Market Discussions

I have high trade skills,

In the last week I have managed to make 1 billion with 1.3 billion of capital just station trading, But this involves a lot of 0.01 isking.

The only thing I am limited with is filling my buy orders quickly enough.

Is manufacturing viable still on small scale i.e buying my minerals and manufacturing in high sec solo?

Obviously I have no manufacturing skills at present.

I am probably on a hiding to nothing but thought I would just ask.

I won't say "there's no free meal" because it'd be too easy.

In EvE you build your future, you are meant to do in depth research (usually with the aid of Excel sheets or software) on items looking for those that are profitable to build and sell.
A manufacturer should also have some market "reading" skills, expecially if he produces items that take a lot of minerals or take a good time to make. In fact, markets are ever changing and dynamic creatures. They are lovely when they turn up (on your items) and so you can sell better than you thought, but they also bite you hard and even crash on your face.

So I suggest you gain some insight about:

- Which items are sold where and why. I.e. entry level PvP items close to Factional Warfare hi sec hubs, specific ammo and mods at missioning hubs and so on.

- Trade them for a bit and learn their market behavior. Also, look for items that sell in 500 units or more per day.

- In the meanwhile you research BPOs to make those items. Dont go to fancy huge ME or PE just go enough to get a good Return Of Investment (time investment into research as well).

- Proceed building the stuff. When you get "bigger and more learned" you'll also see the minerals cycles so you can buy minerals when they are low and so you'll make even more profits when you sell the items you made with those low price minerals.

- There's a subsequent step and it involves going "back to the roots". But I'll leave you to discover it by yourself, learning and discovering part of the fun in EvE! Hint: some times basic and simple is better!

this is the part where i point out that i have excellent spreadsheets for just this kind of question.

10 manufacturing slots can make over 200m a day doing the right t1 industry.

In short, very high margins are available. To make the level of ISK you are pulling in a week is slightly harder than trading, with just 10 manufacturing slots, and you will probably still get involved in 0.01 ISKing to sell the products. Some more detailed information for items I no longer manufacture/are outdated:

When I first started manufacturing around a year ago I started off with a few select large rigs; Warhead Flare, Rigor and Calefaction. Estimated build cost of each was ~12m ISK, and they take just over an hour each IIRC. Estimated profit was ~10m ISK each. Flare and Rigor sold about 20 units a day while Calefaction was lower at 10 in my hub. Aiming to supply 50% of the market (logging in twice a day) meant I could sell 10 units each for Flare and Rigor and 5 units for Calefaction. Total cost was 300m and total income was 500m, so 200m per day was achievable if I could cover 50% of the market. Profits on those 3 items are long gone (now around 15%, so 37.5m per day at current prices).

Some select margins in my hub:

Bestower, 70%
MSE I, 90%
DC1, 700% - note; currently massively manipulated
Vespa EC-600, 49%
Large Anti-EM Screen I, 374%

I now do manufacturing more as a hobby than a living due to reduced playtimes, but still manufacture the same core products I have done for the last year, and for a few hours work per week easily pull in enough to PLEX a few accounts and have ISK for expansion.

One issue with manufacturing is it doesn't scale terribly well. It's easy making 10% a week on 10b, but not on 50b. Trading you can just scale up to more expensive items / more items, but in manufacturing you're limited by build times and build slots.

Margin isn't usually used as a meaningful term in industry.

isk/hr is.

There are blueprints out there with really high margins, but which you can't push large quantities of isk through quickly. There are blueprints with low margins, but the numbers are high enough that if your capital can stand it, you'll get a good hourly return on your isk.