Rosemaery Lorefield

Oh! And please don't use an alpha channel if your texture is not intended to be an alpha texture lol. I have been annoyed at several textures lately because I had to download them, remove the alpha channel and upload again. Extra work and L$ doesn't make me very excited to purchase from that vendor again. I usually upload my own textures as .tga files. They seem to look the best and I don't have to save multiple copies in different formats- tga works in Gimp

I would say at least 512x512 resolution, since they are still pretty efficient but look good. I love packs that come with 512x512 and 1024x1024. Are you making art textures, like modified photographs, or are you considering using elements of your photos to create repeated patterns? I will buy non-seamless textures for some things, but I almost always prefer seamless. Again, I do the happy dance when a creator includes seamless/non-seamless and even shaded versions.

When I build a structure, I try to keep in mind that I have never, even once, just plopped down a house and not modded it in some way. Sure, I like to hope that what I made is great as is, but it is more realistic to understand that people love to customise. I would vote for modifiable over lower impact

Ok I did not realize it was the listing and not the actual item causing the problems. I had a couple of failed deliveries that I assumed were because of my brand name, *Shabby*. It's all renamed now though, and no fails since

I totally agree with all of your points. I'm a merchant but I am also a huge shopper on MP. I'm usually shopping for textures or sculpts, or god forbid, scripts. The MP is terribly annoying to find things, especially if you are not positive what you exactly want. I would never march off to LL to whine about those merchants whose items pop up. I don't think it is their fault most of the time. Point is, LL might want to work on the search engine a bit, and the rest of us should stop villifying merchants for nothing.

Yes, there is a separate tab to search IF you actually are looking for a particular seller. However, merchant names DO still cause unrelated items to come up in search. It happens to me all the time. Please, before you accuse of keyword spam, check their code. Since there is a separate function for searching by merchant, they should disable that portion of text from the standard search criteria, but they have not done so. "Keyword spam is the use of words (such as brand names, item names, or other terms) that have nothing to do with the item listed so that the listing will appear in search results." I'm not sure what the problem is with this definition. Just because a keyword brings up items that you are not personally interested in, that doesn't make it spam, necessarily. I do think merchants should honestly take a look at their product and be vigilant about the keywords they choose, but that will never guarantee that all items that come up will be what any given shopper wants. When I list something farm related, I will use the keyword "farm". No, my item is not an entire farm, but it is for farm use. If I put in something more specific, like "milking stool", then my item would be missed by many potential customers that don't know what to call the item they are looking for. Being TOO specific with keywords, without a couple of broader words, is not helping merchants or shoppers.

I'll be sticking with boxes! I sell home and garden stuff, so I am not too worried about my customers not having a place to rez boxes If I am shopping IW, I prefer to get items in folders. However, I like boxed items from MP. I just have an inherent distrust of MP, and it is easier to see the items show up in my inventory when they are boxed.

Yep, DD finally decided to work for me. I re-named all of my boxed items, uploaded to DD then edited all my listings- deleting the old named items out of unassociated inventory after. It went ok! It took a while but I'm happy that all (but 1 stubborn thing) items appear to be properly linked and listed with no wonky photos, failed deliveries, or anything. Keeps fingers crossed for good luck to continue!

Well I hope everyone who's tattle happy is actually checking keywords before they report. If you all haven't noticed, the Marketplace is totally borked

Yea, only 135 or so items right now. Of course Merchant Outbox has failed to work at all lol. I'm in the "boxed items" camp so I'm just going to rename all my boxes and start picking away at it when it does kick in I guess!

Well then I would have to remember to wear underbritches Most skirts used to be fluffy flexi prim skirts and the "shorts" were called glitch pants. Just so your bootie wouldn't show when you moved around.

So, I am going to go ahead and list my items under DD within the next week or so and see what happens. I have a question though about unicode characters and I have not found the specific answer I need by reading the other threads. My marketplace listings currently contain unicode. I want to make them NOT contain unicode :) So, do I rename all of my products and then drop them in the outbox, then edit the listings and manually link them? OR- Can I unlist, edit the listing names first and then upload the re-named objects and have the listing automatically link- then re-list? I'm just trying to make this as painless as possible :)

Dirtnap gave you good information, I just wanted to add to it a bit. Before you try to sell something with pre-made components, make sure they are copy/trans! On top of that, do make sure the items were produced with the intention of being used in builds and sold. Since you are new, it is not a bad place to start out using pre-made objects but you might want to make the leap to more advanced building before you sell things. The marketplace is full of sculpt maps, textures and kits to create things yourself, with your name listed as the creator. Please keep in mind that a million people can buy the same kit, and shoppers don't like to see the same exact doo-dad being sold "as is" in a million stores. Please use the kits IN something or with something. IE- You bought a flower sculpt kit- put it in a pot. You bought a pot sculpt- texture it yourself/make a custom texture...etc. I belong to a few sales groups and none of them will allow vendors who sell items made by someone else. It makes it difficult for customers to identify who they bought something from if they have questions or just want to say they like the item! If you have mastered how to link objects, then making a sculpt, texturing, etc. won't be very hard. FYI- check out the Builder's Brewery. They have classes and tons of resources for builders

Well, LL stated that they will keep the old prim count system in place for legacy prims- Native prims and sculpts. So if you make something and don't mess with the physics shape, the prim count is what will count toward "prim" usage on your land. If you mess with the physics, then it changes how it impacts land. I don't think I'm going to bother saying anything about my furniture or nicknacks in regards to LI just now. Too many sculpty parts to bother with, I will leave them as is and count the prims. I think I will put a notecard in with my structures though. Especially since the newest one I created has 3 scripted bits that will kill LI if they hard link them to the structure.

