I seem to do well with the home businesses. I had one Sim buy a community lot, and I just don't have the patience to keep one of those running. Even still, I only have the patience to have one home business running at a time.
Here's what I do, Kristal. Maybe this will help. Mind you, my best business is level 7. You might want to ask Shana for more advice, since she mentioned she had at least one level 10 biz. But anyway, for what it's worth: My home businesses do better than my community ones. It's easier to open them because you don't have to leave the lot, and therefore they're open more consistently. If I have a lot going on in a family the first thing that suffers is the off-lot business. Of course, if you move you need to start over, which I find irritating. I've got a flower shop that's on it's third iteration thanks to one move and one unsalvagable lot crash. Don't hire employees outside the family until you get the hang of the customer thing. Employees are just a distraction. Bring along a family member or two by taking a cab to work instead of a car, or just by having a home business. It's easier if you can control everyone. If you do hire an employee or two, have them work extremely short shifts. For example, Jake Hourvitz has a superette. He has an NPC who comes in to stock and another who makes flower arrangements. A third, player employee makes toys or bakes, depending on what he's low on. Once an employee has made a few of one item or restocked everything once he sends them home. Tell yourself when you're going to close and stick to it. Try to keep regular hours, just like at a real store. You'll find your sim and their employees are less tired afterwards. I always tell a joke first and then try to sell the customer something. That works really well. Most of my sims have fairly high charisma. If yours don't, try talking to the mirror for a couple of days and then going back to the store. Also, not being shy helps. Stella Nova is a terrible salesperson because her outgoing is a 2. I've had her father in law take over the shop. Keep an interesting variety of stock, but you don't have to have too much stuff. Sell one expensive item and the rest should be priced at average. Cheap doesn't make you enough money. Once your sim gets a gold sales badge, dazzle the interested customers into buying the expensive item. My home flower shop sells more of that item than anything else. It costs more to replace it, but it's worth it because it makes them the most money. Put snapdragons in the store once your sims have a gold flowermaking badge. It raises the environment score. Don't bother to sell to people debating over the ticketron. Concentrate on the ones who came to buy goods. Anyway, hope this helps.
First off, great advice on all of it. 2nd...I have level ten because I cheat! LOL... I admit that I use the painting quite a bit to keep my employees happy through the "everyone on lot" option. 3rd, there is one lot that I didn't cheat at. But it's one of my rich families to begin with with a ton of toys. They didn't do anything except install a ticket-tron and mark it cheap. Then I just let people decide if they wanted to visit or not. Every once in a while I'll "sell" someone on the ticket tron, but otherwise I just leave it on, even when they are sleeping. I just lock their bedrooms and some of the bathrooms to keep sims from bothering them. I made it to a level 10 within about a week...without having them do anything. I then raised the price slightly, but still kept it below average. It's worked out well so far! Oh, and I also try my hardest NOT to hire anyone, just use the household members for slaves!
Snapdragons also raise your sims' motives. Every hour or so the bouquet releases a cloud of odor that sometimes increases your sims' motives a bit. It doesn't always help, though. Sometimes it will affect one sim's moods and not the other's.
You know, I have yet to play it, but Lola Phoenix's house is a home business now, run by her great-grandson Carlo. She had everything, including a two-lane bowling alley. I think I'll play it for a while and see if they reach level 10. And I feel better! I may only have reached level 7, but I don't cheat, so now I'm feeling pretty good about my accomplishments. It's not easy, but that makes it more fun.
I can guarantee a ten level buisiness to anyone, it's just not very challenging doing it this way (even tho it is a great way to make easy simoleons). Here's my secret formula: 1. Lock all outside doors in the house to allow only "Household & Emplyees" Don't worry, all NPC service personel (maids, nannys, fire, police, etc.) can still enter. 2. Go to the catalouge menu and purchase one "Open/Closed" sign, one ticketron, and one poker table (and 4 chairs). 3. Place the poker table (with chairs) on the front lawn and set the ticketron to its cheapest price. 4. Use the phone to get your buisness license. Your "Open" sign should instantly flip to green and your ticketron's "under construction" sign will go away. Congratulations, you are now "Open for Buisiness"! 5. Have your sims live their simlives as you normally would, totally ignoring their buisiness. Meanwhile your sim's neighbors will be wandering onto your lot to play cards, make friends, and flood your buisiness with happy stars. Within one sim week your sim's buisiness should be at level ten and you will have ten "buisiness perk" points that you can trade in for monetary awards, relationship building and networking boosts, and buisness inventory discounts. You will also be making money like crazy since you get a 100% vigorish on all buy-in's and bets made at the card table! As I said, this formula takes away any challenge. After you get your confidence up, I suggest trying all the different types of business one by one for the fun and challenge. HTH
sell items? wouldnt you need a till ro something in your home or some sort of thing to sell your items...advertise them with?
