Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Hey guys come and play with me!

When I wrote the post detailing what I'm doing, I really did so in the intent to let others find these fields. I expected the competition to rise and the profits go down. I considered it a cost I must pay to make the blog more useful.

What happened was a complete surprise: my profits increased on these fields. Last week report was "Wednesday morning 21.8B. (0 PLEX behind for second account, 0.9B spent on triage carrier alt)" while the most recent is "Tuesday morning 25.7B, (0 PLEX behind for second account, 1.1B spent on carrier/titan alt) ". 4.1B in 6 days, that's 680M/day.

I guess I could try to make it look like an evil scheme working out, but it's completely unexpected to me. I really believed that competitors show up instead of disappearing. But no one wants to play with me! I asked around on the goblinworks channel for explanation and got some first-hand ones.

They found this market after my vague and generic statements. They were simply looking for a field where they can be best applied. And - go figure - it was the field where I applied it. They were surprised on the level of competition but made OK money. Now that I came clean that I'm on these field, they simply found it's easier to apply the market ideas on a less competed field than keep undercutting with me. After all there are so many markets in EVE.

So the result of the "blogging my profit away" series is much better than I expected:
  • You can speak up about your business, giving details. You won't lose money on it. Actually you can gain money as others might choose to look for maybe less green, but much less grazed pastures. It's great to inspire more industrialists and traders to start to blog and comment
  • There are many untaken fields in EVE. Part of the "a newbie can never catch up with vets in eve" myth is "every market is taken, leaving only mining veldspar to newbies". It's completely untrue. Even a newbie with no skills or capital can make good money on a field no one cares about. The EVE economy is huge due to every region has its own markets and there are price differences even between systems of the same region. There is place for you.
  • Another proof that M&S isn't in short supply in EVE. The above myth is based on the "common sense" that if it's profitable, someone must have taken it. Yet many-many fields are untaken, because the amount of people who sell to a ridiculously underpriced buy order is too high compared to those who create those buy orders.
  • You aren't bound to a few "large" fields like it was the case in WoW. There you were selling glyphs or doing it wrong. Here you can trade items related to whatever you do anyway and get hundreds of millions for it. You don't have to go out of your way to make money, you can make money on anything.
So come, play EVE, get rich, blog and comment about it! EVE is full of positive surprises. OK, considering how bad name it has, it isn't hard to surprise one positively.

PS: and don't worry about the tax increase in the patch, it increases the taxes of everyone else too, so the margins will open. It's a VAT so it will ultimately hit the consumer not us (after the prices equalize).

The moron of the day is CCP:
No, not for having a queue as I could log in in a minute and there were only 24K players online, so it was a temporary login server overload. Why would such thing on major patch day make them morons? Remember this?

EVE Business report: Wednesday morning 26.2B. (0 PLEX behind for second account, 1.1B spent on triage carrier alt)
Don't forget to join the goblinworks channel to discuss trading and industrial ideas and laugh on the morons of the day (50-80 people on peak hours).

8 comments:

Foo said...

I too have elected not to play in the Jita region. When I have sufficient ISK to max out my current regions, then that might change, but not today. My current regions have enough to keep me busy.

Anonymous said...

You have two types of readers. Haters and people that will consider your ideas. Neither will be major competition for you.

The first group won't bother copying you because they already know you are a useless failure and they can do better than copying your failosophy.

The second group will start off coping, but switch to a different market to maximise their return as soon as they find an alternative.

M&S are the ones that mindlessly copy and they will kill the market before they giving up and moving to the next "ultimate money trick" Strangely enough, not many of them read your blog.

Bobbins said...

'it increases the taxes of everyone else too'

Question : Does the accounting skill have a greater effect on reducing this tax with the tax being higher?
10% of 1.5% is 0.15%
10% of 1.0% is 0.10% /per level

Gevlon said...

@Bobbins: yes, accounting helps with -0.15%/rank.

Ven said...

Maybe you just work harder then your competition, or since you show your "way" of doing business, they think they cant compete with you.

To me "The secret of success" is, not copying someones ideas and try to use for own profit, everyone can copy, but if things change will you be able to adapt and survive ?

I personally prefer instead learn from personal experiences, searching, reading, exploring, reading work of others, you name it, and try to find my place in it all.

It all depends on the time,effort, sweet, blood you will put on it.

But I am still new here and EVE, but learning every day, so I might stick around and see you in game.

Anonymous said...

Alberthus: That's a rather silly way to go about things. First of all, you can save yourself a shitload of time by looking at what other people are doing: pvp for example, you would take months to figure out what good fits are, when looking on many forums or asking an experienced mate would increase your efficiency by orders of magnitude, with no loss on your part. Sure, then once you're at the same baseline as everyone else, you can go your own way (GO YOUR OWN WAAAAY).

With regards to trading, your goal is to make isk. That means exploiting every opportunity to make said isk. Avoiding one market just because it'd be copying is almost giving up: sure, you're likely to make the most isk on a market that only you have discovered, but you're also likely to be missing out on heaps by avoiding 'copying', which to me is just another word from 'competing'. If you want to make lots of isk, you want to do it easily, and this implies looking at what other people have done/are doing. Only once you have all the information can you 'discover' your own things.

Given that this is a finite game in terms of content though, keep in mind that there are only so many techniques you can discover.

Anonymous said...

They are increasing sale tax , not VAT. There is no VAT in EVE. There is no way to tax "Added value".

So everyone will pay.

Anonymous said...

Interesting. I did something similar a long time ago (told my entire alliance every detail of my T2 resale trade, complete with spreadsheets) and the result was what I expected (lots of competition). But I *wanted* the competition, I was tired of the niche but felt the ability to fit out ships in 0.0 was a strategic necessity. I had already planned my next move.

As far as why to avoid competitive niches: Don't step over a dollar to pick up a dime. Every market action has an opportunity cost. You're tying up capital, slots, and most importantly your time and attention. If you can make a higher return somewhere else, then it's stupid to the same old thing just because it's what you're used to. Anyway, it's a game and if you're not enjoying what you're doing (and even making money can get old) then what's the point?

You won't find that next great exponential return if you're buried in detail work for your current niche, trying to chip a couple more percentage points of margin out of a crowded market.