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Khun SP
Paramite Factories
5
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Posted - 2014.10.25 11:26:02 -
[1] - Quote
So I'm happy with my skills and I just created an alt with the sole purpose of training him and selling on Character Bazar in the future.
What are the most demanded characters nowadays? Browsing the forum section I see Tengu pilots are a good choice and I'm familiarized with missiles and shields so I've decided to follow that train. However I want to get about 20m skill points and that would take about a year of training, I am conscious that expansions and/or markets can change the popularity of this ship or that fit and ruin everything, you know.
I guess a +5 implant set from the beginning is a good bet, as in this context skill points yield isk. Then max perception/intelligence in the case you are training for spaceships and combat, but reserving 1 attribute remapping and the character re-customization so the buyer has the ability to mod the character to his wishes.
Some of my further questions are:
- Is it overall wise to create characters for profit? - 20m skill points looks OK or should I head for a more skilled pilot? Or a lesser one? I'm patient, no worries. - Does the race/gender/nickname/looks affect the sell-ability? - What other kinds of pilot are popular apart from a Tengu missilemen? - Is cross-training a good idea or should I just focus on a specialized toon? - Should I stay on NPC all my training life, or joinining a corp would add some value to the character? As long as I don't smack talk and create myself a bad reputation that is. - Any other tips for making a character more attractive for the potential buyer? Like, if I'm selling a Tengu pilot should I bring him with a well-fitted Tengu ready to fly?
Thanks in advance, dear marketers :) |
Obunagawe
413
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Posted - 2014.10.25 12:11:54 -
[2] - Quote
No longer viable as PLEX prices have risen with the effects of:
1. Increasing your costs. 2. Reducing people's desire to own many chars. |
X ATM092
Clan Shadow Wolf Fatal Ascension
431
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Posted - 2014.10.25 14:29:10 -
[3] - Quote
Obunagawe wrote:No longer viable as PLEX prices have risen with the effects of:
1. Increasing your costs. 2. Reducing people's desire to own many chars. citation needed |
Danjun Zahid
Ministry of War Amarr Empire
9
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Posted - 2014.10.25 19:52:56 -
[4] - Quote
- Is it overall wise to create characters for profit? - 20m skill points looks OK or should I head for a more skilled pilot? Or a lesser one? I'm patient, no worries. - Does the race/gender/nickname/looks affect the sell-ability? - What other kinds of pilot are popular apart from a Tengu missilemen? - Is cross-training a good idea or should I just focus on a specialized toon? - Should I stay on NPC all my training life, or joinining a corp would add some value to the character? As long as I don't smack talk and create myself a bad reputation that is. - Any other tips for making a character more attractive for the potential buyer? Like, if I'm selling a Tengu pilot should I bring him with a well-fitted Tengu ready to fly?
-it can be if you also use that character to fund its own time. for example take a tengu out to null and farm sites till you sell. -20 million really good focused characters can sell for 10 Billion plus so your looking at a small profit margin for the work put in. -the name always factors into buying power. if its ****** or has numbers people can be put off. try to keep race to what your training -cross training is up to you and dependent on what your training for -some people like no corp, others dont mind it. it can go both ways -ships dont count as assets and dont do anything for the sale. only implants and sp really matter.
if i was to do this i personally would make an incursion character for the year. it only takes a couple months to get into a good battleship and run them in hisec and you can end up making decent isk from them, enough to sub the toon each month and more which will mean you cut losses throughout the year. i would either make a mac or vindi toon. perc/will for the first 20 million getting both min and gal bs to V, then gunnery ( depending on what you choose) get the large gun/spec both to V aswell as the supports, then shields or armour and fitting skills up. these kind of characters at present day sell for quite a bit due to the isk/risk of hisec incursions but if it ends up changing, you could hold onto it and pour another 5 odd mill sp into spaceship command and get frog-bs all V in one race to help increase the awesomeness of the character, aswell as small/med guns to V.
at the end of the day, the days of making and selling for profit are gone as plex prices are far to placid right now, but there is still potential if you do it well enough and offset your costs by using it.
hope this helps, have a good one |
Xanato Kaso
Kaso Enterprises
19
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Posted - 2014.10.26 14:56:53 -
[5] - Quote
Making mining characters are a good way to go as well. Fully trained Orca Pilots along with Exhumer V is decent isk/sp value. And you can mine ore while training the toon to pay for itself. Making 100m isk a day half-assing/afk mining will Plex the toon and then some with little attention required, and if you stay in a T1 barge minimal gank risk as well. |
Khun SP
Paramite Factories
5
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Posted - 2014.10.27 10:05:23 -
[6] - Quote
Obunagawe wrote:No longer viable as PLEX prices have risen with the effects of:
1. Increasing your costs. 2. Reducing people's desire to own many chars.
But character prices have risen aswell, I would say proportionally.
