Question: How does Total Avatar Shop work?
Answer: If you’re asking how it works for a consumer, they would go on the website and chose items they would like to purchase for their avatar. This can be in any virtual world, it’s not limited to just one. Once they have their shopping cart ready, they will be prompted to their Paypal site where they will use their Paypal account to pay for their items. Once this is done, they can email sunny@totalavatarshop.com or write a comment on the front page of the website. Let Sunny know what virtual world she needs to deliver the items to and the avatars name. Once that is done and Sunny has the order, it will be processed right away. Since this is not an automatic delivery, it may take a few hours to import/upload products to the world (if it’s a world Sunny is already established at, it will take less time).
Question: How long have you been doing this and how has it worked out for your customers:
Answer: Total Avatar Shop opened since March 8, 2009 so this coming March it will be 2 years! So far I have had nothing but good feedback on my customer purchases. I always try to get the products to them in good condition, ready to wear or use and in a timely matter.
Question: What if someone else wants to put their items on your website:
Answer: I am willing to create a custom page for someone wanting to sell their products on my site. They would let me know what colors to use and if they have any textures I would put them on the site. All I would need from them would be pictures of their products (no real products are used). I also need a short description of the item and the price they want to sell the item for. Once I have them I can setup their personal store. The payments would be the same, they would go through Paypal and I would contact the person when they get orders. I would charge 5% for setting up the store and for using my broadband and server. It is less than the Marketplace charges and you have so many more virtual worlds you could sell to.
Question: Are there that many people in other virtual worlds to have a online store like this:
Answer: Here is a grid list of other virtual worlds. See for yourself LOL! http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Grid_List
Believe me, people in these other worlds need furniture, animations, clothing, hair, jewelry, homes… so many things that it has become overwhelming for me sometimes because I’m busy with this daily. It would be a real asset to have more people doing this for avatars in their virtual world!
Question: Does this mean I would have to create an avatar in each virtual world?
Answer: Yes, you do have to create an avatar in each world. And you have to be willing to upload/import products into these worlds. There are only a few worlds that charge upload/importing fees, but the majority of them are free. If you have Second Inventory that is a huge help in getting items into these worlds quickly, rather than doing one item at a time, which is very time consuming. Second Inventory allows you to save all your creations directly to your hard drive. This includes, Skins, Textures, Scripts and even complex multi-prim objects!