Then I decided I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I missed my "spare" trader on Jita and wanted him back so I started training yet another new character to add to my growing army of trade alts.
I made a new character on the main's account and sent him 600 million, enough to buy a PLEX, a bunch of skill-books, a clone, a couple implants, and still have some left over.
I used the PLEX to activate dual training and started training.
First I trained Cybernetics I so I could install implants and train everything else faster.
While waiting for Cybernetics to train, I bought +3 Charisma and Memory implants plus the basic skillbooks I needed for the first week or so. Social (pre-req for Contracting), Trade, Retail, Contracting, Broker Relations, Marketing and Accounting.
I also bought a Clone Grade Theta (7,750,000 SP) and the books for a bunch of spaceship command, engineering, navigation and mechanic skills I find extremely useful for brand new traders (non combat pilots that is).
Once Cybernetics finished training I installed the implants, remapped to Charisma 30, Memory 24, queued up Social I and Trade I-IV.
Nearly 5 days later here's what his training queue looks like:
Besides trade skills I learned key skills that reduce flight time by improving flight performance or allow me to fit modules that do the same. Early on that mostly means improving capacitor performance so I can make most trips between stations and gates in a single warp.
The 2 most important skills for warp/cap performance are Warp Drive Operation (10% less cap per level to initiate warp) and Astronautics Rigging which allows me to fit Warp Core Optimizer and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer rigs. Warp Core Optimizers reduce cap to initiate warp by 40% (like having Warp Drive Operation IV) and Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers increase warp speed by 20%.
A single Warp Core Optimizer is absolutely terrific for very low skills alts but later when the alt has 3s and 4s in all the applicable cap performance enhancing Navigation and Engineering skills you don't really need it anymore. At that point I usually go with 3x Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizers which brings the Vigils all my new traders fly up to 10.4 AU warp speed (nearly 70% faster warp speed).
The plan from here on is to get (in order) Accounting IV, Margin Trading V, Retail V, Wholesale IV, Accounting V, Marketing IV, Wholesale V, Tycoon IV, Daytrading IV, Tycoon V, Trade V, Daytrading V and Marketing V.
Right now he's just training and not actually doing any buying or selling yet. When he does start buying (probably not until he has at least Margin Trading V and Wholesale IV) he'll train his navigation and support skills up a little higher and get the rest of the basic navigation skills (everything except jump skills) too. I'll install intelligence, perception and willpower implants then too.
At some point I'll get Procurement I-IV and Visibility I-IV too. Though I don't really use them now I'll eventually train both to IV just in case I decide to use a remote buying strategy later and need them.
How long do you tend o spend on a weekday with your ISK making characters?
ReplyDeleteUsually it's anywhere from 1-2 hours a day. I don't do it every day. I rarely log on all characters on the same day and when I do most of them are just for a quick skill update or to check a few key items.
DeleteI haven't checked/updated all orders on all characters in one day in a long time. Probably over a year.
A lot of them generate nearly passive income now. I'll leave them sit for a week or two without doing much at all.
Hi MoxNix!
DeleteI would be interesten in how many orders you update during one of these sessions?
I am asking because, i would like to know the isk profit/order update average of yours. This might be a good value to rate the efficiency of the items you are trading.
My ratio is about 2 mil per update. (with around 60 updates a day, 120 mil profit and 120 open orders). Would be interesting to figure out if this value scales mostly on the number of orders or the number of updates.
Cheers,
Piter
How many orders I update during a session varies an awful lot. Trying to do them all every day would be a full-time job all by itself.
DeleteA lot of the time I just post sell orders on a few key characters for whatever was bought last night and repost/update sell orders for those items only. Or I might spend a half hour or so just updating 20 or so orders on the highest volume and most expensive items on all of my characters.
It's pretty rare now that I actually update all orders on any character though I usually do that at least once a week on the most important characters. I update sell orders more frequently than buy orders. I do tend to update all SELL orders on 2-3 characters (Jita buyers) most days and on 5 others (major hubs) every 2-3 days.
Also I work from home, so I'll often leave a character (usually one on a station where an obsessive camper is messing things up at the time) logged in AFK all day and check key orders in 1-5 minute sessions periodically throughout the day.
As for ratios I don't track that kind of thing, so I really have no idea. In fact I really don't track anything other than the general trends of where my money is in JeveAssets graphs.
That ratio of your's would scale very poorly for campers and much better for once a day updates. Obviously it must scale mostly with number of updates.
DeleteOverall profits (how much you make per day) on the other hand IMO scale with both the frequency of updates and the number of orders. Which has the bigger effect really depends on your exact strategy, your prices, profit margins, etc.
High prices and big margins (the no-lifer and bot strategy) work best with a high update frequency while slim profit margins work well with infrequent updates and scale well with more orders (my strategy).