So, I'm playing with Inge's teleporter bush, and under "Summon Default" I get the option to summon *NPC-Robot.  Just like *NPC-Remote Controlled Car. 

Does this mean that Cleanbot, etc. are spawns of Satan and should be avoided at all costs? 

You're selling salvation? 
Or you got a little something going on in the church basement? 

I worked this out as well.  What I do is make the owner/staff selectable and instruct them to man the register or whatever, otherwise they just wander around looking for things to clean.

I also noticed that if my visiting Sims buy things, when I go back their with the owner they've mysteriously reappeared, they don't need to be restocked.  I haven't remembered to check yet whether they get the money for what's sold, but they certainly don't get the customer loyalty.  I've had Sims visit and buy stuff and not even appear in the customer panel when I've gone back with the owner.

I went into my game, and moved the Larsons (starting with $20,001) from the Sim Bin into the Ranch Retreat house (cost of $10,857).  I purchesed the Wall Phone ($75).  This started the Larson's out with $9,069.00.  I then purchased Little N' Local Business in Bluewater, through the phone for $5,126.  I then immediatly sold back Little N' Local, at a cost of $5,126, the exact purchase price.
Then I re-purchased Little N' Local for $5,126, and called and hired 5 employees, all of varying badges and skill points.  I then called and sold back Little N' Local, at a cost of....$5,126.  Leaving me with a net change of income of.....nothing.
Apparently having employees makes no difference in the value of business.

So my twenty minutes of clicking and 3 phone calls generated me $0 extra cash.

Ok, I just gave the "sell the deed at Ridiculously Expensive" tactic a try.  I found out a few things.

First of all, it took 4 dazzles and a maniuplate.  This requires 5 business level perks plus a gold sales badge.  And just where are you gonna get these right out of CAS?  You aren't.  So what do you do right our of CAS?  Use the Entrepreneur strategy. Which is what I suggested in the first place.

Buy the cheap business lot, sell something, get up to business level three, shut down, sell your inventory, go home.  You can sell the business over the phone, or set up a "dummy business" and try to sell the deed at an average price, which is still more than you will get over the phone.  This probably requires you have a gold sales badge, which you might not have yet.

Do it again the next day.  Get level 3, which gives you enough perks to use minipulate.  You should have the gold sales badge by now.  THEN sell your deed from a home business for an insane amount of money.

But how "insane" is the amount really?  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only makes it twice as much as you'd get otherwise.  So a business that cost me §7748 to buy (I'd modified it a bit, added a restroom and expresso machine) at level 3 would sell for §22,461 over the phone.  I took a slight loss because I was on the lot when midnight rolled around and I got hit with depreciation.  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only doubled it to §44,922.  The phone gave me §14,713 profit.  Ridiculously Expensive gave me §37,174 profit on the sale of the business.

If you haven't noticed, dazzle takes away some energy from your Sim.  Manipulate takes some of everything, and quite a bit of energy.  After the sale, my Sim was pretty much energy depleted, having started with full green in everything.  Three dazzles, then a manipulate, then another dazzle closed the sale.  Without resorting to the Energizer, your Sim won't be able to do many of these transactions in a day.  And right out of CAS, they don't have enough points to buy an energizer.  This sort of tactic can make your Sim a lot of money, but isn't that unrealistic, assuming you don't use stuff like the Energizer.  You might actually make more per hour by selling stuff at a reasonable price.

As for Passing On perks, it takes for-freaking-ever.  It's probably faster to do the Entrepreneur Scenario a couple of times.  Also, a CAS Sim with no money, no skills, and no friends might have problems getting someone who can pass on the perks. 

This scenario is useful for someone starting out, not someone who is already well established.  My recommendation stands.

Hook

They can? Asking them how much money they have just gives an apparently random number of $ signs with no apparent correlation to how much money a sim actually has or doesn't. I should go and get a translation table of what the hell that's supposed to mean, really...

Question: Has anyone actually gotten this award yet?

You have probably all had this sim come over your house at one time or another.  I gave her a big makeover.  Can you guess who she is?

Hint: She is from the base game. Her facial structure, hair and eye color are unaltered.

Perk-passing seems to be bugged. Either it's SUPPOSED to take forever, or it's not, because if you stop and start it over and over, you will pass it on MUCH faster, since everytime you restart it, it gains a few progress bar points (make sure it says "continue"  the second and not "pass on X", or something is wrong).

I think you have to realize that what you've done has unintentionally made Open For Business a lot easier for you.  All that cheap labor.  I think you need to keep that in mind when giving advice to other players.  Most people don't do that, and don't want to do that.

I completely agree that the standard townies suck, but my personal solution was to use Inge's bush on Sims I created in order to put them in the townie pool.  Once I did that, they gained townie skills and townie jobs.

 - Gus