Shops are mainly a way of either selling your items and earning ZP, or as a gallery for displaying your items. This is a guide to how to create a shop, restock the shop and tips on how to modify its look and earning ZP.

If you notice any errors, please contact us! Please note that this article has been written by Dymphna for Zetahelp ^^ so please let her know if you find it helpful!

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You may be asking yourself, what is the point of having my own shop? It takes a lot of upkeep restocking and such, and it costs me hard earned Zetapoints to increase the size. Besides, I can make sufficient money through the games and random events I recieve. If I want to sell an item, I can just use the auctions or trade!

Those statements are indeed true; however, nearly all Zetapets players can benefit from having a personal shop, as long as common sense is used.

==> Simple Guidelines to Owning a Shop <==

*Type*
First, you will want to decide what the purpose of your shop is going to be. If you have done any browsing of other players shops, you probably have noticed certain differences between them. For example, some users have a shop for gallery purposes only (everything is priced too high to purchase, and the items often follow some sort of theme) or seem to have a random assortment of items priced at both gallery and buyable prices. You might want to start your own unique gallery, have a shop just to store some extra items cluttering up your inventory, or have the most common type - a shop that sells items to make a profit (the type which will be discussed below.)

*Items*
Most people find it easiest to "specialize," meaning choose a certain shop (or shops) and exclusively purchase those items. The point of this is, for example, if you spend most of your time in the toy shop, you will soon become acquainted with what toys are most often in stock, and which ones are more rare. Also, you will soon learn the average prices that they go for in user shops and be better at spotting the more rare types of items than can often make you the most money.
It is also easier to mentally keep track of one or two types of items instead of all the battle items, all the food items, all the toys, etc.

*Profit Making 101*
The basic concept of having a successful shop is: buy low and sell high. Purchasing items in the official Zetapets shops and haggling with the shopkeepers in order to pay the minimum price, then placing the item in your own shop with a higher price is quite often the best process to use. Also, you might find a good deal in another user's shop. Once you have you items purchased, try to sell them higher than the original prices you paid, but be aware that if your items cost much more than they do in other players' shops, you might make very few sales. Check the average selling price for your items in the search option down on the left side bar so you can set competative prices (and most likely make many sales!)

*Zeta Economy 101*
A second basic idea to keep in mind when it comes to the Zetapets economy is: the quantity and accessibility of an item and it's price have an inverse relationship. For example, if the candy shop decides to stock 1000 blue lollypops, because it is so easy for anyone to get one cheaply in the shop, they probably won't want (or need) to pay an inflated price in a user's shop. Conversely, if the toy shop rarely stocks this particular limited edition stuffed toy, people who want one will be more open to buying one for a higher price since it is hard to come by.

*Working With a Budget*
Like most players (myself included,) there aren't many extra Zetapoints to burn, and you might think you won't be able to afford a shop. Actually, everyone can! The secret is, do not bother to make it any larger than you absolutely have to. For each time you upgrade your shop, you are allowed to stock 5 more items (so if you have a shop that is size 10, you can stock the maximum of 50 items at one time.) So, if you seem to be able to keep your size 5 shop fully stocked at all times, you might want to consider upgrading it to a 6, and so on until it gets to large for you to keep full. For many people, a size 7 or 8 shop is more than sufficient. Once you sell out of a few items, just stock some more!

==> Creating Your Shop <==

*Stocking Items *
Go to "Inventory" on the left sidebar. Click on the picture of the item you want to stock in your shop, and a pop up window should come up with a drop down menu. (If the window does not show up, you will need to either turn off a pop-up blocker or enable Javascript.) From the drop down menu, choose "stock." Go back to your shop, and you will be able to see the name of the item, an image of it, and a box where you can set a price. Once you are finished, press the "Update Prices" button at the bottom to save everything.

*Editing Your Shop*
Go to "Inventory" - "My Shop" - and "Edit." From there, you can name your store, put in a description of it (HTML code is allowed in that box so you can do some customization if you choose.) Also, you are able to pick different color schemes that will show up in the price of the items, an image of a Zetapets shopkeeper, a greeting for your customers, and a thank you message for those who purchase from your shop. Remember to keep all of those appropriate so you do not get in trouble with the Zetapets staff.

*Upgrading Prices*
Opening one will set you back 500 Zetapoints. To upgrade it to size 2, you will have to pay 50 Zetapoints, 3 is 100, Zetapoints, 4 is 150, and so forth. This may change as your shop gets larger, but I am not completely sure since my shop is fairly small at the present time.

*Sales*
If you've found that some items are missing from your stock, congrats! You've made some sales! Click on the "Till" button to take out the Zetapoints that have been paid to you. You can go to "Sales" and see what item(s) sold.