UPDATE: It seems that some of my information was outdated; these inconsistencies have been fixed.
One of the hardest things for a new player to do is start making good ISK. Generally, big income methods (level 4 missions, wormholes, nullsec, station trading etc.) require significant investment capital or skills. However, new players are still left with a wide variety of options for instant gratification which require very little capital and skill training time before they can be put into action. One such method is hauling, the process of bringing goods from one station to another where they will sell for a larger amount of ISK. Specifically, this method involves finding sell orders for an item in one region that are lower than the highest buy order for the same item in another region. It sounds easy on paper, but how does a new pilot go about doing this?
The Ship
Every new pilot starts out with their racial frigate skill already trained to level II (for example, a new Amarr pilot will have Amarr Frigate II). The requirement to train the racial industrial skill is racial frigate level III, which is not a terribly long skill in the grand scheme of things (training can be complete in less than a day). However, each race's industrials are different, and depending on the amount of time invested in hauling, it might be worth it to train for a different faction's industrial. For the average pilot, training your race's industrial skill should suffice. However, pilots that intend to pursue hauling as a career path should consider training Amarr Industrial for the Bestower, the largest cargo ship. Remember that the higher you train the Amarr Industrial skill, the larger your cargo capacity and max velocity will be. (Note: After training an industrial skill to level III, one can train for a race's freighter, which has a much larger cargo capacity than the T1 industrials. However, other prerequisites take quite a while to train, and they are beyond the scope of this guide.)
Once a pilot has chosen their ship, it is a good idea to fit it. If more cargo space is necessary, Cargo Expanders can be fit to increase the size of the ship's cargo bay. You should not fit more cargo expanders than you need; once you have enough space to carry all of your cargo, Intertial Stabilizers should be fit to decrease the align time of your ship.
WARNING: Do not fly with too much ISK in your cargohold; there are people out there who are willing to sacrifice themselves to Concord to blow up your ship and steal your loot. My general rule is to stay below 100 mil at a time when flying a T1 industrial. You have been warned.
The Route
Figuring out the route you should take to make ISK sounds like it could be the hardest part of all this, but in fact, it turns out to be one of the easiest. There are multiple tools available that enable you to find profitable routes by analyzing the markets in different regions.
If you don't mind doing it by hand, you could take a look at the Jitanomic website and try to find items that are being bought in one region at a higher price than they are being sold in another region. This data is usually fairly accurate, but the process of figuring out profitable routes can be tedious due to the sheer amount of market data available to you.
An easier way would be to use EVE-Central's Trade Finder, which allows you to simply input two systems and will display all items that would turn a profit if bought in the starting system and sold in the destination system. Keep in mind that there are a finite number of orders on the market, and this number can be greater in one system than another; if you see 5 entries for an item where each entry is for a quantity of only 1 item, it's likely that the orders available will limit you to making profit off of only 1 item.
There you have it! Find your route, load up your ship, and take off! Just remember that double checking the data can't hurt, as it'll help you avoid jumping on deals that have already been exploited by another player. If you have requests for future guides, please leave me a comment or PM me on reddit! (/u/toxicity959) Fly safe o7
One of the hardest things for a new player to do is start making good ISK. Generally, big income methods (level 4 missions, wormholes, nullsec, station trading etc.) require significant investment capital or skills. However, new players are still left with a wide variety of options for instant gratification which require very little capital and skill training time before they can be put into action. One such method is hauling, the process of bringing goods from one station to another where they will sell for a larger amount of ISK. Specifically, this method involves finding sell orders for an item in one region that are lower than the highest buy order for the same item in another region. It sounds easy on paper, but how does a new pilot go about doing this?
The Ship
Every new pilot starts out with their racial frigate skill already trained to level II (for example, a new Amarr pilot will have Amarr Frigate II). The requirement to train the racial industrial skill is racial frigate level III, which is not a terribly long skill in the grand scheme of things (training can be complete in less than a day). However, each race's industrials are different, and depending on the amount of time invested in hauling, it might be worth it to train for a different faction's industrial. For the average pilot, training your race's industrial skill should suffice. However, pilots that intend to pursue hauling as a career path should consider training Amarr Industrial for the Bestower, the largest cargo ship. Remember that the higher you train the Amarr Industrial skill, the larger your cargo capacity and max velocity will be. (Note: After training an industrial skill to level III, one can train for a race's freighter, which has a much larger cargo capacity than the T1 industrials. However, other prerequisites take quite a while to train, and they are beyond the scope of this guide.)
Once a pilot has chosen their ship, it is a good idea to fit it. If more cargo space is necessary, Cargo Expanders can be fit to increase the size of the ship's cargo bay. You should not fit more cargo expanders than you need; once you have enough space to carry all of your cargo, Intertial Stabilizers should be fit to decrease the align time of your ship.
WARNING: Do not fly with too much ISK in your cargohold; there are people out there who are willing to sacrifice themselves to Concord to blow up your ship and steal your loot. My general rule is to stay below 100 mil at a time when flying a T1 industrial. You have been warned.
The Route
Figuring out the route you should take to make ISK sounds like it could be the hardest part of all this, but in fact, it turns out to be one of the easiest. There are multiple tools available that enable you to find profitable routes by analyzing the markets in different regions.
If you don't mind doing it by hand, you could take a look at the Jitanomic website and try to find items that are being bought in one region at a higher price than they are being sold in another region. This data is usually fairly accurate, but the process of figuring out profitable routes can be tedious due to the sheer amount of market data available to you.
An easier way would be to use EVE-Central's Trade Finder, which allows you to simply input two systems and will display all items that would turn a profit if bought in the starting system and sold in the destination system. Keep in mind that there are a finite number of orders on the market, and this number can be greater in one system than another; if you see 5 entries for an item where each entry is for a quantity of only 1 item, it's likely that the orders available will limit you to making profit off of only 1 item.
There you have it! Find your route, load up your ship, and take off! Just remember that double checking the data can't hurt, as it'll help you avoid jumping on deals that have already been exploited by another player. If you have requests for future guides, please leave me a comment or PM me on reddit! (/u/toxicity959) Fly safe o7
Just to note, the Iteron V is no longer the largest T1 Industrial. (It wasn't at the time of this post either, oddly enough). The Amarr Bestower has taken that crown.
ReplyDeleteI still generally prefer the Gallente skills, on the offchance that you want to haul ore/minerals (unlikely) or PI mats (somewhat likely)... in which case the specialized Gallente haulers are the obvious choice.