Market Discussions

If you're short on market slots, and the orders have been up for some time, absolutely cancel them and send them back to Jita. Your shipper will be happy to have a return trip.



Absolutely.



It's trial and error.

Personally, I am more likely to bring in an unrepresented item than an overpriced unpopular item. The reason being that when I'm developing a station, I'm trying to expand selection for my customers. I sometimes also want to bring down prices, but on a more selective range of items.

Other traders are generously donating their market slots to your station. You generally want to maximize this donation by leaving those items alone to add variety for your customers. Usually when I undercut another trader in a seeding station it's because I want to lower the overall price point for the customer. In such cases I will often enter the market, slash prices incrementally forcing other traders to pricematch me, get the price to where I want it to be, and then leave the market entirely, freeing up my market slot. Now the other traders are selling an item for 5-10% above Jita instead of 30-50% markup, happy customers are flocking to the station to purchase these cheap items - and my overpriced accessories.



The thing with contracts is that customers will not think to check contracts on their own. So you must advertise for your fitted ships in the beginning, until you have a regular customer base and word-of-mouth working for you.

The one exception to this is if someone is already has a fitted ship service in your station. In that case customers are already trained to look in the contracts section. You are then free to go in and undercut the existing service, or expand on their service by offering different ships (preferred).

Fitted ships seem at first like a grand idea because they do not use a market slot, the most important factor for a marketmaker and seeder. However, for the work that you're going to put into developing a good fit with universal appeal, fitting up the ships themselves and deciding on a price point - this is only worth it if you're a natural EFT/pyfa monkey and otherwise interested in fostering a community in your minihub. Any profit that arises will be quite negligible compared to other things you could have been doing with your time.

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This is my process for setting up a market: first I go in and do some market research. I check out the volume and pricing for about 20-40 absolutely essential items, things that every station requires, stuff like nanite paste and Damage Control II. Check out the margins and volume on those items. Usually I want to see low margins and high volume.

• If you see high margins and low volume, that's bad. It means volumes on side accessories are going to be nonexistent. You're going to have to slash prices everywhere to get people to come to this market.
• If you see low margins and low volume, that's super bad and it's not a good market to enter. Other traders have already used your main bargaining chip - price slashing - and failed to bring anyone in. Likely this region is devoid of traffic or there's a nearby hub that's eating up potential customers.
• If you see high margins and high volume, well that's weird, but get in there and make bank before other traders find out about your hidden paradise!

Once I've done my check on those essential items, I then branch out into popular items, a list of 100-200 items that I'm likely to stock. Using the market's price history info, I enter into my spreadsheet the volume of items I expect to sell in a given batch (typically I take the average of one week's sales volume, but you could go shorter or longer dep on how often you intend to restock your inventory), the price point, and the Jita buy price (or whichever hub you are buying from). From there I calculate the profit-per-batch (or profit-per-market-slot) on each item. And then I bring in those most profitable items per batch.

Now if you have more market slots than you have money, you may prefer to bring in the items with the highest markups, and branch out to even more items with high markups.

Once I have those popular items, I look to specialize in a less popular items, and cover that entire market. So let's say I decide I want to cover warp disruption modules, I'll go through warp scram II, the meta 4 and meta 3, disruptor II and the meta 4/3 versions, and I'll bring in all of those (if they are not already provided by other traders). Or if I want to do prop mods, I'll check to make sure 1mn/10mn/100mn AB are covered in the tech II, meta 4 and meta 3 varieties, as well as microwarpdrives.

In general I try to avoid stocking ships and leave that to other traders, just because they are very expensive to get shipped in, but I will do it if no one else has, treating it basically as a loss-leader. Some items like Station Containers cannot reasonably be shipped in because of their size, but you can manufacture them locally using ingredients that take up much smaller volume (which you can buy from another trader if it's stocked, or ship in).


No more characters left, hope that helps!

