IMHO missiles, projectile and hybrid ammo are already too cheap because they are outlet for miners + everyone and his grandmother produces ammo. I guess M and L laser crystals are ok and also 400 and 800 booster charges as well.

Problem is in fact that miners convert part of their mining supply to dirty cheap ammo so they can sell more minerals overall. Also mission runners often buy ammo BPO to build their own ammo from their melted loot and they also sell excess supply on local market. There is more money in trading ammo if you buy in trade hub -> sell in mission hub or even better near new incursion site.

P.S. I have added more stuff to the list of first post which are better than ammo.

Minimum for production

Production efficiency 4

NOT SURE IF SRS

get that skill to 5 THEN you can start to build stuff

meh, i wouldnt recommend anyone tries to sell on the market without Production Efficiency 5

You'll end up selling your items for less than it cost you to build it

meh, i wouldnt recommend anyone tries to sell on the market without Production Efficiency 5

You'll end up selling your items for less than it cost you to build it

GET GOOD SKILLS

Minimum for production
Industry 3
Mass production 4
Production efficiency 4
Supply chain management 3
Minimum to buy materials and sell the product cost/time efficiently
Trade 4
Accounting 3
Broker relations 3
Daytrading 3
Marketing 3
Margin trading 3
Visibility 2
Procurement 3

IMO Production efficiency V is an absolute needed skill prior to manufacturing any items other than manufacturing for personal use. That 5% extra waste in minerals is pretty much the base of all your profits ecpecially for T1 items, more so when selling in market hubs. Now if you're planning on making your profit based on selling items at an inflated price in regions / systems where the product is scarce than it shouldn't be much of an issue, but than again you're better off not manufacturing and simply buying low and selling high.

Get production Efficency to level V. Start up all your manufacturing runs. While these are manufacturing all your items use the extra days to train up all the additional skills listed. By the time the jobs are done nearly all your skills listed above would be trained, and than start selling.

- Items with cheap BPO (buy BCP to test water if BPO costs more than 10mil).

I think ya mean "buy BPC".

Great guid for peps starting up nice work.

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?

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.

They may sell for better prices, but you need high volume as well.
Why sell 10 mods per day at a 1mil profit each in a lvl 4 agent station when I could sell 60 at 200k profit each in a hub and not need to do the extra hauling.

You can only sell in the smaller markets effectively with high trade skills (you need to place more orders+ be able to modify them at range) as you need to spread where your orders are as well as deal with the logistics of having your wares spread across more stations to cope with the lower volumes.

As a missioner I'd by single mods (e.g. I'd just lost a drone or two due to disconnect) in station if I needed it, but I'd buy ships+ full fittings at the hub, as the savings and guaranteed stock are a huge convenience.

Not true at all. I've been helping a friend do Tech 1 Manufacturer for the past couple weeks and he only has it at 4 and he is making profit. You only look at 200 items? Keep looking.

Aluka has mentioned a few in this very thread that are indeed (still) profitable. You do not need it at 5, does it help? Of course, but telling a new player they absolutely need it at 5 to make any profit is absorb. I've been here from 2003 almost solely manufacturing/inventing/r&d so I know this like the back of my hand.

Finally someone that is actually manufacturing items with "normal margin" and can confirm that there are profitable items in T1 production even with lower prod. eff.
I'm still looking @ items in my production queue that have >100% margin with bought raw materials and I'm like WHHAATTT?.

For the more serious manufacturers, it's not about the margin though. It's about profit per hour. I'm not saying that the items you're building aren't good. But the fact is that you can build ammo with a profit margin of 100% and make 500k ISK per day, and then you can build something else with a profit margin of 2% and make 10 million per day instead.

Blue, production efficiency directly affects size of the margin and that is why I have only mentioned that in my last post.
In original (first) post under "Very important detail" title, I go into details that profit per hour (or per day that I use) is more important than margin like you excellently pointed out.
That is why skills that speed up production and P.E. research of BPO are important almost the same as M.E research and production eff.. But everyone focuses only on prod. eff. skill for some reason :)

P.S. My aim is >5-10mil/day per production line (depending on additional logistic work).

Blue, production efficiency directly affects size of the margin and that is why I have only mentioned that in my last post.
In original (first) post under "Very important detail" title, I go into details that profit per hour (or per day that I use) is more important than margin like you excellently pointed out.
That is why skills that speed up production and P.E. research of BPO are important almost the same as M.E research and production eff.. But everyone focuses only on prod. eff. skill for some reason :)

P.S. My aim is >5-10mil/day per production line (depending on additional logistic work).

I'd like to note that without Production Efficiency at lvl 4 it's impossible to make a profit on anything T1, or at least any of the 200+ items I've looked at. Even with PE at 4, you're still looking at around only ~%20 profit listing at current sell prices, so any impressive ISK/hour is going to require a massive amount of start up capital.

