Vendor

I hope someone can help me. I want to try a vendor to sell my stuff. I've read a lot about it, but I can never find how it workt. I think people can buy stuff at the server, but where are the object they buy? Do they buy from my inventory, or must I show it somewhere in Real? I want to use this to minimize my prims, but does it work this way? Thank you and greetings Naomi

Hi Naomi and welcome. The little I've gleaned so far on vending requires you to own or rent land in-world for an object to act as your storeroom. This is as when you're not logged in, your inventory is off-line.
Of course, I may be wrong LOL

Network vendors, such as JEVN, require you to set up a sever. It's basicaly an object that you put your items for sale into and has to stay rezzed. You really need your own land to use a network vendors.

There are also non-network vendors, where you just put the items you want to sell into the vendor itself. You can carry these around in your inventory and rez them wherever you need one without needing a server.

Vale

Tnx for your answer, but I think I was not very clear. What I want to know is, where are the object, I want to sell? Are they in my inventory? and when someone buys them, they go automatically to the new owner? Sorry for my bad English

Naomi, I thought Vale clearly answers this. You put a copy of your item in a network server object with the 'sell copy' option ticked. Not doing this will sell the single object the once.

The non-networked vendor she describes is an object (again containing a copy)you carry in your inventory and place in-world as and when wanted. You do not AFAIK ever sell directly from your inventory.

Also AFAIK customers 'pay' the vendor and do automatically get a copy, just like when you buy something.

Do I understand right that for the server vendors you need to be 'in world' and for the others you can be offline if someone buys from you ???

Yes you both explain that clearly, but it's not what I mean. And I think my English maby is to bad to explain. What I want to know is, what do the objects (copy's) do with the primcounting of your land. So if I put a copy of a house in the vendor (220 prims), does that counts for the prims on the land. Tnx

NO. You do not need to be "in-world" for server based vendors to function. The server prims are what need to be in world, but you do not. Nothing is ever sold directly from your inventory.

Examples:

JEVN Server System

I have three "server" prims located on my land. Each has scripts in it that communicate with the vending units at my stores. The server prims also contain the art to be displayed when it shows a customer what they are going to buy, and copies of the items that they can buy. It may also contain other resources that they can get, like info cards or landmarks. For example, I have one server for clothes, one for furniture, and one for avatar eyes.

At each store location, I have one or more prims containing a vending script that communicates with the servers. Customers see one or more product pictures displayed on these prims, and have controls that allow them to select or display different products. Different vendors can each connect to one of my servers.

When a customer pays for a product in my store, or requests an info card and landmark, the vendor script communicates with the server, and a copy of the item requested is sent to the customer, while any money that was paid is sent to me.

Server based vendors are usually something you must pay to obtain, and take more effort to set up. But updating multiple store locations for new products or price changes can all be done by making changes from the server prim location.

Stand-Alone Vendors

A collection of one or more prims containing a vending script, the art to be displayed when it shows a customer what they are going to buy, and copies of the items that they can buy. It may also contain other resources that they can get, like info cards or landmarks. These are placed at your store location(s) in-world. When a customer uses the vendor, it delivers the product to them and sends the owner of the vendor the payment.

Most of these vending systems are free. They tend to be easy to set up. But to change inventory or pricing, each individual vendor must be visited and edited. For examplle, if I sold t-shirts at 7 malls, I would have to visit each mall location and make the same editing changes to add the new shirts to each vendor, add new art, set prices, etc..

Single prim, Sell contents

A prim of any type can be set to sell either the original items inside it, or more often copies of the original items. This is often the first type of "vendor" a person will use, as it requires no special scripts at all. Just rez a prim, place copies of your items in it, and on the edit choices for that prim, set a price and "sell contents". They pay the prim, and they get a copy of what is in the box, or possibly a copy of the box with its contents, depending on how it is set up.

If you sell no-copy, transferrable items this way, the box is a one-shot sale device. For example, if I had a single copy of a no-copy, transferrable dress that I wanted to sell, I could put it in a box, set the price and set the box to "sell original", and the buyer gets the box itself with it's contents, while I get the money paid for it. The box ceases to be mine and becomes their property.

As with stand-alone vendors systems, if these need updating, each must be updated individually, by going where the prim is and editing it.


Regarding prim counts

For any of the above methods, the prims for the server or vendor are all that count againt the land they are on. The contents that they sell count zero.

My three servers take up three prims on my land, although they contain hundreds and hundreds of prims worth of content, if that content were all rezzed in-world.

My server-based vendors typically use either 4 or 14 prims each at my store locations. The smaller ones look like picture frames, and display one thing at a time. The bigger one shows 10 items at a time, with a central picture of the one item among those 10 choices currently selected for sale. I use that for furniture, where I might offer ten different colors of the same couch.

My simple vendors take one prim each, regardless of how much stuff is inside them.


Regarding item permissions

To sell an item more than once, you must have both copy and transfer permissions on it for yourself. This is almost always true if you created it.

You can set the permissions that the next owner will have to something more restrictive. For example, you may set a copy of a dress do the next owner may copy it but not resell it. This is done by setting the "next owner" permissions on the object contained in the vendor's inventory.

Ok great tnx. I think I'll understand this

If you place your object in a vendor, then you don't have to keep a copy rezzed inworld. So this will indeed lower your prim count if the object rezzes as more than one prim.

Example:

You build a house of 34 linked prims. Keeping a model home rezzed on your land, so prospective buyers can walk through it, will add 34 prims to your prim count.

