How to set up a store....??

Ok i have many questions but i will try ask the main ones as to save your patience.

So far i have some land (thanks to many helpful tips on an earlier psot of mine) so with those replys in mind i thought i would ask more of your wonderful minds.

I can build well enough to make a shop / selling area, i have also grasped the putting items into a box, floating text and to set the price and set the box as contents.
So my questions...

1 - If i put 1 item into the box, how many times can it be bought until it disappears (as long as its copyable of course)and things i sell do i have to keep one in my inventory ?

2 - How many items can i actually put in 1 box to sell in one go ?

3 - Whats the best way to advertise, ie in search and is it expensive ?

My plans are not to make millions just enough to tide me over so i can have somewhere to live and call home, and also build up a little money while i improve my skills making things i can sell.

If you know a site or another post with the stpes from starting to finish that would be great, id liek to be able to do it from scratch and then tp off and have some fun while hopefully making a little spending money.

Thanks in advance.

Indefinitely. Set it to sell as a copy.


As many as you need.


People who have been in business for years still disagree on this one.

There's not an A B C step method for this. There are many ways to do it.

1: If it is copy you can sell as many times as you want. Permissions are very complicated, but mainly when you are creator you have full permissions and you can choose what next owner can do.
If you are selling stuff the "Next Owner Can" classics are:

*Copy
*No Modify / No Copy / Transfer

But that depends on what you want.
More info about permissions: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Help:Permissions

2: How many objects can you put in a box?
I don't know but a lot and if the thing you are selling is very large lets say...50 items it is recommended to put that in a box and that box inside the box vendor because it takes a lot time to load.

One more thing: when you put an object for sale you have three options:
Original / Copy / Contents. Normally I use contents when I put stuff in a box.

3: Best way to advertise:

Things you should NOT do:

*Don't Put things in a box with floating text: they look ugly and text clips trough other shops.

*Don't use laggy sensors that delivers LM's and NC's automatically: It's very annoying when you are walking and each time you pass trough a shop with that kind of things you get the same LM/NC always.

Things you should do:

*Make nice advertises for your products: this is VERY important instead of boxes with floating text, go to photoshop, gimp, PSP, etc. and make a nice template and try to use the same style for all the products. Put in it a brief description, prim amount and permissions.

*Make a logo ppl will recognize your brand easily if you rent many shops.

*Make a group: to announce new products and freebies

*Get a non-spammer group joiner when ppl can click and notify you that they want to join your group.

*Put your land in search (30L$ a week) / Put your objects for search / If you cann afford it place an Ad Classified

*Make good stuff / try to improve each time you make something

*Offer a good customer support: this is very important, I see some creator's profiles that say for example: "DON'T IM ME FOR STUPID THINGS I DO NOT DO ANY CUSTOM WORK SO PISS OFF" generally creators that get popular get a lot of IM's....well... customer service is part of the job guys, be nice with the people that gives you the bread.

More stuff can be added, but that can give you a good starting point.

A good way to advertise is to figure out your niche and rename your property to suit a keyword in search. For instance, if you sold mainly cars you might name your property "Cars 4U" and mention the word car and cars a few times in the description. Be sure to put a nice picture of your product in the Options tab of your About Land settings. An image that is 385x512 pixels will fit nicely, just drag it over the window in about land after you have uploaded it. Make sure the Show in search box is checked in the Options tab of About Land and hopefully you will land on the first page or two in Search when someone uses your keyword. Another thing that helps in search is if you can get all your friends to make your place one of their "picks" in their profile. Good luck!

My advice is a little more philosophical. Don't set up a shop just to make a little money. Only set up a shop if setting up a shop sounds like fun, and is what you want to do.

Instead of answering I'm making another question:

Imagine that I create an object and that I only want to sell, let's say, 5 copies... how do I set it?

This should be the mantra for all shop owners.

Do it for fun, not profit.

It's the biggest reason I started a shop!

And the only reason I'm still here!

If I expected to make Big $$$ from SL, I would've left looooong ago.

Agree 200% with you... I'm about to open a shop with a friend and as far as I think is only for the fun... We are going to open an Art Gallery to show paints of Portuguese (and european) modern painters and some of the furtinure I'm building on the last weeks, but I don't think we'll take much of a profit... I'm glad if it covers the rent lololol

Well I started a store because I love designing but I can't design just for the sake of it, so I thought it would be good to sell stuff.

I mostly just want to make high quality stuff - even the bigger stores tend to sell pretty low quality furniture and at high prices. I found that the best stuff is often the hardest to find too. A lot of the best furniture/decoration stores are not known at all.

Well, I doubt i'll make even half of my rent back but at least it's fun!

That is very very good advice..

Do it because you enjoy it....because it's fun. If someone buys something from you, consider it an honour that someone thought enough of your work to purchase it... if you don't sell anything, then keep creating till you have made things that people will buy...etc. But regardless of whether anyone purchases from you...be proud that you've created your own unique items.

Yorkster... If you need help with anything, feel free to IM me in-world...I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'd be happy to help if I can...

Make 5 copies, box them separately, set them for sale as original. You might find that the boxes get left behind, but the 5 original pieces will be gone. Be careful how you set the permissions of the objects themselves. If you make them copiable there will soon be more than 5, although without transfer, the duplicates will still belong to the purchaser!

Good luck, and do IM me inworld if I can help any.

Pixie
xxx