In example I once sold a character back when PLEX prices were 300m (oh, those were the days!!). I sold a 18m sp toon for 3.5b. Nowadays you can find the same characters for 9-10b...
Danjun Zahid wrote:-it can be if you also use that character to fund its own time. for example take a tengu out to null and farm sites till you sell. -20 million really good focused characters can sell for 10 Billion plus so your looking at a small profit margin for the work put in. -the name always factors into buying power. if its ****** or has numbers people can be put off. try to keep race to what your training -cross training is up to you and dependent on what your training for -some people like no corp, others dont mind it. it can go both ways -ships dont count as assets and dont do anything for the sale. only implants and sp really matter.
if i was to do this i personally would make an incursion character for the year. it only takes a couple months to get into a good battleship and run them in hisec and you can end up making decent isk from them, enough to sub the toon each month and more which will mean you cut losses throughout the year. i would either make a mac or vindi toon. perc/will for the first 20 million getting both min and gal bs to V, then gunnery ( depending on what you choose) get the large gun/spec both to V aswell as the supports, then shields or armour and fitting skills up. these kind of characters at present day sell for quite a bit due to the isk/risk of hisec incursions but if it ends up changing, you could hold onto it and pour another 5 odd mill sp into spaceship command and get frog-bs all V in one race to help increase the awesomeness of the character, aswell as small/med guns to V.
at the end of the day, the days of making and selling for profit are gone as plex prices are far to placid right now, but there is still potential if you do it well enough and offset your costs by using it.
hope this helps, have a good one
Thanks, indeed an incursion toon must sell well :)
Xanato Kaso wrote:Making mining characters are a good way to go as well. Fully trained Orca Pilots along with Exhumer V is decent isk/sp value. And you can mine ore while training the toon to pay for itself. Making 100m isk a day half-assing/afk mining will Plex the toon and then some with little attention required, and if you stay in a T1 barge minimal gank risk as well.
Nice idea, although I have my own mining characters and use them already.
You all stress the idea of funding the own toon by itself, but I already make my iskies with my developed characters, that's the idea "I dont need" more skills on them so I use that training time for a new character and get profit from it. As I'm using the same account, the cost remains the same. I think it makes sense, the downside is the hassle of logging in the new toon, moving to stations to purchase books, the cost of these books, etc. and of course the fact that I don't train my main unless I pay a PLEX for dual toon training. |
Danjun Zahid
Ministry of War Amarr Empire
9
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Posted - 2014.10.27 21:07:47 -
[7] - Quote
to your post above ^^, our ideas of using the toon are there for minipulating the end profit. you see you will not make much of a profit. if you train using +5s and perfecting the remaps you can get an average of 20 million pts in one year. in plex/isk terms it costs approx. 9.6 billion to plex a toon 12 months on todays markets( with plex being an average of 800million). a toon with 20 million can sell for anywhere between 10-14 billion depending on how focused it was trained and what kind of flyer it is. you also have to pay either two plexes or 1 $20 transfer fee(which is equivilent to 1 plex) plus books so we can estimate that for the year plus transfer plus books you would be looking at around 10.5billion. and we dont know how the market will look in a years time. plex prices i believe will go up and the flavour of the month toon mught be different. profit wise your looking at around 2-4 billion if your lucky and thats for a years worth of waiting. i personally would save a few months of isk and then invest/trade or do other endevours and be looking at possibly triple the profits of training the toon in less time. thats just my outlook on it. i have personally tried to do what you are doing, first time i was away for a while and missed some training on it which pissed me off so i stopped, wont be a problem for next patch tho. and second time i barely broke even. |
Paranoid Loyd
2398
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Posted - 2014.10.27 21:17:29 -
[8] - Quote
Obunagawe wrote:No longer viable as PLEX prices have risen with the effects of:
1. Increasing your costs. 2. Reducing people's desire to own many chars.
Translation: This is my market, I don't want any more competition.
