a little advice for a broke builder?

Hey all.

First, allow me to introduce myself. I'm Giano Anatra and I build and script (mostly furniture pieces). I'm not new to SL, only this name is. I decided to take some time off for a while, and just recently decided to come back.

Here's my problem ...

Over the past year, I've only built for fun, and just gave my creations to friends of mine, free of charge. However, I've been hearing "you should sell this" an awful lot from my friends. LOL

So I've decided to put some of my best work up for sale, only I don't have a lot of money to invest in the land needed to display all of my furniture. I would need at least 9000 m2 of land, and I can't afford that..

So I thought about sticking all of the furniture in vendors, and going with a substantially smaller plot.

My question is, do you think people will buy from vendors based on a picture alone? Most of the furniture stores I've been to have live demos of the furniture out, and it's not in vendors, or boxed.

I've even thought about making affiliate vendors, where I give someone else say 50% of the profits for in return letting me put a vendor in their shop.

Any advice you can give me would be really appreciated. I'm a very firm believer of the "Start small, work your way up" theory. But with the hundreds, if not thousands, of other furniture stores out there, so I stand a chance against the others without a huge plot of land?

Since you write scripts, you could make a rezzing vendor. For instance, I have 4 vendors, each containing a different range of fireplaces, and people do buy from them. You could do something similar.

You could also start with a small piece of land, and sell only your best work to start with. As you earn from sales, you could increase the size of your land.

I recommend listing your items on the SLExchange.

Can you group things into vendors and leave one or two items out so that people can see the quality of the workmanship?

Say you have a matching living room set of 4 pieces, have the couch out and the vendor shows the whole set for purchase?

Phil, Thanks for the suggestion, I have made to vendor versions so far. One is the standard Next, Prev, Image vendor, and the other is a "dollhouse" rezzing vendor, which rezzes a temp "dollhouse" smaller version of the actual product.

But after reading some articles in the forum about temp objects increasing sim lag, I decided to focus my attention on the standard vendor.

Mine don't temp rez. People buy the rezzed fireplace.

Yes Isablan, that was another idea I had (sorry I forgot to mention it.).
Maybe if I put the "deal closer" piece out, and have the rest in the vendors it would work.

What do you think?

Hello Giano, welcome to the forums.

I'm sure you've thot of holovendors, but the normal ones are a little offputting.

There's a different sort of vendor that rezzes a full set of furniture on touch (full size with poses etc), and then has a JEVN-like display of different sets of furniture you can scroll through, and it will rez them as you scroll. I've seen this in a few stores; the only one that springs to mind is my friend Ann McClellan's store, which is called something like Hi Style, Low Prim Furniture. She also has some other samples out, so that people see a range of her work when they come in (but not her full line, unless they scroll through the vendor).

She also has posters on the walls so that you can browse them like a catalog. But if you do that, you need good signs so that people understand whether they should buy from the posters or the vendor.

Let me know if you want the LM. I imagine the creator of the vendor will be obvious when you inspect it.

I want to add to my previous post, but other have posted sijnce then so I'll write it again with the addition...

My rezzing vendoes don't temp rez. People use the arrows to rez the various fireplaces, and when they find one that they like, they buy the rezzed one. They are rezzed as for sale.

The only reason I have them temp rez is because it lowers prim count.

If I had them rez without being temp, I would be back to square one.
For example, I made a very nice canopy bed with sculpted posts and flexi curtains, and it's just over 40 prims.

While this is low compared to some of the other canopy beds I've seen, If the vendors all happened to be on my highest prim pieces all at the same time, I would run into the risk of them not working because the parcel is full.

Maybe I can figure out a way to make it so the vendor checks the prim count of all of the other vendors, and will let the customer know in a professional, not so "sorry I can't do it" way that the object will come out shortly after some of the objects rotate away.

TempRezzing only causes sim issues if continuously rezzing the object. In effect, making it "permanent" by re-rezzing it every 60 seconds.

A TempRezzing vendor that rezzes once only on each touch of the rezzer is one of the reasons TempRez was created. ie, it's temporary.

Yes, there will be a slight degragation at Rez. There is with any rezzing of any type of prim if you watch the readouts close enough. So as long as you stay away from mass rezzing, or continued rezzing, you should be fine. Though I would test out the TempRez of any high-scripted object in a vacant sim prior to putting it out in a store ^.^

~Jessy

Probably easier to just check the primcount on the parcel, with llGetParcelPrimCount() compared to llGetParcelMaxPrims. The disadvantage of the temp-rez vendor approach is that the customer has to buy a different version than the one that's rezzed, or some awfully important script has to unset the temp bit in the customer's copy on CHANGED_OWNER.

You can easily point to the proper place to buy the object by sticking a flaoting text script in the Temp object being rezzed that tells the buyer where to buy it. Example "Purchase this box by paying the sign behind the display rezzer."

~Jessy

The "dollhouse" vendor I was referring to earlier does just that. If functions like a standard vendor, only it displays a miniature version of the object when the products are cycled through. When someone pays the vendor, they get the actual fullsize object.

That would be horrible getting a dollhouse sized canopy bed with no mod....LOL.

From a consumer's point of view, I have bought a lot of furniture, but never straight from a vendor. I need to see the piece I'm going to buy already rezzed. I like to see what type of pose I'm going to be in when using it. The wrong pose can ruin it for me (don't like the ones that are too fidgety).

Giano, you could work with someone to get a showroom.

If you have a friend that owns land but needs some additional traffic for their own shop/home rental business/SL office, offer to give them free furniture in exchange for the ability to provide a landmark from your vendor site to the "showroom."

I thought you'd prefer the ones that spin?

I'm only a hamster on the forums. In SL my brain is regular size.

Hi Giano,

As a consumer I never buy furniture/lamps/flowers, etc., unless I can see it first. Temp rezzers are a good idea as some here have suggested.

If I see something that is in a photo with no rezzer that I really like, I will IM the creator and ask if they will rezz it for me. IMO pictures don't really do a furniture item justice - you can't clearly see the textures or true colors.

I shop on On Rez and SLex alot too, but I will visit the store listed in the ad to see it first. Can't see it? I don't buy it.


Hope my 2c helps

Hi there i use a vnedor to sell complete living room sets they are not temp rezed they just have sciprts in them that sets them out in the set allowing the person to buy the parts indivdually or to buy the set from the vendor by paying the vendor itself and reciving the set in a box

i have 18 living room sets in onve vendor and it shows 9pictures at once for customers to choose which set they would like to look at

im in world and i will show you what i have set up and it was not very expensive to purchase

Dragger Allen

Certainly could. I'm somehow functionally fixated on buying the furniture I see, instead of a box containing the same furniture. I should RL shop more at IKEA.

Either way, full-size is much better than "doll house" so one can actually interact with it, use the animations, etc. And infinitely better than a picture vendor.