EVE guide, ways of making money with my opinion (long post) : EVE Online General Discussions

Im just skimming through my agent missions right now (trying to find a rare missions) so i figured idd start a descent guide for you guys.

Important, before i begin: all these are based oppon my personal opinion and experience, it might differ a bit from reality or your oppinion, but then again this is what ever playermade guide is like

things idd like to talk about:
ways of making money,
my opinion and aprox amount of profit / risk.

1. Mining
Mining is the most basic, and anchient way of making money. It basicly means getting a frigate, cruiser or battleship. and fitting mining lasers on them. Mining is done frequently by havign a few miners in asteroid belts (wich are found in nearly every system) fill up cans, and then have industrial class ships pick up the ore left in the "jetison cans", this can also be done in secure cans, however they only anchor in less secure systems. The reson secure cans are beeing used is becouse of the fear of socalled Ore thiefs, They're people in industrial ships that will come to your cans and take the stuff in them, they cannot be shot or they will trigger concord (=police) responce. Usually the best mining ships are the ships with most gun slots (=most miners).

frigates: The race here doesnt matter, usually frigate pilots will mine solo, therefore cargohold would be nice to have. for example, bantam, probe, imicus.

Cruiser: If you have time and money to spare for the skill idd recommend getting the thorax, this ships got 2000 m3 drone space and 5 turret slots, so defence and mining capability are at its best with drones and 5 lasers here, a vexor or maller would be second choise, below that most ships will have near equal mining ability.

Battleships: most battleships have enough turret slots to be a pretty good miner (tempest and domi = 6, arma and mega = 7, apoc = 8 ) drone bays on these ships are all fairly enough to keep defence at nominal levels. The best ship is offcourse the apoc, but the 1 or 2 more slots its got only insure a 12.5 or 25% higher yield, wich with skills isnt that much of a diffrence (especially if its the first battleship idd recommend the armageddon since its half de price).

Mining can offcourse be done in diffrent areas, i consider: 1.0 - 0.9, 0.8 - 0.5, 0.4 - 0.1, 0.0. offcourse location also means what minerals are available, but ill keep it general (in practical terms one or 2 minerals will be missing in each area becouse of the location/region the belt is located) (profits are considering 1 indy and 1 battleship, solo):

1.0 - 0.9: These are some of the worst areas to mine in, these are often very close to general traveling routes and will be mine by hordes of people and stripmined by mega corperations. theyll contain scordite and veldspar most of the time. also there are no pirates. expect serveral millions per hour

0.8 - 0.5: These belts are often mined unless you find one out of the normal routes people have, i found a few totally unmined, this can be profitable. Commen minerals are veldspar, pyrox, scordite, plagio, and in the lower security levels also omber (0.7) and kernite (0.5). Expect a few frigate pirates, but nothing drones cant handle. also player pirates are not to be found in these sectors. Profits are again serveral millions per hour, yet more then 0.9 and 1.0, but at a slightly higher risk.

0.4 - 0.1: STAY OUT OF HERE unless in rather large groups, in my opinion this is the domain of the real player pirates, expect to find descent ore, cruiser NPC pirates, but worst of all player pirates, these are people usually working in groups of 3 or so, they will first come in with one of them, he will scan you, by this time you should already be at a station or even docked! If you plan to mine here, in any kind of group smaller then your whole corperation watch local with your life. profit can be around 2 - 3 mil per hour per person if its mined correctly. however against the risks i suggest going back to 0.5 - 0.8 for more profit. or if you know how to run properly you can stay here. There are however sentry guns at the stations so you're safe there.

0.0: lawless space, no sentrys, a players will is the law here. You can be killed without any security hit. however in my experience as long as the refinery and your mining spot are close to eachother there si not that much risks from player compared to immense rewards. expect 10 - 20 million per hour or sometimes even more. the NPC's are very powerfull and 1 or 2 battleship sized defenders are a must (or park your own tanked battleship in a safespot).
If you're on your own idd reccoment ninja mining, wich basicly means, get a ship that can run properly. park an indy at a safespot in the system, and mine in the ship untill you see pirates. once you see them, run to a moon or your safespot. wait for about 10 minutes till your scanners clear and go back. then once the can contains about the amount your indy can carry get ur indy out of its safespot and make it grab the stuff also bookmarking your mining roid is a good idea so you wont have to travel much

my own favorite: 0.0 space, if you're in a good allience, have a good group and dont have 2 many player pirates around this is the nr 1 way to make money, however its only for the people with nerves of steel and people that live with the knowledge they could lose a ship daily.
for anyone that does not have this and people that are simply not ready for it yet idd recommend 0.8 - 0.5, that is if you can find a descent system.

