EVE General Discussion

First off, allow me to (hopefully) pre-empt a few trolls by saying I'm not about to ask you for your dearly bought trade secrets. Honestly, half the fun of this game for me is figuring that stuff out for myself.
That said, my question:
I need in-game income, and I also need to deal with work/life - a common problem, I know. As a result, I'm on a hunt for sources of isk that aren't measured by a straightforward isk/hr standard; I'm having a harder and harder time avoiding spending my whole weekend trying to make money instead of actually having fun. I'd like to know if there are any low-grind endeavors other than what I've tried that can achieve meaningful income through the efforts of 1 player (and hopefully avoid dropping months of training time on a dead end). Yes, I've been reading up, but checking out gobs of guides and articles with no context is only so useful, so any help, even if vague, would be greatly appreciated.

Thus far, I've had success with:
small time station trading, though I'm still learning the ropes/developing my pool of capitol
PI, though at about 250 mil/month profit I've pretty much topped out what my setup can achieve (holy tariffs Batman)
datacore farming...though this is a small bonus at best, datacores being how they are

stuff I'm looking into, and hoping at least to learn whether I'm wasting my time or not:
manufacturing (t1 is supposed to be madly competitive, also not worth it unless you're hardcore enough to spend all day managing jobs? I've also heard that ships tend to have next to no profit margin)
invention (60+ effing days to skill into inventing/producing AMMO? Plus, possibly same issues as t1 manufacturing? And buying BPCs would murder the profit margin)
research (t1 BPCs are supposed to be unimpressive and BPOs are reportedly a saturated market?)

Again, not asking for trade secrets; just like to know, can they be made to work with 1 person's resources, are they dominated by a few mega-interests that would crush me, are they a waste of time for relative small-timer, etc.

Just in case you haven't seen it, allow me to point you towards the Making ISK guide.

If you were a 0.0 player I'd say get into trade hub importing: Lots of money in it. But you aren't.

plex would be nice, plex + stuff would be awesome, just stuff would be acceptable

Erm.

Join a corporation/alliance with a meaningful and effective SRP and effectively get paid to PvP.

That's all I can really think of..

You said "reportedly ". Always double check. That's as much of a hint as you'll get from me.

Well mining is definitely a part of any SRP...

T1 can, in fact, be quite profitable without too much effort - at least, in game effort. The margins aren't great, but you can make it up in volume. The catch is that if you don't have a good chunk of capital to start with, it's a bit rough to break into. You spend far less time managing lines than you do with invention because you can just plug in BPOs for long runs. If you want to build multiple lines of one item from copies, you will spend more time managing lines (personally, I've always avoided this for the sake of diversifying my output).

Invention is a bit of a training haul, as you noticed, but it's a pretty solid long term investment . It *is* pretty heavy on line management if you want to maximize your income.

Personally, though? Right now? I would fit a rifter and join the minmatar militia and capitalize on that **** while you still can. It's probably the best thing in the game right now in terms of income for effort (at least for what you have available to you).

And hey, there's always scamming. :D

I PVE grind a lot (I find it fun, go figure); my corp mates PI, mine, invent, & build; other friends PVP and actually make a profit. But of all that I do and all that I've seen, station/interstation/interregional trading is the thing that makes the most isk. It, however, is directly proportional to the time you put into it. Another however is that most folks find it excruciatingly boring.
So my trade secret: buy low sell high.
But a previous poster said it best. Work one more hour RL and buy a plex. You can fund a lot of frigates with that.

Thanks for all the constructive replies! Even some of the snarkers gave me one or two things to go on, so much obliged everyone.