Noob Again, Boxing and Selling.

Hi, I have probably overlooked something, but I have searched here and on Google, and haven't found a step-by-step guide for getting things ready to sell. I see a lot of people saying that you should set particular perms on the items, then I suppose the box would have some sort of perms, etc.

I just want to avoid any mistakes early. Can anyone point me to a selling tutorial? Say I have a product ready to make, textures, etc., ready. The ones I find talk about buying land for a store, advertising, etc., but so far I'm having no luck with the actual physical process of getting things ready to sell.

Hello Vye,

This might help

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials

this is a list of video tutorials and one of them is about opening and selling boxes. It will show you how to put stuff in and how to list it for sale.

Does that cover your question? Or are you asking about how permissions work and what permissions you should choose?

Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm fairly comfortable using boxes. I watched that one, but it doesn't seem to be all that intensive in terms of selling items, just packing them up in a box.

For instance, there are, if I am not mistaken, at least three sets of permissions involved. There are perms on the textures, there are perms on the finished item, and then there are perms on the box itself. I see people talk about how sellers made a mistake on one or the other of them and had their product end up in the resale stores, either through stolen textures, copied items, etc.

Those are the mistakes I don't want to make, and I am honestly a little surprised that there isn't a step-by-step tutorial anywhere on how to do this right. I was told that some aspects of SL don't have corresponding tutorials because, frankly, people don't want to help anyone compete with them. I doubt this is true, I hope it isn't, anyway.

Sorry that I pointed you to something too simple. I agree permissions are a real bugger.

I am sure there are good sources for info, but quick and dirty if you leave the object you are selling, the actual creation, copy and transfer you are at risk for having it used by others to sell themselves or giving it away as a freebie. So, you need to decide copy /no transfer or transfer/ no copy.

The texture question is only an issue if you are selling the texture or are putting it IN the object. If you are just texturing a prim, for example a pillow, and then selling it you do not have to mess with the permissions.

If no one posts a link to better info I will look around and see what I can find, as this is a pretty complex thing to get all the details right. The best thing to do is make an alt account and buy the object and then test it to see if it behaves the way you want it to.

Dont forget the permissions on scripts inside the objects.

Ok here is a link to the big sticky about permission in the Building Tips forum

/8/0b/6729/1.html

I think that it may be a bit dated, but reading through it will give you a better understanding of permissions.

Like JessyAnne said, scripts inside the objects are an issue if you are using custom scritps that you do not want changed or copied. right click on them and choose properties to get a menu to adjust their permissions. Textures work the same way.

Hi, yes, I'd found that one, but I noted that the last post in the discussion stated that it was outdated to the point of being misleading. I'm not gonna start whining about documentation, lol, but honestly with the sheer focus SL has on marketing products, you'd think there would be something, somewhere that would line this out directly.

If for no other reason than to save LL the trouble of dealing with people who have their stuff taken because of incorrectly set permissions. No one knows of a "How to sell your items" tutorial? Like I said, the only ones I find are ones that could be summed up with "location location location", or "advertise a lot", or "check references". You'd think you'd need to know how to put the merchandise together before you get to those things.

They probably do not have a tutorial because of the liability factor.

Eh... that makes tons of sense. Don't tell people how to correctly use your software because if they don't use it correctly you might be liable? Hrm, self fulfilling prophecy, anyone? Wouldn't it be better to be able to show that you made an effort?

This has been read sixty-something times now. At least one of the people who read it has experience selling things on SL, right? No one packages items to be marketed? It seems like someone who uses the system often could explain it, if they wanted to.

There is a class being taught on "How to start a business" tomorrow in-world. I'll go to it, and hopefully it won't be the same "Pick the right location and advertise a lot" stuff. The whole noob experience is beginning to wear on me, honestly. Most of what I find concerning selling stuff in SL seems to be a show of being helpful, but stops just short of actually helping.

I think another problem is that there is no "right" way to do it. Permissions are a matter of personal choice on the part of the seller and vary based on the purpose they have in mind for their product. There are several threads in this forum in which shoppers and vendors discuss and debate their permissions prefrences and why they make the choices they make regarding them.

For example, many people like their clothes to be copiable so that they can make outfit folders in their inventory, but if a vendor makes something copiable then they will almost certianly make it no transfer to prevent all those copies from being sold as individual items. BUT many other people hate seeing so many items rot away in their inventory when they could be given to friends, sold at a yardsale, or transfered to an alt. These people prefer will sacrafice an item being copiable in order to gain this added value of transferability.

Modifying is another tricky area. Some items simply must be modifyable by their owners, and for many items this is a nice feature, BUT if an item, such as a script or prim build, is modifiable then the buyer can take it apart and see how it was made in great detail, which makes recreating much easier.

Each vendor has to decide what risks they are willing to take in order to set permissions that allow them to feel protected while still giving the customer what they want.

OK...I'm clearly a blabbler mouth.

**edit and cannot spell ot type**

Hang in there, Vye. Right now's not a hot time on this forum and eventually someone will come along that can answer your questions more specifically. I keep checking in because I've got some similar questions. When I gave some textures to someone to sell in his shop I got the permissions wrong so he couldn't do it and then there was a problem with the boxing so he resorted to offering them individually. I've got them boxed up at my own place but haven't fully tested them out with a friend or alt yet--more interested in playing than selling anyway.

It would be nice to have a matrix of how to permission things depending on what control you want:

To sell in a box and allow transfer, no copy/mod: Object permissions=x/y/z, Script permissions=x/y/z, Box permissions, Box texture permissions, etc. etc. Same for all the more common scenarios.

No worries, openness doesn't bother me at all.

