Caspervend Dropboxes, where do you have them

[skorreynimble]

As I setup caspervend vendors, I learned about dropboxes from their wiki. 

1. Does each item for sale go into it's own drop box or can you put many inside one box

2. Do you all store these drop boxes on your own land, or somewhere in your own store? Small stores, as i assume the huge stores rent dropbox servers.

3. Is drop boxes and caspervend to complicated and option heavy for small stores?

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

1. No, you can organize your dropboxes however you want - put everything in one or a few, or sort them by categories like houses, bathrooms, kitchens, etc.

2. Store them wherever you prefer, but keep them out of your store. That’s the operational part of your business and isn’t meant for customers. Also, if possible, it’s a good idea to have a secondary set on another sim.

3. No, it’s not. Your store might grow, and you’ll want to keep records handy for a million reasons. Plus, having a redelivery option for your customers is important - you don’t want to deal with that manually.

[Peter Stindberg]

One important thing you should consider is: a customer will see the location of the dropbox, when a delivery occurs. So if you value your privacy, don't put your dropbox in your home!

That said, I have one dropbox above my shop, and a backup dropbox on a small parcel that I rented for cheap somewhere on mainland.

I would 100% advise you to use CasperVend, even if you are just starting out. It makes things so much easier, especially with the Marketplace sales integration. Get the paid version as early as you can afford it - you will save that money on commission costs. I did it about a year too late and regret it.

[Peter Stindberg]

8 minutes ago, RohanaRaven Zerbino said:

Plus, having a redelivery option for your customers is important - you don’t want to deal with that manually.

Good point. And you can use it to send updates as well (even without the Update-plugin, which is only meant for AUTO-updates.

I am curious though: we disagree on a dropbox inside/above the main shop location. I always found it beneficial that customers who click on the SLURL of the dropbox land in the shop. Why do you say it should NOT be in the shop?

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

58 minutes ago, Peter Stindberg said:

we disagree on a dropbox inside/above the main shop location

As I mentioned, this is an operational part of the business and, in my opinion, should be kept outside the store building itself. Shop is a space dedicated to customers. I agree it can be placed above, next to, or near the building platform - basically anywhere else. After all, one wouldn’t set the building platform inside the shop itself, right? A platform dedicated to all devices sending out the LM of their locations is a great option too.

[Michael Blackwood]

I would definitely advise to caspervend, too. I am not a great fan of Casper and his products per say anymore, since he sold his soul to commerce, aka Linden Lab. But so far not much seems to have changed and it seems stable and reliable enough, still.

The positive aspect about casper is that, while it may first look complicated with all its features, once your store grows, you'll need them. And most of them are REALLY useful - starting from the fact that it enables you to sell inworld properly, not only on MP. But then at the same time, you can integrate your MP sales so you can see FULL analytics of both inworld and MP sales on the casper website in realtime. And then of course are all its useful addons - from inworld demo systems to the redelivery and the useful update features.

By no means do I want to advertise for casper, especially under the above reasons, but truth is - if you want to be successful as a business in SL, you won't get around caspervend much. You simply get the best bang for your bucks.

 

About the dropboxes - others have already explained how to best do it. Personally, since all the brands I still own myself do not have inworld stores anymore, I have a few own little datacenters where we place all our dropboxes and some other servers with scripted systems we need. We have these centers spread out across SL to be able to almost guarantee that one of them is always running.

[animats]

I was amused when I discovered that SL has data centers, and that they actually do something.

You can put the dropbox scripts into any object.

Dropbox.  I have an in-world office, and it's in a corner there, with an appropriate texture.

[skorreynimble]

Such GREAT info all of you! I find that I am overly interested is so much of this SL and investigate it to the detail.

I own land, and have store on a platform. So I can make another platform up higher to put the boxes on. Kinda probably like i see at the gaming areas, they keep all these boxes up in the air.

Ok I am comfortable reading and hearing that Caspervend is a good way to go, and i am not wasting time or it is not to big for me. Just so much to fill out! But going through the wiki is fine.

So when all is done, does it make since to have a caspevend and next to it the link back to MP as i have now? Is that easy for customers to choose how they want to buy or am I just overthinking it. 

 

 

[Michael Blackwood]

44 minutes ago, skorreynimble said:

So when all is done, does it make since to have a caspevend and next to it the link back to MP as i have now? Is that easy for customers to choose how they want to buy or am I just overthinking it. 

