Joint Shared Business Ownership

I want to start a busines with another resident. We are not related or associated in RL. We trust each other. We plan a 50/50 arrangement of both costs and revenue. We want both to access vending machines and facilities for maintenance.

Using a Group does not seem to be a viable solution. The Group cannot recieve payment from vendor objects. If I own half the vendor objects, then my busines partner cannot maintain my half if I am away.

Does it make sense to create a dummy resident to act as a "front man"? We could both login as him, and he could recieve payment. We'd have to setup a funding source (e.g PayPal), yes?

We are looking for any input on this. We want to here from other successful business partners.

Interesting question. It will be interesting to see what experts say.

I'm not an expert, but

There are scripts and vendors about that split payments between parties in whatever proportion.
It sounds like you need a (custom/modified) vendor that allows a list of nominated avatars to maintain its settings and contents.
It should be fairly straightforward. The techniques are in common use. Someone may already have created such a vendor.

Products Wanted?
SLExchange?

You can tick to box to allow your business partner to modidy objects. Groups can indeed sell objects and if you've both got pay and receive group liabilities the payments should be shared but as mentioned above, a script or vendor system that allows split profits is the easier solution.

Don't share an avatar.

I can see that triggering the risk API, it's a TOS violation, all sorts of icky weird stuff.

A raw 'statistic' of how human nature and trust is on the grid, is about 95% to the good: 95% are highly trustworthy and decent people - I do believe that. The other 5% will rob you blind. This is what I've seen from my own activities across three years here.

But it sure just works easier, even with the 95%, if you respect passwords and so forth. Also there's no room for 'suspicions' if something glitches.

Get vendors that pay out 50/50 or something simple like that, both get your own premium accounts and donate equal amounts of group tier, and call it done.

Whatever you do, don't mingle things at the paypal level. Expenses, miscellaneous income - wage taxes... just don't go there.

Pay your taxes separately upon cashout and have done with it. Or you'll need an LLC at minimum with tax prep, 941 forms, 800 USD minimum annual tax and all that nonsense.

i remember an italian guy, who had worked for months to make his and his trusted italian partner business a succes, also using a shared "banking" av..

...one morning he logged in to see his partner had sold and/or taken full ownership of all land clubs, malls and L$...

i would only suggest such partnerships, with people you know and can touch in RL.

..im trying to say, limit the risk where you can...

The smartest thing you could do is use the vendor mentioned above that splits the sales equally. How you handle the land will be another matter entirely.

Don't take any chances. You may trust the other person now, but these forums are riddled with stories of business partnerships that ended badly. When it comes to financial matters, never trust anyone in SL that you do not actually know in RL.

we use hippovend & hipporent....(ooo are we allowed to name names?) they both rock, easy to set up, easy to use...not too hard on prim usage either...

Most of the better vending systems allow you to do a profit split, and that would be my advice on how to proceed.

As I recall, the APEZ system allows multiple contributors to add and maintain content and to place shared vendors that split profits. It has a web-based control system. I'm pretty sure that the JEVN system will allow multiple people to update content in the server, and I know it handles profit splits well.

Hi Dashielle

My Grab and go Gift system allows for multiple partners under a group setting. Once system can be utilized and shared between as many partners as you want(addin to 100%) while only having to use one giftcard/sales coupon. Payments are immediately split between partners. We also have begun a web integration that will catalog all sales and allow you to export to a CSV file format(coming soon) This system works with existing display boards as opposed to using a multi author/multi product vendor Contact me inworld if you would like a demo.......cheers.

CC

I use Hippo Rent which allows me to split the proceeds of any rent paid automatically to the people I employ as managers. Its easy to do and works well. I know there are vendors that do the same as well.

I'm with Desmond on the NO SHARING OF PASSWORDS though. It's a clear breach of the TOS and I suspect that LL might ban both parties.

Plus what do you mean by trust? If you can't kick 'em, you can't trust 'em is a pretty good rule to work by in SL

About the trust thing. If your partner does not live with you in RL you can't stop someone else, for instance his heirs if the worst should unexpectedly happen, from accessing his computer and his account and treating you in ways that your partner himself never would.

This isn't an answer to your question, Dashiell, but my advice is not to do it at all. I see so many business partnerships go wrong through personal problems between the two that I often advise people to never ever go into an SL business with an equal partner, as it will almost certainly go wrong on a personal (hurt) level. Trust doesn't come into it. People are always trustable - right up until they show they are not.