am pretty good at making money in Eve now, the main thing holding me back is a lack of investment capital. I haven’t read the article in its entirety yet so I will withhold comment, but since I have access to the author, and there are several Eve veterans plus people who probably have a passing interest in the kinds of unplanned occurrences a more complex MMO provides, I thought I’d start a thread.
I missed this thread when it came out, but in searching for something that it was recently alleged I had said, I found it. So, onwards:
The ‘banking’ system in EVE really is an interesting beast, although I’d argue that it pretty much requires some sort of in-game backing in order to make it more effective than throwing your ISk to the first person in Jita who asks for it. There is currently no way to protect your investment and the rate of return is absurdly low even for the best banks.
Needing to make some ISK myself I recently started a trade alt (starting training up to Tycoon V in a few days). In the last week I’ve made 550 million with a 6 bil investment in market orders (I’m still learning about optimal trading strategies so it’s lower than it should be). And that rate of return still dwarfs banking returns, has zero chance of someone running away with my invested ISK and takes only two half hour-to-an-hour sessions, one morning one night, for me to refresh my buy and sell orders. The allure of banking in EVE, mostly, is that it requires zero work on the part of someone making the investment. But the risk/reward calculation is too far skewed towards risk, IMO.
Along those same lines, Ricdic (or perhaps Ricedick) just stole 200 billion from EBANK after causing them to lose another 275 billion in an unsecured loan that was never repaid. He then engaged in real money trading and had all of his accounts banned. it was only through the herculean efforts of the EBANKers that the minor run on the bank didn’t absolutely destroy it, but they’re apparently recovering. Until, of course, the next guy decides that he wants a titan and a spare, or what have you.
(I’ve got an article on it and an interview with EBANK’s chairman of the board, Hexxx, that should be published soon.)
Oh, and for those interested in getting involved in the financial side of EVE, I’d suggest thisseriesoffivearticles.
And definitely download/try out EMMA. It’s going to a free-to-use version at some point in the next few days (at least, it’s supposed to) It makes keeping things straight much easier without the requirement of an excel spreadsheet.
I pretty much agree. Anything in EVE predicated on “You give me money, no game-mechanics strings attached, I give you stuff” has enormous potential to, sooner or later, become a scam.
I would say, though, that from what I’ve seen of the EBANK folks I’ve spoken to, they are largely really dedicated to the bank. Ricedick always struck me as a bit off, especially when he got all upset that I’d pointed out the controversy surrounding him.
Meanwhile, I’m waiting for my buy orders to be (mostly) filled and I’m going to pack up and head to a 0.0 region in a Buzzard and begin some real market manipulation once I’m used to how it works in a major region hub. I’d stills ay that, barring any CDIC (Concord Deposit Insurance Corporation) type protection for banks, that individual market trading is a far safer and more profitable way to earn massive amounts of ISK. In the last I earned about 75 mil ISk between the tiem I made my other posts and now… without logging in once. I love trading
I have loaned iskies to corp members, and allied corp buddies, generally under 50 mil or so, and usually to get skill books, ships or mods. So far I have always been paid back.
Drago Musevni, long time Razor member, high up in the organization, known to most of us recently cleaned out CEI (razor’s founding corp) hangars of about 50 corp dreads, 100 large towers and mods, a bunch of dyspro, etc…
Knowing someone is, unfortunately, no guarantee that they won’t rob you blind.
I would add, however, that mswas’ original point is a very good one. Banks in EVE are a shitty place to invest cash, but banks like EBANK do give out loans, and often all you need to start making ISK rather rapidly is enough capital to place buy orders in a region.
I was a billionaire for a brief period of time before investing in a wormhole expedition in a failed alliance, and a couple of hi-sec ganks. I’m rebuilding that fortune.
Once you get to 1b you can just maintain your market orders and make a few hundred million a day in revenue with about half an hour of maintenance a day. Basically I got up to a billion but I didn’t secure my investment. I need to get up to 1b and market aggressively to 2b. Once you hit the 2b mark then you can start spending money, as long as you have the guaranteed 1b in market orders so that you can eat a 500m loss.
