Half of being an EVE industrialist is coming up with a good idea. Here are three ideas for business plans designed to inspire new EVE players.

These ideas try to keep investment costs and skill training to a minimum in order to make them as newbie-friendly as possible.

Reselling Skill Books

Skill books are how players add new talents to their repertoires and build up their base attributes. The majority of them are cheap as well as readily available in "school systems" where NPCs sell unlimited amounts of them. This is not perfect, though, as most players have little reason to be in the school systems, and it's a pain in the butt to fly there and back just to pick up a 100,000 ISK skill book.

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style="font-style: italic;">No matter how new you are, there are always opportunities available in EVE Online.

This is where you come in: even on your first day, you can afford to buy stacks of the cheapest skills, move them somewhere with a needy population like a market system or mission hub, and re-sell them on the market for a markup.

As you get better, you will have a better eye for what skills people find themselves needing. You will also be able to sell more things on the market at once, as your trade skills improve. Remember when pricing these that it is generally better to sell a lot of things at a low price, than a few at exorbitant prices.

Manufacture Shuttles

The humble shuttle is not often considered in industrialists' daydreams, yet it is an essential part of life in EVE Online. Shuttle blueprints cost peanuts, can be used without much research or mineral needs, and the product is constantly in demand.

Don't bother trying to sell shuttles in mission hubs, though. You are much better off selling them in outlying systems that are the last stop before low-security or null-security space. The pilots coming and going from there will often need a cheap, speedy flier to pick up skills, implants, or blueprints.

When I wander around the outskirts of high-sec, I like to bring a stack of shuttles with me and seed them in the various stations that I visit. They sell out with surprising speed as long as you don't over price them too much.

Contract Cyno Frigates

Players that use the huge, teleporting capital ships of EVE Online all rely on a single module to get where they are going: the "Cynosural Field Generator I". This little module acts as a sort of homing beacon that allows the big ships to teleport directly to it. The down side is that the item consumes a stack of liquid ozone and locks the ship using it in place for several minutes, unable to dock or move at all. Indeed, the ship even stays there if it logs off.

Because of this paralysis, "cyno ships" are usually expendable little ships like the Kestrel frigate, and are in constant demand by the big guys. Since capital ships cannot jump to high-sec (cynosural field modules do not work there) but are often going to and from high-sec, there is often a need for frigates, cynosural field generators, and liquid ozone. Unfortunately, these solar systems (places like Badivefi and Nonni) do not always have the best markets, and pilots end up needing to fly all over the place to get what they need.

Since catering to laziness is one of the most successful ways to make ISK in EVE, offering fully-fit, fully-fueled cyno ships via the contracts market might be a nice way to horrendously overcharge people. If you are extra daring, you might even fly some of these ships into low-sec space and contract them there. You should be safe so long as you only warp directly to gates and stations, though station camps might be a problem.