The ultimate ISK making guide

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Mining

Expected Yield

1.0 to 0.9 space: 1 million ISK per hour
0.8 to 0.5 space: 1.5 - 2 million ISK per hour on average
0.4 to 0.1 space: 3 million ISK per hour
0.0 space: 10-20 million ISK per hour
Strategies

Ninja Mining: Park an industrial ship in a safe spot and mine with a ship that fulfills the following criteria (in alphabetical order): moves. If you see pirates, run for a moon or a safe spot. Fill a can to the capacity your industrial can carry, have it drop in and pick up the ore. Rince and repeat. Bookmarks are your friends in this scenario. It's a decent way to make money for solo players.
Hub System: Take a hauler with 20 giant secure cans to an out of the way system, ideally to a spot located between several mining fields (meaning you can warp to it from each of them). Place the cans in a circle around that spot. The idea is to insta-warp and drop whatever you have for a pick up later on. The more out of the way the system is, the more centralized your "can-ring", the better your reward.

Agent Missions

The ideal way to make money for newbies and when your favourite TV show is on.
R&D Agents: Purely luck. Can be 120 days without anything, or 3 blueprints in a row. I recommend you get one for the sake of it.
Regular Agents: On average this yields you 250,000 ISK per pop (roughly 1 implant every 30 runs)

NPC Hunting

Profitable if you know what you are doing: Ideally a constant respawn you can handly without any major problems. Dieing will throw you back quite a bit so you should stay well out of close encounters. It's a better idea to chain them.
Pirate bases are a little difficult with up to 30 spawns, so I recommend you slowly test your limits with those.
Exploit 1: Find a belt that suits your ability and kill all NPCs except for the weakest one. After a short while the mobs will start to respawn, again kill all except the one you left out the first time. Rince and repeat. The next spawn cycle will be much faster and the respawn time will continue to become shorter until you reach instant respawns. Chaining in 0.0 requires a small group of people, ideally with shield transfer arrays for everyone: 4 medium shield arrays pointed at one ship make it practically invincible against even the heaviest NPC battleships
Exploit 2: Hide behind an asteroid when fighting heavy guristia: Since they are using missiles, they won't be able to hit you

Trade Runs

Nowadays only suitable for newbies. You'll need an industrial ship, an idea of something that is being sold cheap in one spot, and bought at a high price in another spot. It takes a lot of initial research, but after that things are pretty much on auto pilot.

Scams / Tricks

Here you usually rely on other players being naive, not informed, in a rush or simply not too bright. Not surprisingly, this works well
Sell a shuttle for 10 million. People can be desperate, in a rush or absent minded - voila easy profit.
Overprice minerals. Again people sometimes overlook the "extra zero". Quite similar to the shuttle thing.
Putting a condor named scorpion in the trade window - they used to look pretty much identical.
Get a small industrial and steal unsecured cans in 0.5 space. This has somewhat been nerfed since players can now attack you for up to 24 hours (unlike before where it resulted in a cheerful "police intervention" to your benefit).
Corp theft: Gain trust, grab what you can and make a run. Also: Open up a new account since your former "friends" will want to see you rot in MMO-hell for all eternety. Excellent profit though.
Scamming is an easy way of making money and a sure-fire way to destroy your reputation for good. Period.

Pirating

Requires at least 3 people
In 0.4 to 0.1 space hunting
The more of a reputation you have, the more you can reap by extorting, negotiating and attacking miners
Good negotiation skills, a decent reputation and a nice exchange of words can result in an income of 30-50 million ISK per hour.

 

The ultimate ISK making guide