Deja Letov Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Ok so here comes the nerdy number cruncher in me again. Once again bringing you a silly study and test of my business in SL. :) Obviously you can skip if you feel so inclined...again this is mainly an inworld test, however, my sales are lumped together with ALL sales, both in world and marketplace because I did market the marketplace listings in my promotion. Now that we have that out of the way, onto the experiment!Awhile back we had an awesomely eye opening conversation about the time we spend in SL versus the amount of revenue our business brings in. It starts right around on page 6 of this thread http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/MP-Sales-collapsed-3-weeks-ago/td-p/1576513/highlight/true/page/6Toy and I were talking about the time vs revenue. Both of us agreed we don't want to spend our life in SL. There are far to many things outside of SL that are more important to us. And there is definitely a point where you spend so much time in SL that the revenue you make just isn't worth it. I mean who wants to make $2 an hour right? In fact, I think a lot of people just assume everyone practically lives in Sl. Even Toy, when first throwing out some possible numbers, estimated I was spending possibly 4 hours per day in SL working on my business. When the actual reality was I wasn't even spending that many hours in a week working on my business. So my hourly rate was actually pretty good. I think we estimated that after expenses, in June I made approximately $40 an hour for the 12 hours I spent working for the month.If you read that thread, of course you know part of the reason my time is so limited in SL is because I'm going through a high risk pregnancy and can't spend a lot of time at the computer, plus my hubby is a huge "spend time with me" nut so there's that. But...near the bottom of page 6 of that thread, I made mention that if I ramped up my hours to maybe 20 hours a week, that I could spend in SL I would probably see only a minor increase in sales, so I probably am right where I want to be with working 10-12 hours per month. In fact, I would be surprised if there was a revenue increase at all, simply because of the SL economy.Well...here comes the number crunching nerd in me. After that conversation in July, I gave myself a little experiment for the month of August to see how true that case would be. Well no way could I add in another 20 hours per week. My baby and my husband would have nothing to do with that. But...how about just an overall additional 10 hours for the month. How much of a difference would it make? I told myself I'd only do it for a month, just to see, so if it failed, I wouldn't be too hard on myself for wasting all that time in SL and not seeing any profit.My extra 10 hours spent mainly went towards towards marketing for a big sales promotion over one weekend plus more blogging, more facebooking, more flickring, writing newsletters, submiting for my shopper groups, making new products, hanging out during promotions, etc. Most of this I already typically do with my normal 3 hours per week but I did ramp it up a bit to cover this promotion.As a baseline, when we had that discussion, my total revenue for the month of June was 177,997L (I think it was like 1,000l higher approx in my initial report but I had some returns so deleted a few transactions). And if you look at my annual comparison you can see, this is fairly average for me for the last few months anyway. However, take a look at AUGUST! 10 hours of extra working on a major promotion brought in an ADDITIONAL 103,874L (approx $420 USD) and a total for the month of 281,871L ($1141 USD). This is my highest month ever.While I am extremely happy with the results...there is a discussion to be had here. If you could bring in an extra 100k of linden per month by increasing your time in SL by a full 10 hours (which to me is a lot) would you? Toy, especially for you, you and I are very much on the same wave length about this topic. I will tell you my plan for this after a few people respond, just because I'm curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Well, this is good for you, and great incite into your business. I think it is a bit too simplistic to assume this is really about hours spent. You spent your extra time on promotional stuff, so obviously this translates directly into a monetary gain. If it did not, then it would obviously be not worth the extra time. It would be wrong to translate this into, "the more time I spend, the more money I make". It all depends on what you are spending that time doing. Personally, I don't hardly spend any time at all on promotions. Early on, I saw all the time that it would take to continuously put on promotional compaignes, and how that cut, way too much, into my creative time and time for actually producing products. So, to say that my business lacks promotional appeal, is an understatement. I basically spent the majority of my time, early on, working on my product line, which payed off massively. When you consider that there was no real need to do massive promotions with 70+% of my customers finding me directly from the search engine. Nowadays, it's pretty obvious that promotions and a good promotional system can do wonders for every merchant in SL. For me, today, I'm only working on products when I get inspired, but I am always working on something. Not all my focus is SL now, so I spend a good majority of my time working on things outside of SL. My actual hours in SL has never been that high, except when in full development of a major