"PvE in EVE is a trap to turn you into PvP content, don't confuse it for actual gameplay." Lipbite
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X ATM092
Clan Shadow Wolf Fatal Ascension
431
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Posted - 2014.10.28 01:26:18 -
[9] - Quote
This is still an extremely lucrative market and the people saying otherwise are either being intentionally stupid to discourage competition or are just very stupid. I will be listing approx 130 characters for sale in the next few months and expect to profit over half a tril. |
Obunagawe
415
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Posted - 2014.11.02 12:41:11 -
[10] - Quote
X ATM092 wrote:This is still an extremely lucrative market and the people saying otherwise are either being intentionally stupid to discourage competition or are just very stupid. I will be listing approx 130 characters for sale in the next few months and expect to profit over half a tril.
I wouldn't go so far as to say "extremely" lucrative. It used to be that. Now it's just moderately lucrative.
For example my Tengu chars (which I've created about 60 of over the past 1.5 years) are made on Power of Two accounts and thus cost me 3 PLEX to make and a further two PLEX to sell. These sold very well last year at 7B per unit and a batch of ten would typically sell out within a month. PLEX was around 600M. I was making a profit of (7B-0.6B*5)/0.6B = 6.66 PLEX per character sold.
This year, the same characters will barely sell at 7B (a batch of ten has taken three months to sell normally), and when they do, my profit is (7B-0.86B*5)/0.86B = 3.14 PLEX per character sold.
This issue isn't just present with Tengu characters either - all types are more or less equally affected.
So in summary I am making less than half of the profit I made last year per character, with a third of the sales volume.
As PLEX prices rise further and faster, I would expect to see further reduction in demand and erosion of profits. As it is at the moment, character farming is still very profitable in comparison to most things, but it's absolutely not what it once was and is, in my opinion, very high risk due to the long time that it takes for the investment to mature. |
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Black Madness
Natural Born Builders New Eden Gambling Alliance
13
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Posted - 2014.11.02 19:53:25 -
[11] - Quote
Obunagawe wrote:X ATM092 wrote:This is still an extremely lucrative market and the people saying otherwise are either being intentionally stupid to discourage competition or are just very stupid. I will be listing approx 130 characters for sale in the next few months and expect to profit over half a tril. I wouldn't go so far as to say "extremely" lucrative. It used to be that. Now it's just moderately lucrative. For example my Tengu chars (which I've created about 60 of over the past 1.5 years) are made on Power of Two accounts and thus cost me 3 PLEX to make and a further two PLEX to sell. These sold very well last year at 7B per unit and a batch of ten would typically sell out within a month. PLEX was around 600M. I was making a profit of (7B-0.6B*5)/0.6B = 6.66 PLEX per character sold. This year, the same characters will barely sell at 7B (a batch of ten has taken three months to sell normally), and when they do, my profit is (7B-0.86B*5)/0.86B = 3.14 PLEX per character sold. This issue isn't just present with Tengu characters either - all types are more or less equally affected. So in summary I am making less than half of the profit I made last year per character, with a third of the sales volume. As PLEX prices rise further and faster, I would expect to see further reduction in demand and erosion of profits. As it is at the moment, character farming is still very profitable in comparison to most things, but it's absolutely not what it once was and is, in my opinion, very high risk due to the long time that it takes for the investment to mature.
Almost same figures i had doing my calculations after X ATM092 words.... Anyway at the moment almost ALL of the markets are absolutely depressed, profits are very thin almost everywhere...
www.eve-gamblers.org
-= Real PRO use isk =-
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X ATM092
Clan Shadow Wolf Fatal Ascension
433
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Posted - 2014.11.03 14:10:36 -
[12] - Quote
Have you considered maybe it's time to stop making tengu characters? |
The Greenmachine Greenmachine
Green's Bicycle Shop
101
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Posted - 2014.11.03 19:27:05 -
[13] - Quote
Black Madness wrote:Almost same figures i had doing my calculations after X ATM092 words.... Anyway at the moment almost ALL of the markets are absolutely depressed, profits are very thin almost everywhere...
