selling tattoo's - in what way?

I like the idea of making tattoos to sell in SL.

My main question that I have been thinking of is how do you sell tattoos so that people can put in anywhere they like on their avatar' s body.....

I mean, as far as I understand SL it is not possible to just put the tattoo on the position on your body where you want it..... I think you have to make a texture of the body-part (arm, back etc.) with the tattoo on it so that a buyers can put that texture on his body-part.

If so, that means you have to make specific tattoo's for arms, and different ones for back, legs etc....

Is that right?

Usual way is to wear them on the underwear layer. One for the top and/or one for the bottom. Matching a single tatt across both top and bottom to appear seamless will be your challenge.
Use the templates provided in these forums for all av clothing work.

So, if people cannot buy just a tattoo and put them anywhere on their body .... there got to be differenr tattoo's for legs, arms, back, etc.....?

Hi Ron, most tattoos I've seen are as pointed out, a top half or bottom half article of clothing. For the most part they are transparent but simply have the tattoo in the appropriate place, say, an arm.

There is an alternative and that is a prim. You could have a transparent, curved prim with your tattoo which you could edit the position you wear it on your body but you would have to attach/detach independently of clothing so you might end up with your tat on the outside of your jacket for instance. The other problem is of course close up, it will be easily detected as a prim 'floating' above your skin

hi Ron,

yes you are right, tattoos are generally uploaded with a specific position on the body in mind. I like many other tattoo shops, offer my customers the service of re-positioning any of our tattoos for them, but when they buy a tattoo off the shelf from me the sales board indicates where that tattoo will be placed on their body. So if the sales board shows the tattoo on the arm that is where the tattoo they buy will be placed, but they can always contact me if they see a tattoo they like but want it elsewhere on their body.

Hope this helps, but please feel free to IM me ingame if you have any questions

If you had access to a range of skin textures (as original PS files), you could I suppose offer a service to place your tattoos directly on the skin. You could then sell the skin with tattoo to the customer.

However this would be a too restrictive and expensive for most people who like to be able to take tattoos on and off easily.

Personally I like having the tattoos directly on the skin as it makes wearing outfits much easier without worrying about which clothing layer the tattoo is on. I have gone this route for my own avatar.

Indeed. I've made so many tattoos for pesonal use that at one point I was considering throwing together a few thousand Lindens, contacting the maker of my skin, and asking if she'd be willing to overlay my tats directly on the skin so I wouldn't have to eat up a clothing layer with them. But then I realized that every few weeks or so I go back and get/make another tattoo, so that would just be wasted time and money on my part.

If you know a skin seller well you can ask for permission to put the tattoos onto the skin yourself... but giving you access to those textures is a big trust thing so don't be hurt if your request is rejected.