Science & Industry

Uh... which items are you looking at?

Very key question that makes a world of difference.

Production Efficiency 5 is also pretty important.

Tech 1 production: Make Catalysts with Production Efficiency 5 and a well-researched BPO. Manageable quite quickly. Or make tech 2 components. (A lot of Catalysts are going boom at the moment, something about a New Order, this has pushed the price up on them somewhat).

Tech 2 production: Most t2 modules that are used in PVP are profitable unless there's a named version that is widely preferred to t2. PVE modules much less so as they do not go boom much. Production Efficency 4 and Invention skills to 3 are generally needed. t2 production requires quite a bit of capital to get into (not a prohibitive amount, but 200m ISK is a good starting point for a small number of modules, 1b for a wide variety of modules, and 2-3b for ships)

Remember - minerals you mine yourself are worth as much as you could quickly sell them for. They are never free.

Don't make ship hulls without EXTENSIVE research. Most hulls are built at a loss by people that think 'Hey, making ships sounds cool'.

Like everyone else has said all ready make sure production efficiency V is trained, and use well researched BPO's (ME research with little to no waste).

The best advice I can give you, and this was the realization I had one day that made my successful move into larger scale manufacturing and industry is this. You need to stop thinking like a consumer, and start thinking like a business. Consumers buy manufactured goods at a much higher price then their manufacture price. Manufactured items also have additional costs associated with them that go into a finished good (hauling costs , taxes, import/exports, employee fees, etc). Consumers are willing to pay these additional costs (as well as whatever profit you can make) because they simply do not have the ability to make the item themselves, or just do not want to.

The eve market and industry are both very similar to the real world. So lets use a real world example. A small local coffee shop (your basic manufacturer). This business is able to make a profit by selling goods they manufacture (coffee related drinks, food items) to consumers willing to pay a premium. The business buys materials from suppliers (market traders, other industrialists, etc) at much lower prices then a consumer can get (bulk orders, trade contracts, etc). They buy their materials for lower then consumer prices and sell their items at an inflated price because of the convince and quality. Now look at a company like walmart. The deal with massive volumes allover the world. They get lower prices because of their volumes that are used, and are able to sell at lower prices because of this lower cost of materials, but also because of the volumes of items they can sell and over the larger area (multi regional) they sell products in.


So this is most likely your problem; you are looking at buying materials at consumer prices (market hub sell order price) and selling you're finished product at manufacturers price (market hub buy order prices). Basically you're doing it backwards. You want to buy your materials by setting up market buy orders, and then selling your finished products by setting up market sell orders.


When buying items on the market you will most often get lower prices though setting up buy orders for the mats you need. Buy orders take longer to fill and do not have the instant gratification of buying items from sell orders. You will also more often then not get your materials for much cheaper then market hub prices in other regions (the further way from a hub the better in most cases) , but they are more likely to take much longer to be filled (but you can get materials for 10% - 90% less then their current value some times).

And the same goes with selling your finished manufactured goods. You want to sell your items though sell orders. Selling at trade hubs will be faster and involve alot of competition (other sellers), while selling in other regions may allow you to sell over the current market hub prices, will have less competition (in most cases) but will sell slower.

Buy low, sell high. You'll hear it often from players, but it's a bit misleading. Many (new?) players think of buying and selling in Eve as simply buying stuff at the lowest price (in their region, and from sell orders) or selling their items at the highest price (in their region, and to buy orders). What people should really say is: Buy order low, Sell order high.

So to summarize: Decide on an item to manufacture, and base the price on what you can charge for in a specific region/station. Research what price you can buy the materials at though setting up your own buy orders. Then manufacture the item and sell them in the area you picked though buy orders. You will start to see how manufacture is now profitable, and in many cases surprisingly profitable once you get out of the market hubs.