Selecting The Most Profitable Ore

The process of choosing the ore to mine and sell on the market is a little more complicated than just browsing the market and mining the one that has the highest price. Each type of the ore has specific volume that it takes up in the cargo hold. More importantly, the mining yield of mining lasers and strip miners is based on cubic meters (m3) per time. So while market prices are based on price per unit of ore, your mining yield is based on volume of ore. Therefore, you have to convert the market info into the price per cubic meter of ore, rather than a unit of ore.

To find out what volume the ore takes up, you have look up the attributes information for the ore (right click the ore > Show Info > Attributes tab > Volume). Using the example of Veldspar in the screenshot below, the price per unit of the ore is 12.71 ISK and the volume 1 unit of Veldspar takes up is 0.1 m3. To convert the price into ISK/cubic meter, we divide 12.71 ISK by 0.1 m3 = 127.10 ISK/m3. So every cubic meter of Veldspar ore you mine is going to give you 127.10 ISK if you sell it directly on the market (no refining and not including the sales tax).

Veldspar Volume

Keep in mind that variations of ore (i.e. Veldspar, Concentrated Veldspar, Dense Veldspar) all have the same volume.

Let's take a look at an example of calculating high-sec ore profitability. For this I will be trying to find what is the most profitable ore in The Citadel region of Caldari space at the time of writing of this post (March 8, 2012). The market fluctuates a lot, so you have to constantly monitor prices and recalculate as necessary.

Veldspar

Scordite

Pyroxeres

Plagioclase

High sec ore available in Caldari space and its corresponding highest market buy prices (direct sale to market buyers, no sell orders waiting for people to buy from you):

Veldspar (0.1 m3) - Normal 12.71 ISK, Concentrated 13.36 ISK, Dense 14.00 ISK
Scordite (0.15 m3) - Normal 17.58 ISK, Condensed 17.52 ISK, Massive 18.35 ISK
Pyroxeres (0.3 m3) - Normal 47.90 ISK, Solid 51.09 ISK, Viscous 52.51 ISK
Plagioclase (0.35 m3) - Normal 50.51 ISK, Azure 53.01 ISK, Rich 55.51 ISK

At first glance, Rich Plagioclase seems like the best ore to mine, but let's go through the calculations. To avoid redundancy, I will only calculate the price/m3 of the best variation of the ore. To get the price/m3, just divide the market price by the volume that the ore takes up:

Dense Veldspar = 14.00 ISK / 0.1 m3 = 140.00 ISK/m3
Massive Scordite = 18.35 ISK / 0.15 m3 = 122.33 ISK/m3
Viscous Pyroxeres = 52.51 ISK / 0.3 m3 = 175.03 ISK/m3
Rich Plagioclase = 55.51 ISK / 0.35 m3 = 158.60 ISK/m3

Doing this simple calculation, you can clearly see that Viscous Pyroxeres gives you the best price for your mining yield. You can go all hardcore and set up an Excel sheet that will automatically convert the market prices into ISK/m3, or you can do a quick calculation whenever you see the price of a certain ore skyrocket or drop suddenly to figure out if it's still worth to mine it.

Things get more complicated when you start factoring in refining of the ore into minerals. Those calculations will be the subject of another post. 

A note of caution: if you're also manufacturing and just mining every single type of ore because you need various minerals, I will still urge you to focus your mining specifically on the most profitable ore. Many new industrialists have a pervasive attitude that "minerals I mine and refine are free". That way of thinking cuts deeply into your own profit margins (actually you will be operating at a severe loss) and forces others who understand the value of minerals to abandon manufacturing of wide-spread items due to lack of profitability. The best option is to mine what's most profitable, sell it and buy the needed minerals with the profits from the sale. 

Always try to calculate the better deal on ore. There's no need to waste potential ISK for your time spent mining. Every 1 ISK price difference eventually compounds to quite a bit sum of money when you're dealing with thousands upon thousands of units mined. More information on how to factor in refining and mineral prices into ore mining will be coming soon.