Hi peeps!

This post is for anyone who sells (or wants to sell) on SL Marketplace. The old method of selling (the magic box) is being phased out, and a new method (direct delivery) is bring brought in. In fact, all magic boxes will cease to work from Tuesday 16th April – that’s just a few days from now. So here’s a quick guide to migrating an existing magic box, uploading new items to direct delivery, and writing listings.

Hop behind the cut!

We’ll begin with migrating the contents of an existing magic box, as this one’s really easy.

Migrating an existing magic box

This one’s for seasoned merchants! Step-by-step text instructions follow. For illustrated instructions, scroll down.

1 – Open your magic box, as you would open any boxed item you’ve purchased. Right-click and select ‘open’. Unpack its contents into your inventory.

2 – Once that’s done, find the folder that your magic box unpacked to. You can delete all of the scripts that went into the folder; you don’t need those.

3 – Find your Merchant Outbox. The location of this will vary, depending on your viewer, as follows:

Phoenix Viewer – Sorry, you don’t have a Merchant Outbox! You’ll need to download and install another viewer solely for uploading items to Marketplace now.

Second Life Official Viewer – Look in Me > Merchant Outbox

Firestorm Viewer – Look in Avatar > Merchant Outbox

Singularity Viewer – Look in World > Merchant Outbox

If I’ve not covered your viewer here, and you still can’t find your Merchant Outbox, just google its location!

I’m using the Second Life Official Viewer for this tutorial.

4 – Once your Merchant Outbox has initialised (and the little swirling icon has stopped) you can start loading it up. All you need to do is drag all of the boxed items in your unpacked magic box folder across into the small panel at the bottom of your Merchant Outbox. You can select all the items in the folder at once, or drag them in groups. I don’t recommend dragging more than 50 at a time before sending them to Marketplace.

IMPORTANT! Make sure you drag the items to the small panel at the bottom of the Merchant Outbox, not into the large main section!

5 – You’ll notice that each item creates a folder in the Merchant Outbox. If you click the little arrow beside the folder name, you’ll see the boxed item inside.

6 -  Click ‘Send to Marketplace’ and wait. You’ll see a ‘Success’ window pop up when it’s done. (If you see a ‘transfer failed’ window, don’t despair; sometimes it can be laggy, and sometimes your items have been sent!)

7 – Lastly, log into Marketplace and click the arrow beside your name at the top, select ‘Merchant Home’ and look in ‘Manage Listings’ in the left-side menu. All of your old Magic Box items should now be in the top section (‘Unassociated Inventory Items’) and – if you scroll down to the main ‘Manage Listings’ section you should see ‘Direct’ listed beside each one under the ‘Delivery’ header.

8 – You can now delete all of the items in the Unassociated Inventory section. (At the moment, you’ll have to do this one at a time, sorry!). UPDATE! Scroll down to ‘Magic Box Cleanup’ on this page and follow the instructions. MUCH faster!

9 – Finally, you can delete your magic box that’s rezzed in-world.

10 – You’re done!

Uploading new items using the Merchant Outbox

This one’s for people who are new to selling on Marketplace (and those who sold using magic boxes but are unsure how direct delivery works).

1 – Open up your Merchant Outbox.

2 – Find the item(s) you want to sell, in your inventory.

3 – You can upload items in two ways:

a) You can drag one item to the Merchant Outbox, where it will create a new folder. Then, you can drag associated items (such as instructions notecards, a landmark to your store, etc) into that folder.

b) You can create a folder in your inventory that holds everything (the item, instructions notecard, landmark, etc) and drag that folder onto the Merchant Outbox.

NOTE: If you’re dragging multiple items that are already in folders, make sure you drag them onto that small panel at the bottom, otherwise some of the folders may go into some of the other folders!

4 – You can nest folders inside each other, which is really handy. This is great if you’re selling an item that has multiple options to it. Normally, you’d either box up the options and put them in with instructions to unpack the box, or just cram them willy-nilly in with everything else, but now you can nest them inside the main parent folder, in their own folder.

5 – When you’ve added everything, click the ‘Send to Marketplace’ button, and wait. You should see a ‘Success’ panel pop up. (I recommend not checking the ‘do not show me this again’ box, just to be on the safe side!)

NOTE: If you see a ‘transfer failed’ window, don’t despair; sometimes it can be laggy, and sometimes your items have been sent!

6 – Log into Marketplace and click the arrow beside your name at the top of the page. Select ‘Merchant Home’.

7 – In the menu on the left, select ‘Manage Listings.

8 – Look for the objects you’ve sent through your Merchant Outbox. They’ll be in the ‘Unassociated Items’ section at the top:

9 – To the right of each item you’ll see an ‘Actions’ arrow. Click it and select ‘Create a New Listing’ –

10 – This is the top half of the listings page. Detailed information follows after the pic!

