Backwater Tutorials

     Making stickers is one of the easiest things to start your content creator journey with, because you don't need to use the previewer program for them. It is simply a matter of creating the picture you want to use for your sticker and uploading it to IMVU 

     Although you can find many excellent pictures on the internet to use as stickers its is important to remember the following criteria 

1. The picture must not contravene any copyright laws
2. The file size must not be too big (the larger the file the slower it is to load onto your page)
3. The sticker must follow IMVU Terms and Conditions and be properly rated in the catalog

     For the purpose of these sticker tutorials I shall be using this picture of the sites banner

     Once you have the picture you want to use as a sticker you need to save the picture to your pc and upload it to the IMVU catalog, most file types (.jpg .gif .png) can be uploaded and used as stickers. To upload your sticker, go to the Creator Center an click on 'Make a Sticker', alternatively click HERE to be taken to the submission page, see example below

       Once you are on the submission page you must select the category which your sticker falls into, I shall put the banner under the flags section

       Next, give your product a name, a description and a rating (see the Ratings section for more information on IMVU rating). For this banner the rating is General Audience. Later in the tutorials you will see that the description box can also be used to enter HTML or CSS codes into to display banners, allow links to your other products and also to change the appearance of the entire advert page

      Now you need to set the price for your sticker by changing the value of profit you will make from sales (I have set this to 99). As you can see in picture below there are 3 sections to how a product is priced, a deriviation charge for the product being submitted to the catalog (see 'Deriving from Products' section for more information on this), Profit (the money you make from sales) and retail mark-up (the money IMVU makes from sales)

      Next is to upload a catalog icon. This is the image used to display your product in the catalog and must be 100pixels x 80pixels and cannot exceed 50kb in size. I personally use a simple 2-frame animation icon displaying my logo and then a picture of the product, to learn how to do this click on the animated stickers section as the principal of animation works for stickers, banners and icons. To upload your icon to the submission page simply click on browse. This will open your pictures file on your pc, then select which picture you are using and click on open

       Then upload your sticker file. This has no size limits but, again as previously said, too large a file causes slow loading times. Upload your sticker file in same way you uploaded the icon file

      The sticker height and width values are only needed with flash stickers, so we can ignore them for the time being

     Next part of the submission process is writing the taglines for your product. Taglines are words used by people to search for products in the catalog, so make sure your taglines are relevant to product. You also need to decide here if you wish your product to be 'Bundlable' (see making bundles section) and 'Visible' (customers can view and purchase your product in catalog)

      Now all you have to do is to submit your product into the catalog. You will see beside the 'Submit' button the submission charge for your product and the deriviation charge for your product, ensure you have enough credits to cover these costs for your submissions or your product will not be entered into catalog

     Now that you have submitted your product you need to publish it before it enters fully into the catalog, at the moment you can see and use your product but no-one else can. This is a good opportunity to check the product, change it or change your advert, its also a really good opportunity to take advert pictures (for products like clothing or furniture etc)

     Once you are happy with your product and advert click on the 'Publish' link. This will enter your product into 'Peer Review' (see Peer Review section for further information) Once through Peer Review your product will be visible by all in the catalog and ready for general sale