Although there are some variations among the four Trader professions (Munitions, Engineer, Domestics, and Structures) the fundamentals of what vendor skills you get and when you get them are fairly static.
The Skills:
CL 1: At this level you are allowed to put access fees on any house structure that you are the admin on. (Caution if you are not the owner of the structure you won't get the money by this feature, it only goes to the owner).
CL 4: At this level you are allowed to place premium auctions on the bazaar for a higher fee than standard auctions. The auctions are flagged with an asterisk * to make them stand out more in the bazaar listings and they are sorted at the top of every page.
CL 7: This is the big one. Once you have trained this skill you will have access to your first vendor. The vendor will hold 250 items for sale at one time. At this skill level you will only be able to place the "bulky" terminal vendor. Your Hiring Skill level controls your ability to hire additional types of vendors.
CL 10: This skill increases your vendor count by 1 giving you a total of 2 vendors. It also increases your hiring skill by +10 and your vendor item count by +250. The additional hiring skill allows you to place a new vendor type a small droid called Robobartender.
CL 14: This skill allows for an additional vendor bringing your count to 3 and adds +250 items bringing the total you can have to 750 across all vendors. In addition your Hiring skill is increased by +10 The additional hiring skill allows you to select a specific race from the available player races (Bothan, Human, Mon cal, Rodian, Trandosian, Twi'lek, Wokieee and Zabrak) as well as grant you the ability to place a new terminal called Small which looks like the banking terminal and a new droid called the EG-6 Power Droid.
CL 30: At this level your Bazaar Fees are reduced by 20%.
CL34: At this level you get an additional +20 to your hiring skill which gives you the ability to set your vendor to do an adbark. This greets the customers with one of several preprogrammed sales pitches announcing the type of products being sold by the vendor. You also get the ability to place another vendor and your vendor limit is raised by a further 250 items (you now have a total of 1000). In addition you get the use of a new sign for housing structures.
CL 38: At this level your vendor item limit is increased by a further 250.
CL 46: Gives you a 20% discount to the cost of Vendor maintenance
CL 50: Gives you the ability to place another vendor, increases your vendor limit by a further 250 items and increases your hiring skill by a further +10. This allows you to place the droid WED Treadwell, plus the NPC races of Aqualish, Bith, Devaronian, Gran, Ishi Tib, Ithorian, Nikto, Quarren, Sullustan, and Weequay. It also gives you the ability to create a custom message to adbark.
CL 54: At this level your vendor item limit is increased by a further 250.
CL 58: At this level your vendor item limit is increased by a further 100.
CL 62: At this level your vendor item limit is increased by a further 200. You also get another 20% discount on the Global Bazaar listing fees.
CL 66: You are granted 2 additional vendor slots and your total item limit is raised by +150 items. Your hiring skill is increased by +15 and you also get another new sign for housing structures. At this stage you are allowed to place your vendor on the Global Map for an additional fee (6 credits per hour). This will allow people to see your vendor in the category you select by looking on the CTRL V map. You can only have one category per vendor, but you can re-register once per day and change the category
CL 70: At this level your vendor item limit is increased by a further 150.
CL 78: Gives you an additional vendor slot and your vendor item limit is increased by a further 150. The cost for advertising your vendor on the Global Map is reduced by 20%.
CL 82: Gives you an additional 2 vendor slots and your vendor item limit is increased by a further 500.
Your hiring skill is also increased by +15 and you now get the terminal called Fancy which looks like the ticket terminals, a terminal called slim which looks like the standard mission terminal and the droid 21-B Surgical Droid. Your increased hiring skill also gives you the ability to operate a Merchant Barker Droid. The barker droid can be purchased from a Engineering Trader and will allow you to put in a message of 128 characters which it will announce every 60 seconds as long as someone is nearby. It will also give people a waypoint that you input if they select him and request it. Currently the barker droid is stored automatically if you travel using the JTL travel terminals. In addition you can now give items and clothing to most of your NPC vendors (Ithorian vendors are currently bugged and refuse to wear Ithorian clothes). When you give the clothing to the vendor it will wear it, replacing the clothes it is wearing at the time. In addition Wookiees are sometimes very particular about items they wear. Once you give an item or clothing to the vendor you cannot retrieve it.
CL82 also gives you a 20% reduction off all maintenance fees for structures that you maintain. If you pay maintenance into a structure (any amount) the structure will discount the entire remaining balance by 20% until someone who does not have Efficiency IV pays maintenance into the structure.
In addition you are now allowed to place a merchant tent. The merchant tent is a player structure that takes up 1 lot and has storage for 100 items. This tent is made by an Structures Trader with the aid of a Domestics Trader. In addition you get the use of a new sign for housing structures.
CL 90: Congratulations, you have made the final step in your merchant skills. The master merchant is granted a new droid vendor the Protocol Droid. Unfortunately the protocol droid can't adbark and for some reason he seems to be pink. In addition to Pinky the Silent Protocol Droid the master merchant gets an additional 20% discount on the maintenance costs of his vendors, 2 additional vendor slots and an increase of +1000 to your vendor item limits. At Master Merchant your toolchest now includes 12 vendors and 4000 items which can be split up in among your vendors or placed in only one vendor.