(next guide on next post)

2. Agent missions
Agent missions at the moment are one of the safest and most boring way to make money. To start you need to climb up from a lvl 1 agent to a lvl 2 agent to a lvl 3 agent. This can take serveral days.
the 3 levels all contain a diffrent difficulty, lvl 1 is very eay and can with ease be done in frigates, level 2 can be done in frigates but is hard. in level 3 either a battleship or a cruiser and industrial are a must.
offcourse each higher level will give bigger rewards.
An agents effective quality will show the highth of its rewards, this can be raised by standing and by certain social skills. (so can the standing with the connection skill by the way)
idd say agent are for people that like to watch television while playing and cant find a good belt to mine in, and for people that are starting the game and need their first frigate to cruiser and wish to do this solo.
there are 2 diffrent classes of agents, Research and development and regulair agents.

Research and development agents will only give out rare blueprints, and are based purely on luck, no matter what you do, it will always be a lottery, i myself have had a agent for nearly 180 days and still nothing, others had 3 blueprints in a row. If you manage to get a blueprint you can make serveral (im serious) billions selling these items overpriced (but heck you're nearly the only one with the print....). In my opinion its not balanced out at all becouse ccp bases some richness on what is nearly pure luck. idd recomend people get 1 RD agent for the sake of it, but its not a reliable way of making money. owh yeh, and to increase the amount of Research points (RP) you dont have to do anything, but by doing missions you can sometimes double or trippe the daily amount (get 200 instead of 100 once).

Regular agents: They are also based on luck, and the only big profit to be made with them is by selling the basic implants (whom give a +3 to a certain attribute) for 12 - 15 million a pop. If you're lucky you can get one every 10 missions, i tihnk the average is about 30 missions. but again this is based on pure luck, you can only get implants during important missions, wich are pretty rare. You need a level 3 agent with 6.0 standing (at least) to get implants though. so dont expect to start of with them, it requires some work.
The rewards per missions are aroundm 150.000 isk a pop, wich is not much so i wouldnt go for that. there are tech 2 building componants to get and sell though. I have no idea how much this can make you extra per hour but it doesnt exeed mining or NPC hunting unless you're lucky. (this is what agents are based on though).
You can direct the type of missions you'll get a bit by picking the right corperations and the right part of this corp. For example, security in caldari navy will likely get you fighting missions. however you will still get some gun shipments , so keep that indy ready .

now here comes the "exploit" bit It used to be possible to stack say a million minerals and get a mineral agent, cancel the other missions and only pick require this and this mineral. just click yes and you're done, a frienda mine made 150 mil a night in the past with this. but its been removed im afread. however theres still other ways of making more money then designed, what i do for example is have 3 level 3 agent in the same station, so i complete 3 missions where other complete one (and a half).[/list]

