Market Discussions

I've been involved in cross-regional trading between various niches for a while now. I've enjoyed it, but I want to do more in Eve involving services and trade. I've seen a number of persons involved in third-party service offerings and am curious as to how one breaks into that industry.

How do you start out? How do you get your first customer? I'd love to be involved in this, but I simply am unsure how to proceed.

The way I got in to public 3rd party services was more or less an accident.

A long time ago I started a free service giving T2 bpo evaluations. As business picked up and more and more clients seemed happy with my work, I started getting asked to sell their bpos. That kept going for a while and I started to dabble in lotteries by starting my own. Over time I was approached to secure other peoples lotteries, which I eventually did as I kept getting asked. Once in a while people would ask for a supercap transfers, alliances, shares, etc. As requests started coming in more and more often I decided, to start a thread, since I was already basically running a 3rd party service.

That's how I sort of fell in.

OP,

by virtue of this very thread, you have assured us of your trustworthiness :P

mission... accomplished?

Sarcasm lock successful.

Grendell spoke the truth above. Asking for trust is not how to get it. Demonstrating that you are trustworthy is. He did that by providing a service for a long time. Chribba earned it by providing many services for a longer time. If you really want to do this, then do it the hard way, otherwise, if you want to scam, write an IPO/loan post like everybody else (I'm looking at you Kei and Brock! #stillButthurt)

TL;DR
“Be good at something. It makes you valuable. Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.”
― Randy Pausch

Play for lots of time . (doubt many will trust a new or relative new character)
Clean character , who wasnt involved in strange activities / scam etc
Youre widely known by comunnity be it in trade / pvp / making different stuff for the game (evemon/mentat/b-clinic)
Good skills in writing reading should be also helpfull .
A normal name i suppose ... there was once a guy called Badboy afaik ? he got trusted with hundreds of billions if memory serves me well .



And so on , the list could go on , but i think its not something you achieve , its just something that happens .

The key is to earn the trust, something if you want to be successful you will invest a lot of time into proving pilots can count on you. I get questions like this many times and tbh there's no shortcuts, it will take time and dedication.

Like Grendell said, I landed in this line of work more of less by accident too, I was asked by friends to help them, then their friends asked me and so it went on, but it took over a year before I went from friends to "public", and by that time I had already provided other services for a few years so my name was not completely unknown.

My suggestion, like it is to others is to start small, try help friends, try help locals, be it doing courier missions for them or helping finding items. You can try by running small lotteries and over time increase values. Don't expect to get billion ISK values the first week, expect it to take years by showing that pilots can count on you.

The key is to build a reputation where the reputation itself is worth more than any deals you take on, that will make both yourself and your customers safe. And remember always be polite, a happy customer has happy friends.

/c

Same sentiment here. I was asked to provide third party services related to the Stock Exchange. As you can tell, my services are very specific to stock trading. I either hold collateral for bonds launched in the stock exchange, or hold in-game shares to provide a real-time exchange.

To be more specific and answer your questions, I started a very small corporation (Block Ships and Ammunitions Corporation – BSAC) over six years ago. It was worth 448 million ISK. After several IPOs and Bonds, three years later the corporation grew to 400 Billion ISK. In September 2009, I launched the BSAC Stock Exchange with the goal of providing a real-time stock exchange. In order for the real-time exchange to work, I needed to act as a third party and hold in trust the in-game shares. After roughly six months, my first customer wanted me to hold collateral so he could launch a tradable bond in the exchange.

Today, I provide a service that no one else provides; a real-time stock exchange. Launching a bond in the Exchange is very easy, so don’t hesitate to contact me if you are interested.

Just to add on to what's already been said.

Don't try and convince people you are trustworthy. I know that sounds like the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. But the truth is, people have to start trusting you on their own, and you can't force that. I've seen more start up 3rd party services fail than I can count. They all failed for the same reason, they did not earn their public trust. They tried to skip to the last step instead.

Most of the 3rd parties today started off by doing something for the community and or friends free of charge. The reason I'm sure most charge now is for the same reason I charge for the service now. That simple reason is, these 3rd party trades take up our game time. Some days it can be a few minutes, but other days that means a few hours of our time.

So what I'm trying to say is, don't rush it. Get into a line of public work, preferably a niche need. When people start approaching you for transaction security, don't throw up a thread. Wait until you have a consistent flow of clients.

Don't forget to be polite and politically neutral. Very small but crucial details. I can go on for hours reflecting about how I ended up where I did. But I'm sure you get the idea by now, it can take years. So don't rush it, or you will end up like one of the many failed attempts.

Grendell ♥

The BSAC Stock Exchange is OPEN for bussiness and I have no plans of shuting it down.


I'm buying back all BSAC stocks.

You also shouldnt forget that every business is based on supply&demand. Nowadays we have at least 5 very trusted third party services spread over all time zones and one of those does it already for free...ask yourself why anyone should choose you over one of the other services...




not artificial at all, lol