Hi

[Christopher95]

I'm new here, I just started and i wanted to know where to begin to become a merchant. Any advice or tips will help big time for a newbie like me

                                Thanks

[Chelsea Malibu]

There are a lot of ways to become a merchant but at it's core is that you need inventory.  Are you a builder/designer?  Or did you plan on opening a store that resold other products?

This is the starting point and from there, you build a store and open shop.  You will have many questions and fortunately for you, there is a lot of expertise on these boards where when I first started, we sort of had to make it up as we went along and learned most through trial and error (mind you, a lot of error). 

Best of luck and we welcome you to the community!

 

[Josh Susanto]

The older threads are a great resource.

If you run into almost any kind of problem, someone else already has.

That doesn't mean there will be a solution, but it does mean you'll have some idea of at what point the solution process remains arrested, so you can do your best to put it out of your mind.

 

[Ziggy21 Slade]

I guess it mostly depends upon your existing skills, but I think a good place to start is to take some classes, there are lots of free classes inworld covering building, scripting, texturing etc, just check events>education in search. They can be a bit tough at first if you haven't done any/much building here yet, but you will soon get into it and start enjoying yourself. This will give you a good insight into the huge variety of things you can make, and teach you some valuable techniques. I still sell a product that was a quick customization of an item I made in a class 4 years ago.

Often people will advise you to find a niche, although this isn't bad advice, for now I would not try and do this, make anything and everything you fancy and see what lights your fire, then make a handful of things in that vein and get them on sale. You reap only what you sew, so take your time and make a good job of what you are creating, look at the products you will be competing with, and aim to make yours better. Consider how you will market these products, remember it's much easier to build a brand around a range of similar items than a mish mash of unrelated ones.

Don't expect instant results, it takes a while to build things up.