Production Effiency needs to be at level 5 always if you are planing on a manufacturing careeer.

No point doing any kind of production with out it.

Invest in originals prints and have them on ME10 a minimum. This does not apply to all prints but to majority of blueprints in the game.

Also, T1 profits lie mainly in acquirring mins at a better rate than the competition (aka trading profits)

One issue you haven't mentioned is researching BPO's either ME or PE can take awhile due to slots being used up in Empire and you might have to go lowsec or out of the way highsec.

When it comes to T1 items, isn't the volume more important than the pricing? I would think you would want to move the product inventory pretty quick! I can't see waiting and trying to get the best price for it Jita, when I could transport it a few jumps away and make a better profit on buy orders.

Sound advice. While you train up to Production Efficiency V and acquire/research BPOs, you would do well to just play the markets and see if you can make a profit from minerals alone. Not only will this increase your starting capital to help boost your manufacturing efforts, you'll get a feeling for the ebb and flow of the mineral market.

Once your skills are trained up and BPOs researched, transitioning from buying minerals and selling minerals...to buying minerals and selling manufactured goods should be fairly smooth. In the event that the market for your manufactured item goes south, you can always go back to selling minerals until you acquire alternative BPOs.

It's always the items you pass over or think to yourself, ".. no, those wouldn't sell.." They end up outperforming the items we spent hours researching

Another option for the newer players would be to contact a corp diplo for an area away from the hub's(while staying in high-sec) and asking if there are any mod's that they find short in their area. And you could try and set-up a market tailored to the pirate/mission/mine(ers) in the area.

Since the people looking at this might be new, and are trying to setup shop or find their niche in EVE, this could give them a chance at finding that golden item in their region... Even if they don't know what they are looking for.

PS Good thread, and I hope to see more constructive notes posted.

Nice guide, going to bookmark this and come back to it someday :).

... and have them on ME10 a minimum.

Id be tempted to disagree with the sell in jita thing a little, for small manufacturers its often more profitable sticking a buy order in some outskirts systems (2-5 jumps, in 0.5+ space which covers some popular missions areas) for minerals. Alot of people simply melt stuff they find down and sell the minerals so this can be a very cheap way of finding them.

Once your out there producing specific ammo is nearly always 1) an easy sell and 2) a profit. Its not a massive profit but its quite nice non the less. EG, kinetic missiles will always sell in caldari space and the BPs are cheap for em

Has anyone had any luck selling items in sets?
Such as manufacturing a T1 ship along with all the weapons/modules/drones/ammo that would make up a popular fit for it, then selling the whole thing via Contract?

Thanks for taking the time to post the guide, and the helpful discussion that has followed. One thread that seems to be running below the surface of the discussion is what drives profitability.

The ongoing debate over whether Production Efficiency V is 'required' is a good example. PE reduces waste, which trims the bottom line and thus improves profit. However, it is possible to conduct a profitable sale with a low PE, it just means you take a lower profit, and are priced out of some compressed-margin markets.

Profit is an equation with a variety of factors, many of which can be influenced by training skills. Some factors rely on player knowledge, such as which markets and products represent good opportunities. Master industrialists are, by definition, master of both the character skills AND the player skills - or at least, more of them than the competition.

Looked at from a competitive differentiation perspective, character skills are commodities - anyone can acquire them given time. Player skills are another proposition entirely, requiring time, study, experience, and threads like this to develop.

If you're a complete beginner and want to get a feel for manufacturing to see if it is fun or not, you can make a profit with Production Efficiency 0 if you avoid the hubs and do business out in the sticks. There's really no need for a beginner to spend a couple of weeks training Production Efficiency 5 only to discover that they don't actually find a manufacturing career enjoyable.

This right here is PRECISELY why those in industry need to KNOW THEIR MARKETS. Getting all associated skills to elitist levels (as a couple in this thread suggest) is really only necessary if you're building and selling competitively in hard markets like Rens or Jita. The simple fact is that a lot of still sells for better prices outside those major trade hubs. I'm still baffled why most people don't get it.