A "quick" update.

Since it's still summer here, I haven't spent much time playing in the past few months. I've invested massively in capital parts and structures BPOs in July, thus, I'm still working on these to improve them to, at least, ME:8 or ME:9 and a decent TE. I'm unsure about going at more than ME:8 for structures BPO, since going from 8 to 9 take 90 days in a NPC station and will cost around 65m ISK.
Half of these BPOs, at ME:8, sell at a loss, and pushing them to ME:9 is useless at the moment (the values are the GPM for that each module, at ME:8 and ME:9 with all taxes considered -production and sale-). Things may change when additional modules would be available for players to build, such as factories inside Citadels.

Structure Construction Parts    -13,41    -13,27   
Structure Hangar Array        7,06    7,20   
Structure Storage Bay        -13,95    -13,84
Structure Laboratory        -8,43    -8,26   
Structure Factory        -12,73    -12,56   
Structure Repair Facility    36,13    36,35   
Structure Reprocessing Plant    22,77    23,01   
Structure Docking Bay        26,46    26,62   
Structure Market Network    16,36    16,53   
Structure Medical Center    9,76    9,90   
Structure Office Center        20,56    20,72   
Structure Mission Network    -22,65    -22,5

For now, I'm reluctant to invest more in these BPOs due to these prices.
I'm now working on the industry part of Eve Online for more than 1 year, and I'm still amazed by the amount of items that I could find in trade hubs, which are sold by individuals at an incredible loss. Most of the time, I suspect that the player haven't do the math correctly. Let's take a few examples:

Item                                       TCO              Sell @Jita    ROI                Profit/unit    GPM
Crucifier                                341 215,46    226 999,14    219 848,67  -121 366,79    -35,57
Explosive Deflection Field I 118 417,06    79 999,96     77 479,96    -40 937,09    -34,57
Medium Cap Battery I           46 003,95       29 999,99    29 054,99    -16 948,96    -36,84

Who could build a frigate for less than 300 000, and still make a profit? The one who mine his own minerals? nope, safe if he doesn't value the time he spent at mining those asteroids. Some frigates will always get sold at below their building price, since they are giveaways in the newbie missions. Steer away from them.
Some modules are common loot in NPC wrecks, thus, you could expect to find some of them very cheap from time to time, and that's the main issue.
Some industrialist players don't bother doing the whole maths, and thus, they undercut on a already incredibly low price, digging a bigger hole for that item. People need to learn the ropes of the market. If a player undercut a 3500 ISK module by 1000 ISK, and that the historic price for that module is around 2900-3000 in the past 6 months, chances are good that at 2500 ISK, a careless industrialist-wannabe who try to undercut that price will be selling at a loss.

For example, I got a similar case in the past 2 months. Early in June, I built 3500 of a specific module (Item A), at a TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of 1173.82 ISK/item. I put a Sell Order for 1000 of those at 1513 ISK or so (291 ISK profit after taxes), and slowly undercutting until 1320 ISK (close to 100 ISK of profit per item). At that point, there was no point in undercutting further, and changed back my price back to 1500isk, and waited for the market to recover. It went as low as 1150 ISK at sometimes in July,
I finaly sold most of them past week, and I put the remaining ones from my inventory at 3600 ISK / item. On past Friday, I bring back a couple of thousands more, which I sell now in the 15 000-14 000 ISK backet:

Item              TCO        Sell @Jita    ROI             Profit/unit    GPM
Item A        1 173,82    15 895,92    15 395,20    14 221,38    1 211,54


Now, back to those ridiculously low prices we could see around. The worst items for that kind of behavior are munitions, you could find quite a lot of them at very low prices, and vastly undercutting the building price:

