• Finished John Scurlock's questline to unlock his shop
  
• Access to helm for making rum
  
• Some starting silver

By now you probably figured out that in order to run your Rum and Drug empire you need silver and lots of it.
Using manufactures is by far the best way to get pieces of eight as its mostly passive.
An easy way to get silver is to keep your manufactures running is to sell your rum instead of turning it in for pieces of eight.

If you didn't know, you can actually sell your rum for silver at Scurlock:


Suger and any of the other produce are bought at 10 silver a piece.

• Sugar Canes costs 10 silver a piece
  
• Turning it into Rum is an additional 5 silver
  
• Setting the total cost at 15 silver for a white rum bottle
  
• You can sell white rum for 100 silver, giving you a profit of 85 silver
  
• Gold rum costs, 2 white rum bottles and an additional 10 silver processing cost, total cost of 40 silver per bottle
  
• Gold rum sells for 250 Silver, giving you a profit of 210 silver

You can further reduce the cost of producing rum by buying the smuggler operations upgrades.
Giving you better deals, reduced processing time as well as a change to get more rum.


Its more profitable to turn white rum into gold rum and sell it then as its a higher profit in total 105 vs 85 silver this does require more time, but with the upgrades you do have a change to get more rum out of this.
The same applies for Gin, one of the products you can unlock with the smuggler operations upgrades.

The same applies for the helm base in Telok Penjarah where you have the opium products, the Snuf and Opium.
You can sell these at Rhama once you completed her questline.

If you have a strong enough ship you can also sink the helm leason at sea, this will complete all the quests and give you some bonus materials.
This way you ensure you don't have to pay any silver.
Add the attack quest with the forts in your activities as well and you have a nice profit.