Using external tools to haul profitably

One way to earn InterStellar Kredits (ISK) is to haul goods from one location to another, buying low and selling high.

Establishing a Hauler Alt Character

Eve University students can make a good income as haulers, even during wartime, by setting up a hauler alt character outside of the corporation. The EVE University library includes a recorded lesson [1] on setting up an Amarr character with a Bestower freighter with the necessary skills in less than a day. Creating an Alt Hauler details.

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Amarr Bestower

You can establish a hauler alt of any race. However, the Amarr use a very attractive industrial ship, the Bestower [2], that requires a low level of skills, as follows:

• Amarr Industrial 1

• Spaceship Command 3

• Amarr Frigate 3

With this base level of skills, the Bestower will carry 4,800 m3 of cargo, without any modifications. Eventually, with maxed out skills, 4 Expanded Cargohold II mods, and 3 Cargo Optimization rigs, the Bestower will carry a whopping 24,114.9 m3. In short, with an Amarr hauler alt, you can get started quickly, and eventually end up with a very well equipped industrial ship.

Discover the Value of EVE-Central

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EVE-Central MarketUploader

The economic system [3] in EVE is highly dynamic, driven in large part (but not all) by players, and the resulting supply and demand of goods. This results in disparities in buying and selling prices, resulting in the opportunity for trade routes, where haulers can buy at a low price in one location and then fulfill demand at a higher price in another.

The hauler's most valuable resource for finding profitable trade routes is the EVE-Central Market Aggregator site [4]. Register your hauler character there and download the free market data uploader. [5] Previous versions of this program required manual exports of in-game market data files, but the current version (2.0) automatically uploads market data from your memory buffer, making it much easier to use.

Using this tool, any hauler can routinely earn 300K ISK or more per trade run in high-sec space with virtually no risk, even with a minimum of capital or experience. Here is the process:

1. Base your hauler alt in a system in high-sec with lots of stations - this does not have to be in a trade hub [6] like Jita, Hek or Rens.

2. Make sure your hauler alt has enough capital to buy trade goods in sufficient quantity. For hauling consumer and industrial goods, you'll need about 10M ISK to start carrying near-full loads. If you don't have that amount on hand, don't worry - you can carry partial loads and you can earn the necessary capital over time.

3. Start the EVE-Central market uploader program, and use the browser to open the EVE-Central site. Sign into EVE-Central.

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EVE Market Window

4. Open the EVE market window from the NeoCom interface, setting the search to Region.

5. Click on items that have high volumes. You want to select items that people trade in bulk which will fill your freighter hold -- in general, this will be anything that trades with volumes over 10,000 units. Some items are smaller than 1 m3, though, so for these you'll have to look for even bigger volumes. A good list of market items to review includes, but is not limited to:

• Under Ammunition & Charges
  • Under Standard Charges
    • Under Small, Medium and Large
      • All of the hybrid charges
• Under Manufacture & Research
  • Under Ore & Minerals
    • All of the Minerals
  • Under Planetary Materials
    • All of the Raw Materials
• Under Trade Goods:
  • all of the Consumer Products
  • all of the Industrial Goods

By clicking on each item to get the detailed market report, you will create files of current market data which the EVE-Central Market Uploader can send to the aggregated database. (Yes, this takes a little time, as it's about 30 items, but it's worth it.)

6. Alt-TAB (if you are using a PC) to the EVE-Central Market Uploader program. Force a scan of your system for market data files by selecting File/Scan Now - this will upload the most current data to EVE-Central. Eventually, the uploader program does this automatically, but you want to make sure you have added all the latest data, so it's good practice to do this.

EVE-Central System-Region Search

7. Alt-TAB back to EVE, and view the browser to see the EVE-Central website. Select the trade route finder, then select a System to Region search. Enter the name of your current system plus your current region. Confirm the search.

EVE-Central Trade Routes

8. You'll then get a list of all available trade routes from your current system to anything in your region. It's a good idea after your first search to enter your cargo capacity and to click the "filter for security" options - you want to find routes that will fill your ship and which stay in high-sec. Look for trade runs that generate the largest amounts of ISK per trip, and which are short duration. In systems with lots of stations, you will likely discover some good trade runs with 0 jumps! NOTE: be sure to check the volumes of both the seller AND the buyer before you purchase them - EVE-Central will tell you this. You don't want to buy 100,000 of an item only to find that your buyer only wants 20,000.

