How Profitable is Trading?

[Chenni]

Right now I'm just doing exploration and Euro Space Trucking and I'm finding them okay sources of income. I'm just curious, how does trading fare? Are they the best source of space dollars with respect to time and effort spent?

Would I be like an overnight billionaire if I just do a weekend's worth of trading?

[Assassin Aria]

In my opinion, it's legit the same speed as bounty hunting. I can't do either trading or bounty hunting as it's too tedious for me. I prefer to 'live' as a space faring contractor so I'll do missions to benefit my respective allies. The income doing missions is garbage but can prove useful if you want to influence the turn of galactic events.

In 2015 I used to do 'rare trading' where I'd make 1 to 2 mill a run. Back then, that was a lot of money. Bounties only gave you 500,000 per hour at best. Now they changed it to balance the way income is made. I hear that exploration is a great way to earn income now.

I wish they'd make mining more profitable, though. I've geared my trading vessel to mine as well and the amount I make doing it just isn't worth it.

[AnTi HErO]

for what a billionaire?häää?this is not monopoly,lol......trading is very profitble!!!but you can make cr. /trade in different ways...smuggle.. or you need a very good reputation in your system(home)+(better and inter. trade missions)+more cr....or old school exemple/way search mining system(tech systems for..)buy cheap sell expensive ...and and your are the boss!save fly cmdr!

[raygun]

I just got ED last week and logged about 20 hours so far. I decided to be a trader and essentially do paid errands. I finally got enough credits to buy a Viper MarkIV with about a 100k to boost my power systems. I made more money in 2 hours that the other 18. Having a ship that can jump farther with more storage opened up higher paying jobs. This has increased my reputation for better, higher paying jobs. Basically, the game accelerates as you do more.

[Churchill Cat]

Trading can very profitable if you have a ship with a large cargo hold.
Ships to aim for for trading: Type-6 > Type 7 > Python > Anaconda

I found that the best way of money making with trading is finding a system that is in Outbreak and then find a High Tech system near by and trade between the two.

Hope this helps ;)

[DeathRow]

Originally posted by raygun:

I just got ED last week and logged about 20 hours so far. I decided to be a trader and essentially do paid errands. I finally got enough credits to buy a Viper MarkIV with about a 100k to boost my power systems. I made more money in 2 hours that the other 18. Having a ship that can jump farther with more storage opened up higher paying jobs. This has increased my reputation for better, higher paying jobs. Basically, the game accelerates as you do more.

Ye dude you earn the lategame ships way faster than the earlygame ones. Cutter? Pff gimme 5 min
My first cobra? Took me ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hours man

[Delfino]

Trading is not very profitable in this game unless one owns a big ship. And even then it's not that good...

[Frase]

I have no problem earning about 18-20 mill per hour running bulks in my Cutter

Bounty hunting for me tops out at 7-8mill an hour with half decent HAZ RES spawns in my Corvette with just pure bounties alone.

Both of these are without missions from the board of course. There are always going to be better ways of cheesing your way to the end game if that is your goal but as I reached the big 3 many moons ago I am not aware of what those are.

I would however imagine bounty hunting using something like a vulture up until the point you can afford a Python would a semi-efficient way of maximizing your time without board flipping for hours (is this still a thing anymore???) and then running some single hop 5k+ per tonne <200ls medium pad bulk routes breaks the credits per hour of just pure bounties.

With that python your will probably top out at 6-7 mill/hour bulk trading which is consistant cash unlike RNG spawning in RES sites.

You can of course always kit it out for combat when you are bored bulking.

[Frank K]

Trading is most profitable if you take delivery missions for a faction you are Allied with that is in Boom.

[Delfino]

20 millions per hour in trading? Why I can't believe that? I used to trade in Type-9 without shields with 500 tons of cargo. It took ma a while to find a route with only one jump carrying imperial slaves. It's hard to earn more than 5000 per tone. On a way there and back. This gives 2,5 mln in about 15 minutes. I hardly believe anyone can make more than 10 millions per hour with trading. This is of course extreme example, I wouldn't fly without shields in open. Also keep in mind that in heavy cargo ship one must sometimes take 2 jumps for a proftable route and finding 5000k worth route is not always easy.

Now let's take Type-6. How much can you earn per hour? 2 millions? I would take Asp or Dolphin for the same price, get friendly with some fractions and carry passangers for easy 5-10 millions per hour.

Bounty hunting - ok it's not that much profitable either. 8 millions per hour is huge in my opinion, I can't find so many big targets even in haz res.