I basically understand what the permissions do, I just assumed somewhere there would be a step-by-step walkthrough of "So, you have an item you want to sell". Something that would take you from the created object to a box sitting in a store. There seems to be tons of stuff on how to *basically* create items.

The person I was talking to was annoyed by the lack of "help" from people making skins. I understand a situation like that, I wouldn't give out the specifics of my personal skill to just anyone, either. Somthing like this, though, is so general that I have to believe it is just an oversight.

For instance...

People don't seem to like the folks who unscrupulously troll SL for items they can sell at a fraction of the sellers' price. You see a lot of complaints about ripping off and reselling here in the forums. Wouldn't one way to combat that to be to educate people on how to prevent items from falling into their hands so easily? WIthout carrion, the vultures starve, right?

That's the main focus of my question. I don't want to get confused between the permissions on the box, the item, the script, etc., and give some non-creative flea-marketer a steadier income. To me, that would be in the universal interest of creative folks here in SL.

To be very sure you make no mistakes you need to have an ALT account. Purchase your boxed item with that alt and double check the permissions that your alt has on the product. Have your alt check the product permissions listed in the inventory folder and permissions when the product is rezzed on the ground (if it's made of prims). This should give you true peace of mind that you are not giving away any part of your product.

Great idea, thanks. I'll do that.

Lol, I guess the folks in the know around the forums ARE the resellers. I can't think of why anyone else wouldn't want to answer, and I can't believe with the number of views no one who sells has read the question. I can see why people wouldn't want to share the secrets of making items, I wouldn't either, but I can't see what harm there'd be in letting people know how to safely box stuff up.

I would answer but I am unclear as to what you want explained

ppl have already explained what the permissions do

also would help to know what kind of item you are selling so as to educate you on what can happen with that item depending on permissions.

for example I mainly sell clothes, so I set my perms to transfer yes mod and copy no

my reason is that I personally like to be able to either resell items I purchased or to give them away, therefor the transfer is also available on the clothes I sell

if I set them as copy and transfer then the person who buys it could make copies and sell those copies, bad for me good for them.

I do not use mod because the clothes I made really do not need to be modified, if someone wants something done to it they can im me and ask me to customize it and I will
(some of my stuff is mod, such as a thong, I make one of them white mod transfer in the package so ppl can make that any color they like and give the others away as gifts or resell up to them)

now... if your item is made from prims that is a different matter
anywho it is 1:30am and I am heading to bed, if you want more info contact me and we can meet up and I will give you a run through on what is what and answer your questions.

This depends upon what the texture is for. Most textures I'd say should be full perms, a texture that isn't full perms isn't of much use in a lot of cases.

When selling through a box sell the contents.

Hi Vye,
First of all, it would probably help those very experienced people around here if you were slightly more specific about the kind of products you want to sell

Also if you want to know about what the specific permissions do, that's in the knowledge base. Can't post a link, but if you open the knowledge base you'll find a link to it in the left-hand window under content creation.

And there's been a couple of interesting threads about the subject recently.... in texturing tips : /109/3f/176656/1.html
Plus a poll on permissions settings on clothing: /327/7a/195883/1.html
Hope this helps

Nm. I've said several times I know reasonably well what permissions do. I wasn't sure how permissions inhereted throughout the different levels of an item and box that sells it, i.e. texture perms, script perms, item perms, box perms, yadda yadda. I've said that several times now.

I'd looked to the knowledge base but what I found was basically another rundown of what the *individual* perms do. I have no idea, though, what placing a no copy or no transfer, say, script, in a copy/transfer item would mean, etc. Obviously with all the business in a box hijinks out there it isn't obvious, either.

Consider the topic abandoned. I'll get with a friend and we'll just make stuff and try to steal it until we can't. Thanks to those who made it clearer for me.

Okay, clearer picture now you can make the box no copy no modify, contents can have different permissions. So, for instance..... if you want to package a complete outfit - say prim skirt, slider top plus glitchpants - in a nice looking shopping bag, but don't want the bag copied or modified you set those permissions on the bag only. You can then set permissions on individual items that you put in the box without it making any difference. So prim skirt could be mod, copy, no trans, while top and glitchpants can be mod, no copy, no transfer. Just an example. The only problem i've come across with this so far is that i had a friend make me a charity vending script for a few boxes, the script made the box no mod no transfer, which meant i had to have building permissions to put them in place. But the items in the box still sold as usual.
In short i can make my lovely packaging no modify no copy, but give each individual item inside it its own persmissions. Any no copy items will then spark a warning that items will be moved rather then copied when the buyer chooses to 'copy to inventory'.
/me waves at Vye and wishes her well

if you have a script in an item and the script is no transfer but the item is transfer, I do believe the items becomes no transfer as well (I could be wrong)
I remember something about items after being rezzed take on the properties of all the permissions within it...

It is hard to explain how permissions will interact within a product that has other things with it,

as suggested the best way to find out is to set permissions and pass the item to another person or an alt and then see how the permission interact within the product

as I already said but you seemed to ignore it, if you wish to have more specific help im me in game and we can meet up in game, and go through the different combinations of permissions and if you have any questions (about perms or other stuff) I will do my best to answer

it sounds like you want a clear cut explanation of ever possible combination of permissions set on and within an object. It is not that simple, which is why you are not getting a clear cut answer.

now... give us an example such as....

made a couch/sofa in the sofa is a script for sitting, the script is no transfer, the couch is transfer.... what happens, will it be transfer for the next person or no...
(leaves it open for an answer)

(on a side note, no matter what perms you set on an item, you always have full perms of the original)

um that is pretty much what a lot of people suggested you do, just not worded quite that way hehe

yes get with a friend try different combinations of permissions on the object, it is the best way to learn and test