PrimBay

PrimBay is a new marketplace for virtual worlds. It's a central place for people to find stuff they love, and for merchants to reach out to more customers than ever. It's now open for beta testing by CasperTech users, and is currently open to the public.

What is PrimBay?

PrimBay is a clean, sharp companion to the CasperVend system in Second Life. You can search, shop, browse and sell - it brings the best content in Second Life directly to you.

Our Goals

• SPEED - PrimBay has been written from the ground up wholly optimised for awesome speed. As with our inworld vendors, we prioritise speed and efficiency because we believe it is key to good business.
• SIMPLICITY - The front page of PrimBay is simple. Just a search box. Find what you need, quickly and easily
• POWER - We've designed the site to be massively extensible, laying down the groundwork for much more to come.

What else to expect?

Current Features

These are the current features on PrimBay:

• Full purchase support, by L$, Credit Card, or PayPal, including an (optional) device which can make payments automatically, similar to the marketplace.
• All merchants can get a pack to promote their primbay listings, and in the future, their PrimBay storefront.
• A demo button will be available on listings, no need for a separate listing!
• Ability to share listings in social media.

Future

This is our intended path after release:

• There'll be a special edition of caspervend designed for primbay-only merchants.
• Every merchant will be able to create a "store front" - a special subsite of PrimBay with their own logo.
• New site design - Yes, believe it or not, the current PrimBay site design is nearly 3 years old! We have commissioned a redesign, but for now we'll launch with what we have.
• Custom image uploads - merchants will be able to upload new images to their products instead of using the SL texture.
• Auctions - PrimBay has been designed with auctions in mind, and we will implement these in the coming time.
• Quantities - Quantities are not currently displayed on listings, but this is intended to happen.
• Multiple store fronts - Multiple brands, one avatar.

Register for PrimBay

• In order to register, simply visit a terminal: https://www.primbay.com/terminals.php - click the terminal, and use the Register button.
• You can then login to the site at https://www.primbay.com/.

Note: There is a minimal featureset, in order to focus on speed and relevance. Much more will come.

How do I use PrimBay?

1. First, find a PrimBay Terminal
2. Then, click the terminal to be taken to the website
3. When you find the product(s) you want to buy, pay the terminal to put a balance on the site
4. Select the products and use the checkout

Merchants: All proceeds from the sales of your products (minus the PrimBay commission, of course) will be sent directly to you - no need to wait or to initiate a withdrawl process.

Customers: If you've paid too much money in and want to withdraw what's left, simply use the "withdraw" option on the popup menu after clicking the PrimBay terminal.

Promotional Signs

Promotional "find my store on..." signs are now available! Simply buy them (for free!) on PrimBay!

Prepare Your Products!

Products are listed via CasperVend, which means if you already use CasperVend you don't have to do anything to sell on PrimBay!

To prepare for the opening in a few days, PrimBay has been set to "enabled" on everyone's account. If you don't wish to participate, visit the overview tab and toggle Primay to No. Remember, each individual product has an "exclude" option, too.

Please help us prepare, and take time to review your product listings.

The description field when editing a product is now formatted, and has an editor, so you can make pretty descriptions.

Please take care to also ensure that the "not suitable for children" tickbox is checked correctly on your products.

How Long Before My Products Update on PrimBay?

Currently, products are set to update to PrimBay about every hour. If you've JUST made changes, please note that any changes you make to your products may take up to 1 hour to appear on the site.

Want A Terminal?

If you want, you can get a PrimBay terminal for your store or location. The terminal is 4 prims, and will often appear on the PrimBay website.

The terminal MUST be in a publicly accessible location, free of security orbs and banlines. You may request more than one per region, but only one per region will appear in the list on the website. The list presents 10 random terminals of each "maturity" rating, so your terminal may not appear all the time.

Send a notecard to Primbay Engineer inworld with details about location, positioning, as well as any required group invite. If you want to set a prim out pointing to where it should go, that's helpful as well.

Only the Primbay Engineer avatar can rez out PrimBay terminals. This is for everyone's protection.

FAQ / Troubleshooting

Q. How do I register?

A. Go to a PrimBay terminal, click it and select "Register" from the touch/popup menu. Use your avatar account name, but choose a brand new password.

Q. Will it cost money to list my items?

A. No! You can list your items for free - for each sale we take just 5% as commission. If you own CasperVend Premium, that amount is reduced to just 2%.

Q. How am I paid?

A. We pay money directly and instantly into your Second Life account. We don't retain your money, so there's no risk to you.

Q. What items are allowed?

A. Any product which is permitted to be sold in the grid it's available for is also permitted to be sold via PrimBay. While not exhaustive, items which are explicitly disallowed are (but not limited to) item(s) graphically depicting mutilation, any item(s) depicting or suggesting the abuse or sexual solicitation of minors, any item(s) which are designed to defraud or commit a crime (or entice others to defraud or commit a crime), any item(s) which violate or are intended to violate or entice others to violate UK or international law.

Q. What about copyright?

A. We immediately investigate any and all claims of copyright infringement, and - given reasonable proof - will swiftly remove infringing listings.

Q. What constitutes an "Adult" item?

A. We define an adult item as anything which is not suitable for children. That's anything to do with sex, graphic violence, etc. This applies to BOTH the product being delivered AND the image / listing on the website. Profanity should be considered in context. We don't consider profanity itself to necessitate a listing being set to adult, but any language which is contextually sexual, violent or hateful, definitely would.

Q. CasperTech is in multiple virtual worlds, will PrimBay deliver to multiple virtual worlds as well?

A. At first, PrimBay will start off with deliveries only within Second Life. Support for other virtual worlds will be added later. DropBox(es) with your products in it must be rezzed out in the virtual world that deliveries will be made to.

Q. I have customers who have discounts inworld, will these discounts be available on PrimBay?

A. Customer discounts, profit sharing, and loyalty rewards will all be honoured on PrimBay. Unfortunately, group discounts will not be available, since group discounts use an LSL function that looks at the group an item is rezzed under.

Q. Will we have our own "storefronts" on PrimBay?

A. Yes, you'll have your own personal storefront on PrimBay.

Note from Sphynx: Multiple storefronts are planned for the future, but are not part of the initial roll-out.

Q. Will purchases be able to be sent to grids other than the one it was purchased on, when support for other grids is rolled out?

A. PrimBay is not designed to allow you to buy products cross-grid. Among other things, dropboxes need to be rezzed out in each grid in order to deliver products TO that grid.

Q. How will PrimBay sales show up on our sales histories?

A. They will be listed as PrimBay

Q. Why products were listed before, but now they're not - what happened?

A. Products are automatically de-listed when we have trouble delivering them. It's possible your products were affected by that. Try paying your vendors and make sure they deliver - once they successfully deliver, they will automatically be re-listed in PrimBay. (If they still don't deliver, compare the transaction log on the merchant link against the tracking page to see where the problem might be.)