More Ways to Make ISK

After the last ISK article, I wanted to point out a few other ways to make ISK that were not covered. The previous list was set more around the most common ways to make ISK, whereas this one will cover quite a few that are almost categorized as "niche" methods. With these other methods you can make a decent amount of ISK in certain situations.




Planetary Interaction

Planteary Interaction is a great passive ISK earner. By doing PI in low-sec, null-sec, and wormholes; ISK flows quite well earning at least 500 million a month depending on the setup. By using low-sec planets you can make large amounts of Nanite Repair Paste to create this ISK. In null-sec, and wormholes, having planets create Tier 1 PI commodities can at least generate 800 million a month. The reason I keep the earnings vague is it all depends on what you do, where you are, and where you sell it. Like I said before, it can be a great passive income. You can find my PI Manufacturing Post here.

Wormholes

This method is an article in itself, but one of the best ways to make a lot of ISK in a short amount of time. Of course it requires a great understanding of wormholes, and an even better understanding of fitting ships for sleeper ratting. Of course ratting is not the only way to make ISK in wormholes; there are also many gas fields to mine as well, and with the new mobile depots, this makes for an easy place to drop off commodities. In short there are a couple ways to do this efficiently. One is to setup a POS in a wormhole, live there to generate ISK on a daily basis, and to sell the goods in high-sec once a week. If you plan to do a solo effort, claiming a Class 2 wormhole with a static high-sec exit is a good way to do this. If you can gather many friends to help, a Class 4 wormhole with a static Class 4 exit will help double your income, as it takes a week for wormhole sites to respawn. These methods will be explained in great detail with the upcoming wormhole guide.

Begging

While this method disallows you to have dignity, it is a decent income. In large trade hubs, players will ask people to give them 1-2 million ISK to be able to afford a fit, and in turn receive 2-5 million from several generous players. I'm sure after time people will start to ignore such requests, but seeing that they only seem to ask once each day in Jita, I can imagine it's a decent collective amount.


Plexing

While the static deadspace complexes have been removed, there are still several complexes that are used for various COSMOS missions. A player can take a decent ship through here, and "farm" the items needed for COSMOS missions, and put them up on contracts. Some items sell for as little as 5 million ISK each, but some sell for up to 150 million each.


High Sec POS Anchoring

Most corporations do not want to bother with grinding reputation to anchor their high-sec control towers. A few players offer such a service to join a corporation, and anchor the POS for them. Last I looked people would charge 300 million ISK to do such a task.


Cloning Services

As another High-Sec service, some players will make their own corporation that reflects their standings to various corporations and factions. By doing so they allow corporation members to use this standing to install jump clones in various parts of empire space.


Corporation Skills

How many people do you know that have their Corporation Management skills maxed out? Not many I'm sure. Many corporations will pay players with the max skills to update the corp allowing the corporation to have all the benefits that come from the skills. I've seen players charge 500 million for such an update.


Patch Trading

Patch Trading is a great way to make large amounts of ISK over time. By looking at planned changes on the dev blog, and the test server you can find out what ships and modules will cost more to produce after a patch. With upcoming ship re-balancing patches, you can find several ships that have an "extra material" list added to their blueprint. By calculating the cost of that ship or module, you can determine what the said item will cost some time after the patch. After calculating the price, you can see how much more it would be than the current cost on the Tranquility server. If it's quite a bit more, stock up on those items, and save them until the price increases after the patch.

Example: In September 2012 the test server showed Scythe cruisers with a material cost close to 8 million each. At the time you could build Scythes at 3 million each. After the Retribution 1.0 patch, the Scythe slowly went up in price, and will continue to do so until the material cost is at least matched. Anyone that bought Scythes previous to the patch was subject to making at least 5 million ISK per ship they owned. There will be many patches like this through 2013, so this can be a great way for players to make ISK (if they are patient).


Plex Trading

If you understand the basics of economics and the market price history trading, PLEX can be a good way to generate ISK. Since it is one of the most traded item in the game, market characters can make a lot of money in a single day trading these. The only caveat is that the character needs to have market skills maxed for cost, and corporation/faction standings at 10 to have the absolute lowest broker fee cost. It can be done without these, but a player can make a large percentage more by reducing the costs as much as possible. Just remember you might trade up to 100 PLEX in one hour, and sometimes the margin between buy and sell isn't much more than 9 million. The entire process is based on buying and selling as quickly as possible.


Margin Trading

In the last article we talked briefly about station trading, but with Margin Trading you find a system with an increased demand for various modules. By doing so you can control your own market, and set your own price. The only issue is finding the system.

Just keep an eye out for big corporations that do a lot of anything in a certain area, then capitalize on their needs in that area. An example would be stocking up various modules needed for incursions in incursion invasion constellations. You can also go to various regions looking at the price history while looking for overpriced sales, then finding out where they happened. Even if you don't see a lot of sales in the history, keep in mind that's probably because no one has ever bothered to create a supply.

Conclusion

So there you go, even more ways to make ISK. I know a lot of these aren't the most appealing, but they are ways many players use to make their money. Enjoy getting rich, and fly safe. o7