Monday, December 31, 2012

December 2012 - Monthly Report

WBI officially opened its doors on December 11, 2012. Kiger Wulf, the CEO and Founder loaned 100M to the corporation as seed money. He initially divided up the money between the Master Division and the Industry Division, 50/50.

Therefore, for the purposes of this report, WBI started with 50,000,000.00 ISK.

Blueprints Purchased (All Researched BPOS):
Drones (Acolyte I, Hobgoblin I, Hornet I, Warrior I) - 10,000,000.00
Mjolnir Heavy Missile - 5,500,000.00
Veldspar Mining Crystal - 4,890,000.00

Items Manufactured:
Hobgoblin I - 2,000 (I actually started production on 3,000 more Hobgoblins about a week ago. They'll finish up in a couple more days)
Hornet I - 100
Acolyte I - 200
Warrior I - 1,300
Mjolnir Heavy Missile - 100,000
Veldspar Mining Crystal - 50
Small Capacitor Control Unit - 20
Medium Capacitor Control Unit - 10

Items still on the market:
Hobgoblin I - 0
Hornet I - 55
Acolyte I - 0
Warrior I - 720
Mjolnir Heavy Missile - 190
Veldspar Mining Crystal - 50
Small Capacitor Control Unit - 0
Medium Capacitor Control Unit - 0

Ending Balance in the Industry Tab: 105,527,245.57

Reflections:

This was just the first month, and it only represents a partial month. I'm going to continue working on Industry. I'd like to spend more time creating things, less time waiting for things to finish. One of my goals for January 2013 is to have a total cost of 100,000,000 to create things. This would mean I've been adventurous with my ISK and really worked hard to make as much as I could. I haven't totaled up the cost for Dec 2012, but I would imagine (not counting the BPOs) it's somewhere in the 20-30 million range.

I'd like to purchase 2-3 more BPOs and begin creating those items as well in January.

I'll be paying 50M back to Kiger Wulf and reworking the Wallet Divisions. With such a small operation, there's no real need to separate the money into divisions. I'll operate exclusively from the Master Wallet.

I also finished up Production Efficiency V, which should help to lower costs.

Long Term Goals:

I would like to have Buy Orders set up in my home system for all the materials that I'm using to create. This should, I hope, allow me to have less time flying around trying to get all my materials at the best price. Having them all delivered to my station would save me a lot of time, I imagine.

---

Special thanks to everyone who has kept up with WBI for the first 20 days. I definitely consider this to be a success, I may not be pulling down billions like some of the people who are following, but I'm quite happy with a meager start to this career.

Your encouragement has been helpful and your concerns have been heard. I will no longer consider minerals that I've mined to be free. I promise.

Thanks for following.

Fly Safe!

Friday, December 28, 2012

Would you like to mod your ship?

Greetings, capsuleers!

Wulf Brother Industries is just about to wrap up its first month. I've taken some time learning what works well for the corporation, and even things that haven't worked too well (Such as the Veldspar Mining Crystal BPO).

I used Isk Per Hour the other day to see if any of the BPs that I already owned would provide any sort of income. As it turns out, the two Rig BPO's that I owned were both pretty solid for building. So, I built 30 Rigs (10 Medium, 20 Small) and moved them to the market. Who knew they were so popular and so profitable!?

I also built another small batch of Acolytes. What follows are the details:

Acolyte I - 100 runs
Material Costs: 403,614.00
Manufacturing Costs: 3,415.13
Broker Fees: 3,219.44
Sales Tax: 7,049.98
Total Cost: 417,298.55

All 100 have sold at 4,699.99 each, for a total of 469,999.00, which leaves a profit of 52,700.45.

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I - 10 runs

Material Costs: 24,312,098.30
Manufacturing Costs: 2,843.57
Broker Fees: 262,044.60
Sales Tax: 576,749.47
Total Cost: 25,153,735.94

All 10 have sold for a total of 38,349,962.31, which means a profit of 13,196,226.37.


Small Capacitor Control Circuit I - 20 runs

Material Costs: 10,256,000
Manufacturing Costs: 2,843.57
Broker Fees: 129,489.00
Sales Tax: 285,000.00
Total Cost: 10,673,332.57

As of right now, 13 have sold for a total of 12,349,999.94, which means a profit (to date, with 7 to sell) of 1,676,667.37. Total profit should exceed 8,000,000.