project. Animation creation takes place all outside of SL, and the only reason to go into SL is to make sure the animation is right and to put the package together. The vast majority of my work time in SL is dealing with customers. Even that is extremely low, considering the complexity of the products and the volume that I sell. Most days, I won't even get 1 question that is directly related to a problem with a product. I get more general questions about animation, how to do this or that, or asked if I'll make this or that animation. Custom requests probably make up the majority of questions that I get, which 99% of the time is no. So, basically, my total time in SL "working" probably averages 1 to 2 hours a day, at the most. My time outside of SL working on anything that might be related to a product for SL, is somewhat immeasurable. This is my job. Every minute that I'm not doing mundate choirs, or doing something with my son, goes toward my "job". It can hardly be called a JOB. It's just what I enjoy doing. Even when I watch something for entertainment, it is likely related in some way, whether an animated movie, or reading a blog. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Hey Medhue I've always wanted to ask you exactly what you do outside of SL? Are you in video game design or what exactly? I'd love to see where I couldn't expand into! And yes I agree, it's not always about the more time I spend the more money I make. Which is why originally, in that first thread, I didn't think there would be much difference in sales. Obviously with the promotion this directly related to it...but you're right...time alone does not do it. What does do it is effort and ...ideas I guess you could say. My plan for future is actually not to spend much more time but I think I have a plan that will give me more promotional sales and events without...the time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 Since you asked, no I'm not really in the gaming industry, but I have sold animation to game developers outside of SL. Currently, most of my time is spent inside DazStudio. I planned for years now to work on my own little animated movies, and possibly an animated video series. I've tracked DazStudio's progress for years now, seeing it as a good tool to create video with. There latest move to release the pro version for free and take all their profits from the sales of items, had me thinking that this was a good opportunity to expand into a new market. While I work on formulating the overall scripts of the videos, I also have to create all the movement and animations. Yes, I have thousands of animations, but they all need adjustments for the Genesis character. Plus, making animations for video is quite a bit different than making animations for SL and games, not that I can't sell gaming animations to the daz/poser community. The end result is that I'm constantly working on my video stuff, and selling the animations to the daz community. Even all the morphs that I make for all the characters and clothing items, can be sold. So, morphs are becoming some of my best selling items, and I didn't make any of the items that I made morphs for. All that takes up the majority of my work outside SL, although I do get asked to work on other projects. It's rare that I agree to other projects, but it does happen pretty regularly. Plus, it's all animation, and whether i make it for Daz, Poser, 3ds Max, or SL, I can use or convert the files pretty easily. This is why I keep harping on object creators to learn mesh. They would then have the same convertability as I have as a creator. Actually, it would be even easier for them, as animation always needs some adjustment, where as models almost never need any adjustments, especially if the object is made efficiently. The best part tho, is that everything that I do can make money. As I learn, I post videos. As I create, I post videos. To teach others to use the program, I post videos. As I test stuff, I post videos. Last month, I made $10 on Youtube. Yeah, that is not alot, but whether I make more videos or not, I will likely make $10 next month. If I make more videos, I'll likely make more money. I really just started monetizing my videos last 2 months. Before that, I only kept my Youtube channel for product demos and tutorials for SL. I never really considered monetizing the videos, and didn't post often enough to gain a following. Now, I try to post something every week, and my views and other stats have more than tripled. So, basically, I'm spreading myself out, not just SL and other SL worlds. Here is my latest video that demos the hair morphs that I'm selling: When I sit and argue with Toy about mesh, this is exactly why. As 3d creators, we only make money because of the volume of sales. No 1 person could or would pay us strictly for our time spent making something. The way we can leverage this, is to make things that can be sold in multiple markets. A sculpty can only be sold to SL like places. A mesh can be sold anywhere, and for any game or platform. