Welcome, nice of you to tell us more 

hahahaha 

hehe, yea I let my vendors run out alot too, but never for more than a day or so. Im actually lucky enough to have someone else vendor all the basics at my house, I just suply the rares vendor and whatever i may be scripting that week - wood, ingots, heartwood, whatever.

 I'll be speaking here of luna houses, but the same is true anywhere. First, its important to setup your vendor house the way your gonna want it to be, forever. You cant redesign with vendors up, and asking people to drop vendors so u could, will lose renters.
 Its important to consider the shoppers view when decideing your design, and then where to put vendors. An open, first level, frontal, vendor area is always best. If you think about it, i know i personally prefer to walk down lunas street and say vendor look to open vendors to shop, and most do.
 Now, to be a house people stop at regularly, you need to provide a few basics. My house always has repair deeds, spellbooks, runebooks, and such. Once these are covered, its equally important to have high end vendors, and everything in between. Diversity is the key, a wide variety of goods to look through makes your house interesting and fun for shoppers.
 Finding renters is easy, with a little patience. A spam here and there over time will fill and keep your house full of renters. In fact just answering the crys in general chat is enough usually. The last thing you want is to turn people off by over spamming your house. I'd suggest limiting your spams to offering free vendors for specific needs - like maybe a marked runebook vendor, or a potions vendor. Just hearing you have space is enough if someone needs a space, and noone minds spam about free stuff.
 Another aspect to consider is drawing in customers. You have your basics available, and vendors for them to browse, but aside from just passing by, what draws them to your house? A teleporter to the abyss would be great, but we cant all have that. I find that setting up a random vendor with whatever ive been scripting or farming, and selling that stuff really cheap draws people to check that vendor for daily deals. For example this week ive been doing heartwood a bit, so i vendored an oak saw really cheap, i have lotsa wood from an idoc so i put it on there...that sort of thing helps alot for the total house sales.

 I was just looking around and noticed noone uses this section, so I thought I'd start it off.
 I play on 12 shards, or did at one time, and still can when i choose to. I rarely ever Xfer real toons, just new toons with gold or stuff. Right now, I'm most active on legends, great lakes, and atlantic shards, but i try to play napa and chessy too when I remember.
 Ive always done pretty well gold wise from random buying and selling, and i've always scripted mineing and LJ, and from time to time heartwood - and an extra special script not many have thats made me bill$ over the years by itsself.
 About 5yrs ago I bought a 13x13 luna house on legends for 200m (stories to come  ). In all that time my only complaints were that my house was too small, and you cant re-deco with vendors up. So, about a year ago I bought an 18x14 luna house on the same shard for 500m and moved my stuff. Recently I sold the old one for my 200m back. This time I deco'd the new place before i put up vendors, hehe. Now I have no complaints at all. I dont charge for vendor spots, cause more vendors there with mine just makes the house more popular. And I use the house, and that shard really as a weigh station. I do alot of xfering to move things i buy cheap somewhere, to somewhere else i can mark them up - I also do alot of short-term hoarding - and i almost always start from, or end at legends and my luna house.
 Since I play on alot of shards with the same bank-sitter name, alot of peeps know me. At the same time though, since i play so many im mostly in and out on alot of shards, so im not that hard to miss either. I'm tempted to just say my toons name, but that would prolly bite me in the end. I'm only in one guild though between all those shards, DC on GL. Ive been with them for...idk, prolly 5yrs, and recently they've become multi shard, so that fits my play well. 
 Thats my overview, me in a nut shell....I'd love to hear others story 

awe man thats so sweet. If i wasnt a broke mofo in the real, id be sendin money, but they'll have to make a movie or something to get my cash. I wish i had read this sooner though, i missed the 1st episode on science channel hehe.

    HeHe, silly kids and their silly.... psychopathology...