Selling Advice in a Multi Vendor Marketplace

I was hoping for some advice about a business offer I received today.

I met some people today that own a marketplace with multiple vendors. They charge no rent, but take a 50% commission on every item that I sell. They also decide how many items they want to have me display.

They do advertise the place, and it appears they are high up in the search engine, as I can find them simply by typing a very common word like bed.

Here is my dilemma. They are only offering to display 4 of my furniture/accessories , with the average price about 500L.

If I sell only 1 item each week, then technically I will have paid 250L for 4 prims, or 62.5L/prim. The more I sell, the greater the rate/prim becomes.

Maybe others are more familiar with rates in these type of multi vendor locations that can offer some suggestions. I already have 3 shops and they are starting to pick up in business. I do a standard ad. Even SLExchange only takes a 5% commission and there is no rent there too.

So my first thought is that 50% is way too much of a split? Any other opinions?

Thank you.
Dmitriy

Since you're not paying per prim or meter at all, why are you worried? At any rate, 50% is pretty typical for resale percentages.

If you are receiving sales that you would otherwise not have gotten, you are not losing anything by selling there. But do note that if your own shops are starting to get more traffic, this place could be considered to be actively competing with you and reducing your own full-price sales.

(Personally I think 50% is an insultingly high cut and would not consider it, but that may just be my pride.)

usually I have seen resales at 80/20 (80 for creator)

if you get the preset vendors from ppl, like how jevn has, where the creator can make a vendor that can be handed out to ppl to place and sell the items for the creator

usually 80/20 or 85/15

never seen 50/50

I dunno if I would put out my stuff at 50/50 (especially if they are controlling what I can show), would rather just rent places and then I have control over what I display

I should add, when I said 4 prims - I don't display my items here, i get one vending board per item - so that is 4 vending boards, or 4 prims.

waste of time, sounds more like an ripoff at ur expense

I usually do not even consider percentage malls, they provide me a fixed good, aka space and prims, wich i will pay every week but they are doing nothing to deserve a cut on your sales.

Waaaaaay too much, would never do it.

You know there are places you can rent an entire SHOP with 100 prim allowance for that amount.

It's all a matter of traffic really, if traffic is high, and you get alot of sales from it, it might be ok, but, how sure are you about their 'high traffic'. Alot of places cheat up their traffic, so if I were you, I'd go hang out there and window shop (perhaps as an alt) to see what's going on there. Are there alot of shoppers? Personally, there's no way I would put all the work I do into my items to split such a large percentage just for a vending location. I have my own land, pay for my own ads (not overly expensive, but not cheap either), and also put alot of work into designing an ad that will hit alot. There's no magic to driving traffic to your own land or (much more cheaply) rented land or vending location. Personally, I would recomend against it. It's not worth 50 percent of my sales for sure. In other words, you can drive high traffic to your land just like the high traffic places do.

As long as the sales generated at the commissioned vendors are not taking sales away from your retail stores, go for it.


If you are a well known content creator and people are searching specifically for your products, then it is a bad deal. Otherwise, you are getting sales that you would not normally get AND getting your name out there. I would certainly include a notecard with each item, with links to your retail locations.

I resell alot of products in RL. I am constantly approached by vendors that want to give me another 'profit center' by selling their products. The problem is, most of these vendors want to offer me a mere 15-30% on low ticket items (<$1000 USD).
As they would put it, "you get 20% for doing nothing!". This is utter BS in RL, and in SL. For low ticket items I insist on 50% or higher, otherwise it is not worth my expense, risk, or time.

If the retail location is offering you a no risk opportunity to sell your products I see no reason not to do it.

resell, yes

but this isn`t resell, they don`t buy his product at half price, he just gets 4 prims and a bs traffic story, not even a display stand!

if they would buy 100 pieces at 50%, that`s a risk and an good resell package but it isn`t

I appreciate all the replies. I would never even consider something like this in rl. But without a whole lot of SL sales experience, it's good to get feedback from people who have been through this.

My sales have been doing much better and I am trying to find other ways to get people to the locations. I'm not selling very much of a unique product line, so I do accept that a lot of this is simply pride in my work and enjoyment to see others like my work and use it. I won't be able to retire from this

While no rent sounds like a great deal, the cost ratio is much too high. The way I see it, if one product is going to provide that location 250L, and I am limited to only 4 items there on single item vending boards, then I might find better use of the 250L and add that to my advertising expense to appear higher in search. Or use some of that money (ie, DJ) to hold events at the location and attract people to the stores I already have that display ALL my things.

Well, I am convinced that I will pass this offer up. Thank you all again!!

And if you sell 2 you have paid L$500 for 4 prims. This does not seem like a good deal to me.