This is patently false (unless you, for some reason, insist on selling in Jita, Amarr, or Dodixie). It's quite easy to make profit on a wide range of T1 items in markets where you don't have to slash prices to sell. As I said before, KNOW YOUR MARKETS. If anyone has trouble honestly understanding this concept, there are plenty of threads out there on it. If you want the Easy Button answer, start a new thread about such, and you're bound to get VERY helpful pointers on exactly how to find, analyze, and market your stuff.

If you want to get ahead, you need to understand and seperate your profit by category; your manufacturing profit is what you can make buying from a sell order, manufacturing, and selling to a buy order. All the rest is not actually manufacturing profit. If your making trade profit, it can often be more profitable to resell without manufacturing at all

Since I am new to manufacturing (wholesale trader / reseller mostly) I would like to know if its worth the time and effort to set up a POS. If it should be in high or low sec, or wormhole space ( for safety) and how that would affect manufacturing. Basically what are the great advantages of a POS over a station since you need to pay upfront costs and fuel, and how if effects profit margin. And are reactions worth it doing?

Also what are the main mission areas that would be good to sell manufactured stuff near (even though this is more of a shipping / trading profit matter)?

Would it be more worth while set up a manufacturing in an area you wish to sell ( ship in or buy minerals or ore locally ) and eliminate the need of shipping of finished products (from jita area) to a higher profit area?

Any suggestions on making your spreadsheets which is essencial I've found? Is there someplace that you can get manufacturing minerals required list per item to copy / paste into them, or is there some manufacturing mineral checking program or something :P

Bump for a great thread and some questions.

How often do you turn over your inventory? Do you build a days worth a sell it the next day, or do you build a few days, a week, or month and then put up a bunch of inventory?

Do you mainly sell to one hub, or do you spread it around?

I've been building a day at a time but I'm finding the selling to be a hassle each day. I think I'd like to build for a week and then put it on the market and just leave it for the week without working to change the price every half hour to undercut someone because I have to sell todays inventory to buy for tomorrow.

I've just started manufacturing and unless you want to spend hours a day it seems to me it's best to work around a manufacturing time of a week.

I've also been scouring BPC's for good deals and they can be very profitable but they require more time also.

I think you left out a few things, like using multiple spreadsheets.

I use one to figure optimal research level.
I use another to figure profitability based on local ingredient prices, manufacturing costs, BPO costs . . . . and a few other things.

Bump for a great thread and some questions.

How often do you turn over your inventory? Do you build a days worth a sell it the next day, or do you build a few days, a week, or month and then put up a bunch of inventory?

Do you mainly sell to one hub, or do you spread it around?

I've been building a day at a time but I'm finding the selling to be a hassle each day. I think I'd like to build for a week and then put it on the market and just leave it for the week without working to change the price every half hour to undercut someone because I have to sell todays inventory to buy for tomorrow.

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?

Someone mentioned before in this thread T1 ammo, I have never bought any T1 ammo in my EVE life. You are always advised when it comes to pve/pvp is, to overcome the low SP preventing you to use T2 guns + T2 ammo is using faction ammo, so who is the hell buying T1 ammo ?

Till now I don't swallow the idea of manufacturing T1 items, The only exception I can find are Ships, Rigs, MWD modules. Other than that, I think it's hard to sell T1 items by just making small glimpse on the saturation of the T1 items in market.

Someone mentioned before in this thread T1 ammo, I have never bought any T1 ammo in my EVE life. You are always advised when it comes to pve/pvp is, to overcome the low SP preventing you to use T2 guns + T2 ammo is using faction ammo, so who is the hell buying T1 ammo ?

If you can't use T2 weapons, well, you use T1 ammo for missions. You also use it for PvP if you are keeping costs low.

blueprints that are not researched at all.
(...)
so I guess I am definitely doing something wrong :)

I think we have an answer...

Here, have a look at these blueprint calculators. SHould help you increase your isk/h/line :
http://zofu.no-ip.de/bpo
http://www.fuzzwork.co.uk/blueprints/

Almost all bpos need atleast couple levels of research, there are some which are "perfect" at 0 ME but most mineral based stuff needs research, just dont bother researchin off the last couple bits or tritanium or pyerite and such, when the difference of 100 more ME levels is 5 isk, it just isnt worth it :)

Your listed skills doesnt mention production efficiency, super important. Reason your item is profitable is most likely because its large, hard to move. Like cap boosters, ice harvesters and strip miners.

well yes, if I get a bp with ML 20 and PL 10 I can get 2.5 more products and it's almost 100k cheaper / product. So yeah, that would mean an additional 2 mil / production line but such a BP costs 60 mil, so not sure if it's worth it . And the thing I am producing is fluctuating so not sure if I should invest 60 mil in it and then in 1 week I can not sell it any more :)

You're assuming you won't research your own BPOs then. I wonder what's the proportion of manufacturers who go this way, but it never hurts to have a research job here and there. I'd wager most of them have a dedicated POS for labs. At least I do.

Well that's why I need a mentor :) but how do you research a bp, it takes 25-30 days just to wait for an open slot, how can you predict if something will still be profitable 1 month in advance?