Store!

Hello people I was just wondering, How do I open up my own store???!!!?!??! - Alexander McGann

Welcome to SL!

There are several ways..

If you are willing to get a premium account and own land, you can buy land, and put a store on it, list it in places, and put your items down to sell..

If not..

You could rent land, in US$ or L$, my landlord is Hiro Queso, great landlord

Or you could rent from a mall, there are general malls, that sell everything, or specialist malls which sell just clothing, or furniture..

What do you make/create?

Let me know if you have any more questions

I dont make/create anything yet, lol ive just started and thought having my own shop would be fun , id also like some tips on making clothes, furniture please - Alexander McGann

Although there are tutorials on such things, its best to learn from hands on experience..

Search the forum for "tutorial" if you want to take a look at some..

I started off making some really really really awful furniture.. But out of practise I got better and better.. And I now make enough to cover my land rent fees, with a little left over

Hmm...You say hands on experience, so where could I practise the arts of making furniture

Hey would I be able to create furniture using SketchUp, that's a program you can make 3D models in ! - Alexander McGann

You can practice making furniture anywhere that build is enabled, probably the best place is a sandbox.. Search, on the big map, for sandbox.. Avoid weapons testing and such..

You can't import 3D models from another program unfortunatly..

To practise making clothes there are 3 main programs..

PaintShop Pro
PhotoShop
GIMP

GIMP is free, just search google..

Check the events listing under the Educational category for building classes - I used to run a beginners class in which we all made coffee tables, but I haven't had time to schedule it recently. However, many other instructors do run these regularly.

From my own perspective, I find furniture building to be far easier than clothing, but it may depend upon whether you lean towards Photoshop/PaintShopPro skills vs. geometric modelling skills.

Ok thanks, that answers my building questions but still how do i open a shop and have my items on display and for sale? - Alexander McGann

To open your shop, make sure the sliding door script works. Or you could just have an "open-air" shop and people could fly in.

To open a shop you either build one on land you own or rent.. Or rent a stall in a mall..

To put items for sale, first create them and have them in your inventory.. Objects, like furniture, can be placed out, then right click it, chose edit, and the click More>>, then the general tab has a "For Sale" section..

Clothes have to be put in boxes, and then sold from there..

I have an online basic building tutorial.. here. And an edit menu tabs (slightly advanced, do basic build first) here.

You either need to buy land for your store, or rent space in someone else's shopping mall. If you hope that people will be using the 'Find Places' menu to find your store, then buying your own land is best as it will allow you to set a picture, name and description for your store, and list it in Find Places under the correct category for just L$30 per week.

Or, you can splash out a little more and buy an entry in Find/Classifieds for L$250/week (you do this under the Classifieds tab in your profile) - you can do this even if you're just renting mall space too.

Either way, make sure that people looking for what you sell will be able to bring it up easily by including relevent keywords in the description you write. Very similar to getting your web site found in Google

Your items can be on display individually and set as For Sale, or if you have many items or high prim items, you can use a vendor to display and sell them. There are many vendors available for use - the one I use was coincidentally made by Zapoteth himself - some are free, and some cost money.

You can also visit slexchange.com and slboutique.com to read about how to list your items for sale on their web sites.

It still suprises me seeing those.. I think to myself "Hey, that looks like my vendor, Hey, that is my vendor"

It seems like oh so long ago, when I owned tiny little malls and we all danced the average SL dance, and we had prim CDs for music

Wow thankyou very much!, all your posts have helped me loads!, I can't actually log onto secondlife on my home PC yet due to lack of RAM, but at x-mas ill be online and ready to make a living!!!, thankyou once again - Alexander McGann