Sorry for making another thread about business ideas, but I hope this one can become something close to a complete list of what you can sell in OFB businesses. I googled around and checked in MTS too, and yes, there are many ideas, but most of them are like, gyms, spas, arcades. That's simply having a ticket machine in a lot with exercise machines/jacuzzis/games, isn't it? I was looking for different ideas.

I'll start with what I came up with or read around in my search:

• Ticket machine: what it does is simply making sims pay to stay in the lot. Anything that could be a normal community lot will work if you run it with a ticket machine, so I won't go further on ideas with this.

• Selling items from any of the 5 crafting stations (robots, flowers, toys, pottery, sewing). Of course, you could sell catalog items too that fit with these, to have more variety than 5 objects for sale.

• Restaurant (it's rather complicated to run one, but there are tutorials out there).

• Pet shop (not only pets themselves with the pet display, but also selling collars from the Collar Display).

• Grocery store, with the grocery bins, freezers and all those.

• Sell the food you cook yourself, in the food displays.

• Bar.

• Coffee shop (with the Espresso Bar. Because of a bug, only employees can sell coffee.)

• Clothes shop.

• Jewelry.

• Cologne.

• Car shop, well, not only the catalog ones, but you can sell the restorable car too.

• Beauty salon, with the Makeover Station.

• Selling lemonade (reminder that sims older than children can do it too).

• Selling pictures made with the easel, drafts with the career Drafting Table or photos with the career Antique Camera (the photos' selling price in business is 1-2§, sadly, even if selling them normally would give 100).

• Selling magazines or videogames from the racks.

• Snacks or drinks with the vending machines.

• Or gadgets with the Gadget Kiosk.

• Selling fruits or vegetables you grow.

• Or what you get from fishing.

• Book shop. (If you set a library on sale, it sells individual books, just like magazine racks or vending machines).

• Potion shop, with a witch creating them with the cauldron. You can also sell reactives or the other objects witches can make.
  Note: restocking love potions is bugged. A fix for this is included in Pescado's AL fixes. Or alternatively, there's another fix here. You will have to scroll down a bit to find it.

• And to finish, I'll say that you can also put for sale your business itself (if it's a community lot), by putting the deed for sale.

To make this more complete, let's also put some mods that give us even more possibilities:

• This mod by Lord Darcy makes BV souvenir racks work in every hood and fixes a bug so you can sell them properly in your business.

• This one by simler90 modifies the career Biotech Station so you can put medicines for sale for your sick sims.

• This one by the same creator, allows you to run a massage business.

• This one by MajorJeff, is a cloned and modified version of the Culinary career reward that actually makes chocolate and you can sell it.

• This one by kestrellyn allows selling novels written by your sims.

So if you have any other idea (not simply a ticket machine or selling catalog objects, unless you think you it's a really creative idea), or know more similar mods, I would love to read them.

In my town, I have a high end concert hall.

It's got a bar, a lot of chairs and one grand piano.

Money is made from the bar and from tips.

I do use the ticket machine too, but it is set to super low, because otherwise there's nothing to sell to guests. Not sure of without it they would get stars for having a good time on the lot

Technically you can sell almost anything in an OFB business as long as pricing is enabled on it. For me, the bigger question is what can you sell successfully and make a profit from. I think that boils down to playstyle though, like most things in the game.

My business owners are for the most part deeply mortgaged in order to cover the cost of the business purchase and really have to turn a profit in order to live and pay off the mortgage. I do have one Sim currently that started with a tiny convenience store that had one rack of clothes, electronic gadgets, magazines and one grocery freezer. He sold that business off when it hit level 10 for a substantial return on his initial investment and was able to pay off his old loan with enough collateral to buy a much larger bookstore. When he sold that one he then turned to his passion project and bought the floral shop he had always wanted. Now it's not as important for his profit margins to be above 50% but he could never have started with the floral shop.

In my favourite neighbourhood, I had a philanthropist who set up a charity shop. Whenever any of my sims bought new furniture or had unwanted items, I would have them give them to him (using a mod to make sims always accept gifts). Then he could sell them in his shop for pure profit. Sometimes rich sims could donate money to him- Simwardrobe cheque book was handy for this. When the philanthropist sim had enough money, he would buy a neglected community lot, and improve it by building something nice, like a community center or a park. I'd then have him sell that improved lot back to the community, so that anyone could use it. Then he would use what money he had left, plus the continuing proceeds from the charity shop, to improve even more community lots. This way, I gradually had my rather scruffy town made a lot nicer, all by the means of the charity shop.