Operation and Care of Your Vendors (using your skills):
Creating & Placing Your Vendor: From your housing structure control terminal select create vendor, choose from the options presented there to create your vendor and give it a name. The vendor will be placed in your inventory (make sure you have room for it). Select a location carefully as you won't be able to move the vendor once it is placed. If you drop it in the wrong spot you will have to delete it and start over. Once you have the perfect spot you can select the vendor in your inventory and drop it into the house. (If you are the structure owner, you can drop and pickup the vendor over and over until you are satisfied with placement as long as the vendor has NOTbeen initialized. To pickup, target the vendor, type in /pickup, then hit enter. The vendor will be returned to your inventory and you can try placing it again. This does NOT work if the vendor has already been initialized, and if you are NOT the building owner and are only on admin, or if you use the vendor radial menu.) Once that is done you can rotate the vendor around to face the direction you like and then click on it and select "initialize". This function locks the vendor into place and makes it ready to accept sales from you. Once this is done you can place some maintenance into the vendor (the costs of the vendor will depend on your skill level but the base cost is 15 credits per hour). The next thing to do is click on the "Use Vendor" which will bring up the vendor interface below:
For Sale: The default screen is the For Sale screen. This will list all the items you have for sale on your vendor. The first thing you will notice is that there is nothing listed (even if You have previously listed things for sale) don't panic. The vendor interface doesn't load the items by default to increase speed. Hit refresh or change the category and it will come right up. The second thing you will probably notice is that at the top left are four zones (Galaxy, Planet, Region, Vendor ) selecting one of these allows you to see items not only on the vendor you are currently accessing but any of your vendors in the galaxy depending on the zone you pick. This defaults to the regional view and all vendors in the immediate area that belong to you will be shown. This can be very confusing when stocking or retrieving items or handling offers. Be careful that you have the vendor on the right zone before performing. Do not fear, your customers only see the items on the vendor they are looking at. You are the only one who has access to the other zones. At the bottom right is a button named "Sell an Item" click it and it will bring up a dialog with your inventory shown on the right side. You may pick something from your inventory. Put in a price and optionally a description and click the "Sell Item" button. The item will go up for sale on your vendor. Congratulations now all you need is a buyer. Items placed for sale are on sale for 30 days. After 30 days they are removed from the for sale section and placed in your stock room. You must retrieve them or put them back up for sale within 30 days or they will be deleted by the vendor.
The other button there beside the "Sell an Item" button is for withdrawing sales. Click on any sales item listed and click withdraw. The item will be placed in your stockroom. (more about that later) The Details button will show you all the particulars about the current item you have highlighted.
Offers: The offers tab will show you any items that have been offered for sale by visitors to your vendor. You can double click on the item to see details about it. Click "Buy" to purchase the item and have it put into your stockroom or "Reject" to send an email telling the buyer that you are not interested in purchasing the item. The seller should have 7 days to retrieve the item before it is deleted. No email is generated on an offer. You must check your offers manually to see if you have any. If you are online when the offer is made you will see a system message. No other notification is sent. Items purchased from this tab should go to the stockroom where they can be retrieved or put up for sale.
Stockroom: The stockroom holds items purchased through the offers screen, and items withdrawn from sale (either by your manually or expired by the 30 day timer) The stockroom has a 30 day timer. Anything in the stockroom beyond 30 days is subject to deletion. Be very careful about storing items in your stockroom.
Caution: Be careful when deleting a vendor. You cannot withdraw items into the stockroom and delete the vendor and still retain those items. Any item for sale, in the stockroom, or waiting to be purchased (offers) or picked up will be deleted when you remove the vendor.
The stockroom now has a magic "Relist Item" button. This allows you to highlight one or more items and relist them at their original price and with the description you entered. This is extremely useful when relisting items that have fallen off the vendor.
Tell me about those Tent things: I thought you would never ask. The right to place a Merchant Tent is granted to a Trader at Efficiency IV. The the tent may be purchased from an Structures Trader. The tent comes in three colors (Brown, Green, and Grey) and can be placed on any buildable planet. The tent takes up 1 user lot and holds 100 items. The tent is meant to be a public building so you cannot make it private. You can however put an access fee on it and declare it as your residence. The tent is large enough to hold 6-8 NPC vendors or 4-5 terminals.
I have all these skills, now what happens if I give them up? If you sacrifice your Trader skills by respec’ing out of Trader or by using a profession restart kit you will be unable to place any new items up for sale until you have the skill to operate the number of vendors you retain. The vendor will continue to sell your items to customers during this time, you simply won't be able to put items up for sale until you have either re-aquired the skills you gave up or removed vendors to get back to the number you have the skill to operate.
Other Important Information:
Privacy: Your vendor is not private. It is a public sales tool and anyone with access to the structure it is in may buy any item on the vendor. You cannot place vendors in private structures. Nothing on a vendor is “Not For Sale” if it is on the vendor the game rules allow anyone with the credits in their account to cover the cost to purchase it. If you are unwilling to part with an item do not put it on a vendor or if you must put it up for sale place a price high enough to ensure that you will be fairly compensated for it being transferred to another player. The game staff will not reimburse you for loss due to legal sales from your vendor.
Item Counts: By the time you reach the top of your Trader profession you will have the ability to put up to 4000 items for sale on 12 vendors. Keeping track of that many items across multiple vendors is tricky. Some things to keep in mind. Items inside bags count against your cap. If you put a backpack up for sale with 50 items in it the item count available will be reduced by 50 items. If you put the backpack up for sale empty the item count available will be reduced by 1. When you get a “Status” of your vendors from the radial menu the current item count on all your vendors is displayed.
Access Fees: Access fees are used to charge admission to structures and may be placed by any Trader on any structure they have administrative rights on. The money collected from the access fee will be placed in the bank account of the owner of the structure. There is currently a limit of 50,000 credits per entry and a time limit that ranges between 15 minutes to 2 days (2880 minutes)
Bazaar Listing: By default when you create your vendor all of the items are listed under the Vendor Location tab on the bazaar search screen. This allows anyone to search your vendor from anywhere in the galaxy. This is a powerful consumer tool to help players locate the goods they want. If your business is more local or more on demand you may wish to turn this feature off. You may do so by accessing the radial menu of your vendor and selecting disable vendor listing.