Really amazing answer

I am currently short on ISK vs orders, so I guess it will be better to aim for more profit!

As for ships, building them locally (and importing minerals, or buying them locally) might be what I go for. I don't plan to make a lot since there isint much volumes on those. I do have a good idea of what people around fly (and loose) so I plan on only selling those and maybe filling T1 frigs to cruisers holes.

Would advertising contracts through secure container in space be a good idea? I feel like it might give the idea away to the locals (local spikes in the 80-85 peeps, so I am sure at least a few of them does the same as I do) A lot of lost in the area are the same ships, so I guess I will start with those, and than aim for different fits. No one else seems to be running contract in the region, other than a few rigged BS.

One last question: Would setting up buy orders on stuff that can be possibly sold there be in my favor, or people don't bother trying to sell anywhere else than hubs? There is no hub in the region, so no region wide orders from them.

Thanks for your input :D

that's a really good question. i'm doing seeding in highsec for a while now, and i have some products that i'm no longer seeding. however, there is someone else selling them.

it turns out that you really need to have pretty much everything that people need in store if you want to attract them as regular customers.

you don't need to have everything anyone could ever want. But a good hub needs everything that its target audience needs.

i seed some systems based on the needs of miners. i have everything from ventures to orcas, with all skillbooks and modules required for standard fits.

selling T1 mining crystals isn't exactly a brilliant business idea. but the same guy will remember the station where he bought the T1 crystals for his first retriever when it's time to switch to an exhumer. and i will make 50m in profit if he decides to do so at the same place. and it's even more fun if he does it with the money i paid him for his ore.

i just checked some of my data. one station yielded an amazing 750.000 in profit from selling a couple dozen Veldspar Mining Crystal I in january. With only that information, everyone with half a brain would stop selling Veldspar Crystals.

But i also sold 12 Exhumers in the same place. For ~480.000.000 ISK profit. and i made a couple hundred million from the ore and minerals sold to the buy orders in the same station.


In other systems where i'm active i'm only plucking the holes in the present market. I found a place where pretty much everything that a subcapital pilot could ever need is available. except for T2 Haulers and T2 Cargo Rigs. Guess what i'm selling there? On average, 1 T2 Hauler per week, with at least 25m profit per sale. People would not be willing to pay that price if the location wasn't convenient for them. And it is convenient because it allows them to buy everything they need.

Some tips:

- find a station that is used as a base by an alliance or major corporation. You can do this by looking at the offices rented, and the people docked at the station.

- consumables are "sticky" and attractive for solo pilots. What I mean by that is if I buy 200k ammo at a station for future roams, chances are I'll return to that station to replenish my ammo and dump any loot. Over time I'll dump even more things there. After awhile it'll become my base.

- stations with factories tend to be used by lazy industrialists who sell their products at the station, quite often near Jita prices. You can either buy them out and relist them at a markup, or plug in the market holes left by the industrialists. Industrialists only produce T1 and T2 goods, so good holes to plug would be things like meta and faction items, isotopes, implants and anything else non-T1 or T2.

- high sec islands are popular for risk-averse miners trying to hide from CODE. You can sell mining-related goods at a nice markup since most miners are too scared to transport their own barges and exhumers through low sec.

- any high-sec station adjacent to low sec is great for selling PVP gear.

- selling ANYTHING in low-sec warrants an additional 20% markup. Many traders are too lazy or scared to trade in low sec. If you're interested in low effort, low volume, high margin trading, low sec may be for you.

- PVPers and low sec dwellers tend to spend more than high sec mission runners and miners as they're routinely blown up.

- some regions have a special characteristic about them. Everyshore, for example, has plenty of blue ice fields, so perhaps cater to miners. Black Rise is mainly FW low sec, so try selling frigate and destroyer-sized PVP gear. Aridia is popular with low sec explorers and ratters, so sell exploration and cruiser-sized PVE gear. You get the idea. :)

Just some ideas. The good thing about trading is that you can be very creative.