3. NPC hunting/chaining
quite profitable, but ull offcourse try and take your abilitys to the max becouse the higher the more money. The most important thing here is to know your limits, dont try to take on spawns that are a lot higher then your own ship and ability, if you get killed this will ruin your profits for some time. its better to take pirates a bit below your ability then take them to high, also chaining will mean they'll instantly respawn, if you had any difficulty in the original spawn that problem might get duplicated when they spawn right after they die.
commenly chaining is the best way for making money, however soem voices say this will be removed in the future, still i will discuss the basics:
first you skim through belts trying to find one that suits your own power, then you'll have to kill the entire spawn except for one pirate, this should be the weakest one, let him attack you constantly and dont let him get away. at first nothing will happne but after some time (can be anything from 5 minutes to an hour for the first respawn) the whole spawn will respawn, again you kill all but the one circling you, then after that it should respawn faster and faster and faster, untill it will be nearly instant (right after you kill one he'll be back).
You need to experiement for yourself what chains suit you, and sometimes you will have to learn the painfull way, but eventually you'll get good at it, or ask corpmates for advice about your abilities.
another way would be going to a base, this is hard at first becouse there can be upto 30 pirates at once, but there usually only a few spawnpoints, and them spamming one at a time at a slow rate ( this rate cannot be increased ).
the biggest prize oftenly comes in the sence of the lootcans the ships drop, but can also be their bountys, usually you alone will be enough to chain, unless you're going to chain battleship pirates (0.0 space) then you might need a group, idd also recommend shield transfer arrays for everyone in this case (with 4 medium arrays at one ship hell be invincible compared to the enemys, even if its the heaviest npc battleships). profits killing npcs bss arnt that high becouse of the group split, but sometimes the loot is very rewarding.
npc hunting is profitable but it is risky and knowing your own limits its a must.
"exploits": i wouldnt call it an exploit but officially chaining is one, cant get banned for it though.
another one is when fighting heavy guristia, hide behind a asteroid, since they're using missiles the missiles will not hit you, and sicne guristia like blasters, a big rock can hold them far enough not to use them

4. Trade runs
a friend of mine used to make 100s of mils a day with them, but now thats no longer possible, its usefull for noobs but i wouldnt suggest doing it if your any kind of age, i havnt done any recently myself and if anyone can send me some traderuns to prove me wrong ill reward this with a small isk donation, ill also expand this part of the toturial if i get more info.... untill that time i cant really tell much about trade runs becouse i lack recent experience, i can however explain the basics:

You need an indy or another ship with descent cargo, find a place where something is sold cheap, then try sell it at a higher price somewhere else, it requires a lot of planning and research and is therefor time-intensive to start with. but offcourse there is the autopilot once thats all done .

"exploits": this used to be a famous one, put up a large sell order for a "low" price, and a buy order (with an alt) somewhere else (a bit far out) once someone bought the stuff cancel the buy order and the money is all urs... . this is harder nowerdays though , and finding an item suited for this is har don its own

5. Pirating / scamming, and everything else god has forbidden:
this generally means letting other people make money, and you take it away from them the "easy" way, this includes scamming, pirating, gatecamping, etc.

Scamming:
One of my personal favorites . Im not gonna go into details about how i do it, but lets say i didnt exactly mine for that raven of mine. This basicly means using the stupidity of others, i will tell you people some old scams though so you might think of your own way .
Selling shuttles for 10 million a piece, selling minerals for redicilous prices, putting a condor named scorpion in the trade window (they used to look a like), etc.
scamming is commenly done with alts, but this no longer works becouse people know alts are beeign used and wont buy from them nowadays. scammers can however expect to become outcasts and can expect to no longer be appriciated if this gets known to others. it can def be the most profitable thing to do, but it will get you on more blacklists then pirating itsself will.

Ore theft:
Now i have to admit prior to making this guide i wanted to know what it was like, so i trained a alt to fly a small basic indy, within 2 days i was on the KOS (kill on sight) lists of at least 3 alliences. This is the most hated profession in the game, it makes about twice the profit mining normally does. You just basicly get an indy, sit in 0.5 and grab the unsecured cans of poor miners (they cant attack without police responce as of yet). Sometimes they will attack you, with a nice explosion as a reward.

Pirating:
Now the real forms of pirating would offcourse be killing miners/npc hunters and camping gates, most people see pirates attacking alliences, but i consider these people to be space vikings not real pirates (m0o for instance). this profession can be among the most profitable around, if you're lucky (and any good) you can have people ejecting from their battleships to save their pods, and you can collect an easy 30 million from most smart pilots that desire to live. unlike what most people think pirating is commenly done in 0.1 - 0.4, not 0.0, 0.0 is usually filled with groups of people, this usually ends up in a fleet battle, and not a fast miner holdup. to start the way of pirating described here you used to only need a blackbird, but since the nerf you need a little more, you also need to make sure friends are not to close, and you need to put preasure on people. however blowing them up is not much profit so negatiation is a must.

corp theft:
Among these are the most famous, hated and richest people in eve. It means betraying friends youve been with for months, and often means beeing hunted till the end of the world. Some examples of these are agent shield (who corptheft after his corp let a corpthief join, dual corptheft). and Fallzone (who stole form the richest corperation at the time).
This is a profession most hated and it will not get you friends, even among pirates. But it will get you immense wealth, after wich you can sell ur account...