The initial investment on the Rigs is higher, but the margins were much greater. I'm intrigued to see if this is a constant thing with Rigs or did I just get lucky.

I still have some items on the market, I monitor the prices, to make sure I'm the lowest in the station/system. Here's what's still for sale:

Hornet I - 55 units for sale, meaning 45 sold.
Mjolnir Heavy Missile - 77,190 units for sale, meaning 22,810 sold.
Small Capacitor Control Circuit I - 7 for sale, meaning 13 sold.
Veldspar Mining Crystal I - 50 for sale, meaning 0 sold.
Warrior I - 820 for sale, meaning 180 sold.

---

I'm cooking around some ideas for future blog posts. Is there anything you'd like to see other than just updates about WBI's Manufacturing progress? Don't worry, I'm going to continue posting my updates, just want to augment them with other posts.

As always, thanks for reading.

Fly Safe.



Sunday, December 23, 2012

Planetary Interaction

I've been running PI nonstop (or as close to nonstop as I can) since I first set the whole system up as detailed here. I wasn't thrilled with the system, and I'm still not. Today was the first pickup for the P2 materials, and the second for the P1 materials.

Now, in my defense I found a routing problem I had messed up on one of the planets, I had a P1 product going to the wrong place, therefore slowing down P2 production.

Anyway, I braved the scary world that is low sec and went to retrieve my materials. I'm happy to say I didn't encounter any unfriendlies, and got all of my stuff off the planets, into my cargohold and to a trading hub.

I don't set up sell orders for this stuff, mainly because the volume that is moving through is really low. So, I just sell to the highest buy order.

I have four planets running as close to non-stop as I possibly can, mostly in 23.5 hour shifts, sometimes when I'll be around I lower the time and spend a little more time starting them up, getting those higher yielding first few cycles in.

Retrieving the materials cost me 4,081,500. I then sold my Rocket Fuel, Mechanical Parts, Coolant and Oxygen for a grand total of 30,374,915.49.

Taking into account what it cost in taxes to get the items off the planetary surface, I pulled in 26,293,415.49.

I had made a run for the P1 materials a few days ago, selling a bunch of Oxygen for 7,767,868.30. I don't have the tax number for that, I'm going to estimate it to be at about 1,300,000.00.

This brings my approximate 10 day total to 32,761,283.79.

Back in my previous post, I had approximated about 3,000,000 per day. Turns out, I'm not too bad at math.

My current skill, Production Efficiency will be done in approximately three days. Once it's done, I'll be training one of the PI skills to L4, followed by Mass Production to L3, followed by the other PI skill to L4. This, I think, will be a great use of my skilling time to maximize profitability.

I will then take a solid day to completely revamp my PI system in an attempt to make as much profit from it as possible. I'll probably be adding two more characters to the account in order to get them involved in PI as well, and get them making money for the account. If three characters each make what this one is making, that will translate into an extra 270,000,000 a month. However, I think I can do better. I saw a blog of someone in High Sec who made enough for a PLEX each month. I'm going to figure out if I can approach that type of profitability while still maintaining my relaxed PI play style.

I want this to be an augment to my income stream, not a major time-consumer.

As always, thanks everyone for reading. I read all your comments both here and on the EVE Forums.

Fly safe!

It's been a few days

One of the things I'm noticing about my life as a Manufacturer is that there's a bit of downtime. This will go down as my skills go up, but at the moment, I'm seeing quite a bit of downtime where there's nothing to do to help me achieve my goals.

The 1,000 Hobgoblins and 1,000 Warriors all finished the other day, and I moved them to sell. Here is the cost/profit breakdown:

Hobgoblin
Material Cost: 1,589,560.00
Manufacturing Cost: 29,645.12
Broker Fee: 101,559.69
Sales Tax: 210,000
Total Cost: 1,930,764.81
They are currently listed at 8,799.99 each. Meaning I'll get a lot of profit based on these (Again, I'm using an outdated Material Cost, explained in previous posts). As of this post, 328 units have sold.