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaedra Exonar Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 I spent 12 to 18 hour a a day 7 days a week for 2 months doubling the number of items I have for sale for an other much larger brand I own upgraded the items and scripting and advertising, results was a 50% loss in sales. For the brand you see under this avatar I just spent over a year doing a script upgrade for my creatures, 2 of which were released last week, one of them is my best selling item, results so far 90% loss in sales. At this point I'm afraid to put any amount of time in to SL, other then having fun and customer service. I think my biggest problem selling with the items I sell are the markets I build for are much smaller then I originally thought they were, but it took years to get to the top of search placement to realize that. As more people leave SL the smaller communities and markets are taking a bigger hit that others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Wow Medhue...color me inpressed. I think that is awesome you are into so many things. I have an outside business as well where monetizing my "info" websites are starting to produce a decent amount of income. SO I totally feel ya on the $10 from youtube. I remember several years ago when I first started how excited I was when I received my first google ad words profit. LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 phaedra Exonar wrote: I spent 12 to 18 hour a a day 7 days a week for 2 months doubling the number of items I have for sale for an other much larger brand I own upgraded the items and scripting and advertising, results was a 50% loss in sales. For the brand you see under this avatar I just spent over a year doing a script upgrade for my creatures, 2 of which were released last week, one of them is my best selling item, results so far 90% loss in sales. At this point I'm afraid to put any amount of time in to SL, other then having fun and customer service. I think my biggest problem selling with the items I sell are the markets I build for are much smaller then I originally thought they were, but it took years to get to the top of search placement to realize that. As more people leave SL the smaller communities and markets are taking a bigger hit that others. I guess my biggest question to this would be....what added efforts are you doing to market...not double items for sales, or redoing the scripts or upgrading items. I could add new products all day long and never get increased sales if I'm not marketing correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Also to add...my plan from here on out... I am actually considering doing this test again for the month of September, just to see if I can repeat the success of this and maybe that will help me answer the question for myself (do I want to work more). But as of right now, my answer is no. Yes an extra $420 per month is great, but how can I replicate some of this without actually having to increase my time in SL (mainly so my husband doesn't disown me)? Well for starters one thing I've noticed is people are reading my blog and facebook. When I started doing all the new postings in it I was getting messages from people telling me how much they loved it. Facebook especially because it seems like everyone is on facebook. So, my answer to that...hire a blogger. I found a customer, someone who loves my products and would do an awesome job writing for me and she is now handling that department. That right there makes up probably 1-2 hours of the time I spent blogging, facebooking and writing. She is also going through my MP listings and rewriting descriptions to make them "prettier" and analyzing my keywords to make sure I'm making the most use of them. Voila! Tons of work done but not by me. Yes of course this will cost me some giveaways of my products to someone who loves them and some linden pay...but not nearly as much as my time. My biggest time sink...the time I spent "hanging" around or greeting customers as they came to the store for the promotion. Im talking hours upon hours. One days event was 4 hours long. So, I've hired two girls who are now my greeters in the store. No they are not there all the time, but they hang out occassionally during the week but now, if I want to have a huge promotion, I could spend just 1-2 hours marketing that promotion and then letting them handle the customers as they arrive while I sit my pregnant butt down on my couch in my living room. This is ideal! I don't know if I will see the exact same success, but if I could delegate out 7-8 hours of the 10 hours extra I had to do this month, and pay a little linden to make that happen, it could very well be the answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 That's how every good business person thinks. How can I maximize my time. Every person is different so the answers are always different. Imagine if you loved writing those blogs more than the other stuff. I also think that too many people discount the nothing time, or relaxing time. For me, it is when I can relax, watch a movie, or just chill out that the creative juices start flowing. If I was constantly busy, I'd most likely not be as creative. Plus, SL is a great place to start a business when you want to spend as much time with your kids as possible. Even when I was working the most, I always had time for all my son's things, and I never missed a single special event of his. This would have been impossible with a normal job. I'm sure you are probably thinking the same thing with a baby on the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaedra Exonar Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 Deja Letov wrote: phaedra Exonar wrote: I spent 12 to 18 hour a a day 7 days a week for 2 months doubling the number of items I have for sale for an other much larger brand I own upgraded the items and scripting and advertising, results was a 50% loss in sales. For the brand you see under this avatar I just spent over a year doing a script upgrade for my creatures, 2 of which were released last week, one of them is my best selling item, results so far 90% loss in sales. At this point I'm afraid to put