wow, very nice very nice, umm wats a good pirating class cruiser?

i used to use a blackbird myself, but that was before the missile nerf, idd suggest working in teams of 2 or 3 when using cruisers, a blackbird for one person ( with jamming / dampning devices) and another person in a damage dealing cruiser, you could use a caracal, but since the nerf i dont know its power, i suggest you use the bb to targetjam it, then the other ship with webber, mwd and wdis/wscr (you could leave the webber out).
you could prolly also fit the other ship for blasters if the bb is using ECM not damps.
BB fitting:
high: missile launchers.
medium: 1 of each race ECM, 1 multispectral, 1 caldari jammer.
low: cap relays.

Caracel fitting:
high: missile launchers.
medium: mw, webber, wscr/dis, wdis/rash ECM (works within 5 km, jams 8 to all, so if you use a rash gotta get close)
low: cap relays.

bb stays at range, caracel runs as close as it can get as fast as possible, try hitting the drones with a rash ecm and then shoot the drones while asking for money to the person in question....

this is a setup i used, you might not dish enough dmg with heavy missiles, not sure

EDIT: notice the biggest threat for cruisers are atm heavy drones, i suggest you take in mind that they need to be disabled

Just wanted to say that roel_stijl did a great job and a wonderful service by providing the Guide info. I love it. Thanks a lot man/dude/dudet. Much appreciated.

SPYMAID

hehe np =), my ingame nickname is deadflip2 if ur wondering, i just got diffrent nicknames over diff games, thats why i picked this one. =/
got any more questions jsut evemail me.
well that is ill be on vacation till bout the beginnign of august though

hey cool dude, i got meself a moa but im mainly still a miner (dont comment lol) anyways wats a good combat setup for that? and i will mail u ingame lol-name is rogalic.

moa, mmm
6 high slots, 2 missiles 4 guns.
4 midslots,
4 lowslots.

ive never flown it, but combat against npcs in general means keeping your cap stable, using mainly guns, and trying to keep your shields up. missiles can be used for escape.
this ship is one of the masters of cruiser npc hunting, but since ive never flown it i cant tell what its like im afread. i could gues, but i dont want to leave you with a poor setup

thx anyways. any hints for making an alt pirate?

As A Ex-Pirate I would advise against becoming one as once your SS has dropped (mines -8.2) Its very hard to get it back to empire space and it sucks big time... The profits are good yes but the penaltys are high being able not to get any basic gear (if you pick on someone harder than your self) its makes eve alot harder even with alts unless you happen to have 2 alts that can fly the differnt battleship/cruisers you can use on your "main" anywho thats my advise

i was just wondering what setup you would advise for an armour tanked megathron. This is the one i am running now.

Hi Slots: 4x Neutron Blaster Cannons, 1x Electron Blaster Cannon(will be 2 once electronics 5 finishes) 2xSeige Launchers with torps.

Med slots: 100mn MWD, 2x Cap Rechargers, Tracking Computer 1

Low slots: 1x co processor, explosive armour hardner, kintetic hardner, thermal hardner, armour repairer, 2x tech 2 Tracking Enhancers.

I'de like anyones opinion on how i can improve on this. TY

I know this sounds anal, but I have a hard time reading things without proper spelling and grammar. I went through your guide and edited it for you.


I'm just skimming through my agent missions right now (trying to find a rare mission), so I figured I'd start a descent guide for you guys.

Important: All these are based upon my personal opinions and experiences. It might differ a bit from reality or your opinions, but then again, so is every other player made guide out there.

Things I'd like to talk about:
- Ways of making money (isk)
- My opinions and aproximate profit versus risk.

1. Mining
Mining is the most basic and ancient way of making money. It basically means getting a frigate, cruiser, or battleship and fitting them with mining lasers. Frequently, mining is done by placing a few miners in asteroid belts, which are found in nearly every system, filling up cans with ore, and then having industrial class ships pick up the ore from the cans. The cans can be either "jettison cans" or "secure cans"; however, secure cans can only be achored 5km from the nearest object (asteroids, stations, etc) and in systems with a security level below 0.8. Secure cans are being used for fear of ore thieves. Ore thieves are people in industrial ships who will scavenge asteroid belts and take ore from jettison cans. They can do this without retaliation in secure areas because firing upon them would trigger a Concord (police) response. Usually the best mining ships have the most turret slots (i.e most capable of using Mining lasers).

