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I Sell Drugs

In my hanger there is a container named, "Drugs".

I have seeded my first market with drugs and it is not my fault.  I was only following suggestions.  To my great joy they are selling and I’m rather excited about this.  It hadn't occurred to me to seed the market in Molden Heath, so I have not.  Now I’m in the middle of restructuring my POS to work on this venture.

In general, I am terrible at the Market.  I’ve tried to get into Market trading so that I could roll in ISK. I've read multiple guides.  I've met people.  I have people willing to hold my hand and walk me through it.  I am still, simply, terrible at it.  The adjustments the looking the spending to make things and having ISK as assets and then selling again and the lack of comfort about values and gains and losses and margins and the fact that my head just exploded…

I’m not terrible at making ISK.  I’m not the greatest but I make a few billion a month which covers my needs and tends to leave a bit left over.  I’m more comfortable with bringing things to the market and selling them.  I started with ore and moved onto salvage worked up to exploration goodies and now occasionally I make stuff as well.

When I first started using the market in Eve I didn't think much about it.  I sold whatever I had.  Eventually, I started to understand that things would sell for more in other places.  I didn't notice that it was a player run through for a while.  I’m sure I lost a lot of ISK on buy orders needing to be moved and not understanding when I was selling things for those prices.  I did catch on and started moving my ore the few jumps to the higher prices.  I know I lost ISK selling cheap items for less than their fees.  I’m glad that the red numbers eventually made me wonder why and I realized that I was doing a very, very stupid thing.

My market progression was small.  I started out selling everything I could get my hands on and not use.  I’d look at the mineral reprocessing rates and compare them to the cost of the items and reprocess and sell.  It would take a while and I’d sit in station for hours slowly shifting through my stacks of items.  It got easier when I discovered trade hubs but because I lived in Derelik for a good part of my first month I didn’t discover these magical things called trade hubs for quite a while.

Later, when I was dealing with higher meta items more often than not from the level five mission salvage I would just sell everything over 20,000 ISK and only mineral sort the smaller stuff.  At that point I was still selling directly to buy orders.  I would also sell skillbooks and implants from my excessive pools of loyalty points.  At this point, I was still selling to buy orders and it wasn't until I made my first few billion that I calmed down enough in my desire to have ISK NOW that I started to use sell orders.

Sell orders brought in more ISK but they slowed down my immediate ISK gain.  However, my entire game had started to slow down.  I don’t mean int eh realms of boredom.  My skills were taking longer to train.  I was staying with my ships longer.  My ISK needs were not so immediate and frantic to keep my head above water. I relaxed and began to sell my little modules.  I had no idea how some people had so many of the damn things when I’d only have one or maybe three but I figured they did more missions then I did.  After all, salvaging is how I got my items to sell.

Ahh, how nice it is to have a clue now.  It is small, confused clue but it is mine and I am quite fond of it.

Well versed in sell orders, I was prepared not to dump my shiny items for buy orders once I started to acquire them.  I learned to use my Jita alt to do price checks on items and occasionally I would haul things up to Jita.  I then learned not to do that without a dedicated character to handle the buy and sell orders because the half hour trip was a terrible inconvenience to manipulate my orders constantly.

I decided to try my hand at the market once I had some ISK. I decided to make a dedicated market character with all the right skills and then it would be history. I instantly discovered I had no taste or interest for the market and other, more engaging projects dragged me away constantly.  My money habits also don’t work well with it.  I just can’t bring myself to comfortably buy things with the intent to make profit off of them immediately.  It just goes against the more frugal aspects of my nature.

After my last, failed attempt the other day I've decided to stick with doing what I can do and what I can do productively.  That means I sell what I personally bring to market.  These are my shiny items from DED complexes and the things that I make.

Boosters can be sold on the open market.  Its amusing since they are 'illegal' and you get warnings about carting them around but "Oh, we will fine you at the gates but once you get in station go for it!  We will list them for you, just pay brokers fees!  Inconsistency is our motto after all."  Once the suggestion was planted in my mind by Titus, the next step was to get the boosters across four high sec systems and into their new home.  That was accomplished nicely and then I had to figure out what to do with pricing.  This is my weakest area.  Trying to find a balance, that to me is ‘right’ is very hard.  On one side it is the desire for profit and on the other is the desire to not screw over the people I am selling to since the system is populated by people I care about.

And I know I am not supposed to care, but I do.  My social relationships, even if they are only noticed by me, are more important to me then ISK.  For me, not just giving everything away to the people that I like it an new accomplishment.  Even if Lain was accusing me of having a meth lab  I can say that I sell people their narcotics with an caring attitude.  I settled somewhere between Jita prices and what everyone else in the area was selling for.  After undercutting everyone, I headed home and crossed my fingers that it worked.

And it has.  Some of them have sold.  I started with somewhat low volume.  If things continue to sell at a steady rate I will add more to the market.  Right now I'm just excited that it worked at all.  Its like magic even thou its not.  'Detta says he is going to teach me capitalism properly and break me of my bad pricing habits.

Comments

  1. Good luck in the drug biz. :) Are you just trading these days, or looking into manufacturing as well? Let me know if you need any help, happy to answer any questions.

    Discipline is everything in the drug market - if you record your expenses and watch your margins, there is a fair amount to be made (albeit my profit comes from the manufacture) but its just as easy to lose money in the process (especially through POS fuel costs).

    The volatility of the market is the double edge sword - it swings enough that you can make money in the process, but you have to have some patience and sell only when profitable. A very large volume inventory helps, but is hard to build when you're first starting out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I manufacture and have been for about six months. For the most part I was mostly just selling to my boys and the alliance and the occasional friend or group that wanted something.

      The market seeding is new. When the people who asked me to seed no longer need it, I will probably stop and maybe try something else to sell them.

      I do not want to participate in market hub isk wars.

      Delete

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