I haven't played TS3 for a long time, so I find myself very puzzled. Apparently you can run actual businesses in TS3 these days?

Rumors I've heard:
1) Unusual bistro store thing apparently allows one to run a restaurant, can someone explain how that works?
2) Bakery, a store pack, too, can someone explain how to run a business with it? (I need to decide if it's worth it)
3) Clothes racks at MTS - ?
4) Produce stands at MTS - trying that now, apparently only food prices can be set, but it can sell anything theoretically
...
And a random question: there are now mines in TS3? What can you do with them?

There is just tons of them on the sims 3 store, you probably have to make a decitions what direction you would like to go, and pick something.

to sell something in shops you need the savvy seller set as a base, and build on that.

Mines is a machine digger somewhere in buydebug I think. I don't know what you need to get that. I used a lot from someone else in my world Stranda that was a mine. I don't think I had anything extra for that. Then you have the spawners in the same place of course.

I haven't used the mining machine a whole lot, but you can sometimes find it at a consignment store. Otherwise maybe it's something a sim who gets high skills at he invention bench can make? You can use it about any where, but apparently it's 'fake' loud (you don't actually hear really loud noise from it) because other sims will get angry at your sim for making too much noise. So no mines, exactly. Just a mining machine that can dig up gems and stuff.

Depending on what you decide to use for running a store, you might have better luck building it on a lot with some other rabbit hole on it. Or you can designate it as a hangout, but that attracts sims with certain traits over others. There is nothing in the game that 'calls' a lot of sims to come to a 'visitors allowed' lot, and they didn't make a venue other than 'large market' for the WA worlds. If you have NRAAS mods you can assign a lot as a Large Market which draws about the same amount of sims as a Hangout lot but doesn't encourage some with certain traits over others.

OP here again, please walk me through opening the first business and other business topics I'm unclear about. I've been creating sims in CAS for a month and only now I'm ready to play them.

Some really ignorant questions:

1) What is an option 'Start a business' attached to a business building? What does it do? (I have so far been scared off from clicking it, since I'm afraid it's a career and my sims will lose their promotions by obtaining a new one)

2) How can I learn the amount of money my sim is going to get from a bought property BEFORE it comes first? So far I bought a building but I cannot see anywhere how much I'm going to get or even when...

3) Is the amount of money paid later fixed for buildings? (I noticed that they can't be upgraded, unlike properties)

4) What is 'a private lot' listed under 'Check Real Estate' and what purpose does it serve?

5) If I 'Purchase rental lot' (an option on the phone) what happens? Do random sims automatically move in and pay rent? Do I get to upgrade their house?

6) If I buy a residential lot, what does that do? Is it the same as purchasing a rental lot, or does it become an additional home? (Buying from the phone menu option 'Check Real Estate' and a big list with all purchasable lots that it shows)

8) And what happens if I buy a few residential lots at once this way?

9) Since you cannot eat or sleep at the additional home, what is the purpose of it?

10) If I decided that my additional home should be an actual home instead of the current home, how do I move in? Should I just sell it and move sims the normal way, or is there a way without selling? (It's a bit stupid to sell a house that you already own just to move into it, lol)

11) If I want to sell... say, fish, how do I do that? I can build a lot, put down a register, but how do I tell the game what to sell?

12) How can I open a clothes shop? There is a clothes pedestral, so I know it should be possible. Do I just put a few inside and put down a register and sims will buy clothes automatically?

13) I noticed a model podium in the game, does it actually work? (Maybe not, it was in a random house)

14) If I buy a park which already has a proprietor, and then one of sims from that household wants to perform on its stage, is it possible? Or do I need another park with a proprietor NPC?

Sorry for so many questions, but please help me fight my ignorance

Oh geez what a complicated game this is. I'm going to stick my head out here and hope someone correct me if I'm wrong. The problem is I have to see the menus and perhaps not even then I remember. Please ignore my ignorance if I forgot something in your replies further up.

Have you downloaded any mods? ... or is this vanilla?

On the building you bought, what kind of a building is it? Like one of those "skyscrapers" EA made with some apartments in them, or is it a downloaded lot. Do you have University exp? On rent you have to separate between the roommate system from uni exp and the LateNight hidden/public marker buildings with skyscrapers. At the moment I'm suffering from information overload lol. There some sort of calcultaions on the skyscraper hidden/public markers type, but the people who bother with such things, often comes asking why this and that is like such and such, so don't have too much hope. It's probably not that logical, but I have made a few of them and I didn't find them totally useless. I'm a builder though, and don't usually have enough patience to stick around long enough to really gather experience on each type of feature.

Purchase a rental lot? That depends on what kind of a lot it is, as mentioned above. Someone will have to enlighten me on this. I hope it's the LateNight skyscrapers, but can't be sure.

6. Renting out residential lots sounds like you need a mod or something for that. I think that is commertial lots or lots that is considered by the game to be commertial.

13. The model podium is probably for the stylist career. It's probably most interesting to use as that.

14. The proprietor is a little 1 square spot in buydebug I know. If that one suddenly changes focus when you own the lot yourself I wouldn't know.

