This next guide is from the EVE Tribune
If you are interested in trying EVE you could visit their site - a player led Newspaper that really produces fascinating insights in the game we all love - EVE
See that here:
Second - there is a decent guide below from a guy called hisgoatness - brief summary on the different ways to make ISK - with links to some decent info which provide even further detail.
Article below
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Making ISK for fun and, well, profit
The purpose of this guide will be to list and explain different ways to make ISK to support the PVP of your main.
1. Mission Running on an Alt.
It doesnt take long to train up an alt to fly a Raven with some decent tanking skills. Keep it in a nub corp or an alt corp in empire and find yourself some lvl 4 agents with the highest quality you can to work up to. Train up some of your social skills to maximize your LP and rewards from the agents.
One such example is running missions for the Sisters of Eve. They have Sisters Scan probe launchers in their LP store for 14k LP. These sell for close to 40m ISK in Jita. Train up your social skills and find a high quality level 4 agent who will pay out close to 10k LP per mission with good skills. Ignoring loot and salvage (which if you have the time is also some good ISK), it can take you about 30-45mins to do the bigger missions. Reward and bounties will net you between 10-30m ISK per mission. So in less than 2 hours of missioning you could earn about 60m in reward/bounty, and 2 sisters scan probe launchers to sell for 80m. So a total of about 140m ISK made in 2 hours.
Some helpful mission running resources:
http://eveinfo.com/missions/
lots of helpful information on mission types and agent locations.
http://eve-agents.com/
useful for finding different agents in different regions
http://bytewyse.co.uk/commandments.html
Advice to mission runners.
http://eve-survival.org/missions/
Walkthroughs of kill missions.
http://joonicks.eu/eve/lpstore.php
LP store database
http://www.evegeek.com/npc_damage.php
A chart with damage types of different NPCs
Also, live in-game help for level 4 missions is available in the chat channel: LVL 4.
2. COSMOS Mission Running
Running COSMOS missions can be a profitable venture and is done a lot differently than regular mission running. Most COSMOS mission agents require you to retrieve some item and bring it back to them. Nearly all of the items they want you to retrieve can be bought on the market ahead of time and before the mission even starts. COSMOS missions are not friendly. You will find large numbers of webbing/scramming frigs everywhere you go. There will be large spawns in unusual places that might catch you off guard, like in an asteroid belt or outside a station. Always be on your guard when running COSMOS missions. COSMOS does NOT require hacking or archaeology skills to complete. There are several agents that give repeatable missions for turning in items found in the complexes using hacking or archaeology, but there is no real benefit to running these agents. They give lousy rewards and offer agent/corp standing gain only. You will develop an odd collection of BPC's as COSMOS mission rewards that require the hacking and archaeology items found in these complexes to build too, but in most cases they aren't worth the effort required to construct them. COSMOS missions are NOT repeatable - with the exception of the aforementioned agents. It is important that you know what you are doing and do it right the first time when running COSMOS, as that agent will not give you a second chance if you screw it up.
The rewards for mastering COSMOS missions can be very profitable indeed. You can get rare implants, BPCs to rare items, random faction and cosmos modules that drop, and access to faction ship BPCs. If you get really high faction standing after running these missions for a while, some of the agents in space will actually give you free faction ships.
Links:
http://evevault.ign.com/View.php?view=GameInfo.Detail&id=2
Introduction to COSMOS and agent listings.
http://eve.grismar.net/wikka.php?wakka=CosmosConstellations
More useful information.
http://eveinfo.com/
useful section on COSMOS agents.
http://www.eve-files.com/media/corp/ovc/okkelen.html
another helpful write-up.
http://warpedcore.org/cosmos/index.php
useful site for caldari cosmos.
http://www.hb3.info/cosmos/
Very useful site on all faction cosmos stuff, its in german so you will need to babelfish it or have google translate it for you.
3. Running Hidden Complexes:
A couple patches ago CCP added a ton of hidden complexes that can be found by probing. These plexes come in a variety of difficulties and rewards. To run these successfully you need a good covops ship and skills to find them quickly, and then the ability to run them quickly and collect the rewards.