Warrior
Material Cost: 3,099,620.00
Manufacturing Cost: 29,645.12
Broker Fee: 89,391.54
Sales Tax: 195,000
Total Cost: 3,413,656.66
They are currently listed at 13,000 each. Again, I'll get a lot of profit based on these prices (same outdated Material Cost). As of this post, 96 units have sold.

I'm selling the Mjolnir Missiles for 75 each. As of this post, 10,000/100,000 units have sold.

All of these items are profitable for me.

So, I took a little gamble and bought a new BPO for Veldspar Mining Crystals. I paid 4.89 for a researched BPO. I immediately bought the materials to make 50 units to sell.

Veldspar Mining Crystal I
Material Cost: 999,700
Manufacturing Cost: 1,198.42
Broker Fee: 8,515.37
Sales Tax: 17,625
Total Cost: 1,027,038.79
Currently listed for 23,500, this is a razor thin profit margin. I probably shouldn't have bought this BPO, as it will turn out to be not profitable enough for me.

I have an employee now, and bought some ore from him. Much cheaper than it would cost me to buy the minerals on the market!

I'm going to do a PI update tonight. All my planets have been running for a while now. We'll harvest and sell tonight, see what kind of profit I've got on my hands.

As always, fly safe.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

WBI is now manufacturing Missiles!

The last two days of Industrialing have been good. Over on the forums, there's been a lively debate surrounding the idea that minerals you mine are free or not free.

My position has been displayed a few times in that blog. I'm still working out everything that I'm thinking on that regard. I keep notes of my manufacturing in a journal, and then transcribe them here. So, this isn't all fresh thought, it represents things I've already written down.

Anyway, I had a bunch of drones on the market when I last updated, I had just finished up 1000 hobgoblins and I was eager to get them on the open market. I got them listed and they lasted on the market for 25 minutes before all of them were bought up. This left 90 Acolytes and 90 Hornets still on the market for WBI.

The 90 Acolytes were all purchased today. Interestingly, someone bought all 90 of them, but actually paid more for the last 22 than he did for the first 68. I'm not sure what exactly happened there, but I'll take the extra 8,714 ISK. I literally did nothing for that money.

Once I saw how well the drones sold, I decided to make two more big batches. 1000 Hobgoblins and 1000 Warriors. I went shopping for minerals, and didn't find a price I liked for Isogen. I only needed 4,000 units, so I decided to mine for them. It would take me 6 minutes and I'd be done. No big deal there. Then, for some silly reason, I decided I didn't want to buy Tritanium. So, I spent about an hour mining. These don't have prices for the Tritanium, but I promise, I don't want to do that again.

Hobgoblin I
Material Cost: 1,589,560
Manufacturing Cost: 29,645.12
(Need to get the numbers for selling them later.)

Warrior I
Material Cost: 3,099,620.00
Manufacturing Cost: 29,645.12
(Again, I'll run numbers again once these are on the market)

I set three goals on my list. One was to make a big batch of Warrior I's to sell in Amarr. See above, those are in the oven.

Another goal was to go to Jita and find a researched BPO in my price range. I searched and searched, I took some ideas up with me, mostly rockets and missiles. I found a blueprint for Mjolnir Heavy Missile in Jita with good ME/PE for 5.5M. The price was right, so I went ahead and bought the BPO.

I also accomplished my third goal which was to relist the Warriors from the previous screwup in Amarr. They all sold immediately.

This morning, I decided to mine my Mackinaw full and sell the materials, this is one of those ways to make ISK while the baby is awake (We have a 7-month old in the house). I mined the thing full and sold all of the minerals with the exception of 2,000 Nocxium (which I'll get to in a moment).

All told, WBI made an easy 26,000,000 this morning from me selling mats that were laying around.

I hung onto the 2,000 Nocxium because I needed them for my next project. I could sell the Nocxium for 752.51, but to buy it, it would cost 757.00. So, I saved myself some ISK by "buying" from myself. I see now what the value of the minerals I mine is. In this case, about 10,000 ISK. I then bought some minerals on the open market (for less than what I sold my others for) and returned home to make my first batch of missiles.

Mjolnir Heavy Missiles - 1,000 runs (100,000 missiles)
Nocxium: 1,505,020.00
Pyerite: 1,756,000.00
Tritanium: 2,767,100.00
Material Cost: 7,028,120.00
Manufacturing Cost: 20,558.38
(Market Fees, I'll figure out later, as with pricing. Have to check the market in Amarr).