For selling objects. All the extra content has their own functions. I think maybe you can sell fish straight from your sims inventory. When it comes to running a store you need the savvier seller store set, and I found this tutorial for you where Ani explains how her mod works, and the EA mod is much easier to handle, so you should be fine there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuFD3CVR6yI

Ani's mod: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/The+Savvier+Seller

I read some on the apartment mod by Ani as well, same site in the menu on the left side. It's an adjustment on the university exp roommate system.

These two systems has their own features. I tried the uni system once and had troubles rezoning the lot to something else after building the house. It had bugged up on me, and after some research I realized that was quite common. I tested a mod for someone with that system, but if I can't change zoning on a lot, I won't use it. I sometimes reuse lots, so it can end up being a major problem.

The Ani produce stands mentioned above could be interesting: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Produce+Stand
It looks like you can make a market lot with that mod. She says you can practically sell anything from that stand, so I guess fish as well.

Another mod by Ani mentioned above is the clothes, she has two types apparently: http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Shop+For+Clothes+Pedestal

1. I don't know. I don't have those.
2. I don't know where to find out how much you're going to get, but you can use the phone or computer Real Estate function to collect from all your properties at the same time. (You have to collect manually; it's not automatically given to you. ) Your first payout is available a week after you bought it, but it is kept for a week or two so you can just pick a day of the week and collect on that day all the time. This doesn't answer your real question, but at least now you can find where to collect...
3. Buildings give a smaller amount if you are a partner, and a larger amount if you buy out the other partners and become the sole owner. The amount you get is based on the purchase price, or at least the higher priced buildings pay more.
4. Purchase Private Lot is useful for making sure that when your kids grow up or you otherwise end up having someone move out of your main house they can move into that lot without having to go to Edit Town and evict people from it first. It can also give you a house where you can invite guests that you don't want your spouse to know about, or just set up a party house without worrying as much about the guest who decides to spend the next three days in front of the bathroom door blowing a party horn.
5. As far as I've been able to tell, without having played with the option too much, a rental lot is the same as a private lot. I've purchased a few of them, but nobody ever moved in. But you do get the options to build and buy on any lot you own.
6. It's a private lot as far as I can tell.
8 You seem to prevent other sims from moving into them, although YMMV. (Note: this may not be a good idea if you have sims who need to move for some reason.)
10 There is a way to move into the private lot you own, but I forgot the exact procedure. But there is an option to "move to this lot" somewhere.
as for the rest: I don't have those. I have no idea.

To call sims to visit your shop - on a lot you own or even on your residential lot - you can use Inge's ticket machine mod, which is a remake of the sims 2 ticket machine, sorta. It lets you set what type of sims to call, gender, age, hours etc. I haven't tried it yet, still trying ani's small stand put on a highly passing lot (the library in Sunset Valley, you can't imagine how many sims pass there constantly). Depending on which family I play I sometime send one of the family member on the stand to sell some junk (mainly the poor families). So in theory to make a home shop as in Sims 2, you would need a stand (EA or Ani) and the ticket machine mod. You need EA's sets anyway since Ani's mod use them. The mod was on simlogical, which is dead apparently but all the pages are easily googlable and the download links all work. I should have it somewhere if needed.
Go see the pages of Ani's mods here, they all have tutorial videos; that will help you understand how all her mods work. I also recommend her let's play available on her site, those with shops, as she explains a lot of stuff ^^ There's also a lot of shop explanation at Around the Sims, downtown section; with tutes and links.

You know, my best advice is to decide on a particular type of store or business and learn how to set that up. Because you are asking about separate things:
1) In-Game Real Estate system where sims can purchase property and in some cases make improvements and earn an income from them (you can find info on this HERE);
2) How rental properties work and there are two rental systems in the game as mentioned already;
3) TS3 Store sets or modded versions of them that allow your sims to sell certain types of items. Some things work better than others. Selling fish (and elixers) works best either at the consignment store or using ani's produce stand, but it also requires a set from the store (the original produce stand is part of a lot that was made for Monte Vista if I remember correctly).

For the produce stand, I downloaded some fish cc that I placed on top of it and it's actually inside a grocery store that Maximus McDermott's parents own (the McDermotts are from Riverview originally).



The fish stand is in the upper right of the picture, with the red striped awning. In back (which is the lower part of the picture since I took the screenshot from the back) I created a deli which is a combination of using a baking rack from the Store set along with Cupcake to fill it, and cooler cases from Around the Sims 3 that work with the Savvier Seller set that ani made (available from NRAAS now). Inside my savvier seller cases is custom food that I downloaded but I'm rotating households and have decided that for eating establishments (versus workplaces for my sims) Cupcake can't be beat because it automatically refills the case or rack with the foods you select after they get deleted with the clean-up routine every night. And the rest of the grocery is either decorative CC clutter or produce that the McDermott's grow on their farm, placed onto savvier seller shelves. Oh! And I have the RH rug in a room off to the side (the dark room) so I can send my sims in to purchase other items that can't be grown on the farm and place those in the register inventories so the clerks can restock them.

At any rate, I think this would be a lot less confusing for you and everyone who would try to help you if you take it one thing at a time!

PS: Here is a better screenshot of the produce stand.