confused about prim counts

Hello, im rather confused.

I was looking into renting a shop - this is all future stuff - just researching, and i found one that was 800 Lindens per month with a max of 120 Prims.

Hey?????? If im selling t-shirts? whats that got to do with prims? Is a t-shirt equal to a prim? or is the 'picture-frame' i advertise the t-shirt on, 'the prim'? - in which case, i can advertise ten shirts in 'one picture frame, no?

Hope i make sense to somebody out there,
thanks a million,
S

It doesn't matter what you sell. You may sell a 1 million prim vehicle for example, but you could do that through a 1 prim scripted vendor.

What matters, it's what you put in your shop. Vendors, product samples, bells, whistles, whatever.

Yes you can advertise 10 shirts on one picture frame, however you need to be able to figure out *which* one your customer is wanting to buy. The only way to do that with a single prim is with a vendor script in the prim.

Every box you set out, every sign you use, every vendor you install consists of at least one prim. There can be multiple prims in any one item. If you only sell shirts and if you have less than 50, I have a vendor that would work for you that's a freebie and is only 3 prim.

You don't need a huge amount of prim allowance if you don't have a huge amount of inventory. A lot of sellers use a single prim to sell a single item. A lot of sellers use a multiprim, complex, networked vendor system to sell multiple items. A lot depends on your items for sale.

I hope I've answered your question.

A

As the others said, the prim count for your vending space indicates how many prims you can use for your vendors, signs, and the like. It doesn't matter how many items you have for sale inside your vending devices.

I'll give you a few examples, from some of my own past and present stores.

My first store was a t-shirt vendor in a rented stall in a mall. I was allowed 20 prims. I used 6. Four for the vendor I had my t-shirts in, plus one sign, plus the single prim that my SL Boutique in-world vendor required. At the time, I needed nothing more, as I only had ten or so shirts that I was selling.

One of my later stores had four 3-prim vendors plus a sign that acted as a decorative wall behind them, and a single prim that gave away free shirts with my store name on them. So I used fourteen prims, and I could sell 4 categories of stuff that could easily be looked over by my customers. T-shirts/casual wear, Nice dresses, housewares like kneeling cushions, and avatar eyes. I had as many as 5 locations set up that way, in different malls in different sims. And none of them needed more than 14 prims.

My new main store has a 125 prim allocation, and I'm using every last prim. I have several pieces of my new line of scripted furniture on display in the store. This means people can see the couch or desk or chair in-world, and can sit on them and try the animations. About 75% of the prims are for these in-world examples, and the rest are used by vendors for what I sell. One vendor is a complex JEVN system that shows a main display and ten choices at a time. That one vendor takes 14 prims by itself, but is a far more efficent way to display over 50 kinds of furniture, with all the color choices for upholstery, and all the pose variations for the chairs. The other vendors are 4-prim "picture frames" that are also on a JEVN central server, and that display the clothes, avatar eyes, and other things that I sell. A few prims are also used for a notecard giver and a display mural showing pictures of sims I have designed and built for customers of my sim architect business.

So... how many prims you need depends a lot on how much you sell, and how much you need to display your wares in-world.

Sure, you can sell 10 t-shirts in a one-prim vendor, IF you have the correct scripting in that vendor.

But...

You will sell less that way. It would have to have a way to look at pictures of all the shirts, which would mean waiting for each picture to rez. With the way things have been going lately, that could take a loooong time. Very few people are going to buy something when they can't see it first, so you could have people walking away rather than waiting for 10 different pics.

Personally, I hate vendors where in order to see the item I want I have to wait 30 seconds for a pic to rez. I'm MUCH more likely to buy, and MUCH more likely to pay a higher price if I don't have to wait for it.

Basically, you can sell shirts using low-prim vendors. You will sell a lot more if you put each one in it's own box, which means one prim each. I think you will be amazed at how quickly that 120 prim limit will be reached.

Good luck, whichever way you choose to go.

Well i must say, i might be even more confused now! Lol.

I actually thought, that say i sold a pair of prim shoes, the prim count for the shop being let, included that.... For instance if i sold a pair of shoes that were made up of 8 prims, that that would be incorporated in the prim count...

Meaning that id only be able to sell 15 pairs of shoes..... in a premises thats prim count is 120....

when i go to a shop, and see pictures of things on the walls, like a nurse outfit clothing set... what am i seeing? Is that picture in a vending machine?

for everything i sell id like them to have there own individual 'pictures' on my wall. So are you saying i then need a vending machine for each item? - if so, if the item inside the vending machine is composed of 3 prims, is that added to how many prims the vending machine has, and added to the entire prim count?

i have absolutely no idea about selling products etc, so am rather naive...

thank you again!
S

As others have said- it's not about the primmy-ness or otherwise of what you're selling- unless like Ceera, you're leaving examples out for demonstration.

