Not A-MeMe #5 - Helpful Hint

Dolmere posted up the not-a-meme challenge #5 for a how to do something in Second Life article to help newbies. To think I now have been in Second Life long enough to be able to post a newbie tip is something to be said about persitance and not about how quickly I have picked up Second Life platform. In general, I figure that for everything I do in Second Life there probably is a better way to do it than I know how. So with some trepidition I will post a "tip" expecting that any comments I get on the tip will probably turn out to be people telling me, "You know there is a better way to do that" rather than thanks from a newbie. Anyway here goes:

Newbie Tip: How to sell something in Second Life.

Most people when they get in Second Life, do some clubbing, go listen to music, go at least "window shopping" and then come to the conclusion, I need to sell something. It must be human nature. I know for me it helped justify in my own mind the hours I was spending in Second Life. I was going to make money in SL(haha). In any case, let's say Nancy Newbie, has decided to create an object to sell. Nancy has created a new hat to be worn at parties called the box head hat. She knows that people will flock to buy the box head hat because she has seen many other newbies wearing boxes on their arms, legs, feet, etc.



So, first she first creates a new primitive. She chooses to use the box primitive to create the box head hat. After further deliberation, she decides that she has always liked the look of natural wood, so, does not bother to change the texture or the default color of the box. Nancy places the box on her head and adjusts it to make sure it is what she was really thinking of and after a few minutes of arranging it she has it just right and it is now ready for sale.

Nancy has gone shopping in Second Life and she is really fascinated with the vendors that show off the products and offer them for sale. She gets on SL Exchange and admires the JEVN vendor package, but, then is somewhat taken aback by the Two Grand price tag. She thinks I will have to sell a lot of box head hats to hit my "break even" point. Nancy was a business major in college, when not being the most popular TKE Little Sister at the Frat House, and she knows all about things like breaking even, diminishing returns and market penetration. Fear not, Nancy, there is an easier way to sell that box head hat than these high dollar vendors.

Second Life provides the ability to create objects and then set permissions to share this with others. In this permission scheme is a native ability to sell the object. You basically are setting the object to be able to be taken or copied by another resident as long as they pay you a certain price for the object. This is done on the General Tab of the Object itself. You click the For Sale check box and set it to the price you would like to sell it for. In this example, Nancy Newbie set the price to be 1000 L$, so, that she can get enough capital to get one of those fancier vendors.

You have three choices in how to sell the object. The first is original. When you choose original that means after the buyer has paid for the item it will go in their inventory and disappear from where you are selling it from (i.e. the store). The second option is to sell a copy of the item which means that the items goes into their inventory but there is still the object in the store. These two are pretty straight forward. If you want to sell original, numbered art pieces for example you would sell originals and set the permissions so the next owner can sell it or modify it, but not copy. If you wanted to sell the item, such as a fabulous box head hat in a store, you might put the hat on a table with a for sale sign next to it and set it to sell a copy of itself.

The last option is to sell the contents. Let's say Nancy has made a beautiful dress. She want to get a picture of herself in the dress and put the picture on the wall. Nancy would like buyers to be able to touch the picture on the wall and be able to buy the dress. That is what contents option is for. She takes her picture using the Take Snapshot option underneath the File Menu and then she uploaded the image using the Upload Image option underneath the File Menu. She then created a object and shaped like a picture to hang on a wall and selected the picture of her in the dress as it's texture. Nancy opened this picture of the dress and went to the contents tab and dragged and dropped the dress from her inventory into the contents.

Nancy now has a picture of her wearing that great looking outfit with the dress itself in the contents of the picture. She goes to the General section of the picture (not the dress) and selects For Sale and Contents and sets the price to be 2000 L$. Nancy is thinking big. She needs to remember to set the dress permissions to be what she wants, for example, modify and not copy.

I hope this guide to Simple Selling helps all the Nancy Newbies of the world because we all know there is a shortage of aspiring Fashion Designers in Second Life :)