To cap off the night, I picked up the P1 materials I have, Oxygen and sold a big stack of them for 7,700,000 in my personal wallet.

Some things I'm thinking about:
Research - I've checked all the lowsec stations in my immediate vicinity that have labs in them (Thank you Ombey). They are all booked solid. This is something I'll have to really start to figure out.
Jump Clone - My standings with Ishukone broke 8.0, meaning I can install my first jump clone with a skill book. I don't know what the whole benefit of jump clones is, but I imagine there's a good reason to work on this! What's the most effective way to use a jump clone for an Industrial player?
Advertisement - Is anyone reading this willing to buy some ad space here? Prices would be pretty cheap right now, just something I'm thinking of.

Fly safe, readers.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Update!

Good news!

All of the Warrior I drones that were on the market have SOLD. Well, almost all, I had a few that I only listed for a day, and they didn't all sell. In fact, I'm going to grab them and move them to Amarr to sell them, since I'm able to sell at a higher price there.

My first batch of Hobgoblins is FINALLY ready for the market. I have 1000 little Norman Osbourne-sized drones ready to throw their little pumpkin bombs at all the baddies capsuleers may face.

I'm actually going to increase the price to sell them a little bit, meaning I need to update my previous calculations:

Material Cost: 0 (Yes, I know this is the subject of much debate, but I'm still using zero for this batch)
Manufacturing Cost: 29,395.00
Broker Fee: 47,106.28
Sales Tax: 97,500.00
Total Cost: 174,001.28
Listed Price: 6,500,000 (6500 each)
Profit: 6,325,998.72

---


Current Project List


Go to Jita and find a new BPO for production
Make a batch of 1,000 Warrior I's to sell in Amarr
Relist unsold Warrior I's in Amarr

Sunday, December 16, 2012

More Manufacturing

I'm still getting the hang of manufacturing. My first batch of Hobgoblins is still on the assembly line, it will finish up tonight at 1:00 in the morning. Work tomorrow morning means I won't be waiting up for them to wrap up.

I'm not pleased with my PI right now, I'll be doing some more research and some more skilling in order to get what I want out of PI. If I get my skills up; I'll have more planets and more power to utilize in an effort to maximize profits. Once I'm done getting my main character up to par on PI, I'll begin work on the alts on this account.

I also need to get some manufacturing skills built up on this account. I can only run three manufacturing jobs at a time, something I learned last night when I tried to get three sets of drones going and was rebuffed by my lack of skill (because I already had the Hobgoblins running).

On the 15th, I made another set of Warrior I's to list in Tash-Murkon Prime. I bought the materials off the market, searching for the lowest prices possible. I actually bought much more than I needed, just so that I could sell the minerals at higher prices (which I knew I'd be able to do).

Materials:
Mexallon: Bought 22,845 units at 50.10 each: 1,144,534.50
Nocxium: Bought 24,390 units at 726.85 each: 17,727,871.50
Pyerite: Bought 1,605,295 units at 12.86 each:  20,644,093.70
Tritanium: Bought 90,000 units at 5.50 each: 495,000

Warrior I's:
Material cost: 823,516.00
Manufacturing cost: 3,864.54
Broker Fee: 7,555.44
Sales Tax: 16,500
Total Cost: 851,435.98 (8,514.36 each)
Listed Price: 1,100,000 (11,000 each)
Profit: 248,564.01

As of writing this, there are only 17 left.

After getting the drones made and listed, I took the rest of the materials and sold them, expecting to make a profit:
Mexallon: Sold 22,245 units at 56.71 each meaning I made 89,391.93.
Nocxium: Sold 23,390 units at 746.33 each meaning I lost 214,959.85.
Pyerite: Sold 1,604,695 units at 13.32 each meaning I made 263,012.91.

Total profit from material flipping: 137,444.99

I won't be doing this with materials ever again. It was a total waste of my time and ISK.