Frigates: Here, the race doesn't matter. Frigate pilots will usually mine solo; therefore, a large cargohold is a plus. Some examples are the Bantam, Probe, and Imicus.

Cruiser: If you have the time and money to spare for the Cruiser IV skill, I'd recommend getting the Thorax. This ship has 2000m3 of drone space and 5 turret slots, so both defense and mining are possible. Mining capability is at its best with 5 lasers and plenty of drones. A Vexor or Maller would be the second choice. Below that, most ships will have near equal mining ability.

Battleships: Most battleships have enough turret slots to be excellent miners. The Tempest and Dominix have 6, the Armageddon and Megathron have 7, and the Apocalypse has 8. Drone bays on these ships are fair enough to maintain nominal defense. The best ship is, of course, the Apocalypse. However, the 1 or 2 more slots it carries only provides a 12.5% - 25% higher mining yield, which isn't a huge different with proper skills. This is especially true with the Armageddon, the first battleship I'd recommend since it is half the price most.

Mining can also be done in different areas. Different locations mean a difference in what minerals are avaiable, but I'll keep it general (in practical terms, one or two minerals will be missing in each area due to the location/region of the belt). Let's consider the follow areas while mining solo in 1 industrial ship and 1 battleship: 1.0 - 0.9, 0.8 - 0.5, 0.4 - 0.1, and 0.0.

1.0 - 0.9: These are some of the worst areas to mine in. They are often very close to general travel routes and will be mined by hordes of people, often stripmined by mega corporations. They'll contain scordite and veldspar most of the time. The main benefit is the lack of NPC pirates. Expect to rake in several million dollars per hour.

0.8 - 0.5: These belts are often mined unless you find one outside of popular routes. I've found a few totally unmined areas, which can be very profitable. Common minerals are veldspar, pyroxes, scordite, and plagioclase. Lower security levels also contain omber (0.7) and kernite (0.5). Expecct a few frigate pirates, but nothing drones can't handle. Additionally, player pirates cannot safely attack miners in these areas.

0.4 - 0.1: STAY OUT OF HERE unless traveling in large groups. In my opinion, this is the domain of the real player pirates. Here you can find the decent ore, cruiser NPC pirates, and worst of all, player pirates. Player pirates are people usually working in groups of about 3, each person scanning others for potential targets. If they come in on you they will normally scan you; by this time you should already be at a station or docked! If you plan to mine here in a group smaller than your whole corporation, watch the local channel with your life. Profits here can be around 2 - 3 million per hour per person if mined properly. However, I would suggest mining in 0.8 - 0.5 for a better profit vs. risk ratio unless you know how to run properly. Remember, there are sentry guns at stations; you are safer near those.

0.0: This is completely lawless space. There are no police, no sentry guns, and the only laws are those imposed by force. You can be killed without any security hit. However, in my experience, as long as the refinery and mining spot are close to each other, there is not that much risk in exchange for immense rewards. You can expect 10 - 20 million per hour or more. The NPCs are very powerful, and either getting one or two battleship sized defenders or parking your own tanked battleship in a safespot is a must.
If you're on your own, I'd recommend ninja ming. Basically, this means getting a ship that can run properly, parking an industrial ship at a safespot in the system, and mining in the ship until you see pirates. Once you see pirates, run to a moon or your safe spot, wait for about 10 minutes until your scanners clear, and then go back. Next, once the can contains about the amount your industrial can carry, get your industrial out of its safespot and grab the ore. Bookmarks are a good idea to cut down on traveling time.

My favorite: 0.0 space. If you're in a good alliance, have a good group, and don't have too many player pirates around, this is the #1 way to make money. However, it's only for the people with nerves of steels and those that live with the knowledge that they could lose a ship daily. For those that do not have this kind of fortitude or those that are simply unprepared for this kind of mining, I'd recommend 0.8 - 0.5. That is, if you can find a decent system.