Yep, I have been playing around with linksets and found a few to do's and not to do's! I found out to never link a scripted object to a large linkset, and that USUALLY sculpts don't work out well on any other setting than "prim"! I was giggling yesterday making baskets when I decided to play around with the physics shapes and made a 14 prim basket have a 49 prim land impact, or something like that lol. It has made a huge impact with my structures though. I love the new toys

I think that diversifying is a great idea, as long as you still cater to your base customer with the dolly fashion as well My sis runs a very successful neko clothing shop, but she decided to branch out into mainstream fashion as well and it has really worked for her. Good luck with your store

Yea, I figured it would be all complicated lol I don't anticipate people resizing my things on a large scale...the structures would look odd unless they max out their avi size, same goes for the furniture. I sell homes, furniture and decor. I figured on using prim count for the smaller items since they always contain more sculpts- so they are less affected. The prim count/land impact tends to come out about the same either way. Since it is only the structures that I am really concerned with, I think maybe a notecard explaining the possible impact if they modify would be good to include in the purchase. I like the idea of advertising in terms of prim count as suggested. Ie. 147 prims, counts as 100 prims. If people don't know what land impact is, then they might not understand a land impact number of course. Then again, they might be all intrigued by the term and want to buy...hmmm!

I belong to a "weekday sales group" with a price cap of 99L. I think that's a decent price cap that allows designers to sell some nicer stuff than the lower priced groups. The key is to offer nice items in a range of prices. You don't have to sell only freebie stuff for 50L. I don't sell or give away "freebie junk" at all. Not even for hunts. How are prospective customers going to get a good impression of the products you sell if you just throw them some crap, right? Use resources (sculpts, textures, etc.) that you already have in inventory and give them the best product you can. Set a time limit on your labor if you want. Find a well established hunt. I do hunts for Fire Island Natures hunts, Royal Living and Home & Garden Market. I always get customers and subscribers from those hunts. I think sales groups are a great alternative to hunts, and you should use the same philosophy when creating items for those too. Limit your time, and put a limit on what you will spend to create the item or use only stuff in your inventory. Have pride in the thing you make and people will love it, feel lucky to have it at a good price, and become fans of your work And ultimately, be realistic about how you are pricing your regular inventory. I was in SL for a couple of years before I opened up shop, and I did tons of research into pricing. The truth is, you may feel like your items are worth 500l, but if everyone else is selling them for 150l, they are not. If you want to sell high priced items, do limited time exclusives, add value to the product by making it resizable, texture change, etc.

I know this option became visible for Mesh, but I have noticed that I can use the land impact rating to benefit builds made with native prims and sculpts as well. I have a question though. Recently I built a structure that is 147 prims but only 100 or so land impact rating. When selling an item, would you advertise the prim count, the land impact rating, or both? I know that lots of people are using V1 clients, so they won't be able to see the land impact rating, but will they be able to tell the difference on their land info? As far as I know, it displays the prim limit, not Land impact limit, so they might not realize that they can place more items unless they do it accidentally? Sorry, this might all be basic knowledge by now but I was ignoring the existence of Mesh until the last possible minute :)

I have the same problem! The only solution I have come up with it to close everything not building related, and ignore anything else going on in the world...but I mostly did that before anyways I hate the new floaty notifications, it was easier to half ignore-half keep track of incoming conversations when your IM button just showed up at the bottom. I do have to say that FUI is much better looking to me than the v2 and v3 styles. I'm using that now to ease into the new style, but I'm not sure I will ever get used to it.

<<Without a Magic Box, then someone can delete his account entirely and his stuff will continue to sell on MP forever.>> That wasn't the impression I'm getting from the DD thread. Hopefully there will be some requirement of an active account!

Yea, I am pretty positive that they won't be updating my viewer of choice anytime soon lol. I was hoping it was more of a server-side thing instead of client side. I can probably manage to drag myself IW with Firestorm long enough to upload though, so there's that. Over all, I don't think this looks all bad, but I'll be waiting a week or 2 to see if there are any horror stories.

I'm not clear on how DD is going to make this worse? A magic box requires a single prim, and you can rent space in "box farms" for super cheap. Merchants will either sell a good quality product or they won't, regardless of what the venue is or whether they own land. Just because a merchant cannot afford a large bit of land for a shop doesn't mean they aren't deserving enough to have a place in the market. I think it will be a good opportunity for a lot of people, speaking as someone who struggles with large land rental fees.

Good point lol. Merchants have the same "how to deal with difficult customers" conversations just as often! I have spent an entire day trying to fix a scripted item for someone, only to find out it was not the item causing a problem, but I wasn't annoyed because the person was very sweet and apologetic, and tipped well. Would I spend that kind of time on someone who was rude? Not unless they could show beyond a doubt that my product was the problem, and not their user error. I feel for the person who is out money, but the best thing to do is keep this in perspective and move on. Post a review if it was a marketplace purchase.

This is why I posted a reply to LL- I would like to know straight from them what is supported and what is not. I'm new to the marketplace, enjoying the extra business, and I don't want to lose out because they aren't clear on what's going on!