With the increased amount of people using instas to get past gates quickly its become increasingly difficult catch people by the gates.
Instas are no good in my opinion, it's an unwanted element which I hope will be remedied soon.
I'll return to this topic another time.
Gate ganking haulers or other ships can be a lucrative business and there are many approaches.
It's still possible to catch someone hauling goods through low security systems, either by catching those who dont use instas or simply to catch those who warp through to the other side of the gate.
There are actually just two things which you need to worry about. The senty guns and other people interfering. The later is pretty uncommon.
So, you got yourself the skills required to fly your brand new uninsured battleship and want to try out piracy. What do you do? Shoot at people by the gate? Afterall, you're in a big scary battleship now.
WRONG!
You should at least insure your bloody ship, cause there's a great risk you'll lose the ship if you do things wrong. Also, you MUST tank your ship if you're going to try take on the ships approaching or leaving the gate. You should be able to stay alive for the time it takes to shoot down your pray and get away safely to a safespot.
I can't stress how important a good tank is. Without it you're most likely going to end up in a pile of debris while your escape-pod flashes nicely in space. It's up to you what type of tank you wish to use. Shield or armour tank is up to which battleship you fly.
Another approach to gate-piracy is sniping your pray. Most likely this will require more of your trained skills and your pray has a better chance of escaping. I usually go with close-range ganks.
Get in - get out, and in between shoot that hauler to pieces.
If you want to have a higher chance of looting those nice techII POS products, you should have a wingman in a hauler to scoop the dropped containers. Unless you want to chance on that the can will still be there after the 15minutes of criminal flag is gone.
Some hints on ships to target.
I'd usually go for the mark IV or mark V haulers. Pilots who are old and most likely wealthy.
There's usually no use ganking the young pilots with small haulers. They are probably carrying veldspar or other crap. Remember that we're aiming high!! It's a waste of sec-rating to go for the small pray.
Leave the young people alone if you're a pirate, they'll work hard and eventually one day they'll have expensive stuff you can loot.
Now some warnings:
If you notice people flying in ceptors or other small crafts, jumping back and forth to the gate. You can most likely expect a setup. Avoid this, you dont want to be scrambled at the gate if you're attacking something. Those turrets will get you down before the ceptors will get you.
If there are mercenaries or many people in the system, avoid gate-ganking at all costs. There's too much risk that people will jump in to interfere. I'd go for smaller systems in low security space.
Eventually you WILL catch that nice hauler carrying techII stuff for over 150mill.