Some skills of note.
Covert ops V
Astrometrics V
Astrometric Pinpointing IV
Astrometric Triangulation IV
Signal Acquisition IV
Production Effiency V
One of the racial Encryption methods IV/V
One of the racial Starship Engineering IV/V
Mechanical engineering IV/V
Modules/Rigs
Gravity Capacitor Rigs x2
Sisters Scan Probe Launcher
Probe BPC pack 1000run copies of each probe type
Sisters Core Scanner Probes
The above allow you to get your complex scanning Covert ops pimped out, ready to find plexes.
Focus on Radar and Magnetometric and Unknowns when youre bored. Radar plexes net you datacores, decryptors and Interface BPC's along with the components to build the racial interfaces. Minmatar in angel space, Amarr in Blood/True Sansha space etc etc.. The Magnetometric plexes net rig components including t2, t2 rig bpcs, and the Racial Encryption method skillbooks...
Unknown plexes can net content worth bringing a friend along for! MUCH more fun than ratting thats for damn sure. [Unknowns are combat plexes Ed]
Helpful Links:
http://www.d-nightmare.de/exploration/OGDB/database.php
A variety of walkthru information on different types of hidden complexes
http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…ic&threadID=431586&page=1
Guide on scan probing
http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=445716
Guide on finding hidden complexes
http://blogs.chimpswithkeyboar…hive/2008/05/01/1915.aspx
another guide to complexes
4. Invention with an alt corp in Empire
With some decent skilling and a little market research, a good amount of ISK can be made with only a little time invested doing T2 invention. Basically you set up an alt with the needed science and production skills. You get your faction standing up a bit so you can put a POS up in empire, or dont worry about standings and do it in low sec. Set up a POS with labs for inventions. Acquire datacores, interfaces, BPCs, and the needed materials for building things. Take the items needed and invent t2 ships or modules. Build these items using the invented T2 BPCs, sell them on the market, collect profit. That of course is a very basic summary of how it works, but there are some good write-ups on exactly what you need to get to do invention. So with a proper skilled alt, you would only have to log him on to start and finish jobs, whether it be inventing a T2 BPC or building things from those invented BPCs. Getting your own R&D agents rolling will save you ISK on datacores as you wouldnt have to buy them all on market, thus increasing your profits.
Helpful Links:
http://www.eve-production.org/invention/intro.html
Guide explains how invention work and the skills and components you need to do it.
http://more4you.ws/articles/la…Short-Invention-Guide.htm
another guide
http://igbtools.com/index.php?m=invention&typeID=956
Useful invention calculator
http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=743617
invention profit calculator
http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=495139
invention Q+A
5. Trading
Trading can be one of the most profitable forms of ISK making if you get good at it. There are two basic methods of trading. Sitting in a market hub like Jita and playing the buy order market on items with a good buffer between buy and sell orders. Buy stuff low, turn around and sell it high. This takes some market privacy as you need to be able to watch your orders and change your price when another trader plays the .01 ISK game with you (lowering the price by .01 from yours in order to get on the top of the buy order list). It takes minimal skills, and with good skills you can do this remotely without even being in the system. It takes money to make money though, which means you need to have some starting funds in order to buy things you are gonna sell. Its a lot like playing the stock market.
The second basic method of trading is playing the different market hubs together. What this means is buying things in one market Hub that is in high abundance, then hauling it to another market hub where they are selling for higher. If you do your homework this can be very profitable. You can buy cheap things in Rens or Amarr, and haul them to Jita for profit, or vice versa. Also, you can set up buy orders on mission loot drops in missioning hubs for very cheap as mission runners want to unload their loot, then haul it to a market hub where it sells for higher.
Whichever of these methods you chose to use, be sure to train up decent trading skills, as well as some navigation and hauling skills if you use to play the markets.
Some testimonials:
"Station an alt in Jita and put up buy/sell orders limited to the 4-4 station on anything with a decent margin between the lowest sell order and the highest buy order which trades in decent volumes. Refresh orders on 0.01 ISK basis as often as you stand to. I use an alt with <1mil SP to do this. This method paid for my mom and brings in up to about 3bil per month (depending on how much effort I put into it)."
