Market Milestones - Reaching 300b

Well, I seem to recall first starting trading in EVE recently, but apparently it has been almost 2 and a half years now... I have no idea where the time went, but my markets keep plugging along, and when I add my income from my main trader plus my other side projects (Simela, Thera) I am well over 300b in profit now. Nothing to brag about considering the earnings of many traders.

Since May, I have been on "casual mode," and have only updated orders and restocked markets one to two times a month. Yet I still bring in decent profit considering that I only put a few hours into the market a month now, with most of that time spend hauling goods. My isk efficiency now is better than it has ever been, even in the record month of November 2014 when I made over 20b on one character. I am happier now to simply spend a few hours a month to pull in 6-10b.

Here are some major changes I've made in trading over the past 6 months:

- Sadly in some ways, I no longer trade in Simela. It was too time consuming to maintain the market there, and was originally just a side project. In total over the course of a year or so, I think I made roughly 40b isk from simply putting common items on the market and leaving them for a month or two at a time.

- I continue to change what I sell (and where) based on market and gameplay trends, but nothing more sophisticated than looking at Dotlan's PVP / NPCs killed numbers and saying "this region seems active, let's go there." I feel I have reached the maximal balance of time relative to potential profit.

- I've become a little more lazy, shall we say, when it comes to hauling my goods. I will probably be a bit more careful now that I am activity playing EVE and so on, but when I was playing casually I would sometimes haul 5-10b isk in one trip. In fact, here's a rather funny screenshot of a rare occasion where I had to venture through Uedama with 4b in my cargo, thankfully not in a freighter and flying away unnoticed:

- What about the profit? Over the past year, I have switched to making long term investments, so most of my liquid isk goes into market speculation that may or may not result in big payouts later on. For instance, one investment I made--like many players--was to buy a ton of Geckos. I sold most of them when the prices hit 120-130m a piece. Whether I will have similar luck with other investments remains to be seen.

- Finally, I did "cash out" recently. During the last PLEX for Good I donated 60+ PLEX to win books signed by CCP, which was most of my liquid isk at the time. I am now back to where I was a year ago in terms of liquid isk. Ready, I guess, for another PLEX for Good to donate to...assuming it is too optimistic to think there will never again be another such crisis. If only.

Trading definitely remains one of the best possible ways of making isk with little time. All you need is a decent starting capital (or some aggressive day trading at Jita to get there) and knowledge of the market in some--any--aspect of the game. If you know what is a "low" price for some item X,Y,Z and you know what a "high" price is, you're in business.