Trade and Epic Arc

I'm not doing much that is notable right now. I'm about 2/3rds through the Sisters arc. I note that Antimatter is much more expensive at Hek than Arnon, so when my factory job is done I'll probably take it there to sell.  The Sister's missions themselves are easy; I'm probably doing it much later than the game allowed for, so my Algos with 5 drones and a lot of drone skills are making easy work of all the tasks.

Trade is going well too; I'm finding that there's plenty of business to be done using buy orders to acquire stuff at much less than it would cost me to buy from a seller, or manufacture it myself. The downside is that you have to wait for the goods to come to you at at whatever rate the rest of the population wants to sell them at. But it's reasonably quick, especially if you buy lots of different things. I'm doing ammo (several kinds), salvagers, a type of heavy missile launcher and a few other things.

One thing I'm wondering about, though, when should I start to try PvP through faction warfare?  From what I understand, beginning players should expect to lose for a long time and just be happy if they land a few hits.  So why would I want to do it? I could use cheap ships and equipment, but it's still throwing away a million ISK or so every time...is the experience of getting killing in 30 seconds really worth that?  It would seem the best course of action is to join a group so you're not the only target. You'll make some shots and get fleet experience AND be safer than you would alone.

But more training first, and I gotta finish this long, long series of cabbage quests first.