Item                  TCO        Sell @Jita    ROI        Profit/unit    GPM
Gamma M        12 099,75    5 900,00    5 714,15    -6 385,60    -52,77
Gamma S        2 465,08    1 306,06    1 264,92    -1 200,16    -48,69
Infrared M       5 128,60    2 699,95    2 614,90    -2 513,70    -49,01
Plutonium Charge M    48,99    30,00        29,06        -19,94        -40,70
Radio M          13 266,53    8 650,98    8 378,47    -4 888,05    -36,85
Ultraviolet M    6 027,51    3 582,00    3 469,17    -2 558,34    -42,44
Ultraviolet S    1 187,82    798,86        773,70        -414,12        -34,86
Xray M            10 352,08    6 500,00    6 295,25    -4 056,83    -39,19
Xray S            1 969,73    1 188,00    1 150,58    -819,15        -41,59

Those ridiculous prices are mostly due to players, who did a couple of missions, looted a bunch of ammunition from the wrecks, and put a sell order at a ridiculous price in a trade hub to sell them quickly.
Sadly, "market PVPer's" or careless industrialists will undercut those prices. When the undercutting
amount is low, the impact is weak. When you see someone undercutting a 200 rounds Sell Order by a 2 500 000 rounds Sell Order, you know that you should put you sell order at a decent price, and wait for the market to recover.

Now, one of the most common advice we give to a new player, who want to get involve in the industry, is to start with the ammunition, without explaining too much on how to calculate the TCO, in a POS or in a NPC station, or how to deal with those various sales taxes. I spent a lot of time researching formulas, on how to calculate those costs. I managed to find them, test them in a NPC station, then in a POS before writing them down in a huge excel file.
I keep track of the building cost of my 360ish BPOs, hundreds of BPCs (tier I and II), how much minerals did I bought this month, for how much, and how cheaply versus the current average price, etc.

Could we still say to a new player to go and buy ammunition BPOs and start from there ? Yes definitively. Will he/she be able to make a fortune of it ? nope, but statistically, he/she will do some profits.
Here's some guidelines and hints:
_ diversify ! don't do only one kind of ammunition, do missiles, hybrids, lasers, etc. Multiple size (S/M/L) - avoid XL for now.
_ do your researches :
+  some ammunition are more used than others.
+  look at killmails, what kind of modules, munitions, turrets are they using.
+  Look at your trade hub, what do people buy/sell the most ?
+  Is there a war going on somewhere ? Who fight there ? what's their doctrines ? Could I build something that they use ?
+  Should I get involved in ships ? yes, but do you research ! most of ships are selling for a slim profit, if at all.
_ Pay attention to your logistic chain: (time to market is part of the logistic chain)
+  Building close to a trade hub, mean high manufacturing taxes, and a short logistic chain.
+  Building far from a trade hub, mean low manufacturing taxes, but a long and possibly dangerous logistic chain.
+  Finding an opportunity where you could get a 50% GPM is meaningless if you can't bring that item in the next few hours. (time to market)
+  Do you plan to move yourself your minerals ? with what (T1 indust, Freighter) ? How many jumps to/from your trade hub ? How much time do you need to move stuff around ? Is there pirates ?
+  How much minerals/Moon products/PI do you need per day ? or per week ? How much of them do you have now ? (delay of 6hours due to CCP`s API)
_ If you plan to use a freighter service, you have to consider these costs and integrate them in your TCO or in your sale taxes (the later is easier)
_ Learn to use an excel-like software (MS, OpenOffice, etc). you *will* need it.
_ Don't use a BPO which is not fully researched, this is especially true for modules, rigs, ammunition and ships. Then again, do your maths! Sometimes, it isn't worth it.
_ If you have to move BPOs, use a fast ship, lots of stabs, a fast align time, and give a small prayer to Bob before each gate jump.


Oh well, I'm sure I've forgot a bunch of stuff, some of them may or may not apply to you, since you're playing in a different space (Null/Low/High), or you are a genius in mathematics. Anyway, there is no one way to do industry in Eve Online, there is so much complexity in that game, so much variables, that you will have to find a way to make it works for you.
Eve Online was a drug for me when I first started to play it. The more I was digging, the more I was amazed by the amount of stuff I had to understand before being able to play it correctly. The learning curve is huge on this game, and there's always more to get on. I could say that I know now how to do industry, to do PvE missions safely, but I still don't know how to PvP, how to fly in a fleet, how to be a Fleet Commander.. 2 years on, and still so much to learn, so few hours to play :-)


Fly safe o7