If I started with 1b on the first of the month and did nothing but trade I bet I could get it up to 10b or more by the end of the month. I just don’t have that kind of stamina. When my wallet fills I generally want to buy an expensive ship and faction fit it.
1b is the magic point because it allows for proper diversification. Some high-volume returns on standard items like ammo and mods that everyone uses, and some lower volume but high priced returns. Like say Cruise Missiles/Cap Mods vs T2 Cruisers. It’s really all about transaction velocity. The trick I’ve found to really making money is to have a ton of market orders up and reset them periodically while mining or missioning. This helps you bring in income that you can invest further in the market while your money is also working for you. I took over my buddy’s industrial toon and he’s pretty much where I want him to be skill wise now that when I get back up to 1b again I’ll have my own production going as well as be buying from the market. Right now my main revenue is just going into my T1 production business because that’s the tried and true mainstay for sub-billion trading.
I’m about to go out of town otherwise I would look into a loan. Though I am kind of done with loans. It is always annoying when I invest for a friend and have to worry about paying them back. I owe one friend of mine who took the bath with me when I got ganked for over 600m in goods that I would’ve turned into like 750m.
How? I’ve been trading in a very active market hub and constantly flipping trades with margins anywhere from 20 to 100%, and I’m barely clearing 100 mil on a good day.
Again, how? I’ve got regional market orders in on dozens of high volume orders on which I routinely make anwhere from a few hundred K to a mil or two per item trades, and I’m hovering around 10% growth per week. You’re talking, what… 80% growth per week? That’s explosive.
Tell ya what, when you get back from your vactaion if you want to put these sorts of ideas into print I’ll pay you 20 mil ISk per page, 100 mil ISK cap per 5 page article and publish them in the Tribune. Deal?
I’ve never cornered a commodity. I had a plan to corner one in a serious way but it would require a lot of people who want to take part in the venture and who are willing to risk billions with a possible return of billions. They’d have to be in it for the lulz for it to be truly worthwhile though.
In all fairness I was probably talking about my ass a little. Not totally but a little. The thing is I don’t keep an accurate accounting, I just set floors and ceilings and try not to violate them if I can. That way I can watch revenue and know I am making at least my floor in profit.
Well 100m isk would represent a loss of my main markets if I advertised it to everyone and told them exactly how I do it.
So I wrote a long post about this and my daughter hit the power button right as I was about to hit send so maybe I can make it more concise this time.
Ok so say I diversify between several markets and several items. We have the items separated into various different types, all the markets are L4 combat mission hubs in a single region.
Item 1: T1 ammo cost 120 sale 150 @ 300k units per day = 9,000,000 profit
Item 2: T1 ammo cost 60 sale 80 @ 150k upd = 3m profit
Item 3: T2 mod cost 750k sale 850k @ 150 upd = 15m profit
Item 4: Assault Frigate cost 20m sale 22m @ 2 upd = 2m profit
Item 5: Meta 3 mod cost 250k sale 500k @ 5 upd = 1.25m
Item 6: HAC cost 110m sale 130 sale 0.5 upd = 10 m
Item 7: T2 mod cost 800k sale 900k @ 50 upd = 5m
Item 8: Meta 3 mod cost 500k sale 1.2m @ 5 upd = 3.5m
Item 9: Faction mod cost 10m sale 13m @ 3 upd = 9m
Item10: T1 drone cost 20k sale 23k @ 500 upd = 1.5m
And so on. I might have any one of these items strung out amongst 5 different markets. I might also have T2 drones in there, or several types of T1 ammo, or T2 ammo, or Faction ammo, or any number of other products, but I’ll stick with it at 10 items and aggregate the sales from the various markets into one number.
