Any data from before 2013 is lost. I did not
keep a track of my profits because it was a pain to do it, and for me it was
pretty much suffice to know that Isk was flowing in at a good rate (according
to my needs), so why bother further?!
In Late 2013 I found out about “Eve profit” at http://192.40.57.168/war/EVE-Profit/.
It’s an amazing tool, because it records and manages buy/sell order from every
toon I have. It records the price, “Item A” was bought by my “Jita Toon” and
will correlate it with the price sold by my “Dodixie Toon” later on, using a
method called “First in/First out”, or something like it…With this tool I could have a pretty nice idea
on my performance. Here is the spreadsheet with
the main data.
“Buy (Isk)” field – It’s pretty much everything
I buy from the market. Important note! This includes PLEX that I use to pay
subscription and stockpile a bit, plus my expenses with PVP ships. Therefore
1.5-2.5 Bil represents PLEX, and I’d spend 1-2Bil in ships (Yes, I die and
stockpile lot’s of crap)
“Sell (Isk)” field – It’s everything I sell in
the market. It pretty much represents the items I trade. I don’t really sell
anything other than I buy in Jita, exception to the occasional faction mod that
I grab from some poor fella who came into my scram range, or some mods that I
might buy at discount from corp, but those number are hardly relevant.
“Income” field – Isk entering or exiting my
wallet in the end of the month. It’s really only the Sell-Buy value, and I
don’t consider it to be really relevant. Most important info here is that it
seems that, per month, my wallet grows, in average, 2.8 Bil.
“Profit (isk)” Field – This is the profit value
provided by the program “EVE Profit”, using the “First in/First out” method. I
seem to be making an average of 7.2 Bil profit/month.
“Profit (%)” Field – Value obtained by dividing
my Profit (isk)/Sell (isk), making about 16%/month average.
Spreadsheets are nice to see totals and
averages, but let’s take a deeper look into my Profit (isk) using a graph.
1st of all, I start with a “lucky spike”… I
have no idea why it’s there. It’s also when Rubicon expansion came out, but I
doubt it’s really related. Usually my profits are related to personal life
events, or to my patience to update market orders. I also checked if I had some
items that sold over the average, but no… that particular month Capital Mods
were the most profitable, but don’t really explain the spike. I’m going to attribute
it to me having more patience to do market stuff.
Then you see a downhill tendency, until it
crashes with the “Baby Arriving” event. That’s pretty much self explanatory I’d
say. Also, I had a “Mid-life” crisis in EVE. With a baby arriving I was unsure
to what would happen to me and EVE. Would I have time to log in? Should I unsub
and take a long break? Would I make Isk to pay PLEX while taking care of a
newly born baby? I did slow down on my EVE activity a lot. Eventually the dust
settled, and considering I don’t really spend much time doing market stuff, I managed
to regain my usual routine after a few month. I just have to wait for baby to
get to sleep and all is good :D
Still, not taking in account the “Baby
Arriving” all-low, there was a decreasing trend in my profits, and this trend I
do not attribute to my laziness. Something was changing and making my profits diminish.
After looking a bit in my logs, I noticed that my main trade hub, Dodixie, had
been making less and less profit over time. I honestly cannot say why. Local
parasites still go around the 350 mark, so cause was not an increase in
population, and I pretty much traded the same old items. In January 2015 I
changed my main market Hub from Dodixie to Hek, where you have less sales but
bigger margins than Dodixie, and it pretty much seemed to work instantly. Not a
huge difference, but it’s there!
Once again, I had a low spike afterwards, due
to family being sick, and did not even care for EVE much. Once back on track,
is business as usual!
Main conclusions:
- Real Life and not Expansions or game changes,
play the biggest role in my profits;
- Profits are fairly even over time, mostly
because when I hit the “7Bil profit” mark I stop doing market stuff;
- Down trend from early 2014 was worrying me a
bit, implemented a change and it’s working so far. These trends downwards worry
me more than low spikes due to Real Life causes. A downward trend might represent
a failed strategy and doom my efforts in the long run.
I thought it’d also be interesting to take a
quick peek to the “Profit (%)” graph
I was quite surprised to see how similar it was
to the “Profit (isk)” graph. It should not be THAT similar! After all, I can
sell only 1 Bil in a month at a 50% profit instead of 10 Bil at 15% profit. I
could perfectly have an “Up” spike in “% graph” and a “Down” spike in the “Isk
graph” for the same month. Still, after thinking a bit, I think the similarity
is due to game market mechanics. Here is my theory:
If I update my orders often (once per day,
every day in my case), I sell stuff sooner and faster, and I’ll sell those
items at a higher price, no needing to undercut my competition by much, or for
many times. There’s a better chance for “Item A” to be sold at 90% of the
initial potential profit when I bought it in Jita.If I don’t update often (lets say I only update
orders once per week), I sell stuff much later and in less amount. Not only
that, when I finally update my orders I’ll realize I’ve not been undercut by
the usual 0.1isk, but market prolly shifted more and I’ll need reduce my price
for several million Isk, reducing my profit margin drastically in one shot.
Main Conclusion:
- Less market order updates lead to less sales
and also lead to lesser % in profit. Sales volume and % Profit are more related than I
expected in EVE, before actually thinking about it.
