Get rich quick

ISK can't buy me love

There are many paths to finding pleasure in EVE Online. Camraderie of a good corporation, missioning, mining, salvaging, fitting ships, optimizing skills, trading, hauling, research, manufacturing, exploration, wormholes, testing yourself in combat against other players and many other activities are available. The almighty ISK is necessary to provide the capital to broaden many of these opportunities. This guide is designed to help intermediate players find an alternative, faster route to achieving the necessary resources. For a beginner guide, see [1].

Warning: EVE Online, like life itself is carefully balanced so that pursuing happiness without shortcuts is very satisfying. A little improvement followd by some time to savour it can be repeated many more times and be more fulfilling than a few big improvement with a short time to savour each before plateauing. Use the following strategies at risk of losing a few months or more than a year of slow improvement.

Station trading

EVE online offers the aspiring trader of all skills and starting capital a way to enhance income. It is certainly possible to become an ISK billionaire via station trading fairly quickly. In a recent Station Trading 101 course, the teacher mentioned that it is possible to triple one's starting capital with a week of play. If one starts with 30 million in ISK and triples it, then triples it again, then triples it again, and so on, that's 1 billion ISK in a little over three weeks time. Not everyone has the temperament and aptitude for this route.

For a more varied route, one can build skill in Accounting and Broker Relations. Also, build up Caldari faction standing and Caldari Navy corporate standing to save on trading and refining costs at Jita. Standing requires mission running so Day Trading, Procurement and Marketing can allow quick trading updates while missioning.

There are three sets of career agents, Data Centers and Cosmos missions that can help build Caldari faction status quickly. Having low trading costs allows a trader to pay more to buy things and sell for less and still earn a profit. Some of the highest volume markets have very thin margins that require very high skills and standing. (My alt, Jefferson Locke, was able to achieve Caldari 6.5, Caldari Navy 7.5, Accounting 5, Broker Relations 5 and Daytrading, Procurement and Marketing 3 in a few months and build up a bankroll trading part time and then make some good station trades to double a bankroll of 500 million in a week).

Another side of station trading is having the required capital. Many station traders can earn more than 100 million ISK per week. This is enough to play for free by buying PLEXs. If you can master station trading only well enough to make a 5% return per day, you can still earn 100 million ISK in a week if you can deploy 250 million ISK for seven days. Rather than wait for a small bankroll to double every couple of weeks (if you can resist spending it!), it might make sense to test strategies using small volume trades and then sell a PLEX to raise the starting capital to apply those trades in high volume, then buy the PLEX back a month later after you have a big enough bankroll to afford it. Be sure that your target markets can support billions in ISK per day (mostly at Jita) if you want to deploy tens or hundreds of millions in them.

Contracting

There are many items that cost a lot of ISK, but are thinly traded in contracts. Few buyers means that the final auction price may be quite low. For example, when a rich player auctions off a ship with not so great rigs, the starting price is often less than the cost of the ship without rigs. A low-ball bid may be able to win and the repackaged ship resold immediately.

"Sniping" or bidding at the last minute can be done to win an auction. A dedicated contract trader can observe when a juicy auction target changes over from being x days away to x-1 days away and have good information about when to log back in to snipe and win. One can also look up all of the auctions that have less than one hour to go.

Many goods are only sold in contracts. Thoughtful appraisal of a lot with multiple items can allow one to resell them for a profit. Be prepared to take some losses here learning the ropes.

Many successful traders combine contracting and harvesting or production. Cosmos items can often be gathered and sold to impatient missioners who want to grow status fast for their station trading alts. Again, this requires capital (a good PvE cruiser or battlecruiser), on-the-job research to figure out what goods sell quickly. Market volumes are not simply a matter of looking at a graph, but must be determined manually.

The lack of information means there are many opportunities to buy and resell Cosmos items at contract.

Skill at Contracting is a must.

(My alt, Jefferson Locke, has been contracting a little for a few months with an alt with level 4 that permits 17 items. Currently I have about 65 million in goods where about 80% of it turns over every 3 days with margins of 100% on half the items harvested in Okkelen and 20-50% on the other half bought from other contractors. Taking this to 100 million per week would require harvesting higher level complexes with battleships, lowsec with cloakies or more contracting slots with another alt.)

Repeating non-repeatable Cosmos missions

There are level 2 and 3 Cosmos missions that reward or drop 100 million ISK implants that can allow one to make 300 million ISK per week training a succession of alts to run them. One of the missions is a traditional Caldari Cosmos mission. New account alts are deterred by requiring a hauling mission prior to the mission with the nice reward. Industrial skill (even ORE) can only be taught to paying players. Getting an alt to Caldari standing 3 (all that's required now to access a level 3 agent) and sufficient industrial skill can be done in about a week by running all agents in the career funnel twice while training social and connections.

There's a level 2 Angel Cartel Cosmos mission in high sec requiring Battlecruiser prowess that is rumored to drop two +5 implants. Training Diplomacy 3 or Connections 3 should allow access to a Level 2 agent even with a mild negative base standing.

If you don't want to interrupt your skill training to train an alt, consider being your own buddy. The buddy program (which comes and goes every few months) permits you to invite someone else--or yourself--to become a new member. You pay for a plex on the new account and receive a plex in the old account. Some players (like me) make their alts permanent after doing this so it's reasonable to think that this is a legitimate way to get a second training queue going.

It may require two-boxing with your main to get the mission drops and rewards. That may require a complete second box if you do not pay to upgrade the trial account because the CCP clients will not do simultaneous logging in on a trial account and a regular account from the same machine. Since two boxing is a way some players really enjoy playing, CCP may be making a mistake here to make this hard.

(I haven't tried this strategy yet, but maybe soon.)

Manufacturing

I've been tracking Cosmos items that sell well and looking at the rewards that the missions these items fulfill give. Some of them are blueprint copies. This gives a clue for manufacturing something that people actually want. Seeing an item going for a particular price in a contract does not mean anyone is selling anything at that price so it is essential to pick a product that a successful manufacturer is making money at rather than picking at random. More hard core industrialists can consider hunting for technologies and parts in wormholes or setting up a POS to do tech 2 research and beyond. There's a class on becoming a billionaire that touches this briefly.

My story

I joined the uni trying to learn trading, mining, hauling, contracting and all things business. Given the population of Jita, trading is what many players have as an avocation to pay for whatever they do for fun. But it has to be pretty compelling for so many to do it so much. After learning the basics of trading, my alt started grinding standing with Caldari Navy. This led to a precipitous drop in standings with other factions because I wasn't paying attention to what faction I was missioning against. I started repairing my standing and grinding standing with Cosmos missions and extra career funnels. I learned hauling and Navbot. I learned what Cosmos items were where and which were hard to get and had great rewards. I learned contracting and auctions. I trained battlecruisers and battleships. My trading and contracting blossomed to allow faction ships, drones and weapons. Harvesting cosmos items became easier both in the complexes and in the markets. I started dabbling in ships, expensive ship equipment and later minerals in station trading. Minerals is almost as much adrenaline as getting targetted by a gate camp. So 3 months after completing the Sisters of Eve Epic Arc, my alt's a billionaire and has another billion in ships, equipment and trade goods. Too fast? Or just getting started?

Send Freeman Locke a mail with 1 ISK if you liked the article.