So the total there is about 51m in profit for a single day. Those kinds of volumes CAN be done if you just prune them a couple times a day, or you can grind it and double those volumes. But say I am sufficiently diversified, I have all 57 of my market orders filled ten of them are buy orders but 47 of them are sell orders, I can clock about 300m in revenue in 24 hours. Since I try to keep my profit at 10% I can generally assume that out of 300m in revenue 30m of that or so is profit. When I am in market mode I just resink that into buying more stuff so that I can grow the principal.
There are mitigating factors of course like sudden drops in the price of a certain mod because a lot of people get the same idea at once, this can result in a loss, sometimes a big one if I overinvested in that item. There are also things that don’t move very quickly that can reduce the overall earnings potential.
But the key really is transaction volume. It’s not about the margin, it’s about the units per day. 300 units at 10% is worth the same as 30 at 100%.
But if you are making 100m in profit per day you’re doing just fine, that would be adequate for me, that’d be where I just sit back and let things flow.
Another good thing to do is when part of your sales market drops the price significantly it might be worth it to buy up a bunch of the T2 mods you would normally pay 750k for at 780k so that you can remove the cheap product on the market. The volume on common mods is barely affected by the price. Missioners are willing to spend 10-25% more for instant gratification rather than go two or three jumps. So a Damage Control II is not going to sell any faster at 750k than it would at 1m so don’t drop prices thinking you’ll sell out unless your intent is to hit the wholesale market and sell to people like me who will buy hundreds of units at a time.
So if you look at the list above and consider that it’s 51m, and I could conceivably have twice that amount, and could be selling some things for a higher profit margin than those that I listed, or selling a greater volume because I am paying more attention, you can see how I could breach 100m per day with a 1b investment. If you pro-rate it to a weekly rate though it goes down because I might be busy for three days and not do much. But even so I’ve had times where I filled up my market and still had at least 100m in revenue a day while stuck in a wormhole while my stock sold out. If you’re operating with more than 1b you obviously want to stock up some slower selling items too because it’s just too much to have to pay attention to every single item. I only reset my hot items every time I login.
But I have about doubled what I have in the past two weeks since the gank and that’s not giving it my full attention by any means. I’m back up to about 700m in product/isk/mins from like 300m or so. So keep in mind, my analyses are very rough estimates, but I was buying like T2 cruisers and Covert Ops frigates and fitting them without touching my principal when I was doing well with it.
Eve - a Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Game (MMORPG). It is set in space
ISK - the money used in Eve (analgous to platinum pieces in World of Warcraft)
Here is the wiipedia entry: Eve Online - Wikipedia
Strange, works just fine for me. Maybe you should try again.
-The most awesome MMO ever developed, tactically, strategically dense, player created content in a persistent world with one single server for the entire planet, the most awesome PvP out of any MMO, severe penalties that make dying in the game a series situation, etc…
-The currency of Iceland and the fictional currency of EVE-Online, the Inter Stellar Kroner. We’re talking about the fictional one.
-Jita is the market hub to end all market hubs in EVE. You can make a fortune trading there but if you even try it’s an insane amount of work as there are hordes or ravenous traders fucking with things.
-No, no real money is used in the game’s banking system.
You might want to check out EMMA. And I see the difference now, I thought you were referring to profit as revenue. EMMA helps clear all that up, by the way, makes clear exacly how much margin you’ve made gross, and net, on every item you’re trading.
Yep, I buy out competitors when they significantly undercut me and then just relist their products. Generally flip those trades pretty quick. Although I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be moving into a region with more L4 missions. I’m in one that has some, I think… but I’m not really sure.
Anyways, if you were talking about roughly the same profit I’m making a day then it makes sense… I don’t trade in ammo though as I’ve been doing regional buy orders. Maybe I need to look into finding out where the L4 hubs are.
I generally build my own ammo. It maximizes my profit margin. 750k cruise missiles every three days. I need to branch out and get into more forms of T1 ammo.
T1 ammo and T2 mods are my bread and butter. Everything else is gravy.
But yeah, I was talking revenue when I said revenue.