LOL |
Mroe Bree
Sebiestor Tribe Minmatar Republic
6
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Posted - 2014.11.03 21:52:07 -
[14] - Quote
People are not going to give away their secrets. But unless you discover a gold mine:
20M sp = 12B isk. That's being really, really optimistic. Without power of two you're talking 14 PLEX or 10B. So, after all that waiting, you're getting 2B profit on an average of 5B amortized over a whole year. That's an exceptional ROI, but with a non-zero risk of nerfs destroying character value -- for instance, what if the wheel of nerfs turns and renders missiles non-viable? Do you think a Tengu character will still command a premium, or will it sell at a discount to PLEX value?
Another risk is having to predict whether eve will grow or shrink. If there are fewer accounts there's a shrinking market for toon farmers. Think about datacore alts here when pondering the limitless downside of unforseen future nerfs. As the game keeps getting older margins on everything typically shrink, and it becomes harder and harder for alts to self-fund. At some point it becomes smarter to sell the alts and only run one account.
IMO you're probably better off accumulating and holding PLEX themselves. Yes, that 40% return looks sexy, but the risks are very much non-zero.
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Gryphon Infinite
Caldari Provisions Caldari State
53
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Posted - 2014.11.04 18:22:14 -
[15] - Quote
Hmm, you have spurred my imagination... I might start making miner or fighting characters for sale ^^
Dear Fellow Eve Online Players: Please consider checking out my Mentor, who's character name is "Eve Mogul". He has taught me a lot and is a good friend! Here is a link to his website: http://9cbb2am0s31dt31c-2v9pi0nak.hop.clickbank.net/
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Tinu Moorhsum
Random Events
379
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Posted - 2014.11.04 22:06:27 -
[16] - Quote
Khun SP wrote:So I'm happy with my skills and I just created an alt with the sole purpose of training him and selling on Character Bazar in the future.
I won't make a value judgement about whether this is or is not a good idea.
However, what you do with this approach is convert real world money into isk..... transfer costs, subscription costs, plex costs etc.
This approach may not be altogether without merit but *IF* you are going to convert cash to isk then there are much more straightforward ways to do it.
T- |
X ATM092
Clan Shadow Wolf Fatal Ascension
433
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Posted - 2014.11.04 23:17:17 -
[17] - Quote
unless he made the alt with plex and is paying the transfer fee in plex and selling it for more than the cost of those plex while getting the use out of it in the time until then |
Mr Epeen
It's All About Me
6682
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Posted - 2014.11.05 00:21:01 -
[18] - Quote
Paranoid Loyd wrote:Obunagawe wrote:No longer viable as PLEX prices have risen with the effects of:
1. Increasing your costs. 2. Reducing people's desire to own many chars. Translation: This is my market, I don't want any more competition.
That's pretty much it. The guy has probably 50 or 60 characters for sale at any given time.
Mr Epeen
There are 86,400 seconds in a day. You just saved one of them by typing 'u' instead of 'you'.-á Congratulations, dumbass!
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Obunagawe
416
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Posted - 2014.11.19 19:52:03 -
[19] - Quote
Still think it's a bull market, Kwark? |
Niskin
League of the Lost
79
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Posted - 2014.11.19 20:22:47 -
[20] - Quote
Tinu Moorhsum wrote:Khun SP wrote:So I'm happy with my skills and I just created an alt with the sole purpose of training him and selling on Character Bazar in the future.
I won't make a value judgement about whether this is or is not a good idea. However, what you do with this approach is convert real world money into isk..... transfer costs, subscription costs, plex costs etc. This approach may not be altogether without merit but *IF* you are going to convert cash to isk then there are other very straightforward ways to do it that you should consider as well. T-
This might be hard for some people to understand but some of us pay for our accounts with cash so we can play the game, period. This person wants to train up an alt and sell it, since the account will be active anyway and they don't need to train anything on their main. The profit calculation is really simple:
profit = amount character is sold for - transfer costs
That's it, don't over-complicate things by bringing in the "if you aren't profiting in real money from playing EVE you are doing it wrong" mentality. There seem to be a lot of smart people in this thread that could probably play EVE free forever and still make billions in game, and that's great. But once it was determined that this person has no actual costs for developing the character, the short answer is: "yes, you should be able to make several billion isk from selling a character in that fashion."
Remember kiddies: the best ship in Eve is Friendship.
-MooMooDachshundCow
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