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to make three batches of drones when I went to bed in order to get them on the market this morning. I got two of them made, had to make one more batch this morning after I woke up. Here is the low down:

Acolyte I - 100
Material Cost: 413,974.00
Manufacturing Cost: 3,864.54
Broker Fee: 3623.55
Sales Tax: 7499.99
Total Cost: 428,962.08 (4,289.62 each)
Listed Price: 4,999.99
Total Profit: 71,036.92

Hornet I
Material Cost: 576,067.00
Manufacturing Cost: 3,864.54
Broker Fee: 6757.94
Sales Tax: 13,987.50
Total Cost: 600,676.98 (6,006.77 each)
Listed Price: 9,325.00
Total Profit: 331823.02

Warrior I - 100
Material Cost: 828,984.00
Manufacturing Cost: 3,864.54
Broker Fee: 8,153.01
Sales Tax: 16,875.00
Total Cost: 857876.55 (8,578.77 each)
Listed Price: 11,250
Total Profit: 267123.45

These drones are listed in Amarr, which should explain the price difference.

A new character friend of mine joined WBI; he is planning on mining. I'll be buying some ore from him, but WBI doesn't make enough to buy all the ore he plans to mine.

I'm going to be looking into getting a new BPO, possibly for some form of ammunition.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Small Drone Batch

I read all the comments on here, and on the EVE Forums today. I'd like to thank each of you who took the time to read.

I did a little work today. I mined a little bit in the morning for some cash to insert directly to the corp. Total cash from my mining efforts was, 10,923,427.90. This was deposited into the Industry Account.

I decided to make a small batch (100) of Warrior I drones. I, again, used materials on hand, so I won't count the cost in my cost to build. Yes, I got a few comments about doing this, but it won't be a problem from here on out. And, while it may not represent what we consider a usual "profit per unit," it does represent the profit that WBI is making based on these drones.

100 Warrior I's
Material Cost: 0
Manufacturing Cost: 3,864.54
Broker Fee: 7,555.44
Sales Tax: 16,500.00
Total Cost (per Unit): 27,919.98 (279.20)
Selling Price per Unit: 11,000 (slightly less than the regional average, will be the cheapest in this station)

Total Profit Expected: 1,072,080.02

I messed up and accidentally listed the drones for 1 day. Perhaps they'll sell, but, I'll probably have to relist them.

After this, I sold all the materials that I had previously mined. All of them. This represented the largest influx of cash I've ever had, personally. Should give me some breathing room for a while.

I did a little bit of work on PI, I'm completely unsatisfied with my results from last night's 4 hours worth of work. A simple 3 days worth of skilling could help, but I'm not sure if I'll like the results. One nice thing is that I don't have to pick up as often because P2 is much smaller yield!

We'll see how the drones sell. The batch of Hobgoblins will be done soon, too. Then, I can get them on the market.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Planetary Interaction

I'll start by saying this, it's a good thing that once this is set-up, it's a pretty simple process to keep it going indefinitely. I'm not sure what the long-term Dust 514 ramifications will be on PI, but at this point, it's a pretty awesome and simple ISK maker.

Up until now, I've basically made some big-time P1 centers. I have 4 planets that I can run, and they were each making P1 products. After three days of cycling, I sold Precious Metals, Toxic Metals, Electrolytes and Reactive Metals on the market for a total profit of 15,038,437.

So, the goal here was to change my set up to make P2 products. I wanted to do this without lifting my command centers, thus saving me some start-up cash.

I was already using a Barren, an Ice and two Storm planets, which limited the P2 materials I could create.

I decided to make Mechanical Parts, Coolant, and Rocket Fuel. The first two are both integral to making POS Fuel. For now, they'll be great to sell, but possibly at some point, they'll be good for actually making POS Fuel (That's a ways away, though).

Mechanical Parts move relatively steady in the region, the lowest day in the last 10 was 1,000 units. Selling at an average of between 8,000 and 9,000. I'll have the ability to make about 120 per day. Without doing anymore work than clicking three times, I will make a million.

Coolant moves even faster. The lowest day in the last 10 was more than 2,000 units. The price is about the same, and I'll produce at the same rate. That brings my total/day to 2,000,000.

Rocket Fuel does not move nearly as reliably. This may end up being something I don't continue making. It's okay for tonight, but I'll be keeping my eye on this to see if it's worth making, or if I shouldn't move my production elsewhere.

