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This article explains the basics of how to get started as a merchant onthe Second Life Marketplace. Once you are familiar with these steps, check outHow to market your productsfor tips on how to make your business stand out, or learn aboutManaging your Marketplace store.
The first step to becoming a merchant is to create your store on the Second Life Marketplace. Your store is where customers can browse and purchase items you have listed for sale. Once a purchase is made, the items are delivered directly to the buyer's inventory in Second Life and the proceeds are added to your Linden dollar (L$) balance.
To create your store:
- Make sure your Second Life account is at least five days old and has payment information on file.
- On any Marketplace page, clickMy Marketplacein the upper-right and clickCreate a Store.
- Read theMarketplace Terms of Servicecarefully, check I agree to the Second Life Marketplace Fee and Listing Policies,then scroll down to the bottom and clickContinue.
- (Optional) Customize your store profile to make it more attractive and easier to find.
- Restart your Second Life Viewer before attempting to upload items to the Marketplace website.
Once you have set up your Marketplace store and restarted the Second Life Viewer, you can begin using the Marketplace Listings window to manage your store's inventory. Make sure you understand Second Life's next owner object permissions before listing your items for sale; these permissions allow you to control how your object may be copied or redistributed after you've sold it.
The Marketplace Listings window
Video Tutorial: Learning Listing, Version, & Stock Folders
The Marketplace Listings window is an extension of your Second Life inventory that allows you to manage all inventory in your Second Life Marketplace store. By dragging and dropping items from your inventory window into the Marketplace Listings window, you can immediately begin setting up new listings, add updated versions of your existing products, and even list or unlist items on the Marketplace Store. You can access the Marketplace Listings window by choosingMe > Marketplace listings from the top menu bar of the Second Life Viewer.
Version folders
Each Marketplace Listing folder contains one or more version folders thatallow you to easily manage updated versions of a productwithout creating a new listing. Version folders look like normal inventory folders with three lines drawn on them, like this:
. Only one version folder may be active at a time for each listing; when a customer buys your product, they receive a copyof the active version folder and its contents.
To activate aversion folder for a Marketplace Listing, right-click the appropriate version folder and choose Activate. If a listing folder contains only one version folder, it is activated automatically. Currently active version folders are marked by the word "(active)".
Note:When you dragobjects from your regular inventory to a version folder, they aremoved, not copied. This means that they no longer appear in your main inventory and will be lost permanently if deleted from their respective version folder.
You may instead copy an itemfrom your inventory to the Marketplace Listings window by right-clicking the item in your inventory and choosingCopy to Marketplace Listings.
Stock folders
You can use the Marketplace Listings window to sell a limited stock of no-copy items. No-copy items that you drag into the Marketplace Listings window are automatically placed into astock folder. Stock folders look like normal inventory folders with a grid of squares on them, like this:
. Stock folders also show the number of items they contain next to their names. For example, "Example Crate(stock=7)".
Each stockfolder must be inside a version folder, and represents the sale of asingle item in the listing, even though there may be many items inside the stock folder. For example, if your activeversion folderconsists of a copiable notecardand a stock folder containing 25no-copy objects, each customer will receive a copy of the notecardand one randomly selected objectfrom the stock folder until no items remain in the stock folder.
The no-copy items within a stock folder must be of the same inventory type, but may have different names. For example, some identical limited-run items may have serial numbers written into their object names, but they canstill be sold from the same stock folder.
Note that while it is still possible to sell a limited quantity of copiable items using the appropriatelisting field, the quantity of items availablefrom a stock folder is determined by the number of items in the folder and cannot be changed using the Available quantitylisting field.
When astock folder runs out of no-copy items, the Marketplace de-lists your listingand sends an email alert remindingyou to add more units.
Creating a new listing
Video Tutorial: Creating a New Listing
Follow these steps to create a listing for a new product on the Second Life Marketplace:
- Open the Marketplace Listings window in the Second Life Viewer by choosingMe > Marketplace listings from the top menu bar.
- Open your Inventory window by choosingMe > Inventoryfrom the top menu bar.
- Drag your product from the Inventory window to the section of the Marketplace Listings window labeled Drop folders here to create new listings. It now appears under theUnassociated tab.