Click the link in my siggy to my thread Careers and businesses for sims

Is there any discussion on there involving owned businesses on vacation lots? I want to have a Sim drop out and open a surf shop but not sure how that would work. I think my biggest question is do they have to have a vacation home. I have a mod that allows sleep on community lots so I was thinking he could just live there for say 3 days at a time and sleep on the business lot. Would that work do you think?

I don't think owned business on vacation hoods ever was a possibility even with mods. I do run a surfboard shop but it's in a shopping district subhood that's set up like tourist beachy area with a boardwalk. It also has a bird sanctuary style business where the ticket machine takes 'donations' for upkeep. I think that's the closest you can get to simulate an owned business in a 'vacation' lot is pretend your shopping district is a vacation hood with that sleep anywhere mod you mentioned - throw up a few hotels to simulate that aspect.

Unfortunately you can't. They really fell down not allowing owned resorts or anything in BV hoods except going on holiday. :/

Yeah, I thought it was a pipe dream. My hood is still really young and small but at the current birthrate, it won't be for long. When I expand to a shopping district I'll rethink the surf shop idea. That dude is never getting out of Uni with his grade point average and I keep making him redo semesters. Meanwhile I found two more game mods I can't live without while reading that thread.

Oh, that concert hall sounds like a good idea! I wonder how much you can make from tips.
You gave me an idea, not sure if I can call it a business, but... playing with a musician that gets all his money from tips, I bet it will be challenging.


Well, I guess I want to find all items that have pricing enabled. And also things like the library, I would have thought it's sold as the whole library.
Making successful business isn't hard if you go simple and sell catalog items. I could start that like and then turn into a more fun shop when I have more money. So I'm just looking to have as many different businesses as possible. My fav shop right now is the potion shop ran by my fav household, an infallibly good warlock and his Servo, and honestly, making money from isn't that easy. Potions take so long to be created so I have to close the shop constantly to restock. But it's fun so I'm happy with it. And having all my playables' inventories full of ReNuYu and love potions may come in handy someday.

And that charity shop sounds good. Mind if I steal your idea? Maybe instead of gifting stuff, I could set it up for sale at absurdly cheap. It would be nice if we could give tips (or donations) to business owners without mods.


Ah, I wonder how I didn't find that thread before. 18 pages, I bet there are many good ideas there.
Look, I learned something in just the first page. I thought having a coffee shop was impossible. To be honest, I never hire employees, I'm good with just one or 2 family members. I guess I'll have to do it if I want a coffee shop. Isn't there a mod to fix that?

Having sims own businesses is a pipe dream in Dodge for now because the town is just starting out and it's not going to be big enough for a while though I can have vocational workshops on community lots and they can earn money that way for now.

I do play B&B's though. I have one on a beach lot and another is a winery. I use the meeting controller and dorm doors on the rooms so guests can take and lock their rooms. Then they pay the host via the wallet token controller. If the sim is a townie they can write an article on Monques computer.
If I want something to happen I try and think of ways to make it happen.

I made a tiny surf shop for my island 'vacation' hood. It's really a main hood based around tourism. It's uploaded here https://modthesims.info/d/644674/su...rfing-shop.html

One of the most successful businesses in my hood was a shop selling lights. I started it simply because there already was a furniture shop; and I did not expect it to take off like it did.

Also popular - (entrance fee) a swimming pool with some games and a BBQ. It was a community lot at first and I added a room with a pool table and darts so that they could have something else to do. I had a Sim bought it (think it was her 3rd business) and it works; the visitors come to swim even when it rains or snows.

I second that. There are lots of creative ideas over there.

I'll have to advance my town before sims can start any home businesses or buy community lots and start a business there because the town needs a larger population to support it or business owners will bankrupt themselves because there won't be enough sims to provide customers at the business.It will take at least a generation or two to get there though for my town.

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but there's a mod that allows to earn money by woohooing, you don't have to open a bussiness in order to achieve that, but is recomended.

The mod doesn't have explicit sexual content, it uses the same animations as the normal game, so i thought this is SFW.

http://cyjon.net/node/241