I am writing this as a historical record, for the man who fails to learn from history is doomed to repeat it. This will be my laugh reel in a couple months or years, as I look back and laugh at the Terribad newb I am. I expect that no one will read this, and quite frankly, if you're reading this, its not for you :P.
So a month or two ago, I decided to try my hand at T2 production in Empire space. I had previously worked with a couple of other Corporations doing invention as part of my duties to the company. This was before I took a year or so off from Eve for personal reasons. I had some researched BPOs and decided to make a go of it.
February and March was clearing out the junk in my hangers and selling it off to make capital for investment. I raised about 583.31 million Isk. Still have a Raven that hasn't sold, but that's what you get for selling a Caldari Battleship in Amarr space. At this time, I was also looking for a new place to live. I am still looking to join FW, preferably for the Caldari or Amarr, since the Gallente or Minmatar would cut off access to Jita, a bad thing for a manufacturer.
At this time I also created a second account, and after foolishly trying to mess around with combat training on an invention/trader alt, I finally got down to business. In the future I need to buy all of the implants, skills, BPOs, and items that the new alt will need and contract them to them in the station I plan on them working out of. With my alt well on the way to inventing, I realized a few hours ago that next month I will need to spring for another full set of researched component BPOs. At current contract prices, that will run ~300 million isk. I also need to change tactics from what she is currently copying and go totally into copying weapons.
April was my main starting to make Scorch S since it has a high return on investment. And the day before my first batch of 800 Scorch S came out of the oven, the market crashed from 400K isk / unit to the current price of 199K isk/ unit. While you are still making about 155K isk /hour, you are very limited in the total isk that you can make. I had all the knowledge and BPOs (after buying all the component BPOs), so I moved to weapon upgrades, which makes ~ 400K isk/hour. Its a steeper buy-in for the kit costs, but worth the investment.
I over invested in manufacturing materials, which includes enough material to build 1000 runs of Scorch S (which produces 4000 units), since I made something like 260 copies of Ultraviolet S before the bubble was decimated. It also included enough materials for 200 of each of the 4 weapon upgrades I produce. I was thinking that this should make me look pretty good next month, until I realized that I will need to buy component BPOs for by alt. Oh well, when I finally get past the new business hurdles behind me, it will all work out in the wash, and I may even be able to buy a PLEX or two in a couple of months :)
In May I will be trying to find the long tail. Reading some recent articles from Prosper and Merchant Monarchy talking about the Big Head and Little Tail (Working Big Head Long Tail Theory), have inspired me to find some T1 products to fill the gaps in Empire T2 production. The idea being that the Big Head is your main sales items. For me this would be T2 through invention, weapons mods on my main, and small guns on my alt. The little tail comes by filling in with T2 components that have a high isk / hour or other products will keep my manufacturing slots full and still making profit when there is a lull to the T2. These lulls can come from several places, being over invested and not having the liquid capital to buy your next kit, or, more likely, waiting on copies to come out of the oven. In empire, there is usually a wait of 5-45 days for copy slots.
For my main, the long tail will end up being the Scorch S stockpile that I currently have. There are some logistical issues to this, with only 2 slots available for invention, its difficult to keep up with the manufacturing, especially during the week, when I only have a couple of hours to play.
In the future, I need to look into getting a POS, but with an initial cost of 500 million to 1.5 billion or so, it's currently out of my range to get one. I would also like to let the fuel price changes from Odyssey work themselves out. I will be bringing up new inventors in the next couple of months, so I will need to start looking into new products to produce. I would like to get a toe into some ships, but most of that market has such a low profit (or loss) or such a low velocity, that its not worth buying a researched BPO and making T1 hulls.
And if you're still reading this (why? no really are you that bored that you would read this? Yes I am talking to you future self!!), I realize that I have not once mentioned spreadsheets, even though the title is a comedy of spreadsheets. That is because I am not nice enough (or confident enough) to share those sheets, since most of them were extremely manually to update with new products and prices.
March breaks down kinda like this:
- Skills: 67.5 million Isk.
- Manufacturing Buy-in: 231 million Isk.
- Manufacturing Sold: 26.7 million Isk. Which puts profit at -204.4 million Isk.
- Personal Purchases: 33 million Isk.
- BPOs: 16.26 million Isk.
- Inventory Cleanup: Sold 583.3 million Isk.
April Breaks down like this:
- Skills: 88 million Isk.
- Manufacturing Buy-in: 888.7 million Isk.
- Manufacturing Sales: 1,071.19 million Isk. For a Manufacturing profit of 183.15 million Isk.
- PI Sales: 15.8 million Isk.
- Personal Purchases: 41.69 million Isk.
- BPOs: 476.45 million Isk.
- Inventory Cleanup: A Bantam listed last month sold for a whopping 415 thousand Isk.
- Total value of Inventory: 2.2 billion Isk.
- Cash on hand: 73 million Isk.
- Total value: 2.27 billion Isk ($64.97 US with a PLEX cost of 524.8 million Isk)
Summary:
This leaves me upside down 400 million Isk at the end of this month. With 1.10 billion of income and 1.51 billion of outgoing expenses. But with production stockpiles where they are
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