Selling - location, location, location

As I said in a previous post, I've been selling primarily in a trade hub and a mission hub. The graph below shows the relative number of transactions in each location.

It's (almost) the same "suite" of items that I'm selling at both. I have found though that some items just don't shift at all at the mission hub, whereas other items are actually almost as popular there as at the trade hub. It takes a bit of time to learn exactly what sells where, but hopefully this information might be useful to other people planning their sales strategy. The simplest use of this would be to decide how much of each item to list in each location as a starting point until you can see which items work best at which locations.

Mission hubs verus trade hubs:

• Items in the mission hub generally take a bit longer to move
• Prices are typically a 10-20% premium over the trade hub
• Orders in a mission hub generally require a lot less "babysitting" - there's less people playing the 0.01isk undercutting "game" with you
• Sometimes you'll see people undercutting the trade hub at a mission hub. This is an opportunity: you can buy them out and relist at a higher price, or wait it out and list your items at a premium once theirs have gone
• Trade hubs are generally where you find the big lumps of orders (hundreds or thousands of items listed in a single order) but in mission hubs you're competing against smaller sized orders which can (occassionally) move quickly, leaving the hub wide open for you to exploit. In other words, timing becomes important, unlike trade hubs where generally all items are available all the time. There can even be times where you need to adjust your prices up in a mission hub if you become the only supplier
• Trade hubs generally seem to have one station which is used exclusively
• In mission hubs, items can sell at more than 1 station - check out what agents are in which stations. Stations with level 4 agents get the most action, but if you're selling frigates or cruisers (or modules for those ships) stations with lower level agents may be fruitful

That's some early thoughts after a month of experimenting, hope it's useful to somebody!