venue with tips

This lots funds were very low. About 11k. I wasn't able to buy any of the Bluewater OFB shops that are left. I think the lowest one was 60K. The sim purchased the Career Reward lot for a little over 2k.
Here is the basic set up for a starter "venue" OFB shop. I find a venue lot to be one of the easiest to work to rank 10. You can work it up without any sim effort.

I start by putting in a ticket machine and two instruments.
Rank 1 gives 3 customers. One or two instruments work nice at this level. It allows the extra guest to tip the others.

Tips the customer earns on a community lot will be added to your money. This works on an OFB lot or a Uni Community lot. Need a little extra cash in uni, go to the uni community lot and put down some instruments. Then visit the lot, while your there you can study and let the Uni Townee make you a little extra cash.

A customer with his ticket. In the back you can see the extra career rewards that are stocked on the lot.

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TIP: How to make a "sharing lot". If there is an item in the game that you like to use, yet are tired of creating new ones or earning them you can create a sharing OFB lot. Go to the neighborhood screen. Put in a cheap, small, community lot. Load the lot that has the sims who has the item you wish to copy. Have that family purchase the community lot. Send them to the OFB lot. While there, they drop off the item you wish to copy. Then they return home and sell th lot back to the neighborhood. NOW exit the lot. Find the shared lot and package it to file or move it to the lot bin. (one of the ep's allowed you to keep a copy of a lot in the lot bin - I don't recall what ep allows this) Now you can place down as many copies of the "sharing lot" you wish to add to the game. When you have a sim family, that needs the items, have them buy the sharing lot, visit it and take the items they need. They can keep or sell it, that's up to you.

This can be done with snapdragons, robots, full juice machines, a garden ready to be harvested, career rewards, and more.

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A customer tipping another sim.
Another venue money trick is to put in a poker table. Again, you earn the winnings. (unless this was changed with one of the ep updates. I've not rechecked this or the instrument tipping in a while. So it may have changed.)
While the customers enjoy the poker table, the playable sims work at the flower workbench. Venues are wonderful lots that allow your sims free "workbench" time. If you have never worked a shop to rank 10 or earned a gold workbench badge, give this set up a try. While your sims are on the OFB lot, they don't have to go to work, deal with infants or skill building. They are able to focus on workbench skills and needs.

Place things they need to refresh their needs or use the energizer to keep needs high.

Fast comfort building. For female sims, have them set on the most expensive toilet about 4 times. This should nearly fill up their comfort needs. It only works for males if they happen to set down. If they stand, then they don't get a boost to comfort.

Energy Boost: Coffee pot, sleep in a tent, Tai Chi, or Energizer.

Snap dragon tip: Snap dragons put off pink (good) or green (bad) smoke. Pink ones are created when the sim who is making them have plat or gold aspiration. If they have a lower aspiration they risk making green smoking snapdragons. Pink smoking snapdragons give a need burst to everything except energy. Green drains their needs.

Place about 4-8 snapdragons next to a crib and you won't have to deal with the infant needs.

Place 4-8 snaps at the foot of a sims bed, and they wake full of energy and needs.

Place 4-8 next to a chair or sofa used for skill building. The sims will work on skills until energy drains.

Snapdragons give energy boost to anyone standing up to three squares away from them. The power doesn't seem to go through walls. Stacking them (moveobjects on) allows them to have even more energy boosting power. I'd say 8 on top of each other is the max needed no matter the activity. You can get away with less snapdragons near things that use up less sim energy (beds or chairs).

Snap dragons and venue: Place at least 8 snapdragons around the venue. Stack them if you want. In this example, they are not stacked. Price your venue up high. In this example I priced it 900 vs 48 (average cost). You can go higher, just experiment with it. At the higher price, you will have to "work" to get people to purchase a ticket from the venue. You need a sim with a gold badge in sales. My typical combo is "basic sell" then "dazzle x2-x6". With this combo, most customers will come in. Some will not, no matter your combo. You can also add manipulate if you have all the perception perks open.

Dazzle.
The sim took the ticket after this dazzle.
Manipulate. This was done after the sim took a ticket. If you put in as many sales options as you can, sometimes the sim will give you a gold star. Watch for negative marks, if you see those cancel out any extra interactions.
Another dazzle.
My sim is talking to a servo with a pile of money in his thought bubble. [If you come onto my over priced lot, I will enjoy your money. (evil laugh) ]
Rank 10.

This is the sim telling everyone the lot is closed.
As soon as all of the customers leave, the owner of the shop will leave the lot.