Trading - Choosing a Market Hub in 2011

Already knowing I wanted to avoid Jita and that I’d give regional trading a shot, I traveled a bit around to the main hubs. I would check several prices in both Jita and secondary hubs at same time, make some mental math to see if there was a good profit to be made, checked the volume sold, etc. 

Everything was really overwhelming and I was completely lost, but eventually decided for Dodixie. It was quieter than Amarr, had good margins comparing to Jita prices, and stuff sold also a bit faster than Rens or Hek. Also I had already lived in Dodixie before and was a great place to ninja salvage and grief carebears (Dodixie had a lvl 20 agent, before those got “rebalanced”). What could be better than making isk and grief people in the same system!

Now to decide what to trade. Upon my market investigations I reached some conclusions:

- Ships had low margins, really low. Everyone seemed to like selling them. Exception was really T2 haulers and the occasional Recon or T2 Logistic.

- Ship mods had huge competition. Not only each market order could easily have more items than the ones sold in the whole system in a day, but most items had 10+ orders being updated several times per day.

- Faction items were too expensive for me to invest heavily, and price shifted too randomly, mostly because some sellers got those items for “free” while exploring, and made huge undercuts. Also I was lost with so many faction items… What’s the point of having a bizillion different set of 10mn faction Microwarpdrives?... Geez…

So what about the good news?

- Structures had a good profit margin, affordable prices (from the simple warp scramble battery to a small POS), not much competition and seemed to have decent sales;

- Implants, though expensive, had really low competition (no more than 2/3 orders per High-Grade implant) and amazing profits;

- Skillbooks were seeded by NPCs 2 jumps away, and not many were selling in Dodixie. These were indeed a nice surprise. Science Skillbooks were seeded by NPC at 10mil, 2 jumps out, I’d go grab some, sell in Dodixie at 14mil with no competition.

It was decided, I’d try out Structures, some Implants and Skillbooks. I spent 10 Billions in Jita sell orders, hauled them myself to Dodixie (not all at same time), and tested out the waters.