any amount of time in to SL, other then having fun and customer service. I think my biggest problem selling with the items I sell are the markets I build for are much smaller then I originally thought they were, but it took years to get to the top of search placement to realize that. As more people leave SL the smaller communities and markets are taking a bigger hit that others. I guess my biggest question to this would be....what added efforts are you doing to market...not double items for sales, or redoing the scripts or upgrading items. I could add new products all day long and never get increased sales if I'm not marketing correctly. After doubling my items for sales I spent 6 months on just marketing and community building, and sales have just keep going down. I did a lot of research on community market sizes, it was quite an eye opener, the markets I build for don't even show up on a bar graph compared to the over all marketplace size. The info I collect on the market size suggest that your main market is at least 18 times the size of my main market, and is growing about 10 time as fast, you have 21 more pages of items listed then I do and you sales are 22.5 times higher then mine currently, but compared to my last year sales which was before I started doing any marketing and before I doubled the number of items I sell, your current record is about 5.5 times higher from where I use to be. I've talked to some merchants that create for a very general market in SL and the volume of their top selling item is 700 time more then my top selling item. My top selling item is in the top 3 listing for inworld, marketplace and google image searches, which to me suggest that I'm building for a small market that is in decline, I'll keep building for my current markets for fun, but any serious effort is going in to new markets. Any way it's good to see that some people are making $ in SL doing less it makes me hopeful that some day I'll get there too, I just need to find the right market, I all way was surprised at what items became my best sellers lol which might be one of my biggest problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaedra Exonar Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 Good idea about getting customers to help blog, I just had some one write a review that was so good sounding lol I thought I might hurt sales because it sounded too good to be true and people might think that I wrote it my self, that might be the perfect person to get to help write for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 phaedra Exonar wrote: Deja Letov wrote: phaedra Exonar wrote: I spent 12 to 18 hour a a day 7 days a week for 2 months doubling the number of items I have for sale for an other much larger brand I own upgraded the items and scripting and advertising, results was a 50% loss in sales. For the brand you see under this avatar I just spent over a year doing a script upgrade for my creatures, 2 of which were released last week, one of them is my best selling item, results so far 90% loss in sales. At this point I'm afraid to put any amount of time in to SL, other then having fun and customer service. I think my biggest problem selling with the items I sell are the markets I build for are much smaller then I originally thought they were, but it took years to get to the top of search placement to realize that. As more people leave SL the smaller communities and markets are taking a bigger hit that others. I guess my biggest question to this would be....what added efforts are you doing to market...not double items for sales, or redoing the scripts or upgrading items. I could add new products all day long and never get increased sales if I'm not marketing correctly. After doubling my items for sales I spent 6 months on just marketing and community building, and sales have just keep going down. I did a lot of research on community market sizes, it was quite an eye opener, the markets I build for don't even show up on a bar graph compared to the over all marketplace size. The info I collect on the market size suggest that your main market is at least 18 times the size of my main market, and is growing about 10 time as fast, you have 21 more pages of items listed then I do and you sales are 22.5 times higher then mine currently, but compared to my last year sales which was before I started doing any marketing and before I doubled the number of items I sell, your current record is about 5.5 times higher from where I use to be. I've talked to some merchants that create for a very general market in SL and the volume of their top selling item is 700 time more then my top selling item. My top selling item is in the top 3 listing for inworld, marketplace and google image searches, which to me suggest that I'm building for a small market that is in decline, I'll keep building for my current markets for fun, but any serious effort is going in to new markets. Any way it's good to see that some people are making $ in SL doing less it makes me hopeful that some day I'll get there too, I just need to find the right market, I all way was surprised at what items became my best sellers lol which might be one of my biggest problems. I think you're definitely onto the answer there...the market. I can tell you I've considered starting to design for other markets as well. I know being "goth" is limiting me somewhat. It's a niche market and I know if I designed for the general public my buyers market would be bigger. But my problem is that I love the goth style so much, I honestly think I would suck the big one if I expanded outside of it because my heart