Creating your first marketplace listings

I haven't posted here in a long while as I have been fairly busy with RL and work in SL learning Blender and Marvelous Designer (not to mention working on a few projects).  However I promised my lovely girl long ago that I would create a set of instructions for her to follow in order to create her own marketplace listings.....and here it is.

To begin with, we need to open the new Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM) Listing Manager.  We do this by going to Avatar, and then click on Marketplace Listings...

Now for those of you for who this is truly your first exposure to the marketplace, you will get a box about creating a new store.

Don't be intimidated...this is actually a really simple process.  I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, but here are the basic steps you need to take to create your store:

1. Make sure your Second Life account is at least five days old and has payment information on file.
2. On any Marketplace page, click My Marketplace in the upper-right and click Create a Store.
3. Read the Marketplace Terms of Service carefully, then scroll down to the bottom and click Accept.
4. (Optional) Customize your store profile to make it more attractive and easier to find.
5. Restart your Second Life Viewer before attempting to upload items to the Marketplace website.

Now, once your store is ready, if you go to Avatar, Marketplace Listings... you are presented with your Marketplace Panel.  This lists everything you have in your marketplace. If they are limited items (no copy) then it shows the amount you have on hand, the listing number, and if it is active or not.

The items in BOLD are active listings.  They also say (listed) on every item.  If it's a limited item it will list how many you still have for sale (max=<number you still have>).  If the item is NOT in Bold, then it is either a delisted item or a new (Unassociated) item.  There are tabs at the top of the popup which you can use to break them down into ALL, Listed, Unlisted and Unassociated.

Listed is pretty straight forward.  These are items you actually have in your MP store.

Unlisted items are typically items you have run out of, or are items you have delisted or retired for one reason or another.   Limited (no copy) items you have run out of will say (out of stock) at the end.

Unassociated items are items you have either not listed yet, or might be something you chose to unlist and then remove from the MP.  Typically though, this is where new items will be, and is where we will spend the majority of our time in this post.

Click the Unassociated tab

In order to create a NEW listing for an item, all you need to do is drag that item from your inventory to your marketplace listings window.  You can drag ONE item, or a whole folder of items.  Personally I like to drag ONE item over (even if I have many), create the listing, activate it, and then drag over additional items once I know it's working.  In the example I am going to drag a Gatcha item from the inventory to the marketplace. 

Note that although I have 5 of that item I only dragged ONE over.  Yes, I could have dragged over the folder and just put all 5 into the MP, but as I said, I like to do one item first and then stock the listing after it's done and active.  Also note that I grabbed the item that isn't listed with a number behind (like Cuff 1, Cuff 2, Cuff 3, etc) it as I want the listing to not reflect this.

 If you right click the item now, you will get a drop down menu like this

There are a lot of items in this menu, but we are only going to concentrate on the first one, which is Create Listing.  When you create the listing you will see it say (updating) behind it and then it will disappear from the Unassociated tab (now it is an unlisted item).

Now you can click on the Unlisted tab and at the bottom you will find our new listing.  You see that is says the name of the item, the listing number, and (max=1) meaning we have one in stock to sell.  Later we will move the other 4 items into the listing so that you will have 5.

Right Click the item again and you will see the same drop down menu as before, however the Create Listing and Associate Listing options are now greyed out.  What we want to do is Edit Listing.  Select that option and you will be taken to your MP listing for that item.

This is a really long page on which you need to fill in all the info about your item.
SKU is something you can safely ignore for the most part UNLESS you have a larger store and need to start cross linking items.  For now we will ignore it.
Version is again something we will ignore as it's an advanced topic.
Item Status is where you can activate the listing or inactivate it from the browser.  For now leave it at Inactive.  I always leave my listings Inactive until I am sure that everything is filled out the way I want it.  Plus, we will activate the listing from inside SL...so ignore this.
Maturity level is fairly self explanatory.  Just keep in mind that any words you use in the description of the item or in the keywords later can affect this.  Using words like 'Gor' or 'Slave' or such will result in the item being listed immediately as Adult (even if it's something clearly for everyone).
Mesh Again self explanatory
Permissions This is the permissions the object you are selling has.  In this case it's a Gatcha item, so the permissions will be Transfer (sometimes it's Mod and Transfer).  Make SURE you check the item and mark the permissions correctly here.  For non gatcha items you really should make anything you sell into NO TRANSFER items unless you don't really care how many are out there and that people can compete with you.  Keep in mind this is a business where L's are transacted.  People will screw you over if you give them the least chance...so protecting yourself and your intellectual property is of utmost importance.
Usage requirements In most cases items come in boxes that need to be unpacked (ie - they can't be worn immediately).  However some items come unpacked and ready to wear.  Select the appropriate button.
Clothing works with self explanatory.  In our case we will mark both the Classic and Mesh avatars

Moving down to the Languages section, you can see the Folder name, the item title, features, description, and keywords. 

Folder name cannot be changed.