- Under theAll orUnassociated tabs, right-click the listing folder containing your product and chooseCreate listing. The folder is moved to theUnlisted tab and now displays a listing number.
- Under theAll orUnlisted tabs,the single version folder
inside the listing folderis automatically made active. - Right-click the listing folder or version folder and chooseEdit listing to fill out the required listing fields on the Marketplace website. If you try to list your product before filling out the required listing fields, you will receive an error message explaining which fields still require input. Clickthe Update button to save your listing.
- On the All orUnlisted tab of theMarketplace Listings window, right-click the listing folder and chooseList to list your product on the Second Life Marketplace. You may list or unlist items from the Marketplace website as well.
Changing versions of a listed item
Video Tutorial: Updating a Listing
As you develop updates for your products, you can easily update your Marketplace listings with the new items without deleting the older versions:
- Open the Marketplace Listings window in the Second Life Viewer by choosingMe > Marketplace listings from the top menu bar.
- Open your Inventory window by choosingMe > Inventoryfrom the top menu bar.
- Drag your updated product from your Inventory window to the listing folder for that product in the Marketplace Listings window; this creates a new, inactive version folder containing the updated product.
- Right-click the new folder and choose Activate to make it theactive version folder for that listing. All new sales through the associated Marketplace listing will deliver products from the active version folder.
At any time, you can revert your listing to sell a previous version of your product by right-clicking its version folder and choosingActivate.
Changing the item associated with a listing
Video Tutorial: Migrating Listings & Checking for Errors
Under rare circ*mstances, you may need to completely change the item associated with a Marketplace listing. The most common reason for needing to change the item associated with a listing is accidental deletion of theinventory folder associated with a listing and need to re-associate items with an existing listing.
To associate a listing folder with a pre-existing Marketplace listing:
- In the Second Life Viewer, chooseMe> Marketplace listings.
- Find the listing number in parentheses next to your existing listing. For example,"Example Crate (3757)".
- Click the Unassociated tab of the Marketplace listings window.
- Right-click an unassociated item you wish to associate with your listing and chooseAssociate listing.
- In the Associate Listing window that appears, enter the listing ID of your existing listing and clickOK.
- The unassociated item now replaces the existing item (if any) in the Marketplace listing.
Note that changing the item associated with a listing in this way causes the item to become unlisted because you are replacing the active version folder. You will need to activate a newversion folder and re-list the item as described in Creating a new listing.
Previewing your store
After you have listed at least one item, you can preview your store:
- On the Marketplace website, go toMy Marketplace>My Store.
- This is how your customers see your store — but it also helps to browse the Marketplace as analtto really walk in your customers' shoes.
Important:To see items in your store that you have listed as Moderate or Adult content, make sure yousetShow maturity levels toGeneral, Moderate, Adult when you search!
Delivering items to the buyer
The Marketplace automatically delivers items for you. Occasionally, the delivery system fails, and a delivery gets lost on its way to the customer. If that happens, you caneasily redeliver the item.
Blocking unwanted buyers
In the event that a Marketplace store owner should wish to avoid doing business with a particular customer, adding the customer to the store owner's inworld block list will prevent the customer from purchasing items from their shop. See Blocking for more information on how to add someone to a block list.
Managing problematic reviews
While most reviews, even negative ones, offer an opportunity for a merchant to respond to the review to provide context and assistance to their customers, there are times when a customer review becomes a problem.Ifthe review comments appear to be in violation of the Terms and Conditions, Community Standards, or the Marketplace Listing Guidelines, please report the review using the "Flag this review" link that is located directly beneath the review comments on the Product Listing.
A store manager is a Resident you have designated to manage some operations of your store in the Second Life Marketplace. Store managers can perform many of the same actions as the store owner, taking allowing them to take on some of the burden of managing your store. For full details on store managers, see Second Life Marketplace store managers.
There are two API wiki pages targeted at Third-Party Viewerdevelopers. This API documentation is helpful for developers who want to integrate Marketplace features into their Third-Party Viewers, but is not necessary for most Marketplace merchants or their customers:
- Marketplace API for VMM
- AIS V3 API
