The "business in a box" at 4L or free, hurts the way to do business in SL?

If you are thinking of getting into anything where you sell things with full perms, you can expect that whatever you worked long and hard on will be all over the grid at BIAB stores within the month, especially if you market it as a BIAB.

If you aren't thinking of selling full perm and are wondering if the BIAB places are going to put you out of business, I wouldn't worry. BIAB only give you things that everyother new resident generally will have already been suckered in to buying, so who are they selling to? The other new residents who eventually see this chain also. It doesn't take long to realize that BIAB really isn't going to make you money in the long run. Also, if you look through most BIAB things, they are crap, complete crap, and do not compare to quality creations in anyway.

BIAB sellers (unless they are the original creator of the items) make me sick. It takes a certain kind of person to stick in someone's hard work that someone copied and start selling it and it takes a certain kind of person to repackage freebies and completely fool all the new residents into thinking they are getting something of worth. I don't understand those people, and I never will. Those people are leeches, leeching off of content creator's hard work. Above all, it shouldn't be so damn hard to shut down someone for selling your things. I think that's just ridiculous. It makes me feel pretty unsafe around here.

I think the most outright case of not caring I have seen was the time I walked in my store and saw someone building prims on top of my objects, copying them the best they could right there in my store. This person had also been trying to get me to give them the object FREE so they could figure out how to make it and sell them herself. I know this isn't the same as copybot, but it really pissed me off. I worked hard to come up with the design she was copying (which if you think about it, the way she was doing it would be like tracing someone's art in RL), and she was just tracing it with prims and obviously was going to sell it as her own. I hate even having to think about it, but it happens alot.

My best advice to other creators is to never look blindly at things in SL. Keep your eyes open and keep an eye out for things out of the ordinary. If you notices someone copying someone's things, let the original designer know. The best way to stop the BIABers from stealing from you is to catch them before they do.

Just as a side note, I think "prim air" could be a big seller.

(kidding!)

I was worried about that, if i invest time and effort doing skins and hair, per example, most users sticks with the freebies that are available everywhere for a few (but really few) lindens.

My main concern was that freebies or BIAB are everywhere and ppl stay with them instead of buying other more detailed or well done stuff.

However, in the other hand, i detect that people like to buy, so maybe they just buy and buy and buy and buy... all with the illusion that in lindens all are "cheap".

I figure that if someone wants to start a little selling business, and are just learning the ropes about what/how/when/where, and have no graphics experience, they could approach a creator of products that the business newbie really enjoys, and ask them if they would consider a resale opportunity. With proper permissions on the items, both parties win; the creator gets their name out to an increased audience, and the newbie reseller gets a taste of business. Of course, the reseller would have to develop a rapport and trust with the creator in order to successfully sell the stuff without hurting both parties, but I do think that it's a good alternative to BiBs.

NEW users really like free things. There are even those out there who like making something for nothing (oh come on I guess we all do, but we're not all extreme enough to steal over it).

When it all boils down though, I think the only people who buy BIAB are other new residents. It's just a big vicious circle that I think more and more new residents are putting themselves through before realizing that there is just no comparrison to the real thing.

In the end though, I believe most newbs figure it out and stop getting scammed.

I agree. I see an arrangment more like the one you describe replacing the BIAB frenzy among honest players. I have seen a few shops offering commision vendors which let you set up their vendor in your space and you split the profits. I think this looks like a pretty good idea myself. You could have a shop with some of your own content and compliment it with commisioned vendors from other content creators. The established merchant doesn't have to hassle with finding mall space (or paying rent) and the new merchant can fill out thier shop.

I don't use vendors, but it seems like the permissions issue is taken care of this way too right? If the vendors are networked then the creator never has to give a full perm copy to the reseller and rely on them to change it, right?

To the OP, I agree with what people have said here, BIAB stuff will not hurt your sales of original content. Have fun learning new stuff and building your own unique buisness and customers will find you.

i think biab merch has had the effect of forcing creators to raise standards, so thats a good thing. and full perms merch has its place on the grid as well. its perfect for creating a 'value add' to existing services/products.

What you also see is that most people, after they have spent a little time in SL and have met more experienced users, will decide they want better looking hair/skin/clothes... Because wearing nothing but freebies screams "I'm a newbie". The free stuff is wonderful when you are starting out. But after a while, you want to look better. You start comparing yourself to others, and feeling like you could do better.

That exactly what I was trying to say earlier, but just couldn't find the words ;D

keep in mind that how people market your product will reflect upon you. you can get a bad rep if your vendors are seen in sandboxes, on squatting land, on 16m plots, etc.
that being said, apex offer something like this, and i think hippovend as well.

To answer the direct question, as long as you are creating high quality items, you have nothing to worry about from BiaB folks. It's very rare to find someone who's willing to stay in freebies forever and there are a lot of designers charging and getting solid figures for thier work =)

Can I ask if this was the vendor that is selling skins in a box- providing all the files and whatnot which allows you to change them up in Photoshop, and then resell them as your own? I was quite tempted to purchase them so that I could get a jumpstart on how to make my own skin- kinda like Mor was explaining, a starting platform of sorts. :/ I only hadn't bought them yet since it was so expensive.

