There are a wide range of planetary materials to produce, each material is produced on two of many different planet types.
Each planetary material can further be refined and combined with other materials into yet more advanced materials. The problem is that sometimes the raw materials sell for more than the components.
How does one decide what the best processed materials, or unprocessed materials are to sell?
There are so many to choose from, doing the math on each is quite lengthy. Does anyone have any market winners for planetary production?
Best Answer
The more advanced the material, the more money you'll make. Why is this? Because you don't have to MESS with more-processed stuff as much.
If you try, for some reason, to deal in unprocessed stuff like "Aqueous Liquids," you'll be out at the customs office every frickin' day with a hauler, and a load will be worth a few thousand isk at most. Bleah.
Go up one level, and "Water" will be a trip every few days, and it's worth a few hundred isk/unit. We're getting into money.
Process it again and you've got "Coolant" at 10k/ unit, and you're hauling once a week. This is almost practical!
The details can change, but the basic idea applies to everything. I'm working on Robotics, myself, but it's still 1 isk/unit "Heavy Metals" going into 100 isk/unit "Toxic Metals" going into 1000 isk/unit "Mechanical Parts going into 60k/unit Robotics. Same pattern.
One last thought: Think about where you live. What systems are handy to you? What planet types are in those systems? Look at the spreadsheet at https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0ArlHEr5t26lndDN3QVhBODJ3YnF5MWVMcUQ0bHdxQXc&f=true&noheader=true&gid=0 . What level-3 commodities can you build by combining only two planets nearby? That's what you build.