Market Discussions

Here is a couple of points (no particular order)


know your customers. talk to them. ask them what they want and need need, but can't find.

it makes no sense to sell warp scramblers to miners.

offer a one-stop-shop for a particular need. If you want to sell a mackinaw, make sure you also sell everything needed to fit it.

if you are selling stuff to miners, make sure you are also buying their ore, if you are selling ammo to mission runners, buy their loot.

it's easier to seed the stuff someone else forgot to seed in an already existing market than it is to create a new one.

jumps just indicate people travelling. you don't want travelers, you want residents.

How to identify if system is inhabited by miners:
1) Lots of belts in the system.
2) Orcas on undocks or in belts.
3) POSes with compression/refining/AAs
4) Decent industrial index.
5) Small history of catalyst-related violence. (not true for most ice systems though)
tl;dr: Sell crystals, buy ore/compressed ore or ice.

How to identify if system is inhabited by PvE grinders:
1) Number of L4 agents or L4 agents of a corp whose LP has above overage exchange rate, like Amarr Navy and their ammo
2) Tonns of NPC kills.
3) Arc Agents/COSMOS
4) Proximity to storyline agents
5) Large volumes of salvage.
Other note: Take a look whats the likely NPC that an average person will grind? If I am fighting Guristas, I wont buy EM ammo, but I will buy Kinetic.
tl;dr: Sell ammo/drones, buy salvage and meta modules.

Also I assume that people are intelligent and wont lose their ships, which is never the case. Therefore its a good idea to sell barges to miners and BS hulls to mission runners with fittings of course.

I also seed a station, currently have 5 billion invested in one. It's a nullsec station with a largeish amount of residents (for null), and I just use courier contracts to move items out. I've learned a few tips...

1. Demand is better at creating supply than supply is at creating demand. What I suspect you did, like I did on my first try, is to create your own market, in order to avoid competition. At least for me, this doesn't work. People will not come and live there solely because there's a market there. It's much more effective to go where there's already demand but a shortage of supply than to create the supply and expect demand to form around it.

2. As other's have stated above, you have to have everything required to fit a whole ship, otherwise there's no point to the market and people won't really use it. However, you alone don't have to have everything, competitors can help out, which brings me to my third tip...

3. Competitors are good! (to an extent). Competitors are not deal breakers when choosing a system. It's very hard for a single person to stock every single thing every single person will need. You'll run out, or forget some items, etc. Competitors might come in and fill your holes, helping to complete being able to buy whole ships. They can get annoying though, especially if they start stepping on particularly profitable "territory", and they get even worse if they're from the same group you're selling to. If they are, sometimes they'll start selling items at ridiculously low markup like 20%, for the benefit of their group, which is very bad for your wallet.

4. Markup expensive items less, but cheap items more. For instance, if I bring in a T3D I usually sell for 90mil, because the customers will notice (important word there) the markup if I set it any higher. However, if I bring in something like a small processor overclocking unit I (18,000 isk), I'd probably sell it for one or two million, because nobody really cares or notices small expenses like that.

I hope these help you a bit, but I must admit I don't know as much about seeding highsec stations (only tried low and null). I think it'd be better though to invest in a single station rather than spread out, because of the idea of being able to fit a whole ship.

@Mad Vemane
Actually, to be honest, that thread alone is what made me want to do some seeding, really in-depth.

@Bobb
Your first point, well that's a good one, didn't think to look at it like that. Apparently I just thought by 'selling things' people would eventually buy them, didn't think it through.

As per point 2, I just re-activated my alt ( She's almost Wholesale V ) for the market slots, I'll take her around and try to find the best place to park her. Definitely going to go the 'whole ship' route, but need to do some recon first and figure out what people in the area usually get blown up, off to the killboards I guess.

Btw - really great info here guys, thanks a million ( no pun intended )

Update on current progress:

I gotta say, the 'provide a fitted ship' approach was a great idea. Did some research on Killboards and found a few frigs that were being killed a lot in a region, put them up on market with about a 18% margin and sold a few. Nothing spectacular, but still, pretty good.

I chose a system based solely on NPC kills, which seemed to be a good idea at the time, but again, stuff is just sitting in station, not selling. So, I'm going to try another approach, and scout out some systems which have a lot of in-space pilots and do a little more in-depth research.

So far, I'm still looking for that gem in the dirt I guess you can say. I'm going to do what I didn't want to do and look around these popular regions like Sinq and Forge. My ultimate goal with all of this is to have a 'steady' form of income in some fashion.

So far, it seems ammo would be the way to do that, I'm selling 5-6k ammo a day, per station ( currently 2 ) but the overall isk profit on those, despite 32% margins, is low.

Anyhow, that's where I'm at now, and will be looking more after work today

@Bobb - I think this boils down to my station selection; where I'm at right now ( the new station ) and the items I decided to sell ( based on region volume ) has limited my margins.

The reason why is I went for items that sell more than 20-100+ daily volume, and apparently people in the nearby system ( < 2 jumps ) had the same idea, so I was forced to set my base profit margin at %30 and go from there.

However, either my station, or item selection is still whacked, because I'm only making about a mil a day.

Neither really, both stations I seed have been outside of major trade regions. Honestly, I didnt think to look into specific people who are buying off of me, great idea!

Yep this has saved me once.

It's a good idea even if you don't actually want to buy the item in question - your order need only be at the top for five minutes.

1. Stop trying to make profit on T1 frigates. Lots of players build ships out of miserals they AFK mined themsleves so they consider those minerals "free" and sell frigates under the price.
2. Try faction warfare zone. Stuff keep being detroyed there. It is no wonder, that PlacId and Essence has two large gallente trade hubs each. Still trying to figure out, why Verge Vendor does not have one...
3. This page can help you out. It can be nice to build your own home on the empty spot, but IMHO all reasonable spots are not empty any more.

So the question still remains, which is more preferred:

High profit, slow-selling items - Example would be the Astero, pretty much guaranteed to sell one a week, regardless of the price ( provided its not like a 1000% markup )

=or=

Low-profit, fast selling items ( DC II's, Ammo, etc.. )

At this point, I'm REALLY leaning towards ships, yes it's a higher initial investment, but I'm looking at it like this: If I buy different T2 ships ( frigs to start ) and diversify the ships ( not buying just one ), i could potentially make a larger profit within the same time-span instead of trying to sell low-profit, fast selling items.

Edit: I realize this comes down to personal preference, but I'd like to get views on both points. Your opinion as to why one is better than the other, have you seen success with one vs. the other etc...