I must also admit, I was suckered by some of those other notorious BIABs when I first joined SL. In my travels since I have seen the same boxes of items ranging from $1L to $1000L! If I had only known then what I know now!

That is a very good point. A top selling vendor with a good reputation really has very little to gain from this sort of arrangement, but a person who wants to create but has little intrest in marketing their stuff now has this option rather than trying to sell their items as BIAB content which will, without a doubt, get ripped off.

Your point is taken though that a creators reputation goes where ever their product does.

sorry i dont have the url, but there was a german sl website that had zip files up for download. i think they may have had psd's in them with layers and all. i'll have a look and see if i can track them down.

You should check out Apez for this sort of thing, they are inworld and you can manage it all from their website, including which products you have in the vendors or even a collection from a certain designer.

I have gotten multiple requests like this over time though it goes in waves

"hi where is your full perms version of your stuff and how much"

or

"can i have your stuff full perms and how much"

I say "no I dont give my stuff away full perms its MINE and I want to keep it that way."

the other response is less volative if i'm not tired of being asked and i say

"if i gave my stuff away full perms I would have no business in three weeks or nothing to call my own sorry but no"

I can go for weeks without being asked and then 5 people ask me in one week.

I honestly don't think she had a way to access the necessary files to redo the skin. She only had what she had bought from someone else who bought from someone else who bought from someone else...you get the picture. You can always try tracing the skin back to the creator and asking them for the PSD file, but that is assuming the creator actually created them first and not by stealing a texture.

Best bet I think would be to open a forum thread in the texture section to see if anyone might be willing to release a template skin for you to use. If I could do skin, I would so do it for you guys, but I'm in the same boat, floating around hoping to see someone release something that might help!

At NCI, we offer most of the elements. Besides our many "how to" classes (including building, clothing, scripting, and texturing), we also offer classes in Starting a Business in Second Life, a weekly NCI Business Forum discussion group, Basic and Advanced Land classes, and a SL Consumer Skills class.

You are correct there. Recently NCI was given a huge folder of Business-in-a-Box kits with the idea that we would put them out as freebies. However, as I began to go through the items and contact the creators to confirm that they were indeed freebies, it turned out that well over half of the BIABs were items that had either been taken from the original creators via a permissions bug, or outright stolen via a permissions exploit. I'm still going through BIAB stuff, but I feel very sorry for anyone who buys them. About the _best_ people selling BIAB content can hope for is a reputation as a reseller of freebies!

No.

That would be secondforum.de. You have to register (free) before you can download the skins, and the site is entirely in German so it may present a navigation challenge for some. The available skins (two male and two female) are not the highest quality, and they're only offered as TGA files (not layered PSD). But they're still a nice starting point for experimentation and learning, and the price is right.

Are people asking to buy your stuff full perms or do they just want freebies? I can't imagine asking a vendor for something for free. If they put out a freebie box to entice people in, that's one thing, but just expecting to be given something is ridiculous. I've never even tried to bargain.

I can see, however, asking for something with limited perms, such as transfer no copy, so I could give it as a gift, but would have to buy another if I wanted it for myself, or no transfer, copy, so I could safely rez it and keep a copy, but I couldn't sell it to others. Would you consider selling, say 2 dozen of an item with transfer rights, but no copy rights if I had a resale store? What if we had a deal in place where I would buy items in bulk with no copy, but transfer rights from you at a mild discount and agree to sell them at a set price (not to exceed x) out of my location? We set the price so I could take a profit, and you increase your sales substantially, but take a smaller profit per item? How about exclusive sales rights on a product line? Surely if I made a juicy enough offer, you would be willing to work something out, right?

I'm not making any offers, btw, I'm just thinking that you might be missing opportunities by flat out refusing to give perms on your sales. Meh - on the other hand, I'm a noted idiot, so what do I know?

In RL I bargain with every deal I make.... but in SL? No, I take the price that is given. Too expensive for me? No big deal, I won't buy it.

Morwen.

No they come to me and basically ask where my full perm versions or my stuff are usually

Some just ask if they can buy them full perms and the answer is no of course. I get the impression that these people get the impression that everything is actuallly full perm somewhere as a given.



If i gave stuff out with full permissions basically it would happen like the business in a box and I would be out of business. I have spent many months working on making stuff that people will come to me for. They would have to pay me a good 300k or more lindens per item in order to make it worth my while because basicaly in a week the items I sold would be worthless.

and yes I have had the occassional person try just about anything on me but the asking for my full perm versinos its a new thing created by this BIAB thing which if you look around regardless of the itme in the box ends up free after a few weeks

Do you prefer just buying a box of Twinkies and selling them to people? Or do you bake cakes, custom decorate them, and sell those?