One important factor to consider before selecting your trade run is sales tax. The universal sales tax rate in EVE is one percent (1%). EVE-Central does not include the effect of sales tax in its calculations, and this is a potential trap for haulers carrying low margin goods. While the vast majority of trade runs in EVE have more than a 1% margin between the buying and selling prices, it is never guaranteed. Smaller haulers are unlikely to haul low-margin items, since they naturally tend to focus on trading goods that maximize profit per cubic meter (m3) of their very limited cargo space. But freighters, and haulers with very large capacities, are more likely to select larger volumes of goods at lower margins, so they can fill their expansive holds, and they can get caught more easily in a sales tax trap.

For example, let's say that EVE-Central lists a trade run for buying 79.5 million ISK of Robotics, and then selling it at a nearby station for 80 million, showing a net profit of 500 thousand ISK - not bad! But this does not take in to account the sales tax of 1% on that 80 million ISK sale, which will give you an additional cost of 800 thousand ISK - resulting in a net loss of 300 thousand ISK!

A good rule of thumb, therefore, when selecting your trade run is to look at the potential profit margin of the run, and compare it to the original purchase price - if the profit is not more than 1% of the purchase price, pass on it, and find a better run, even if it means one that will not completely fill your cargo hold.

9. THIS STEP IS IMPORTANT: Most of the time, EVE-Central provides good trade run suggestions, but it's always a good idea to double-check. Verify that the EVE market window data is the same as the EVE-Central recommended route information. This is why you want to start in a system that is NOT a trade hub. The market in a busy trade hub, such as Jita, can be so volatile that between uploading market data and doing the route search, it can change significantly. Better to do this in relatively quiet systems with more market stability.

10. If your trade route checks out, buy the items from the station that you will haul. Warp to that station, open Items, and drag them into your ship's cargo hold. Undock, warp to the buyer destination, dock there, unload back into Items, then right-click your items and select "SELL THIS ITEM". Check one last time that the buying price is the same as what you expected from the EVE-Central data - if it does, execute the sale. (If it doesn't, you may want to sell it anyway if it's still profitable. Use the Wallet/Transaction tab to find the price that you bought the item, if you forget. Be extremely leery about using the Advanced selling option to set your own selling price, as this will apply a broker fee, in addition to the usual sales tax, that can further erode or eliminate your profits.)

11. The market window for the item you just bought and sold will now change. Click on that item, Alt-TAB to the uploader program, and use "File/Scan Now" to EVE-Central, so that it has the most current information.

12. Go to step 7 and repeat for the next few trade runs. Every half-dozen or so trade runs, go back to step 5 to upload refreshed market data on all your target trade items.

What's the payoff?

Using this process, haulers can easily make 1 million ISK about every 20 minutes - sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Not a bad return for something that is almost risk free.

As warned in step 8 above, EVE-Central does not include the effect of sales taxes or broker fees on your transactions. It's up to you to remember the potential effect that these costs will have on the profitability of your trades. Fortunately, the 1% standard sales tax is easy to calculate.

You can reduce the amount of sales tax by training the Accounting skill - this reduces sales tax by ten percent per level. So, a fully maxed out Accounting level of 5 will cut the standard 1% sales tax by half, resulting in a sales tax rate of one-half percent (0.5%). However, the Accounting skill is relatively expensive to acquire (about 4.5 million ISK), so you will have to trade a great deal to earn that back from slightly lower sales taxes.

Broker fees will also apply if you use the Advanced option in your market trades to set a specific selling price, rather than selling at available market prices (i.e., selecting the "Sell This Item" option and accepting the offered market price). Broker fees are variable and can double your transaction costs, especially if your standing to the faction of the station where you are trading is poor. An illustration of the relationship of standings to broker fee can be found here: [7] In general, sell at market prices, and don't use the Advanced option when hauling - unless you really know what you are doing, and you believe that your higher potential profits will make the additional broker fee worthwhile.

You also have to watch out for suicide gankers, of course. To minimize this risk, don't autopilot, warp to 0 between gates, and jump manually. And: insure your ship - always.

Fly safe! o7

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Further Reading

• Here's a great feature on "how not to die" when hauling: http://k162space.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/hauling-how-not-to-die/
• Another good source of EVE market information, EVE Metrics: http://www.eve-metrics.com/
• Yet another very interesting trade route finder - this one uses data only from your own market reports, but also includes a tax effect calculator: http://code.google.com/p/navbot/