Rimhawk
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Posted - 2005.11.18 10:49:00 -
[1]
I do have a question though. I see many people making claims that they can make a profit with T1 items, but I'm having a hard time of it. I'm wondering if it's not in the way it's being calculated. A rough example, and yes I am going to forego on the time (=money) I spent gathering up on the materials.
Let me try to explain (I'm not at home so can't get exact numbers):
My industry, production efficiency skills etc. are all at level V. The BPO/BPC's I'm using are all at least at ME100. So I'm not burdened by 'waste' you might say.
What I do to determine the profit of a given T1 item is this:
1. I look at the Bill of Materials.
2. I then take the minerals listed on the Bill of Materials and calculate the cost price of said materials, using the average selling prices. So the average prices people were willing to pay in recent days.
3. I then look at the average price of the module I want to produce. Same thing there, average prices people were willing to pay for the module during recent days.
Now I use averages since there is not realistic way to calculate it otherwise. You need to cut out the overpricing and underpricing, the 'excesses' you might say. Unfortunately a lot of people are using the lowest selling prices or highest buying prices to calculate that profit. If I calculate it that way, ure I get to 25% profit margins too. But such calculations are not a realistic calculation of profit, in fact you're misleading yourself if you calculate that way.
Now regardless of the tech items I have looked at, be it modules, ammo or ships, the profit is really low. On a ferox with ME15 for example I end up with a mineral cost of 23.8 millio. Yet these days I'm lucky if I sell it for 25.5 million, since there is always someone selling at those prices. Now you might say that means you still get 1.8 million profit...
But what has not been included yet was the time spent to gather the materials! It's a bit more difficult to turn that into solid numbers. But the time it takes me to mine the basic minerals (even with a barge) and buy and haul the rare minerals, costs more than 1.8 million. If I work really efficiently that takes me at least 6 hours (mining and hauling it all to the factory). That means that for every hour I make a profit of 300k or less...
Now pretty much anything you can do (trading, hauling, mining with mineral sale, missions, buying low and selling high) gives you more than 300k per hour.
Now yes, I also realise that with the Ferox example, or expendables like ammo, I can get a higher price. Say 26.5 million, provided I haul it to a station where you have a lot of agent operators. Or if I haul it to low sec space. But there you need to add in the time spent and, in case of low sec a risk estimate, but even then the profit goes to about 400-500k per hour max. So where is the profit in that, because I can still do pretty much anything else (like mining) and make much more than that!
I guess what I'm wondering about is this: I hear some people saying they have good profit margins on T1 items, but:
1. How are they calculating their profits?
2. Are they looking at absolute numbers or percentages?
3. Do they include the time spent to gather materials in there?
4. Would it be possible to give some examples of the T1 items they are producing? Even if only one such item is available, because I am very curious to have an example as to which mysterious T1 items do produce those hefty 10%+ profit margins. Because no one is actually giving any examples...
Rimhawk
IX Technologies |