What controls how much a photo can be sold for in OFB?

[Persephone]

I'm talking about photos taken with the antique camera.  I wanted to have a photo studio as a business as OFB.  No prob, I can take the pictures on my owned community lot, and place it for sale, but no matter how much creativity the sim has, or how much it would sell for if sold directly from the camera, I can only mark it for sale for a dollar.  Is there any way to set a custom price for these damn things?

Thanks!

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think the photographs are a waste of effort except as a means of making money! One of my sim teens took a lovely photo of his father's wedding to his new step-mother, and I put it on the kitchen wall, and they don't even know it's there!  Same thing applies to paintings now, although I don't think it used to.

[Sagana]

I've not tried photos, but to get a custom price on other stuff, you click on the item (each one individually) and choose 'set price' (or whatever exactly it is). When the menu comes up, the standard ('average', expensive, ridiculously expensive, etc.) sunburst rays are there, but below that is a field where you can enter a number directly - whatever number you like. You'll hafta do each photograph individually though, I think. I don't know of a way to set them all to a custom amount, unless the "set price" from the cash register will also give the custom option.

[Persephone]

This actually does work!  I did not know about the custom setting button (Actually I did know it was there for the hairdresser chair) because I have never used the sim interaction to set prices, I usually just go back into wholesale mode.  Set price for type works perfectly too, I just marked all photos for a $1 then used set price for type to mark all photos to $100.  The sims will probably whine about how high the price is, but so freaking what?  I have yet to have a playable sim buy one though, so I'll have to see what happens and let you guys know if it messes up the way custom paintings when placed in inventory.

[nikita]

Yeah, this was really annoying.  I had a Sim who opened up a gallery with all of her photos taken with the reward object and they were all priced at 1 simoleon.  I used the custom pricing to change it to 2000 simoleons per photograph.  Every day she takes 16 photos and goes to her gallery and sells them.  Her customer loyalty rating stinks but she's well on her way to becoming a millionaire.

[Persephone]

I have mini-sets set up all over my community lot studio and a little ticket machine to charge the ones who just hang around and stuff for them to do, like places to dance, things to sit on etc.  This makes helps because they spend alot of their time hanging around socializing which keeps the customer loyalty up a little bit and also gives me oprotunities to photograph people in different situations.  So I charge them to hang out, pay them nothing while I use them as free models, and then sell their portraits back to them at a high price. Quite a racket.

Oh and I just had a playable sim visit the lot and buy a photograph and a custom painting.  When they came home both of them retained the correct image.  Maybe if its bought autonomously it will revert to a practice painting?

[ZephyrZodiac]

This actually does work!  I did not know about the custom setting button (Actually I did know it was there for the hairdresser chair) because I have never used the sim interaction to set prices, I usually just go back into wholesale mode.  Set price for type works perfectly too, I just marked all photos for a $1 then used set price for type to mark all photos to $100.  The sims will probably whine about how high the price is, but so freaking what?  I have yet to have a playable sim buy one though, so I'll have to see what happens and let you guys know if it messes up the way custom paintings when placed in inventory.

Couldn't you just make one of the townie customers selectable after they buy one and check their inventory?  Or make one of your sims selectable and get them to buy one?  I think, if I was to start putting money orders in my playable sims inventories and letting them go shopping, I'd probably do that so I could get them to buy things they want.

[J. M. Pescado]

The custom price option can be used to set a meaningful price for everything. As a general rule, nothing worth less than about $100-$200 is even worth the bother of selling it: Considering that even paying employees craptastical wages in the $5-$15 range, you're going to probably require at least an hour's worth of employee-time, and your profit will be something pitiful, maybe $10 or so.

Which means with every sale you even attempt, you're losing money. This is not what I call a good business model.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Actually, I don't know that it matters as the business value is totally different from what your sim gets for selling the business - and popularity sims only want to own businesses to get the contacts and make more friends anyway!  and when they've earned all the rewards they can make friends really fast!

[Persephone]

The custom price option can be used to set a meaningful price for everything. As a general rule, nothing worth less than about $100-$200 is even worth the bother of selling it: Considering that even paying employees craptastical wages in the $5-$15 range, you're going to probably require at least an hour's worth of employee-time, and your profit will be something pitiful, maybe $10 or so.

Which means with every sale you even attempt, you're losing money. This is not what I call a good business model.

LOL, JM!  Who pays employees? Not me!  I use only family labor.  All I need is a cashier anyway, and the husband does that.  There is no stocking since the photos are not restockable.  I just take a bunch of pictures, hang them up and price them, and then open the gallery.  Once they all sell, close it again.  I've upped my prices now that she has good sales skills and some customer loyalty.  As for the other portion of my business, the photo studio, there are still no expenses.  I just charge the visitors a small fee to hang out in the house, and when they make an interesting face, snap a picture.  Whatever money is made is pure profit, since the only expenses are the fixtures and they paid for those with the cash business perks.

[J. M. Pescado]

LOL, JM!  Who pays employees? Not me!  I use only family labor.  All I need is a cashier anyway, and the husband does that.  There is no stocking since the photos are not restockable.  I just take a bunch of pictures, hang them up and price them, and then open the gallery.  Once they all sell, close it again.  I've upped my prices now that she has good sales skills and some customer loyalty.  As for the other portion of my business, the photo studio, there are still no expenses.  I just charge the visitors a small fee to hang out in the house, and when they make an interesting face, snap a picture.  Whatever money is made is pure profit, since the only expenses are the fixtures and they paid for those with the cash business perks.

A policy of family-labor-only, alas, does not create a functional business when visited by other families. The Cashier position is one of those you are required to outsource if you want the business to function when visited by other playables, since the business owner will just wander around the lot doing useless things when that happens (And usually trying to reassign everyone to random useless tasks as well, so you'd need noreassign, but still...). Some family-fillable positions are also high maintenance, due to factors like the ADHD factor (which can be reduced or eliminated with the ever-helpful Macro/BRY set).

[Persephone]

It's a home business, so that isn't really an issue for me.  For some reason I don't really visit most owned businesses with playable sims... But I'll keep that in mind if I ever want to, and make sure that business has a staff.

[nocomment]

One nice novelty with selling photos and paintings is that you can buy the same one over and over again.

I put up a photo for sale, closed the shop and sent the owner home.  Then I went to another house and had a sim visit the shop.  He bought the photo and came home.

His roomie then went and bought the same photo, so now they have two copies. 



There may be an easier way to duplicate photos and paintings, but I found this fun. 

[dadditude]

Thanks for the tip, nocomment... That might actually be useful, if I ever get a photo that I want more than one of. Any chance you know if it works for sim-painted paintings as well?

[nocomment]

I haven't tried with paintings yet.  It's on my big list of things to do.  It should work, but you never know.  I need to test the photo booth photos as well.

[Persephone]

Thanks for the tip, nocomment... That might actually be useful, if I ever get a photo that I want more than one of. Any chance you know if it works for sim-painted paintings as well?

I'm pretty sure that it does.  I had some custom paintings up during my little experiment with the studio, and I THINK i remember them being replaced when purchased as a playable sim...

[VyeOlin]

I had a sim visit an art gallery on a community lot that belonged to another sim, he got his portrait painted but wasn't able to purchase it. Only had the option to sell painting for specific amount. I then went and played the artist who had started a still life painting at home and sent him to work, the portrait he had done earlier had vanished. So he had to start all over again but was able to sell to a non-playable normally. I sent him back home and his still life painting that he had started earlier had vanished. Does this mean that a sim can't have works in progress on different lots?