Editing Making ISK as an Explorer (section)

=Getting loot to market=
Your cargo hold is beginning to reach capacity with all the loot you have recovered from various sites and you are thinking it’s time to cash in before that Pacifier that has been tailing you through the last three systems catches up with your paper-thin explorer frigate.

First task, however, is to get the loot to market…

This section doesn’t cover the challenge of evading that pesky Pacifier or the camps that are also looking to ruin your day, before you reach the relative safety of a low-sec, high-sec or Thera NPC station.  Hints and tips are available [[Navigating_New_Eden|here]].  

Instead, the focus here is on the more mundane task of getting it from that NPC station to wherever your market is.  Options include hauling the loot yourself or contracting the task out to others – both are considered below. 

==What ''not'' to haul==
The first key decision that impacts hauling occurs during exploration: what to loot, what to leave behind and/or what to jettison. [[File:Cargo Sorter screenshot.png|200px|thumb|right|Screenshot from Mzsbi Haev's [https://therascan.info/cargo/ Cargo Sorter]]] On many exploration runs with ships like the T1 explorer frigates or larger, cargo space is not a major constraint.  However, T2 covert ops ships have much less cargo space which can easily become full.

You can quickly make rough decisions by sorting your inventory view by item value.  However, decisions on what loot yields the best ISK per m3 are greatly aided by a tool called [https://therascan.info/cargo/ Cargo Sorter] from Mzsbi Haev.  Cut and paste your cargo contents (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-V in-game works) into the tool and it returns the estimated ISK value per cubic meter occupied by that item.  This enables quick decisions in what to jettison.

The [https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Containers#Jettison_container process of jettisoning] generates a cargo container that can be bookmarked for later retrevial, but only within the two-hour lifetime of an unanchored container in space.

==Hauling by yourself==
The most ISK-efficient method to haul through low-sec or high-sec is to do it yourself – assuming you can do this without getting blown up!  This does have the downside of the necessary investment in hauling ships, skills and your time spent hauling.  The usual techniques for safe hauling apply:
* Scouting using tools like [http://eve-gatecheck.space/eve/ Eve Gatecamp Check], [https://zkillboard.com/ zKillboard], and [https://www.twitch.tv/uedamascout UedamaScout] to see where there may be gate camps.
* Using appropriate [https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Travel_fits travel fits], e.g. passive tanks for smartbombing and suicide ganking.
* Approaching gates from alternative angles by bouncing off celestials. 
* Scouting for gate camps using perches within D-scan range of the gate.
* Use of [https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Cloak_trick the MWD-cloak trick].
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKmn3rabMac Instadoc bookmarks] for the main trade hubs, especially Jita 4-4.

===Hauling by a Signal Cartel alt===
For a Signal Cartel alt, war-decs are a particular hazard.  The corporation has [[Policy:War_Dec_Eligibility|a deliberate policy of not avoiding war declarations]] and maintains a player-owned structure to enable that policy.  If another corporation has a war dec on Signal Cartel, their ships can engage Signal Cartel anywhere in high-sec space without intervention by Concord.  

In practice, during war decs, most of the risk is concentrated on the key high-sec hubs and the usual approach routes to those hubs.  So hauling to these hubs with a Signal Cartel alt while under a war dec needs to be done with particular care.  Please read our [[SCA:Guide_To_Surviving_War|Guide to Surviving War]] for more information.

===Hauling by an out-of-corp alt===
A viable alternative is to use an out-of-corp alt to haul through low- and high-sec.  Loot can be easily transferred at an NPC station using a contract.  The hauling alt can use an appropriate ship and fit:
* For example, an alpha alt with good shield tanking and navigation skills can use a sub-2s-align Sunesis with enough tank to survive the vast majority of smart-bomb gate camps.  
* An omega alt with appropriate skills can utilize more sophisticated methods such as a blockade runner with a covert ops cloak, with even more survivability.

The main downside of using a non-Signal-Cartel alt is the need to avoid Credo issues.  Assuming the Signal-Cartel alt and the out-of-corp alt are never logged in at the same time, the main issue is the flow of intel.  While intel flows from the out-of-corp alt to the Signal Cartel alt are not a problem, the opposite is not true.  Practically, this means one should not use the Signal Cartel alt as a scout for the out-of-corp alt.  More information regarding alts and the Credo is found [[Policy:Alts_and_the_Credo|here]].

==Hauling by others on your behalf==
Hauling loot is an activity that many players find tedious.  And for many others, time spent hauling goods would be more profitably spent doing further exploration, even after you pay somebody else for their time to take your loot to market.

There are three major alternatives for contracting other players to do the hauling for you:
* [[Crikey Freight]] is a separate corporation run by Signal Cartel ''alts''. [[File:Crikey Freight Logo.png|200px|thumb|right|[[Crikey Freight|Crikey Freight]]]] It is not subject to war declarations.  Among other activities, it provides hauling services for Signal Cartel members at special rates.  Further details are provided [[Crikey Freight|here]].
* Public courier contracts can be posted from [https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Moving_your_items#Making_a_Private_Courier_Contract the contract creation dialog box].  So long as you set a collateral value bigger than the worth of your loot then this is a relatively safe option.  Should the contracting courier fail to make the delivery, you receive the collatoral as compensation.  In setting up the contract, you need to name the fee you are willing to pay and competitively priced contracts will be accepted quickly and delivered upon.  Public courier prices will, in general, be lower than those with third-party services (see below).
* There are a number of third-party efforts running brokerage-type services between a closed list of haulers in their employ and players in EVE.  The two best known are [https://red-frog.org/ Red-Frog] and [https://www.pushx.net/ Push X].  Their fees will be higher than those of public courier contracts, but reliability and timeliness will be higher.  So for example, in March 2023, Push-X was quoting a fee of 18.3M ISK for a 1000m3 load with collateral up to 1.5B ISK hauled from Turnur (in low-sec) to Dodixie.

For all options, the fees for hauling loot works out as most economical for larger shipments.  Shipping the loot from several explorer runs in one hauling shipment can push the hauling fees down to a few percentage points of the total loot value.