Practical Secrets of Selling

And now for some practical issues about which I haven't been able to learn anywhere. I've by now read dozens of posts in the forum, I go to every SL class I can, and I read tutorials galore - but just how to offer something for sale seems to be a secret known only to insiders. How do I put the objects I made into a box for sale? How do the buyers get the object, if it is large (in this case a house) rezzed successfully?

And, somewhat related to the above: how do things work again with coordinates for products to sell? I've read somewhere that you have to have your root prim at (0,0,0) for the buyer. How can that even be done? Is it really necessary?

I'd be grateful to hear explanations of these seeming secrets!

Thanks,
Xylo

Hello Xylo!

It isn't a secret....just a matter of knowing where to look

To put items into a box then place for sale:
1. In the Edit menu go to the Contents Tab
2. Drag the items you wish to place in the box from your inventory into the Contents window.
3. Go to your General Tab in the same Edit menu. Find the box that says "For Sale" and there should be a grayed out line that says $L10 (this is the default price).
4. Check the For Sale box then enter your price
5. Now decide HOW you want your buyers to purchase the item. The original, a copy of the box and its contents, or just the contents (this option will just create a folder in their inventory with the box's contents in it).
6. There is a drop down menu for how your buyers will purchase the object: right click and get the pie which contains the option to buy, or set to click and buy it (this means they simply left click on it and get the option to purchase it in a window which shows the contents).


I have never heard the root prim needs to be at any specific rotation. If it's just one box with the contents...well it's the ONLY prim...and you can display that bad boy in any direction you want (even make it spin)...and if it's set to sell, then your customers can buy it.

Have fun!

~Ari

Thank you so much, Ari.
I didn't mean the sell-box; I meant the root prim of the object for sale (in this case, a house.) It doesn't need to be set at a certain position and/or rotation?

Xylo

My apologies...I misunderstood.

I've never sold a house, but the root prim has nothing to do with selling an object. I believe it would determine how it was rezzed by your customer....something to do with the center of the object when initially rezzed on the ground.

Hopefully someone experienced in selling homes in a box can give you a specific answer on this.

~Ari

The only things I can think of that would make a difference with regards to the position/rotation of the root prim of a for-sale object, is if that object contains scripting that's position / rotation dependant.

For example, I build some furniture which is interactive, scripted, and contains moving parts. I build everything facing in a certain direction so it gives me a good point of reference while building, but I have to make sure my scripts and functions will work whichever direction the object is turned or moved to. In other words, if I build facing north and the purchaser turns the furniture east, the sit-targets and moving parts have to be able to work correctly regardless.

This was a bit of a pain in the @$$ when I was just starting, mostly because I didn't realize that there were so many little details to consider. Bear in mind that all this has nothing to do with the for-sale box, it's all about the item that's ultimately going to end up in the cusomer's hands.

For houses / buildings, what I've seen in use are 'rezzers' where the purchaser gets a single prim or a few prims linked that form the base or foundation. They position that where they want, rotated how they want it, then trigger it and it rezzes the rest of the structure in the position and orientation that is desired. Entire skyscrapers or apartment buildings can be rezzed this way. Smaller or simpler builds (that can be linked) can be sold as a single linkset since it's easy for the customer to select and move it all at once. The worst thing I've seen is a big fancy house that was sold as a single object, but it wasn't linked so when it's rezzed, it's a real pain to move and all because it's just a collection of 200 separate 1-prim objects.

-Atashi

Thank you, Ari and Atashi. (I noticed only today that you two had replied, hence the belated thanks. Wish there was a way to be notified when people reacted.)

Yes, I suppose it would be relevant for larger builds. Mine are fairly modest in size, so far. I guess I'll try to find out more about the rezzer thing by the time I'm building, say, the Eiffel Tower (which I'm sure has already been done. The Eiffel Tower would not make the most original of ideas, but sometimes I have ideas which I'm sure nobody has had before, only to find they've been done several times. That can be a bit disheartening. This really is a big place, isn't it?)

Hi Xylo. IF you are selling prefabs then even the most basic small structure should be packaged in an auto align/rezzer in order to avoid any prim drift or unalignment when your customer is rotating/positioning the build. Check rez faux and rex foo on slexchnage.com. I believe these are the brand leaders. Personally i use rez faux to package up my prefabs. Its extrememly to use both for me the builder and for the end user and I think it only costs about L$600 which is a bargain.

I disagree. If your building is small, and you're using simple doors of only one prim, then the whole thing should be linked as one object using the appropriate door scripts. That is by far the simplest thing for people to deal with.

Next easiest is a rezzing system.

Not so easy is a build all in pieces that leaves doors etc behind when moved.

Building multipart buildings so that all the root prims have reasonably even number coordinates relative to each other also helps with correcting clumsy mousework later on.

