Trading - Blueprints – Opportunity for AKF Isk?

I’ve never looked into Blueprints. Research, copy or manufacture. I did some manufacture in 2010 in null, but hardly serve as any kind of experience in this subject.

Recently EVE has undergone some industrial changes, and I did not really understood what happened. I read the blogs sure, but meant nothing to me, except for a small change that I put on hold in a dark corner of my brain. Research and manufacture slots were removed. Now you can do those activities in any system that supports it.

Recently, looking for other way to make AFK Isk, I decided to dwell a bit more into BPO research/copies. Not understanding anything about it I came up with a series of questions that needed some answer before I moved on:

1)      Is researching BPOs in empire expensive?

2)      Once a BPO is researched, is it worth keeping it and making copies, or just sell the BPO?

3)      What are good BPOs/BPCs to sell via contracts?

4)      How do I get a “BPO contract history” similar to a market item history;

5)      How do I get a “BPO contract volume” similar to a market item volume;

6)      How fast are BPO/BPC contracts accepted by buyers.

Other similar questions arise in my head, but you get the point. I turned to EVE Forum to look for answers lurking up to long forgotten pages. I came up to the following conclusions with some minor testing/background research. Feel free to laugh at my face if you already know the blueprint market inside/out and realize that I’m wrong here…

- Cheap BPOs are basically free to research. By “Cheap” I mean up to medium or even large ship mods;

- BPOs are kinda grouped into “research time classes”. For me, “low end” blueprints, in empire, take 3, 7, 11 or 23 days to fully research;

- BPCs for those items seem to be stupid cheap and there are lots of offers. Don’t know if there’s much Isk to be made in such “low end” item BPCs

- Isk value for low end BPOs are kinda related to the time they take to research, but I think that items that take 23 days to research don’t really sell all that much higher than those that take 11 days.

- Offer/demand still plays a big role on prices. A BPO that takes 7 days to research can be sold way way overpriced and by a lot more Isk than a 23 days BPO, if there are no others being offered via contracts.

- There is no “BPO contract history” or “BPO Contract Volume”. Only way to know how many “Expanded Cargohold Blueprints” are being sold on contracts in a month is to keep track manually/daily of all contracts… Hell no!

As a nice surprise you can see the “Contract history” of toons and corporations! I had no idea this option even existed!! You can just click a blueprint, look for it’s contractor, see his contract history, and you have a great idea on his strategy, how much that toon/corp sell, how long his contracts take to fulfill, what are his favorite items, etc etc etc. It works the complete opposite side of regular market where you only know someone’s name if you buy from them or vice-versa. There is still a problem. I have no idea how many times the “Item A” blueprint was put in contracts before being sold… might show on someone’s contract history sold in 2 days, but he could been trying to sell it for the 5th time, making it really 77 days.

Having done some research it’s time to put some ideas to the test.