2. Agent Missions
At the moment, agent missions are one of the safest and most boring ways to make money. To start, you need to climb up from a lvl 1 agent to a lvl 2 agent to a lvl 3 agent, and perhaps higher levels as extra agents are added to the game. This can take several days. The 3 levels contain different difficulties. Level one is very easy; frigates can handle these with ease. Level two is moderate; frigates can handle these given the right equipment and pilots. Level three, however, requires either a battleship or cruiser in addition to an industrial. Of course, each level has higher rewards than the ones below it.
An agent's effective quality will show the breadth of its rewards. This can be raised by standing and by various social skills. Your standing with the agent, which increases with every successful mission and various other factors, can also be raised by the Connections skill.
I'd say agents are either for beginners or for people who can't find a good belt to mine and like to watch TV while playing.
There are two different classes of agents: Research and Development (R&D) agents and regular agents.

R&D agents will only give out rare blueprints, and handouts are based purely on luck. No matter what you do, it will always be a lottery. For example, I have had an R&D agent for nearly 180 days without any results, while others have had 3 blueprints in a row. If you manage to get a blueprint, you can make several billion dollars by selling these items at inflated prices, as you would be one of the few people owning prints to manufacture these items. In my opinion, it's not balance out at all. I'd recommend people get 1 R&D agent for the sake of it, but it's not a reliable way of making money. Also, to increase research points (RP), you don't have to anything, but by doing missions, you can sometimes double or triple the daily amount. R&D agents are all level 3 agents, and the higher quality agents give more RPs per day.

Regular agents: These are also based on luck, and the only large profit to be made through them is by selling implants for 12 - 15 million dollars a pop. Incase you don't know, implants give certain boosts to attributes (for example, +3 to intelligence). If you're lucky, you can get one every 10 missions. I think the average is about every 30 missions. But, again, this is based on pure luck. You can only get implants during important missions, which are fairly rare. The minimum requirement is a 6.0 standing and a level 3 agent, so don't expect to start off with implant rewards; it required some work.
The rewards per mission are around 150,000 isk a pop, which is not much, so I wouldn't focus on missions. However, you often get Tech 2 building components to sell. I have no idea how much this can make you extra per hour, but it is nothing compared to mining or NPC hunting unless you're incredibly lucky.
Lastly, you can direct the type of missions you'll get by picking the right corporations and the right divisions in the corporation. For example, the security division in the Caldari navy will likely get you fighting missions. However, you still get the occasional transport mission, so keep that industrial ready .

Exploits: It was once possible to stack, say, a million minerals, get a mineral agent, cancel the other missions and only require certain minerals. You just clicked yes and you were done. A friend of mine made 150 million a night using this. However, it has been removed. Still, there are other ways of making more money than designed. For example, I have three level 3 agents in the same station. By taking on three missions at a time, I can nearly triple the work done in the same amount of time.

3. NPC hunting/chaining
NPC hunting is quite profitable. Of course, you'll try to take your abilities to the max for the maximum amount of profit. The most important thing here is to know your limits. Don't try and take spawns that are out of your league; getting killed will ruin your profits for some time. It's better to take on pirates slightly below your ability than to shoot high and miss. Also, chaining them means they'll instantly respawn, so if you had any difficulty in the original spawn, that problem might get duplicated when they respawn right after they die.
Commonly, chaining is the best way for making money; however, some say this will be removed in the future. Still, I will discuss the basics:
First, you skim through belts while trying to find one that suits your own power. Then, you'll have to kill the entire spawn except for one pirate; this should be the weakest one. Let him attack you constantly and don't let him get away. At first, nothing will happen, but after some time (anything from 5 minutes to an hour), the whole spawn will respawn. Again, you kill all but the one circling you. After that, it should respawn faster and faster until it will be nearly instant. In other words, right after you kill one, he'll respawn again.
You need to experiment for yourself to see which chains suit you, and sometimes you will have to learn the painful way. Eventually, however, you'll get good at it. Perhaps ask some corporation mates for advice about your abilities. Another method is be going to a pirate base. This is hard at first because there can be upwards of 30 pirates at once. Still, there are usually only a few spawnpoints, and then they spam one at a time at a slow rate that cannot be increased.
The biggest prize from NPC hunting often comes in a loot can. NPC pirates will drop loot cans after being destroyed. Sometimes, however, the bounty is more valuable than any of the loot. Chaining can be done alone, though larger chains that contain battleship pirates (0.0 space) will probably require group work. In this scenario, I'd also recommend shield transfer arrays for everyone, because 4 medium shield arrays pointed at one ship can make it practically invincible against even the heaviest NPC battleships. Due to splitting of loot, profits from killing NPC battleships are not that high, but sometimes the loot is very rewarding.
Overall, NPC hunting is profitable but still risky. Knowing your limits is a must.
Exploits: I wouldn't call it an exploit, but technically chaining is one. However, you won't be banned for it. Another one is when fighting heavy guristia: hide behind an asteroid. Since they're using missiles, they won't be able to hit you. Also, since guristia like blasters, a big rock can keep them far enough to render their weapons useless.