Displaying a house for sale is a good way to advertise it- not many people will buy blind from a box unless it's something they saw in world already and liked.

Also advertise on forums, and put your stuff for sale on the sl marketplace websites. It's all extra publicity for your work and costs nothing but time to post.

Your wrong there, I sell hundreds of prefabs a month and none of my stuff is rezzed for viewing. I have put a lot of effort in to presentation but at the end of the day people are buying based on the images rather than seeing the builds.

there is another way which I didn't see mentioned here. My apologies if I missed it.


You can grab an entire build and take into your inventory as one piece even if it is several large unlinked parts. And when taking it out of inventory, it will stay together.

-Select one of the parts of the build and choose edit...or just open up an edit box.
-Drag a selection box over the entire build. (This can be done by using your camera and zooming out away from your build...I like to zoom up above the build so as to look down from above)
-Once the entire build is highlighted, right click and "take copy"
- A note before doing this, this process will create a single object in your inventory named after whatever the last prim in your selection process was. If you'd like to rename the prim before hand you can do that...or select any prim you want it to be named.

-When pulling this object back out of inventory, open up an edit box BEFORE pulling it out. With the edit box open, drag the object out of inventory and because the edit box is open, you can move the entire build around and place it as needed. Once done close the edit box and you're done.
-The build will no longer be one piece but this process will allow you to treat it as one piece.

When I first started selling, this is the way I did it and it was a nightmare. It will work fine if you rez it straight on your land without moving it any. You could get away with moving it up and down or side to side very very slowely without suffering any unalignment but it's virutally imposible to rotate a large group of linked prims without experiencing unalignment. And my experience of this was from the old days before the lag and packetloss so I suspect it will be worse now. I used to receive endless complaints from customers about the quality of my builds even though I knew they were aligned perfectly before I sold them. I eliminated this problem entirely when I purchased rez faux.

thanks for the feedback. I've never had issues with mis-salignment after moving, rotating large groups (large groups for me being about 70-80 prims...maybe even larger sets are harder to do?), but I agree....it can be cumbersome and the rezzers work better.

Just throwing out options for new people asking for them.

Thanks everybody, for the information. What learned people you all are.

Xylo

Maybe I am wrong here then, I've relied on auto rezzers for everything for at least the last year so it may be possible to rotate large linked ojects or groups of objects without any prim drift or unalignment nowadays. I will have a go later.

I would just strongly advise anyone new to selling buildings to have something for people to see. I didn't have two years of good feedback and reputation when I started selling prefabs last September, and I noticed a *marked* increase on sales of houses with a "poke-about-able" display model compared to those without, along with IMs asking for me to demonstrate a house that didn't have a model. Even now I get people muttering because I didn't get round to fixing all my houses with a demo mode, as if being able to click a "lock" button makes any difference to just accepting it says "doors lock" on the sign.

Since I set up in a store where pretty much every house I make can be explored on a rezzer, sales have increased a relatively *massive* amount. I do also see people who TP to the store, head straight for the boxes and buy from them- they saw a house in world and wanted it.

Your experience may be different, but my experience was that people wanted demo houses to walk round and kick the prims, and setting up for that paid off so well I have to recommend it to anyone selling prefabs. Anyone who's prefabs will stand being looked at close up anyway. Even if you have only 512m2 and two or three models, you can display them this way.

I am building a second rezzing platform because the one I have gets so crowded people argue about seeing the houses. They don't buy from box pics.

I agree Ace, If I displayed all my builds full size so that people could experience them first hand I would definitely sell more. I'm greedy and like to cash out a large percentage of my earnings so i keep my in world expenses as low as possible, but my ultimate goal would be a sim with everything on display. Tried using a couple of rezzing/viewing systems but I just didn't take to them. But it is possible to run a very successful prefab business displaying just images. However It has taken a lot of trial and error to work out the best way to present my builds to give customers the confidence to buy without seeing a build full size. I think its important that your store looks good and is built to the highest standard, this is an instant example of your building and design skill for potential customers. I would also advise displaying as many images of each build as possible, keep them as low resolution as possible and looking as good as possible. When i take my images I can fly around for days searching for a cool empty plot without auto return so i can rez the build and take my time taking the snapshots,. (been caught in the act a few times too, so maybe best to ask the owner). Basically you need to sell the build through the images and i rekon you have about 10 seconds to do this before the customer moves on. If you have stuff rezzed full size, customers will wander around and get a feel for the build. As this is not possible selling via images, the presentation of your work is key. A year ago I was getting multiple requests every day from customers asking me to rez builds for them to view, nowadays it rarely happens and i'm selling over a hundred prefabs a week, so it can work if you don't have the space/prims to rez everything full size.