I want to be successful

Your results and success depend on a bunch of questions:

• Are you Omega?  Must be Omega to run PI.

• How many characters do you plan to train for this.  more than 3 is required for larger chains/profits

• How much skill point time do you plan to invest.  It takes 13 days for omega to hit level 4's on some of these skills, 73 days for 5's.

• How often are you going to harvest.  Are you going to run once ev ery two weeks? once a week? once a day? be a masocist and run once a day?

• How often are you going to export.  This depends on how often you are harvest and are willing to fly out to your planet...

• Where are you going to sell it.  And you'll have to fly that hauler to wherever you're going to sell it.

• Do you have other isk to pay the taxes involved.  Each of the items have a tax rate based on the material and the corporation running it.

• Are you doing this in high sec, low sec, or null sec.  High sec harvest are tiny compared to null sec.  The lower the security, the faster P0 regenerates.

• Do you have the isk for the skills, the Epithal hauler, the command centers, and the planet building fees.  fees below, like 10 mil minimum.

This is what Success looks like to one helpful vet:

Mithral DeFrense: In null-sec I make around 1.5 million per planet ust extracting P0, per day on PI (circa 2023 Q2).

If we extrapolate this out, assuming you're doing the exact right thing, in null sec.  High sec, doing things wrong, or dying will GREATLY reduce your income.

1 character with level 4 skills: 225 mil a month

3 chars with level 4 skills: 675 mil a month

6 chars with level 5 skills: 1.6 bil a month.  And maybe 2 hours of your life a day, aka 60 hours.  But hey, more than 2/3rds towards Omega?  But might be higher because you can do P4.

Yes, I want to click my brains out

It's not just that, you have to set a schedule.

If you do multiple times a day, you can make a lot more isk.  It is a LOT of clicking, and you need to find a place to sell that stuff.

Anyone who minimizes the time they spend doing serious PI work is fooling you.  Some are spending upwards of 2-4 hours a DAY to make these reported 'I make easy 400 mil'.  Which is an insane amount of time with this extremely boring content.

General overview

You place down command center.  You pay to upgrade it.

You place down nodes around it in a VERY certain pattern.  Certain planets are better for certain setups, and if you're doing advanced builds, you need factory planets which are organized differently.  If you mess this up, you lower your income, but can always reset.

You figure out how many extractors you can fit. You figure out how many processors you need to process it all. You make sure your bandwidth is minimized.  There is a lot of min-maxing here, so doing tight clusters of pyramids with flat tops is common.

Finally, you're ready to extract.  Place a head for the material, put it in the center of the high concentration.  Set how long it will run for.

Repeat upwards of 6 times, on different planet types.

Come back in the 24 hours later.  See what you produced to see if you'll fill your command center before you're ready for the next day.

Replace the heads in the best spots on all your planets.  Import more stuff if you're doing import/export.  I'm sorry this sucks so bad.

Have to export? Do a Launch.  Fly to the spot. Pick up your loot and don't get popped from gankers.

Take this to the place you're going to sell it.  If it's a market hub, check the price to make sure you're not taking a loss.

Wait for it to sell.  Having good accounting and Broker relations skills help with these taxes.

Been informed by Estel Ciryandor:

A juicy null-sec PI planet takes 5-7 days to fill a launchpad on daily cycles. On 3/4 day cycles, a launchpad will take 1-2 days longer while requiring a storage to balance production.  A customs office has the storage size of 3.5 full launchpads, so you can move from launchpad weekly, then move one Epithal full of product every 3.5-4 weeks.