"I move high volume items from Jita to another trade hubs. I just use a noob hauler alt and I have a noob trader that I use.
Usually I can double my ISK by moving stuff from Jita to Amarr or Rens. Takes awhile to sell sometimes so if you need ISK fast moving stuff wont work like that. But it is good steady income and you only need to put in a few hours at the most."
"Stick up wide range, low cost buy orders for high volume stuff like minerals, advanced materials, T1 drops, salvage etc. For example, a 10 jump radius buy order for cheap trit to capture a bunch of lvl 4 mission hubs. Forget about it for a couple of weeks. Come back and you'll find a small stash of stuff in your hangar which you can sell in the nearest market hub or repro for cheap mins.
I used to buy all minerals for building bs's using this method. Build cost was around 50mill and I sold them for 95mill. Output was only 1 or 2 bs a month but it was easy money and took very little effort."
Helpful Links:
http://eve.allakhazam.com/db/guides.html?guide=840
Basic guide on trading.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=487360
excellent player written trading guide.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/in…p?a=topic&threadID=200967
Good guide on playing the buy/sell orders.
http://blog.goddchen.de/2008/0…in-station-trading-guide/
Another guide.
6. R&D Agents
A very passive form of ISK generation is the use of R&D agents. While it probably doesnt generate enough for you to live off of, its completely free income once you have it setup. ISK is generated in the form of Research Points. Each day your research agent gives you RPs in a particular research field. You then take these RPs and cash them in for datacores. Datacores are used in invention so you can sell them on the market for inventors to buy. As an added bonus if you run 1 mission a day with that agent, they double your RPs for that day. Your faction standing and standing with the agents corp determines what level and quality agent you can use. Your faction standing can quickly be raised using Factional Warfare of buying and cashing in COSMOS faction tags.
Basically you want to get your alt and get his faction standing up, and then run missions with the corp of the R&D agent you want to use in order to get your corp standing up so you can talk to the agent. The goal being to get level 4 agents in the highest quality possible as they will give out the most RPs per day. Different types of datacores are worth more than others so its important to check the market and see which ones are the most valuable and use agents that give out RP in those areas. So there is some legwork in the beginning getting your standing up, but once you have done that, you get RPs everyday, total passive income generation.
For an example of max profits you could earn, look at this:
You have an alt who gets his standing up for lvl4 electronic engineering agents. You train up Research Project Management to 5, allowing you to use 6 R&D agents. Going with the highest quality agents gets you about 110 RP/day per agent. You run 1 mission with each agent a day. That means you get 220 RP/day with each agent for a total of 1320 RP per day. After a month thats 39,600 RP. Each Electronic Engineering datacore cost 50 RP. So thats 792 datacores for the month. Right now they sell for about 400k each on the market. So thats 316.8 million ISK profit for the month.
Helpful Links:
http://www.eve-guides.com/other/r&dagents.php
guide on getting agents
http://eve-agents.com/
Agent finder
7. Buying/Selling Characters
I have made most of my ISK through buying and selling characters. Its a lot like playing the real estate market in real life. Be warned though that you have to some a bit of capital to start with, and more than 1 account for training. Basically you hunt across the character sales forum, find a character that is missing some key skills and the guy is desperate to get rid of it. Low ball him or give him a moderate buyout offer. You would be surprised what some people will settle for when they need the cash and are desperate to unload a character. Next train up the character for a few months getting all the important skills done. Its important to have a direction with the character whether that be uber hac/recon pilot, capital pilot, command ship, or industrial character. Once you have a decently specialized character trained, put him up on the market. Your advantage is you shouldnt be desperate to sell yourself, so wait it out. In my experience there is always someone who gets trigger happy and will pay too much for something they want if you are patient enough.
Spend a year doing this and you will be raking in the billions. For some examples, I bought a pirate char for 4 bil, 3 months later I sold him for 6.5bil. One industrial character I bought for 1 bil 6 months later sold for 6bil. If you are a high roller in RL and can afford to run multiple accounts, you can do several characters at once and really rake in the profit.
-hisgoatness
