Market Discussions

Guide to Skillbook Trading for absolute Beginners

This guide is intended for new players who want to start a career as trader in Eve. Experienced traders won´t find many new informations, but are welcome to add their experience to this guide.
I am in this game for only a few months now, but made my first few hundred ISK with the trading of skill books. Many trader guides state, that skillbook trading is great for beginners, and although thats true, they do not tell how it is done in detail.


The very Basics

How to Sell

If you want to sell an Item, it has to be in your station hangar, you cannot sell from your cargo hold. Right click in the Item and... stop. Do NOT click "Sell Item" first, but "Show Market Details". Now a new window will open with lots of stations and prices for the Item you want tp sell. Click on "Price" under "Sell Orders" until the lowest prices are sorted to the top. Scroll trough the listed sell orders. If you are in a region with a notable trade hub (a system were most of the trade in this region is done) you will see a lot of sell orders in the same system/station probably with prices very close to each other. Now you know what price is realistic for your item.
Now right click on your item and click on "sell Item". A new window will open with the price of the highest buy order for you the station you are on. NEVER sell to this order if you want to make some money. You now have two choices: You either sell your item on the station you are for a price considerably lower then in the trade hub (in the hope that somebody will fly out and get your item) or you fly to the hub and set the sell order up there, for a price just 0.01 ISK lower then the lowest order. Remember to set the duration of the order (I normally use three months all the time).

How to Buy

Buying something works similar. Check the market as above, but now sort the highest buy order to the top. If you set the buy order at the trade hub, choose a price 0.01 ISK above the highest buy order. If you set it up somewhere else, you can choose a lower price. In the buy window, you have the option of extending the range of you buy order up to "region". That means that players can sell to this order in the whole region the buy order was set up in. This can be useful sometimes, but if you, for example, set up a regional buy order for "Veldspar" use a fixed minimum sell amount like 50.000 units of Veldspar. Else you could have a single unit of Veldspar in each station in the region.

How to get you first money to start trading

Thats the ugly part. You need some money at start to start trading. My hint would be to run some of the tutorial missions. You will get some money and items, enough for your first trades.


Skillbook Trading

Why Skillbooks?

Frankly, the one biggest ISK making factor for traders is lazyness. Every play could save millions of ISK if he would make some extra jumps. Traders or speculative Haulers use this to their advantage. Skillbooks are selled by NPCs for a fixed price. On trade hubs you can get prices up to 500% higher then what you pay at these NPC stations. For an experienced play, these few hundred thousand ISK are peanuts, for a beginner its a chance to make easy money. So you buy these Skillbooks at the NPC station, transport them to the regional trade Hub (Jita (biggest one), Dodixie, Amarr, Hek) and set up a sell order. Then all you have to to is wait and every now and then modify your orders to stay at the lowest price. (Do not make that too often, once or twice a day is enough) In the meantime, you can make more money with missions, mining, PI or something completely different.

What do I need to start?

Some money and a shuttle. Thats it. A few skills in the trade area are also helpful. You will need Trade IV, a few levels of Retail, maybe Accounting, Broker Relations and Daytrading to modify your orders from a different system. Half a week of training should be sufficient, but you can start without. The shuttle is needed because its fast, and the cargo hold is not factor in Skillbook trading, as they take up almost no space.

Which Skillbooks are good to sell?

Well, I won´t tell you that. A trader never talks about his goods :). A little hint: Books you get for free in the tutorial are almost worthless, as each player can get the for free. But do not forget lazyness. Experienced players creating an alt, will buy this books anyway, because they do not want to waste time running tutorials. So: Just browse through the Market Details of the Skillbooks, have an eye on the amount of Skillbooks sold and set prices accordingly. And never forget to not put all your money in a single item.

Fly safe