 

First, check ‘Active’, under ‘Item Status’. If you don’t do this, your listing won’t show up!

Next, check the Maturity Level. Make sure you get this right, as your listing may be flagged and temporarily removed until you fix it. If this happens, you’ll receive an email to the addres your avatar has registered with Second Life, telling you which item was flagged, why, and what you need to do about it (for example, it will suggest the correct maturity rating for the item). Check out this guide to maturity ratings for more info.

If your item contains mesh, you’ll need to complete Linden Lab’s IP (Intellectual Property) Tutorial before you can check either the Partial Mesh or 100% Mesh options. To do this, you’ll need to log into the main Second Life website, and look in the menu sidebar. You’ll find the IP tutorial under Account > Mesh Upload Status. Or, just click the ‘uploading a mesh model’ link in the listing.

Check the relevant permissions for your item. If they have mixed permissions, check ‘See Description’. Make sure you list the different permissions in the main description (see the next pic for that).

Finally, check the relevant Usage Requirements. If an item is something to be worn, check ‘Wearable’, if it’s to be rezzed out in-world, check ‘Land’ etc.

Now we scroll down to the next bit of the listing. This is where you get to be creative! Again, detailed info after the pic.

You can change the item title in the first box. For instance, this arbor is low-prim, so changing its title to Mar’s Low Prim Steampunk Arbor might catch the eye a bit more than the current title.

You can list up to five product features. This is where you highlight the best points about your item.

Then, write up your product description. Be creative! I’ve written quite a dull (for me!) description here, but you can get as corny or as funny as you like. Remember to refer to the Listing Guidelines for what you can and can’t write here.

Lastly, input some keywords that are relevant to your item.

Why did I highlight that? Well, consider how many times you’ve searched Marketplace for, let’s say, a dress. On the first page you probably got results for shoes, hair, and all kinds of other things! Why? Two reasons:

a) Lazy merchants, who write one single set of keywords containing every single thing they sell, in every colour, and paste that into the keyword box for everything

b) Keyword-spammers, who try to cheat by inserting incorrect keywords to make their listings show up in irrelevant searches. Keyword-spamming is against the ToS (see those Listing Guidelines again) so don’t do it!

Note: It’s a good idea to include alternative spellings for your item, as Mar has done here with the US ‘arbor’ and UK ‘arbour’. This isn’t essential, but it’ll help your item catch the eye of people who don’t spell a specific word in their country in the same way you do in your country!

Now down to the final bit of the page:

This is where you choose your item category. Again, look for the closest category possible and don’t settle for one of the parent categories. Your item may be flagged and temporarily removed if it’s in the wrong category! Here’s a list of all the current categories, nested so you can find them.

Set the item’s price, and its prim count (or land impact).

If the item is rezzed in-world (either in a multiple-item rezzer, or as a standalone item) insert the SLurl where it can be found.

Upload your images. At the moment you can only upload one at a time (and it’s sloooow), but you can upload multiple images. I think the maximum is eight, but don’t quote me!

When you’re finished, double-check everything, and then at the very bottom of the page, click the orange ‘Update’ button.

You’ll be sent back to your Manage Listings page, and – hopefully! – you should see ‘Successfully Updated!’ in a green bar at the top.

Under ‘Store Setup’, select ‘View My Store’ –

Your item may take a few minutes to show up in your store, so be patient. Eventually, you’ll reload the page and there it is!

Glance over your listing, spellcheck it, make sure it’s okay. If you need to change something, click ‘Revise Your Item’, just above the price. This will take you back to the main listing page, where you can make any edits you need to.

And you’re done!

But, Mar, I don’t even have a Marketplace store!

Then you need to create one! It’s really simple.

1 – Log into Marketplace (use your avatar name and SL password) and click the arrow beside your name at the top of the page.

2 – Click ‘Create A Store’

3 – Accept the Terms of Service on the following page.

4 – If you’re logged in-world, log out and log back in.

5 – You can now start listing items!

6 – Don’t forget to edit your store information (in the left-hand sidebar of Merchant Home). Give the store a name, if you have one, and write a bit about it, if you want. If you have an in-world store, enter its SLurl, and if you have a banner image and a logo you can upload those, too (note down the dimensions these need to be; they’re written under the ‘browse’ buttons).

And that’s about it! I hope you found this guide useful :)

Further Reading

SL Marketplace Listing Guidelines

Knowledgebase: Direct Delivery Migration Guide

Direct Delivery Migration for Dummies (SL Forums)

Direct Delivery Tips and Tricks (SL Forums)