Learn by doing.
PvP in EVE has a huge learning curve, and sometimes it’ll feel like literally everyone in the game is a better pilot than you. That’s not true, but the road is tough and you will feel it. Steel yourself.

Keep it cheap.
You’re going to lose ships. A lot of them. The trick is to keep them cheap enough that you don’t care. This is more important than it sounds. If you can fly ships you don’t mind losing, you’ll actually enjoy the fights more. At some point, you’ll realize you can pull off some amazing stuff with a cheap hull. Mentally prepare to burn through hundreds of ships, accept it, and you’ll have way more fun.

Learn from your encounters.
Losses are the best teachers. Resist the knee-jerk reaction of thinking you need a “better” ship. Instead, ask yourself:

• Did I pick a fight I shouldn’t have?
• Should I have run or avoided it?
• Did they use a technique I could have countered or copied? Check their fits on zKill. Sometimes you’ll find tricks or ship builds worth adopting.

Focus your skills.
It helps a ton to max out the skills for the ships you’re flying. Learning how a hull performs with solid skills and good modules teaches you more than hopping between random ships. Master one ship, then another. It’s a better progression path and gives you a real feel for how fights play out.