Finally, I'm using my fourth planet to make Oxygen. It's a requirement for POS fuel. I should be able to produce about 2400 units a day. It sells at a price of 280, and moves in huge quantities, yesterday 270,000 units were sold. This means I should make an average of 672,000 a day. This is a free way to make nearly 3,000,000 each day.

All that said, I'm not pleased. I want to increase production of the Mechanical Parts and Coolant. If I add another Advanced Processing Facility, I should be able to double what I'm earning. That'll require an extra level in the Command Center Upgrades skill (a mere 3 day, 6 hour skill boost). I'll queue it up once I get Product Efficiency to level 5 in about two weeks.

Below, I'm adding a picture of my Mechanical Parts production center. I need more power to add more facilities, so I assume I'm going to get a backup at some point, the facilities won't be able to keep up. Once I get the upgrade, I should be able to start moving products at a better rate.


I'll have a better idea after tomorrow night how this has worked. Although, a cursory glance tells me this may have been a bad decision. It looks like I was making 5,000,000 a day with the way I was doing things. The frustration is that there is a greater volume and therefore requires multiple trips. This new way should only require one trip. Maybe I actually had more sitting in the area than I thought, meaning this was more than three days worth of PI. If I did, in fact, just cut my profitability, I hope it's a temporary problem until I skill a little bit more. I should be able to add some power to what I'm making and then add another planet to the mix, there is another planet that would be greatly valuable to me in the production of P3 materials. The P3 materials sell for exponentially more than the P2. I'll be doing more research into all of this in the coming days. Once I get set up the way I want, I'll add some alts into the mix and get them on PI. This should increase profitability even more with just a few simple clicks each day.

Special thanks to this link for the PI chart, makes life a lot easier.

Getting started - Day One.

Wulf Brother Industries opened its doors on December 12, 2012. Since then, we've been working to get our industrial queues set up for manufacturing.

Since I've spent most of my New Eden life as a miner, I have a lot of minerals in reserve. My refining skills are super, and therefore I can mine a lot of my own materials. However, after perusing other Indy blogs, I've decided that I don't want to spend a lot of time mining. But, while I'm getting started in the Industrial world, it makes sense to continue mining.

I donated 100,000,000 ISK to the corporation as seed money. I expect that I'll be paid back at some point.

I also split the wallet into two divisions, the Master Wallet (taxes, rentals, etc) and the Industry Wallet. I split the money in half, 50,000,000 in each.

This morning, December 13, I made the first corporate purchase, 4 BPO's.

I purchased a BPO (50ME/30PE) for the following Drones:

Acolyte I
Hobgoblin I
Hornet I
Warrior I

The cost for the 4 blueprints was 10,000,000. This represented a major investment for WBI, 10% of our starting cash-on-hand was now wrapped up in blueprints. (There was also a broker fee of 28,201.98 for accepting the contract)

I checked the market for profitability and movability of these drones. Which ones was I relatively sure I could move fastest? I decided to make a batch of Hobgoblins. I used my personal minerals, which I have on hand, and set up a build for 1,000 Hobgoblins. They will be finished on December 17, 2012 06:42 NET

I then set about figuring out my costs.

Material Cost: 0
Manufacturing Cost: 26,395
Total Cost: 26,395
Cost per unit: 26.4

The sell price for each will be 6,000. I'd like to see if they move at this price. If they don't, I'll rethink my price point, possibly even move the drones a few jumps to Amarr. I'll set them up for a week and see what happens.

To set up the order it will cost:

Broker Fee: 30,572.31
Sales Tax: 90,000
Total Market Cost: 120,572.31

If I add my 2 cost totals together, I have a total cost of:

146,967.31 or 146.97 per unit

This means we should make a total of 5,853.03 per unit, for a total profit of:

5,853,030

This would be more than half the initial investment returned to the corporation with the first batch.

I'm excited and apprehensive.

In order to not make the day a total waste, I also mined my Mackinaw full of Kernite, refined it and sold it for the corporation through buy orders. The net profit of this venture was: 7,342,891.31.

This leaves the Industry Wallet at 47,314,689.33 after day 1.

I've had a cup of coffee and my PI is about to finish it's day-long cycle. I'll be selling what I got from there, and then reestablishing all of my PI in an attempt to make higher level products. Hope to see some solid results from that venture, too.