Item title This is where you can change the name that people see for the item you are selling.  Typically we leave this alone UNLESS you have placed in an item that you have multiple of and it had a number behind it.  We will want to remove that number.  Example: You are selling Super Great No Copy Cuffs, and have Super Great No Copy Cuffs 1, Super Great No Copy Cuffs 2, Super Great No Copy Cuffs 3, Super Great No Copy Cuffs 4 all in your inventory because you boxed them up previously.  When you went to sell the item you dragged Super Great No Copy Cuffs 3 to the listing.  So now the item title says Super Great No Copy Cuffs 3 in it.  Just remove the '3' so that it says Super Great No Copy Cuffs

Product features Here you can list up to 5 features of the product.  You can skip this part...most people never even look here...however it CAN help with searches.  It's up to you if you choose to use it.

Extended Description This is a required field.  Here is where you can go into long and flowery descriptions of the product you are selling.  In the case of Gatcha items I always just paste in a standard disclaimer:
The items are sold "AS IS"
I am not the creator of the items you get. I got them at gachas, special sales and VIP members paid groups. If you have something to complain about, please go to the original creator of the item. Just right click on it and you will see the name of the creator.
Please do not try to cheat me and say you didn’t receive the item, because you did. Or that the box is empty, because it isn’t. Or that a full set is missing a rare, because it’s not.
No refunds. Please don't buy any item you are not sure you want.

Keywords This is where you put in some key words about your item.  In our example case we are selling [Tia] Beatrix Cuffs, so I will put in [Tia], Beatrix, Cuff, BDSM, Gatcha  These are the important words that will come up when people are searching the MP.  Hence anyone searching for anything [Tia] related or for Cuffs will pull up your item. If someone is specifically looking for the Beatrix cuffs your item will pull up as well.  Keywords can be vitally important, so make sure you use them strategically.

Final note on this section is that you CAN go in and fill in all the other language tabs individually.  This is great if you are trying to make sure that your item can also be seen and read in the German, Japanese, Spanish, etc markets.

Category  Pretty self explanatory.  just make sure you categorize your item correctly, else SL will recategorize it FOR you, deactivate your item and then you will have to come back and reactivate it.  In our case they are Cuffs, so we will use Avatar Accessories, BDSM Accessories, BDSM Cuffs, Leashes & Restraints

Price Self Explanatory.  Just make sure not to price your item too high else you will never sell it, or too low as you will be cheating yourself out of money.  Doing a lot of comparison shopping on the MP helps with this.  Just make sure you are comparing apples to apples (in the case of gatcha's, make sure you compare a rare to a rare of the exact same kind, color and style, and not to a common and visa versa)

Prim Count, SL url, Video url we will all leave blank as for this item it's not important.  Prim count is important when it's something you don't WEAR.  And SLurl is the location of your inworld store....so for now we won't use them.

Available Qty is prefilled in for you and you can't affect it.

Images Here is where you upload an image of the item from your computer (NOT from your inventory in SL)  If the only image you have of the item is in your SL inventory then you will need to save it out of SL to your computer so that you can upload it here.  In our case I have the image of the gatcha items and upload it to use as the picture.

Most of the remaining parts of the listing can be ignored with two exceptions:

Related Items  This is where you can link to up to 8 other items you sell.  This is important if you want people to see all the stuff you have.  They will be listed at the bottom of the page for that item in the MP.  Now, THIS is why I don't activate my listings immediately.  Usually I go through and create all the listings I am making (in this case for all the cuffs in different colors) and then I will go back to each listing and add the other listings as 'related items' before activating it.  That way I am giving people the chance to see my other stuff.

Revenue Distribution  This is how you share in the profits from an item you are selling.  By adding a distribution, you are essentially giving someone a 'cut' (percentage) of the sale price of the item.  In our case I am taking a small percentage cut of the cuff as per our agreement.  So I add in my SL name as the collaborator and add 25 to the percentage (meaning I get 25% of the sale price after the 10% commission to SL).  Note that you don't need to add in 'Resident' to the name as that will give an error.

Finally you UPDATE the listing and you end up looking at the VMM Listing page

Now you CAN activate the listing from here by clicking on the check mark, but we are going to do it from inside SL, so you can now safely close the browser.

Inside SL you can now right click and List the item.  That takes it from Unlisted to Listed, makes it bold and essentially turns the listing 'on' in the MP.

Now we will go back and fill in the remaining inventory we have of that item from our inventory to the marketplace.   In the Marketplace listing open the folders fro that item until you see the actual item.

 Simply highlight all the copies of that item in your inventory (Left click the top item and then SHIFT-Left click the bottom one to highlight them all) and then drag tem on top of the item in the marketplace listings.  Make sure they end up in the lowest level folder with the first item, else the inventory count won't work properly.

When you are done, the listing should show like this

And that's all there is to it.  I know this seems like a LOT of work, and it can be, but once you have done it a few times you will see it's very simple and repetitive.