Having received a question from Brullig on FHC about it, I thought I would mention tips here for how to make the most profit possible from trading when you only have a small amount of capital to start with (<500mill).
(1) Margin trading skill: This skill is super important early on to make the most of the cash you have in your wallet. It is most useful when trading items that have low turnover (say enyos or cap mods) as your buy orders will be filled slowly, so the isk you retain in your wallet can be used for more high volume trading (cap rechargers, damage controls etc).
More info on it here.
(2) Other skills: Competition in most hubs is fierce and margins will be cut and slashed to their limits. You need to minimise losses from taxes and broker related skills, so do train broker relations etc to their max level as soon as possible. This is even more important since yesterday... a stealthy change from CCP in patch notes:
(3) Standings: By having good standings to the station owner, you pay less taxes. If you trade at Jita, run some missions for the caldari navy - it will help in the long run by saving you some %s!
(4) What hub? Jita is the hub that tends to draw the most active and powerful traders, mostly because a majority of moon goo flows through it compared to any other hub. However, it also means you have to compete against the no job/no life players who can update orders every 5 mins. I started my trading in Hek around 4 years ago, dealing with +2 and +3 implants. It was a slower market, but I was able to control my few item types with much less competition. I could play less hours, yet still make sure my buy orders remained on top and sell orders the lowest.
(5) Regional Trading: If you run missions, set up buy orders in mission hubs for common items that drop and sell orders for common consumables (ammo, drones). Many others do this, but there are usually good margins to be made as you have a pretty constant player base (mission runners never stop grinding!). This requires hauling, but that is almost a necessity early on.
(6) Do you pvp? Especially, in lowsec... when fleets aren't running or you are camped in station, always browse the markets for items you can fit into a cloaky hauler (so you can safely remove from lowsec). Always have an alt in jita to compare market prices - if you see a deal, especially those where the sell price in lowsec is lower than the highsec buy price - jump on it! Dont forget to check out contracts too, people firesale items all the time.
(7) Live in 0.0? This is how I really made my ISKies originally. Trade between 0.0 alliance hubs and jita. Ofc this requires a carrier and your own cynos (or a JF ideally, but you'd be amazed what you can do with a carrier only). 0.0 folk expect a 5-30% markup, so if you have access to a decent hub, then this can be excellent business.
(8) Start Manufacturing: Depending on how many alts you have, train one to Production Efficiency 5 and start building. By producing and selling an item in hubs, you will learn the most about the behaviour of that product, it's cycles, the main competitiors who build the product etc. Since missions stopped dropping meta 0 items, there is actually space for manufactures to make isk on low-end products. However, ammo is always a safe (but low margin) bet too!
(9) Burnout! The fewer orders you have to babysit, the better. Let's face it, trading isnt super thrilling. If you have 300mill ISK, have buy/sell orders for no more than 5 items. If you have 3000mill ISK, then dont dabble in more than 10-20 items. I try not to have more than 40 buy/sell orders up at any time, as otherwise updating them all (especially in hubs) will make you go grey.
And finally...
(10) Raise equity: This is what I did with FCV, and there is no reason anyone can't do it. Easiest if you have RL friends with spare ISK, this can still be done if you don't. Approaching corp or alliance mates, or approach people with ISK and offer collateral. If taking a loan, many people are happy for small (~5-6%) percentage of your earnings, so if you are trading a lot, a loan can be a sensible idea.
As an aside, consider the advantage of more ISK using this example:
Say you have 300mill ISK and lets assume that you can turnover 10% profit per week = 30mill
Lets assume this takes 20mins an evening, 6 days a week, which gives an isk/hour of 15mill/hr.
That's not bad, but you would be better off mining, ratting or missioning all which can easily hit 20mill an hour.
However, lets say a friend lends you 700mill for a total of 1bill. With 10% profit = 100mill/week.
Orders might take 10mins longer to organise per evening, but you are now making 33.3mill/hr.
The point I am making is that 0.0 ratting or mission running have a max profit/hr of around 60mill. And that is by really tweaking all the details (and investing in expensive ratting/mission ships). The profit per/hour in trading is only limited to how much ISK you have to invest. Of course, 10% profit per week is quite a modest amount for an active trader and as an added bonus, trading is super easy activity to have on a second account while pvping with a main. I have made millions while waiting for guns to cycle in big fleet fights with time dilation!
That's all my tips for now - if I have forgotten anything major - do let me know!
