There are many of ways of making ISK in Eve Online. Some of the best ways of making ISK are the following:
Mining
Mining is one of the simplest activities in the game. You go out in an asteroid belt, you start your mining lasers, you launch your mining drones (if you have any), and you haul the ore you mine in a station to be used later. It’s a boring activity which appeals to some people since it leaves you with time to do something else such as chat with corpmates, make strategic plans, or anything else which requires a modicum of concentration. You will want to progress to the Hulk Mining Ship and head to 0.0 space to mine the best materials. Mining can be boring at times, but it is very rewarding.
Mission Running
There are many types of missions for mission running, which we will go into detail later on. The main missions you will find for mission running are courier, trade, kill and mining missions. To be honest the rewards in the beginning are pretty poor, but if you have a friend or someone from your corp with you, it can be a more interesting experience. As you increase your standings you wil be able to take on more rewarding missions. Generally rewards are pretty low until you hit L3 with an agent. Overall Mission running can be fun, but not as rewarding as other Isk making techniques.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is one of the best ways of making Isk in Eve Online. Eve Online players are always wanting to buy items to further themselves or there ships. And of course replacing ships lost in battle. You can be the one to supply them will these goods which in return they will supply you with their ISK. The only real problem with Industry in Eve Online is that to make items you need to get your hands on blueprints, these blueprints can cost a lot and it can be time consuming researching them.
Trading
In a nutshell, trading is buying something for a loew price in one region and then selling it for a higher price in a different region. Sounds simple enough, but in fact this is probably the hardest, yet most profitable path to go down. Technically you could try to buy and sell at the same station, but you would be lucky to see a good return in this. Isk can be lost as quickly as it is earnt in this area so make sure you are prepared before taking this path.
Ratting
Ratting is basically going around asteroid belts hunting down enemy NPCs. This can be good for new characters to start with, as generally you will only find a few of them together and they are VERY easy to kill. But if you really want to get into ratting, you will need to be prepared to go into low sec and maybe even 0.0, to reap the best rewards.
Exploration
The shipboard scanner is only able to find “encounters” (almost the same as a mission) but you have a slightly higher chance (compared to belt-ratting) to encounter faction or even commander NPC spawns dropping valuable loot. Using probes you can find various other things (including entries into wormhole “wildspace”), but this is best left to explain in much more detail in a seperate post.
PvP
Pvp can be a good way to make Isk but we do not consider it the best way. If you want to go down this road you will need to have alot of knowledge about PvP as there are alot of experienced fighters out there. Also training the right skills and coming up with the right ship setup is critical and may take some time.