You decide to use a vendor instead of a display model to drive sales. You "Take" your house into Inventory, where it is stored as a single object. Your land prim count decreases by 34.

You put a vendor on your land. That takes about 2-3 prims, depending on the model. You drop a copy of your house object from Inventory into the contents of the vendor prim. Your house can now be sold from there.

Total prim usage before: 34 prims
Total prim usage after: 2-3 prims

Does that help?

One other way to sell. An in-world item can have a price set on it, with "Sell a copy" selected. For example, at my main store, I have a writing desk and chair rezzed in-world, so people can actually sit at the desk and see their avatar using the writing animation. If they like what they see, they can click on the desk and buy a copy of it, and can click on the chair and buy a copy of the chair and writing animation pose ball.

The same chair and writing desk is in the vendor on the wall, sold as a set or individually, along with a selection of matching side-chairs with different sit pose animations.

At my smaller stores, I save on prims by only having the vendor on the wall. The difference is that I can set up a smaller store with 30 prims, while my main store uses 100 prims, and has the desk, the writing chair, a couch, another chair, a lamp and a book case all on display in-world. Each of the in-world products can be purchased by clicking on them. The display art in the vendor tells you more information about each item, such as what the permissions are on each item, and what is included (or not) in the product.

YES, that's exactly what I meant, tnx!!!!!

Excuse me necro-posting (yet again) but I was browsing for starter vendor systems last night, and it resulted in a whole whack of questions related to this thread and the one about how you choose to shop. Any help would be greatly appreciated

-First of all, I came across a couple of 'hologram' vendors. I assume these rez an instance of the object that is for sale so that buyers can get a better look at it? How does this affect prim count on the land though?
-I saw a number of simple free (non-networked) vending systems on SLB and SLE, are these legit? I know there are systems that appear free, but take a cut of your sales, how can you tell the difference if the description doesn't mention it?
-512x512 and even 128x128 seems like a really big texture to be using for such a small image, do any of these vendor systems allow the use of parts of a texture as the image? Editing a 'poster vendor' I could easily use texture offset and scaling to only use a quarter of a texture per poster, but is this possible in any of the free or low cost vendors? If not can anyone suggest where I could get a vendor thats full mod so I could check out the script and try implementing it myself?
-Finally, does anyone have any preferred vendor brands, or brands they would suggest avoiding-to help a n00b content creator avoid a few painful mistakes?

Thanks.

-First of all, I came across a couple of 'hologram' vendors. I assume these rez an instance of the object that is for sale so that buyers can get a better look at it? How does this affect prim count on the land though?

These use temp-on-rez prims, which are not supposed to affect parcel prim count. But I have heard that recent updates screwed that up, and that the temp prims were being counted. Not sure it's been fixed.

-I saw a number of simple free (non-networked) vending systems on SLB and SLE, are these legit? I know there are systems that appear free, but take a cut of your sales, how can you tell the difference if the description doesn't mention it?

Ask other people who are using it? Non-networked vending scripts are pretty simple. Lots of people give them away free. There are a few that take a cut, but most do not. Any that do would have to have some other person's Avatar key embedded in the code, and you can find that if you look. If the free script isn't modable, and you can't examine it, don't use it.

-512x512 and even 128x128 seems like a really big texture to be using for such a small image, do any of these vendor systems allow the use of parts of a texture as the image? Editing a 'poster vendor' I could easily use texture offset and scaling to only use a quarter of a texture per poster, but is this possible in any of the free or low cost vendors? If not can anyone suggest where I could get a vendor thats full mod so I could check out the script and try implementing it myself?

The free ones I have seen are all full-mod. You can not use just part of a product image in any system I have seen. I usually do 256 x 256 for my images, because people DO zoom in to get a close look at what you're selling. A tiny, grainy pic doesn't sell well.

-Finally, does anyone have any preferred vendor brands, or brands they would suggest avoiding-to help a n00b content creator avoid a few painful mistakes?

Look around at the malls and check for free low-lag vendors offered by the mall owners. I believe the store in Serenity Woods offers a good one for free.

As far as I know, this isn't a bug, it's a deliberate change in policy, intended to stop temp rerezzers.

Funnily enough, of the freebie ones I found the Serenity Woods one on SLB is what I'm going to use. It seems to have all necessary features, without unnecessary listeners, and the ability to pretty much do whatever I want with the component prims (such as replace them with something else of the same name, and possible implementing a texture splitter in the script for a smaller version).

An earlier version of the Serenoity Woods free vendor was what I used when I got started. It worked well, but I eventually got enough vending sites that a networked system made more sense for me. Easier to update 5 stores from one set of servers on my home parcel, rather than going to each store in 5 different sime and manually editing each vendor to update merchandise, prices, or art. But for a simple start, the SW vendor should do you quite well, and I feel safe in assuring you it's an 'honest' one that doesn't quietly sneak out a cut of your sales.

Good luck in your merchant endeavors!

Well I will initially only have need of one or two basic vendors, and I also didn't want to go splashing out on a network system before (a) I had some idea of what basic use and functionality was all about and (b) I had a manufacturer who's free products gave me confidence in their premium ones. Of course the fact that I don't have a home parcel kind of makes a network system pointless to me for now as well =D

Thanks for the feedback and vote of confidence in my choice

ermm, you dont actually have to set objects to sell that you place in a vendor, or box for that matter, since it's your object and your vendor it will sell as many as it has to... in fact, if an object is marked for sale when sold via a vendor I'm pretty sure when set out that object is still for sale... meaning someone else can come along and buy it right out from under you