Not sure what you mean. Usually people will either buy on MP by searching your items in there while others prefer to shop inworld and will find your store and buy there through the caspervend vendors. It's unusual to have both casper product panels for sales in your shop and a link to each product on MP next to it. If they come to your store, they likely do because they want to buy in there. 🙂

 

[Stephanie Misfit]

1 hour ago, Michael Blackwood said:

Not sure what you mean. Usually people will either buy on MP by searching your items in there while others prefer to shop inworld and will find your store and buy there through the caspervend vendors. It's unusual to have both casper product panels for sales in your shop and a link to each product on MP next to it. If they come to your store, they likely do because they want to buy in there. 🙂

 

Not to mention, if they buy in world from the Caspervend panel, you will save on marketplace commission. It's good to have a marketplace store, but I would not be encouraging people to shop there over the in world store.

[Gem Oxygen]

Please keep in mind, if you live in a new Bellisseria home, you are not allowed to store drop boxes on the parcel, it is in the covenant and people DO report them. So if you do store them in your Linden home, you run the risk of them getting returned by LL and your venders not delivering your merch to customers.

[Peter Stindberg]

12 hours ago, Michael Blackwood said:

Why is he wearing a hard hat? 🤔

[Michael Blackwood]

6 minutes ago, Peter Stindberg said:

Why is he wearing a hard hat? 🤔

I was wondering that to myself as I took the photo. I think it's to protect from the sever gods, or something.
But hoenstly, I don't remember why I gave my technical bot that ahrd hat to wear in the server facility lol.

[discussionbot]

16 hours ago, Michael Blackwood said:

That looks awesome, good work 

[skorreynimble]

Quote

21 hours ago, Michael Blackwood said:

Not sure what you mean. Usually people will either buy on MP by searching your items in there while others prefer to shop inworld and will find your store and buy there through the caspervend vendors. It's unusual to have both casper product panels for sales in your shop and a link to each product on MP next to it. If they come to your store, they likely do because they want to buy in there.

 

Since I only sell through MP, I set my signs up with a link back to MP to make it very easy for people to get back to the actual MP. I do see what you and the others are saying now. If they come to my store via MP, they should know how to get back if they are buying from there. So if I get rid of all MP sing links, and only use Casper, they should not be confused. Mmmm, so i always look in MP and go to the stores, and i see no issue. So, you are all correct, I should remove my MP signs with Caspers and not worry about it. 

 

19 hours ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

Not to mention, if they buy in world from the Caspervend panel, you will save on marketplace commission. It's good to have a marketplace store, but I would not be encouraging people to shop there over the in world store.

I was figuring to use the free one, and i think they keep 5%. My reason is, for the cost of the caspervend outright is something like $20,000 L of sales. Am i thinking about that correctly?

 

19 hours ago, Gem Oxygen said:

Please keep in mind, if you live in a new Bellisseria home,...

I own a parcel on the mainland, so have plenty of prims usage and space. I am up in the air, as i like the land for my home. I do have another place for my private home.

[RohanaRaven Zerbino]

14 hours ago, skorreynimble said:

I was figuring to use the free one, and i think they keep 5%. My reason is, for the cost of the caspervend outright is something like $20,000 L of sales. Am i thinking about that correctly?

From a business perspective, I think your math doesn't mathing  If you’re thinking long-term, it’s better to avoid paying any fees to third parties from the start rather than cutting costs later. The full CasperVend system with all the extras (Holo Vendor, Midnight Mania, Lucky Chair, Texture Vendor) is 2,995L$. But for what you're trying to do, the  Vendor Pack (1,995L$) and the Holo Vendor (999L$) should be all you need, and the difference between the fat pack and buying the two separate packs is just 1L$. The rest can just sit in your inventory for now, in case you ever want to use them later.

 

14 hours ago, skorreynimble said:

Since I only sell through MP, I set my signs up with a link back to MP to make it very easy for people to get back to the actual MP. I do see what you and the others are saying now. If they come to my store via MP, they should know how to get back if they are buying from there. So if I get rid of all MP sing links, and only use Casper, they should not be confused. Mmmm, so i always look in MP and go to the stores, and i see no issue. So, you are all correct, I should remove my MP signs with Caspers and not worry about it. 

The trick to making sensible business decisions is to role-play as the customer in your own shop Once you start a business, it’s a bit hard to go back to that customer mindset, because you might feel the urge to provide all the info, all the links, and make everything accessible. However, that can sometimes create confusion. It’s also really helpful to study the existing standards and procedures in the market to see what works.