4. Trade runs
A friend of mine used to make hundreds of millions of dollars a day on trade runs, but now it is no longer possible. It's useful for noobs, but I wouldn't suggest doing it if you're any kind of age. I haven't done any recently, and if anyone can send me some trade runs to prove me wrong, I'll reward this with a small isk donation. I'll also expand this part of the tutorial if I get more info. Until that time, I can't really tell you much about trade runs due to lack of recent experience. I can, however, explain the basics:

You need an industrial ship or one with decent cargo room. Find a place where something is sold cheap, and then try to sell it at a higher price somewhere else. It requires a lot of planning and research, and is therefore time-intensive to start with. But, of course, there is the autopilot once that is all done.

Exploits: This was once a famous one: put up a large sell order for a low price and a buy orders with an alternate character somewhere else. Once someone buys the stuff, cancel the buy order and the money is all yours. This is harder nowadays And finding an item suited for this is hard on its own.

5. Pirating, scamming, and everything else God has forbidden:
This generally means letting other people make money and then taking it away from them the easy way. This includes scamming, pirating, gatecamping, and other bastardly activities.

Scamming:
One of my personal favorites . I'm not going to go into details about how I do it, but let's say I didn't exactly mine for that Raven of mine. Basically, this means using the stupidity of others to your advantage. I will share some older scams with you so you may think up your own
Selling shuttles for 10 million a piece, selling minerals for ridiculous prices, putting a condor named scorpion in the trade window (they used to look identical), etc. Sometimes someone stupid enough will buy them.
Scamming is commonly done with alts, but this no longer works because people know alts are being used. Scammers can, however, expect to become outcasts, and can expect to no longer be appreciated if this gets known by others. It can definately be the most profitable thing to do, but it will get you on more blacklists than pirating itself will.

Ore theft:
I have to admit, I wanted to know what it was like prior to making this guide, so I trained an alt to fly a small, basic industrial. Within two days, I was on the KOS (kill on sight) lists of at least 3 alliances. This is the most hated profession in the game; it makes about twice the profit mining does. Basically, you get in an industrial, sit in 0.5+ asteroid belts, and grab the unsecured cans of hapless miners. They can't attack you without police retaliation yet. Sometimes they will attack you anyway, but they'll get taken down by police in the end.

Pirating:
The real forms of pirating would be killing miners/NPC hunters and camping gates. Most people see pirates attacking alliances, but I consider these people to be space Vikings, not real pirates (m0o for instance). If you're lucky and any good, this profession can be among the most profitable around. You can have people ejecting from their battleships to save their pods, and you can collect an easy 30 million from most smart pilots that desire to live. Unlike what most people think, pirating is commonly done in 0.1 - 0.4 space. 0.0 space is usually filled with groups of people, who end up in fleet battles. These are not quick miner holdups. The start the way of pirating described here, you used to only need a Blackbird, but since the nerf, you need a little more. You also need to make sure friends are not too close, and you need to put pressure on people. However, blowing them up is not as much profit as negotiating some money from the deal. It's a balance of building fear and reaping the benefits.

Corporation theft:
Among these are the most infamous, hated, and richest people in EVE. It means betraying friends you've been with for months, and often being hunted to the end of the world. Some examples of these are agent shield, who corptheft after his corporation had just let another corporation thief join, and Fallzone, who stole from the richest corperation at that time.
This is the most hated of all professions. It will not get you friends, even among pirates. However, it will get you immense riches, after which you can sell your account...