Science & Industry

So perhaps this would be asking of a trade secret, I'm sincerely hoping its not.

Often when I read what other industrialists type, they say thing such as, "Don't buy minerals off of sell orders, get them on buy orders"

And while that sounds good to a observant outsider, my question is this. I find that in trade hubs, I'm woefully under supplied in minerals on a trade hub. And I don't have a freighter to haul (effectively) from remote areas, nor a idea on how to find such a area that has a abundance of miners.

So am I reading the comments right? Is the best way to make money to buy on buy orders for .2 isk less per unit then I could buy it on a sell order? Or am I missing something.

Again, if this is a question on trade secrets, let me know and I'll let it drop.

edited for grammar.

Putting up a buy order costs you the broker's fee. If the difference of sell vs. buy order is lower than that fee you should go with buying off sell orders.

If you live near a hub, chances are slim that your buy orders will be filled, if they are lower than in the hub. In remote systems you can go much, much lower than hub buy prices.

Better yet, buy the ore and refine yourself.

i tried to give you a realy detailed reply breaking down the numbers etc...but it dissapeared into the internet and was eaten by goblins :(


TL;DR

its not worth worrying about placing buy orders in trade hubs and spending the time babysitting them (eg making sure yours is the best order every 10 mins) until you are dealing with bulk.

In the example i was going to give you, you added about 300,000 isk profit onto a battlecruiser, and so would need to be building 60+ hurricanes to make it pay more per hour of time than say running level 4 missions.

for the expensive minerals like zydrine, nocxium and megacyte i highly reccommend placing buy orders, but for tritanium and pyerite you would actually be better buying it on remote locations for much less than the jita prices if you were going to spend that time hauling regardless.

Once you have your freighter and are dealing with much larger volumes of minerals, buy orders become important, until then, i doubt its really going to make or break your industry.

Regards,

Proff

The further away from major trade hubs the cheaper the sell orders. People are not willing to transfer the minerals to the markets so they just place them on the market at decent prices. I usually buy out all sell orders in my area. The most im willing to travel is 3 jumps to pick it all up.

So far so good, the margins arent bad, but they arent OMGWTFBBQ great either. But its an easy income. So just because player x or y say dont do it, look at the numbers and you can figure out what works best for your situation and roll with it.

Play YOUR game, not anyone elses. Learn by mistakes, in the end the best knowledge is the knowledge by experience.