EVE New Citizens Q&A

I've read here and there and searched for information on trading. I want to try different aspects of Eve. I'm so new I don't understand a lot of what I am reading. Could someone so kindly explain trading to me? I've searched the forums and can only seem to find people looking for loans and I've had people explain it to me. But they use words like contract, dead space..etc I don't quite understand. I just want to try all I can so I know what to do with my skills. I really need to make some isk so I can keep buying necessary skill books. Those seem so expensive! :)

Info on trading is pretty scarce, since most traders keep their techniques to themselves. It's just the old catchphrase of buy low, sell high. Get some stuff for cheap, then sell it for more. I class the process into 2 main areas, although they overlap they work as a general guidelines.

1st, there's merchanting, which means getting in a hauler moving things from somehwere cheap to somewhere expensive and selling it. Don't expect to find something so obvious as buying stuff, hauling it, then selling it on the spot. You can get those occasionally but they are rare and the profits slim. Watch out for suspiciously profitable buy orders as there is a scam that uses this idea to lure you into buying things at inflated prices. A step up from that is buying all the cheap stuff that's too far away for lazy people to go get, and bringing it to your local trade hub. The final step is working the region with buy orders, managing the prices to stay competitive, and selling the goods when you've amassed a fair bit.

2nd there is speculating. Being able to analyze price trends, investing in goods, and then selling when the trend goes up. This is the riskiest form of trading and potentially the highest reward. Station trading does this, by buying popular goods/modules at a low swing, holding onto it for a while, then relisting when the price swings back up. If you like numbers and graphs then this is for you.

Regardless, you need capital to get started. Probably a good 100m isk to see a decent return. I strongly recommend training combat for your first month (or mining if you plan to manufacture things) to build up that starting capital. As a reference, in one month with a decent skill plan you can be running level 3 missions for 3-5m isk every 15 minute mission or so. I also suggest finding a training corp - eve university for example - that will teach you the best skill plans, etc, as you get to know the game and what you want out if it.

Thanks for the info. I think maybe this is nor for me right now. I thought it was a little more simple. prehaps I will stick with missions and mining for now. I sold a few of my items I no longer needed and it was way above regional price value and I was excited and thought that it could be easy to make isk. But sounds like you've got to put a lot of time and invest into it. Or maybe watch the markets and learn as I see people do stuff. I thought this was a common thing everyone on Eve did.


"I'm not a troll! just a noob" lol... I still don't know entirely what troll means. But I do know at the same time.


On another note; how can I upgrade my pod skills so I can put guns on my pod? ... JK, sorry. I had to.

Actually, the most basic form of trade probably would be to set up a buy order for an item, then relisting it again. Stationtrading, no need to even leave station.


Vyvica, that is how I got into trading, by setting up sell orders for my mission-running stuff. That way you will eventually find some items that can be traded for profit as well as learn the intricacies of the market....

Offtopic posts removed.

Did you say something mean? I'm confused.