[Sid Nagy]

On 11/20/2024 at 11:52 PM, Stephanie Misfit said:

Not to mention, if they buy in world from the Caspervend panel, you will save on marketplace commission.

In my situation the inworld store only made expenses much higher than the marketplace commission.
An inworld store is only needed when one has to display more of the product than the same item picture on a vendor IMHO.

[Peter Stindberg]

On 11/21/2024 at 7:49 PM, skorreynimble said:

Since I only sell through MP...

What few people new to this realize is, that CasperVend is the perfect addition to MP-only (or MP-Mostly - my sales come 95% from the MP, my inworld shop is for street cred only). It gives you:

• decent statistics for your MP sales
• send redeliveries to people who bought on MP or inworld
• send updates to people who bought inworld or MP
• customers can use any(!) CasperVend redelivery terminal to get redeliveries also for MP purchases
• be able to send review-copies or free copies to people from the CasperVend web page

All you need to do is connect your MP store once to CV, and that's it.

[JUSTUS Palianta]

I put my servers on a land that is renting space for server space.

Reason being if my shop gets returned when im asleep the servers are safe and i can rebuild the store from that, it has nothing to do with being a big store.  Just back up plans.

I use casper but i never linked it to my marketplace or any of that fancy malarky. ❤️

Edited November 23 by JUSTUS Palianta

[Stephanie Misfit]

3 hours ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

I put my servers on a land that is renting space for server space.

Reason being if my shop gets returned when im asleep the servers are safe and i can rebuild the store from that, it has nothing to do with being a big store.  Just back up plans.

I use casper but i never linked it to my marketplace or any of that fancy malarky. ❤️

It's good to link it to your marketplace, if only because if you ever do redeliveries, you have the option to include all marketplace purchases as well as in world ones. Also, you get the stats of marketplace sales.

[Clem Marques]

On 11/20/2024 at 5:51 PM, RohanaRaven Zerbino said:

1. No, you can organize your dropboxes however you want - put everything in one or a few, or sort them by categories like houses, bathrooms, kitchens, etc.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I thought all the items had to go inside 1 dropbox. This is extremely helpful.

[Michael Blackwood]

12 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

Interesting, I didn't know that. I thought all the items had to go inside 1 dropbox. This is extremely helpful.

Not at all, that's why you can and should also always have clones of all your boxes on another sim. So if one sim is down, you can still sell through the dropboxes in the other sims.

[skorreynimble]

Thanks for all your input. I DID get all my items in a caspervendor, on my store. I kinda felt stupid, everything in my drop box and it is only 1 prim! I already did 3 sales through it though most through MP. Now that I figured it out, it is easy. I even figured out, that I cannot copy but have to make a new vendor...which is easy. Like anything, once through something complicated, then it is easy. Ill look at that MP connection, sounds interesting. For those with huge stores, now I get it, you would have lots of dropboxes. (I like the server above)  Whew, so much to have a store, but once in it, and set up, it is pretty fun. I can imagine the huge stores, there must be more than one person to manage all this. Again, THANKS!!

[Reid Parkin]

On 11/21/2024 at 5:28 AM, Michael Blackwood said:

if you want to be successful as a business in SL, you won't get around caspervend much. You simply get the best bang for your bucks.

I've never used Caspervend because it never suited my inworld business model of having a landscaped garden where everything on display is for sale - every clump of grass, patch of soil, rock, pond, puddle, weed, stone, etc. Just click and buy. It's convenient for buyers and works well, but there are just too many objects spread all over my sim to maintain a redelivery system.  My customers know this and accept it. I also sell cheap because it's no frills.

I've  been reasonably successful with this business model, having made over half million USD over my years in SL. 

 

[skorreynimble]

15 hours ago, Reid Parkin said:

I've never used Caspervend because it never suited my inworld business model of having a landscaped garden where everything on display is for sale - every clump of grass, patch of soil, rock, pond, puddle, weed, stone, etc. Just click and buy. It's convenient for buyers and works well, but there are just too many objects spread all over my sim to maintain a redelivery system.  My customers know this and accept it. I also sell cheap because it's no frills.

I've  been reasonably successful with this business model, having made over half million USD over my years in SL. 

 

Wow, i mean really Wow. I did not think people made so much money here. I never thought of the real money, more of lindens to use to buy more stuff (love shopping) and paying rent! I was always wondering about the redelivery, about not having it. I use it when I buy stuff, sometimes I loose it or something does not work.