Can I sell my paintings?

[SLtesterL2]

Hello! I was wondering if I can start of a small busines as a hobby by selling custom and premade paintings to friends and customers. I was also wondering if I can make my paintings on actual physical canvas IRL rather than using a computer program/software to make it look nicer and more realistic. How I plan I doing this, im not too sure...but if you do know how PLEASE tell me! Thank you! :matte-motes-smile:

[Madeline Blackbart]

You'd have to create the picture either on canvas paper small enough to scan or take a good quality photograph of it. Theproblem is weither it will be worth your time to do. Art doesn't sell for much in SL that I've seen (people feel free to correct if wrong) you might be able to sell for slightly more if it's a one off custom work never sold again but I think it would still make you less then the cost of hte canvas and paint even if your reaswuse the canvas several times (by painting over it with white paint). You might be able to make more money if your sold the actual canvas as well as a digital copy? But I dunno the likely hood someone would buy it. I assume it's pretty low since people don't like to spend the amount art is worth (100s of dollars typically) all at once in sl. Still if you're doing it purely for fun it's worth doing just know you might lose money on it.

[Dresden Ceriano]

I think it's a great idea.  You should be able to take a high quality, digital picture of a painting, resize it 1024X1024 or preferably 512X512, if you can get away with it, and save it as a tga or png to upload into SL.  Make sure the image contains no alpha channel, because that won't be necessary and it could cause problems.

If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, you might be able to use the high quality photos to sell as prints with the use of a website such as this.  This would work especially well if you wanted to commission portraits of people's avatars for SL, then offer them the option of buying a RL print of it through that site (you know how vain we can be about our SL selves).  That way there wouldn't be any RL disclosure issues on either side, like there would if you wanted to sell a RL copy to them directly.

Here's an example of a wonderful SL artist who sells her work this way... Whiskey Monday.

...Dres

Edited for clarification.

[Tamara Artis]

Once I made a little test, rented a small shop at the landing point in one sim that was well visited and in the destination guide. I put 3 of my photos inside, 2 of them were set to sell for free and one for 99L. I was checking my transaction history, free ones were selling pretty often, sometimes people would buy multiple copies, the one that costed 99L did not sell. Then I switched the prices and again, free ones did sell but one that costed money did not. 

You are free to do your own test, maybe you have better luck

[Madeline Blackbart]

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Tamara Artis wrote:

Once I made a little test, rented a small shop at the landing point in one sim that was well visited and in the destination guide. I put 3 of my photos inside, 2 of them were set to sell for free and one for 99L. I was checking my transaction history, free ones were selling pretty often, sometimes people would buy multiple copies, the one that costed 99L did not sell. Then I switched the prices and again, free ones did sell but one that costed money did not. 

You are free to do your own test, maybe you have better luck

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You get this problem with almost anything though. I have clothing up on mp some for free some for 100L and one for 10L and one for1L. I find the only thing that sells is the free and 1L stuff. I've sold maybe one or two of the 10L outfits and 0 of the 100L stuff. This may have to do with how flooded that market is? Because my mods for blue galaxian sell FAAAR more often for 50L to 100L but I think there is less stuff for it so people are more willing to buy it.

[Tamara Artis]

Yes you have a point there, I didn't try with any other items then some pics I did but I guess its similar with anything.