If your eight prims shoes are packaged in one box* with a price set on it, that's one prim.

If you put that box in a "3 prim vendor" along with 10 other boxes of 8 prim shoes, that's three prims.

I mean you wouldn't set out 15 pairs of shoes and mark them as "buy original". You'd pack them in one prim boxes with "buy contents" or "buy copy" on them.

The prim limits on rental stores relate to the number of prims used to display and vend your goods.

*a "box" can be any shape, or a picture on a wall etc.

Hi Scott,

Usually if you go into a shop and all the things for sale look like individual pictures on the wall, then each prim is a one-prim vendor. The most simple version of this is just a prim with "for sale", a price, and "Contents" checked in it's properties, and the stuff to be sold inside it. The buyer clicks the picture, selects "Buy" on the pie menu, and it charges them the price and gives them the contents of the box. This is sort of sloppy, however, since it just dumps the landmarks in their landmarks folder, the notecards in their notecards folder, the clothes in their clothes folder... Your items don't stay together.

You can also set the prim "for sale", a price, and "Copy" checked in it's properties, and the stuff to be sold inside it. That way, they get a box that looks just like the vending picture, and it ends up in their Objects inventory. They can then drag that out of inventory on to the ground, left click and select "Open", and then click "Copy to inventory". That will make a folder in their inventory, with the same name as the prim and will copy the contents of the prim to that folder. This is advisable if you want to include a notecard and a landmark with the item.

With either of the above methods, each prim is one item you can sell, regardless of how many prims the item itself is. It could be a 300-prim house or a zero-prim t-shirt that is being sold. If you were selling shoes, and had 24 versions of shoes for sale, it would take 24 prims, each with a picture of the shoes on one or more faces of the prim.

A three-prim vendor is a box with forward and back arrows on it, that allows you to display and choose from multiple items in the box, each of which has a seperate purchase price. A vending script handles taking money and delivering a copy of the sold object to their inventory. Most of these allow you to sell 30 to 50 items, and display hover text over the vendor, indicating the item's name and price. I could sell 50 different kinds of shoes in a siungle three-prim vendor, but to see them all, someone would have to click the forward arrow 50 times, waiting for each picture to rez.

A decent compromise is to use one three-prim vendor per category. Let's say I was selling 4 styles of shoes, in 6 color variations each. I could do 24 individual one-prim vendors, and you could see all of them at once, once all the textures rezzed for you. Or I could use one three-prim vendor for each style, with the color variations in each vendor. So three prims for the basketball high-tops, three for the running shoe, three for the high heels, and three for the cowboy boots. 12 prims, they see each style, and they can browse for color choices.

More advanced vending systems, like the JEVN networked vendors, allow you to update your product line from a central server, or give you better inventory sales records, or give better ways to display the merchandise. The more advanced vending systems are usually not free, as they are more complex to program.

Nope.

When you go into a shop and see a picture of an item for sale, you're not seeing the item itself, you're just seeing a picture of it. This picture can be just one prim, even if it's showing something that's made up of 100 prims. The prim that displays the picture needs to contain some scriping which sends the customer a copy of the object when they pay the prim. To do this, you need to write or buy the scripting stuff and you need to take a snapshot of the item you want the prim to display.

When you go into a shop and see an object for sale (like a pair of shoes on a shelf instead of a picture of a pair of shoes) you're seeing what the object looks like. If that object is made up of 100 prims, you have to have 100 prims available to display it.

In either case, when somebody buys the object, they're getting a copy of the object for sale. This copy does not go against your prim count - it just shows up in the the customers inventory.

Actually, you don't need scripts at all for a one prim "vendor".

You rez a box. You put your object(s) in the box ("contents" tab in the edit menu). You put a picture of the item(s) on the outside of the box. You set the price of the box, and put the item in your store. It counts as 1 prim. If someone right-clicks on it, they can use the pay option to buy the box AND all it's contents from you.

Keep in mind, this sells _all_ the items in that box. You cannot sell just one item in that box without scripts. If they pay the price set on the box they buy everything in it at the same time.

Have we got you thoroughly confused yet?

SHEW, actually, i understand now, Haha!

Its all making sense, thank you for your time. Im sure i will have a hundred more questions in time though, lol, im taking full advantage of these forums.

So please, bare with me

Take care for now,
S