Market Discussions

Hello, I am looking to start up trading with an alt. I am asking questions to avoid some common mistakes without asking for "Tell me where you trade at and what items make you the most." I am aware of skills such as Retail/Wholesale/Tycoon for slots, Account, Brokers, Margin and the lot.


Station Trading or Regional trading:
What is better for a beginner who will spend quite a bit of time at first actually doing this in their spare time? Some days I will have 1-2 hours at a time to mess around, others I may have 4-5 while some days i wont have any time. What would be the best to suite this commitment timeframe?


Low/Null Sec
If I were to have the capabilities of supplying to a low or null sec area with a jump freighter, what would be the generalized amount of isk one would put into a 50/100/250/500/1000 man alliance/coalition area?

The provided product would need to be something similiar to the doctrines used and lost often, as well as the basic necessities such as fuels and ammos. With this, what would the general profit margin percentage ideally want to be to take on a task like this?

Ideal Profit per week/month
On a day to day basis it is hard to generalize your market profit margins let alone your total "everyday" profit I would guess, however do you run a "target" per week/month? If so do you do it so you don't burn out? Also, if you were to start with, for example 2b isk, would your weekly/monthly target profit be lower than if you were to be using 50b isk?

Loans
I have seen over time threads for Loans. If I were to look into taking a loan, let's say 4 months from now. What would all be included in my preparation for this?

Lotteries
I have seen several corp/alliance run lotteries. I am wondering what is needed to start one? I am not looking to start one as of now. I am just intrigued s to what would go into a lottery for, say a Supercarrier or Titan?


If there is anything else I may not be asking questions for that someone is willing to maybe share additional information. It would be appreciated.


I expect there will be trolls, L2P'ers and the general "Figure it out yourself" responses.

I am more of a homebody with the occassional "We are going to [location] for a couple weeks!" Though, that happens every few months, if that.

As for turnover rate, I would guess it would go with people wanting/needing to fit/refit a ship. I was thinking there could be more reliable sales in contract selling an entire doctrine fitted ship with some additional mods in cargo for change out as directed by FC. I just cant see supplying 50-100 1600mm Steel II's would sell as fast as a fitted ship itself.

I do both station and regional trading for a while now and here are my humble experiences in regards to your questions:

Station Trading or Regional trading
You can do both at the same time. You will needs alts to change your sell orders in the hubs you trade in anyways and if they have free orders just put up buy orders for items that have a good margin and turnover. If you sell out of a smaller hub you can still put up buy orders for stuff the people in the area produce.

Low/Null Sec The amount depends on what these people use and how much time you have to resuply your stock. I usually put around 5bil in sell orders in one place and then wait until a certain lower bound is reached before i restock. how low this is depends on the time i can invest on restocking. If the system is far away from high sec I would even put in more value to make the trip out there worth it. My profit margin for this is at least 20%.

Ideal Profit per week/month
Isk per month scales with your isk invested and available orders. However it doesn't skale linear. So, yes 50 bil will make more isk then 2b bil but not 25 times as much. Furthermore, you need enough orders on your alts to spread these isk on enough items. I personally work with 1000 available orders, which works great for the amount time i have to trade.

Loans
You better start right now and start small. You need to build up a reputation to get bigger loans. Start with a couple of hundred mil and work your way up. However, if you have collateral you can just jump into the loan business. People will give you loans if you have a proper collateral, that can be liquidated quickly if you default your loan. And don't copy paste the loan request from another thread. People don't like that.

Lotteries
Supers are not good for lotteries since you need a dedicated char to fly it. They are called space coffins for a reason. I think it is realy difficult to get into the lottery business since there are so many good sites out there already.

And one final recommendation:
Don't haul your stuff yourself. Instead of wasting time and money and skillpoints on hauling your goods you can better trade and make way more isk than the silly coule of mil you safe on hauling. I usually send packes of 1 bil in goods from one hub to another with a margin of 20%. Hauling from eg Jita to Amarr is never more than 5 mil isk for a hauling contract which is 0.5% of you profit margin. Instaed of hauling the stuff for 20 min I rather send a second pack to another station and make another 200 :-)