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Manufacturing vs Selling then Buying
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Rayzilla Zaraki
Yin Jian Enterprises
#1 - 2013-05-26 13:42:54 UTC
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, or my skills aren't high enough yet, but I am finding it is cheaper for me to sell materials and using the ISK to buy items rather than to manufacture them.

For instance, say I can buy 10 items for 100,000,000 ISK. To manufacture those same items I require materials that I can sell on the open market for 120,000,000 ISK. Granted, it could be at a station 25 jumps away, but that's why we have autopilot, right? ;)

Forgive the noobish question, but what am I missing? Is it worth training a character up to maximum research and manufacturing skill?

Thanks!

Gate campers are just Carebears with anger issues.
Elena Thiesant
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2013-05-26 13:48:48 UTC
Not everything can be manufactured for a profit, some can. Some stuff requires maxed out skills and well-researched blueprints, some doesn't.

If it gets you more ISK to sell the minerals, then sell the minerals
Rayzilla Zaraki
Yin Jian Enterprises
#3 - 2013-05-26 13:52:55 UTC
Elena Thiesant wrote:
Not everything can be manufactured for a profit, some can. Some stuff requires maxed out skills and well-researched blueprints, some doesn't.

If it gets you more ISK to sell the minerals, then sell the minerals


Thanks,

That is what I have been doing. It just seemed strange that it made more sense to do that than to manufacture them. After all, someone is buying all those minerals from me for something, right?

Gate campers are just Carebears with anger issues.
Rengerel en Distel
#4 - 2013-05-26 14:06:54 UTC
Rayzilla Zaraki wrote:
Elena Thiesant wrote:
Not everything can be manufactured for a profit, some can. Some stuff requires maxed out skills and well-researched blueprints, some doesn't.

If it gets you more ISK to sell the minerals, then sell the minerals


Thanks,

That is what I have been doing. It just seemed strange that it made more sense to do that than to manufacture them. After all, someone is buying all those minerals from me for something, right?


Well, hopefully for them, they're buying those minerals for something that makes them profit. There are a lot of people in the game that don't care about profit though, they just wanna make stuff.

With the increase in shiptoasting, the Report timer needs to be shortened.
Rayzilla Zaraki
Yin Jian Enterprises
#5 - 2013-05-26 14:13:49 UTC
Rengerel en Distel wrote:


Well, hopefully for them, they're buying those minerals for something that makes them profit. There are a lot of people in the game that don't care about profit though, they just wanna make stuff.


I guess, but they'll eventually run out of ISK as it will be going down a black hole.

My goal is to use manufacturing to supplement my other activities, mainly exploration. I have alts training to max out mining and research and manufacturing to help fund my main activity.

I have looked into a POS, but I am not seeing profit in that unless I more than double resourcing time to manufacture the fuel blocks. That is one item I found made sense to manufacture rather than sell the components and buy the blocks with the proceeds.

I just have to get that ice processing skill trained. :)

Gate campers are just Carebears with anger issues.
Elena Thiesant
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2013-05-26 14:23:00 UTC
Rayzilla Zaraki wrote:
That is what I have been doing. It just seemed strange that it made more sense to do that than to manufacture them. After all, someone is buying all those minerals from me for something, right?


As I said, some stuff can be manufactured for a profit. Some of that stuff requires well researched blueprints and near-maxed skills. Hence that someone who's buying the minerals could well be using them for something that does make them profit, either because they've got better skills, better blueprints or just know an item that doesn't need either.

POS = blueprint research, not manufacturing. You can manufacture there, but it's not the best of ideas unless you're researching and have spare CPU/PG for arrays.
Sir SmashAlot
The League of Extraordinary Opportunists
Intergalactic Conservation Movement
#7 - 2013-05-26 21:13:08 UTC
Rayzilla Zaraki wrote:
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, or my skills aren't high enough yet, but I am finding it is cheaper for me to sell materials and using the ISK to buy items rather than to manufacture them.

For instance, say I can buy 10 items for 100,000,000 ISK. To manufacture those same items I require materials that I can sell on the open market for 120,000,000 ISK. Granted, it could be at a station 25 jumps away, but that's why we have autopilot, right? ;)

Forgive the noobish question, but what am I missing? Is it worth training a character up to maximum research and manufacturing skill?

Thanks!


If you place a value on your time, you will be a step ahead of many players. If a market is easy to get into, it is easy for others as well. Just because some players like working for free, it does not mean that there is no money to be made.

If you have not heard of tiericide, just stay away from the tech 1 ship hull market.
Erloas
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#8 - 2013-05-28 16:06:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Erloas
One other thing to take into consideration when looking at prices is that not everything is sold for the highest buy price in the universe and not everything is bought at the lowest sell price.

In some cases the highest buy price for something might be only over a range of a single system, they pay a premium to get the minerals delivered right to them, but someone else pays a less and covers the whole region and spends some time collecting the goods later.
Is your time worth spending to save an extra 0.5 isk per trit by making a lot of jumps (a *lot* depending on the distance and how much you have to purchase and whether or not you have a freighter or smaller hauler).

Then there are the secondary sources for minerals like the meta 0-3 loot. It has little combat value but are regularly dropped by NPCs. Mission runners probably don't spend a lot of time training their reprocessing skills but they get a lot of these mostly useless modules, so their reprocessing losses make it better for them to sell the item directly rather then reprocessing and selling the minerals (modules are also less bulky then their raw material makeup if you have to move said items to sell them)

So from the manufacturer's standpoint, they aren't getting their trit for 5.1, they are effectively getting it for 4.5, they already have these BPOs highly researched, they have the free manufacturing slots, so they make these items at very low margins along with the more profitable items that they can make just so they keep all of their lines busy and they are still making money even if it isn't a lot.
And of course they also have to look at supply and demand, they don't have to worry about the margins dropping any more on these really low items because they have already bottomed out but the items are still selling in reasonable numbers. But if they focused all of their manufacturing on some of the more valuable items they can make they will flood the market for those items, dropping their margins on them in the process and potentially sitting on very high levels of stock that may take too long to sell.