At this moment passanger missions are the most profitable way of earning especially in smaller and cheaper ships.

[funkynutz]

Can make about 1.5-2 mil every other jump if you find a good trade route. You just need around 400T cargo space. Boooooring way of making money though.

[Frase]

Originally posted by Delfino:

20 millions per hour in trading? Why I can't believe that? I used to trade in Type-9 without shields with 500 tons of cargo. It took ma a while to find a route with only one jump carrying imperial slaves. It's hard to earn more than 5000 per tone. On a way there and back. This gives 2,5 mln in about 15 minutes. I hardly believe anyone can make more than 10 millions per hour with trading. This is of course extreme example, I wouldn't fly without shields in open. Also keep in mind that in heavy cargo ship one must sometimes take 2 jumps for a proftable route and finding 5000k worth route is not always easy.

Now let's take Type-6. How much can you earn per hour? 2 millions? I would take Asp or Dolphin for the same price, get friendly with some fractions and carry passangers for easy 5-10 millions per hour.

Bounty hunting - ok it's not that much profitable either. 8 millions per hour is huge in my opinion, I can't find so many big targets even in haz res.

At this moment passanger missions are the most profitable way of earning especially in smaller and cheaper ships.

In my shieldless Cutter I'm currently hauling 792T at a profit of 4,743 cred/tonne which gives me 3,756,456 Credits every 12 mins +/- 30 seconds.

3,756,456 x 5 completed loops per hour = 18,782,280 Credits

This is a single hope and both stations are 50ls-130ls away from star, so there is little SC time needed.

Without sounding cocky, my cutter is damn site quicker than your T9 at docking and moving from place-to-place. Engineered it will have 3+ LY jump range advantage which opens up a host of other single hop trade routes without forgetting a 150m/s boost speed advantage.

Last week I had a 5,200/tonne route and that took me over the 20mill mark

If I'm not happy running shieldless due to high traffic I run a class 6 generator which will reduce my profit by roughly 8% still sitting at 16-17+mil/hour.

[calabacina]

Im not an expert merchant but with my T9 I can farm 4/6mil cr por hour.
in RES you can also farm A LOT of money (and for me it's funniest) but it depend on your luck with spawns...

when I need sure and fast credits I do taxi mission with my 50ly ASP, in my experience, is a lot faster then trading.

[Delfino]

Ok probbably this is possible but it's kinda extreme. Cutter without shields and 2 very lucky, close-by systems. When I get a little bit lucky I can make 20 millions per hour in my Orca with normal shields and safety build. Orca is much easier to buy than Cutter. One very good thing about trade is the fact that it is reliable and not very absorbing. Once you have the systems you can just trade without using brain and for example watch a movie same time. It's much harder with passangers missions as it usually requires some planning.

There is also another niche which I found lately. Passanger transport missions with Beluga. It needs some preparation as one has to get allied with several fractions and then we can start filling up Beluga with passangers, sending them to nearby systems. After some time we get allied in those systems too. With such a setup we can make easily over 10 millions per hour by just hooping between same few systems and filling Beluga with passangers, but as a bonus we also get a very fast boost in federal or imperial ranks. It still requires much planning and we need to have different cabins placed at those systems to quickly reconfigure our ship when there's need. But I would definately recommend this for of earning rather than trading. It's actually pity I discovered it so late.

[Frase]

Originally posted by Delfino:

Ok probbably this is possible but it's kinda extreme. Cutter without shields and 2 very lucky, close-by systems.

I'm not so sure what is lucky or extreme about it? 3.7mill per loop, 5 loops per hour, 18.5mil profit per hour. The math is there for you... I'm currently doing it and have been for the past year as and when I need credits. These trade routes are not hard to find.

Regarding shields I have stated that I run them when trading in busy areas. The drop in trade profit is not exactly substantial, I simply run without them (sometimes) to maximise my profits when in desolate areas. With shields I can still pull 16+mill an hour. The trick to trading is getting that loop time from station-to-station down, that is where you start increasing your profit-per-hour. Couple this with the fact im hauling circa 50% more cargo than you at a lower loop time. This mounts up.

there are currently 3 single hop trade routes within 70LY of my current trade loop at 4700-4800/tonne. All of the stations are <250ls from the star.

Right now I'm just doing the one with lowest LS total to station. When this loop is depleted I will move to the next loop.

[Chenni]

Hi All, thanks for the input. I was just curious how profitable trading is. Seems you would need monstrous cargo to be able to run huge gains and even so not that far from Space Uber and Bounty Hunting.