OK...Taking the business plunge

After carefully watching the (PU) economy over several months, and seeing several businesses fail in their ventures, and others succeed. I had forgotten to ask a most basic question:

* What vendor system should I be looking for to effectively sell my digital, oil, and acrylic art, and which ones keep a record of who bought what...so that I can have the ability to give good customer service to my customers?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Im not sure what would be the best for art, maybe one which you can scroll through, but as for records of who bought items, You can check you transaction history. It goes back 30 days, so if you d/l it monthly, you will have a record of who bought something from you and how much they payed. I've never checked mine, so Im not sure if it shows the actual item name itself or not.....but then if they pay the vendor i don't know whether it would come up with the avvie name either sorry.
Some one will know though...

Show us your etchings!

I am becoming more and more of a hippovendor believer... professional, lots of good features and good customer support.

.d

Put the artwork on a box and arrange it to look "nice" (framed, unframed, etc.). Set it to sell copy, or sell original. Use Transactions history on the SL page to see who bought what and when. Be sure to download your transactions history at least once a month as it only contains a limited number of transactions, not all.

I never used a vendor, so can't help you there (didn't see the need for something like that).

Then again, I sold maybe 10-20 art objects in a year inside this world, so I am not the best guide in the world.

Oh, if you set up your own gallery, set up one of those Gallery network thingies on your land (I can't seem to be able to describe this particular thingie well, if you look in search for a gallery, you will likely find what I am talking about).

I've only sold a handful of my paintings in SL, so I'm no expert. Personallly I have them set up as a finished framed work, set as 'sell copy' so if someone wants to buy one, they just right click and 'buy'. They get a copy of the piece, and the original stays on the wall.

I download my transaction history from the website to an excel file and keep detailed records of every sale that way - who bought what, when. I don't have a fancy gallery or anything set up, just scattered my stuff around the top floor of my mall. You're welcome to go and have a look, they're on the third floor:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Waikiti/231/166/22/?title=Waikiti%20Mall

I also have them on SLX and OnRez, but haven't sold any through either of those venues -- not that I'm surprised. I think people need to see it for themselves, rather than a watermarked photo on a website. Actually that's sort of the point I'm trying to say -- in my small experience, people are buying the (prim based) object of the finished work, not just the texture. So I believe it's best that they can see the finished object firsthand, rather than just look at a texture of it on a vendor display screen / 2d web site.

Good luck, and have fun

-Atashi

I don't know there is nothing like being in a sim with tons of those vendors making you stutter when walking. Rhee is example of when vendors go wrong. From what I heard friend has some land their there is over 1 million scripts running right now due to vendors.
I think the lower lag way might be to just sell things in prims, but I have also few times tried to use this system biggest thing is setting things right, then getting people to want to buy things.
I don't sell my creations like I use to but it's hard just finding people to share what I have done, I figure unless you're really talented its even harder challenge to get people to come and buy from your vendors...
Hopefully you will do very well.
I figure the best way to vend your creations is do whatever is lowest lag and have environment people want to stay and visit once they find you but what would I know.

for both buying and selling I have always just preferred "selling contents" of a sign- to a scripted vendor.

Just as a consumer that spends about $10,000 L a month shopping. I hate vendors!!! I don't stop and click through them, waiting for them to rez the next pic. I want to walk into a shop and look around the walls and see actual displayed items, not stand in front of a vendor clicking. Just my preference but if a shop is all vendors I tp out of there.

And I hate having to stand there for 6 minutes waiting for hundreds of things to rez. Tradeoff.

Graphic -- I got most of them -- Depends on how you want to sell.

Hippo is great for Reseller programs cause it's dumbed down.

Apez is okay cause you can tap into different verticals (other peoples stuff) by searching out collections however I find the web interface a bit cumbersome and it is not so reseller friendly.

Do you want to house all your stuff in one vendor or do you want to fill up a store? i personally use both -- Hippo for resale stuff and my own *ahem* gift card vendor system for in house -- I have covered most bases at that point. I can take my show out on the road, offer a couple of different reseller programs, and offer value based incentives to cusumer and vendor as well.

If you'd like to see any of these in action -- feel free to jingle

CC

I still prefer the jevn

As for artwork, be sure to watermark the display pics (with sample or display or something written across it) else dishonest folks can screenshot/snapshot your work and upload it to SL themselves

good luck with your venture... (don't know how well the artwork market holds up, but if you do make those sculpt shoes, send me a LM, after seeing the pic you showed me a long time ago of one you were doing for someone, I would like to see the finished result)

also if you do make sculpt shoes and decide to sell the sculpt maps, let me know, I know of a few ppl would be interested (depending on style of course)

It never bothered my to flip through vendors, but I will say I am more likely to see what you have if I am walking by if you have them all put out seperatly.

I have used Hippotech before and was happy with how it worked. I kept two multi-panel vendors at the front of my stores and filled the inside with single panels. If you just want the scripted vendors for group discounts, profit sharing, remote management of multiple store, web interface and all the other goodies scripting brings, I can reccomend HippoVend.

As noted already, people will want to buy art as it looks hanging on the wall. Vendors want to show any object in the same aspect ratio. I made all by pictures at 3 X 5 aspect and uploaded at 256 X 512 pixles. Yes, it gets distorted in the processes but once applied to the vendor panel it looked correct again. To sell art, on the other hand, you would place a vendor up, change the texture to to your art work. Reshape the vendor board to be the frame and apply the frame texture and then do that for each seperate piece. Unless you just have to have all the scripting toys you may well be better off just setting the object for sale.

Vendors make me impatient. I'll click a few times and then wander off to do something else.

A-MEN! I hate vendors. I have a very fast pc and yet I still don't have the patience for more than two clicks...three tops.

If you absolutely need them, which I did at first, I liked using Onrez's vendor system. I haven't used any others so I can't make a comparison, but since you'll probably want to post your items to ONREZ anyway, why not kill two birds with one stone?