wouldn't be into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 I just took a look at your MP store. Right off the bat, you don't have enough products. Deja is probably right about marketing, especially in today's market, unless you are already established in the market. That said, you need to have a minimum amount of products to get any kind of relevant sales or data to base anything on. I'd venture to say, that unless you have, at least 100 products, you can't expect to see sales on any regular basis. There are people that only sell a few products and still do ok, mostly cause they dominate that market, but this is a very rare thing. Just for an example, the first year that I started selling, I made around 5000 animations. That's almost 20 animations a day. The average time between product releases was about 3 days. Now, that's a crazy amount of work. but in those days I started selling on a large scale pretty much from the time I posted my first product. This gave me a massive incentive to work my butt off, just to see how far it would go. After 8 months, I quit my day job. Granted tho, that was in 2007. The main thing that got me to that point was putting my head down and making products like crazy. If you don't have a good amount to choose from, it is going to be impossible to see any kind of major gains. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 Medhue...when you quit your job, was it 100% revenue from SL? Or did this include your other endevours as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 At that time, other than doing charcoal portraits, which was maybe 1 every few months, I had no other endevours that made any money. I've always done side jobs that were art related tho. Like for a few years, I did murals on the sides of buildings, and huge backdrops for photographers. When I started doing SL, I stopped all those other things, so I quit my day job strictly on SL income. I had saved up quite a bit during the year because of SL, so I was not that worried about the future. Plus, my sales were incredibly stable or rising every week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaedra Exonar Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 Deja Letov wrote: I think you're definitely onto the answer there...the market. I can tell you I've considered starting to design for other markets as well. I know being "goth" is limiting me somewhat. It's a niche market and I know if I designed for the general public my buyers market would be bigger. But my problem is that I love the goth style so much, I honestly think I would suck the big one if I expanded outside of it because my heart wouldn't be into it. One of the good things about the goth market is that it gets the general public at Halloween, all so big tie in to the vampire scene, and Victorian age Gothic revival. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 Medhue Simoni wrote: At that time, other than doing charcoal portraits, which was maybe 1 every few months, I had no other endevours that made any money. I've always done side jobs that were art related tho. Like for a few years, I did murals on the sides of buildings, and huge backdrops for photographers. When I started doing SL, I stopped all those other things, so I quit my day job strictly on SL income. I had saved up quite a bit during the year because of SL, so I was not that worried about the future. Plus, my sales were incredibly stable or rising every week. That is awesome Medhue! I would love to do that one day...and you're right, especially with a new baby on the way. The thought of going back to my 9-5 job after 12 weeks of maternity leave literally makes me sick to my stomach. I'm really jealous of my husband who is gonna be the stay at home dad and stay home to take care of her. I'm glad he is, but I wish it were the other way around. Unfortunately (or fortunately however you look at it) I am the bread winner and make too much money. ya I know...why would I complain about that? Well I'm not really...it's just that when you become used to having a specific lifestyle, it's hard to change that. And I can't imagine my SL income every coming in anywhere close to what I make in the real world...but I would most definitely welcome it if it did! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 phaedra Exonar wrote: Deja Letov wrote: I think you're definitely onto the answer there...the market. I can tell you I've considered starting to design for other markets as well. I know being "goth" is limiting me somewhat. It's a niche market and I know if I designed for the general public my buyers market would be bigger. But my problem is that I love the goth style so much, I honestly think I would suck the big one if I expanded outside of it because my heart wouldn't be into it. One of the good things about the goth market is that it gets the general public at Halloween, all so big tie in to the vampire scene, and Victorian age Gothic revival. This is true...but it's only for a month. My sales are definitely great in October! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaedra Exonar Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 Deja Letov wrote: phaedra Exonar wrote: Deja Letov wrote: I think you're definitely onto the answer there...the market. I can tell you I've considered starting to design for other markets as well. I know being "goth" is limiting me somewhat. It's a niche market and I know if I designed for the general public my buyers market would be bigger. But my problem is that I love the goth style so much, I honestly think I would suck the big one if I expanded outside of it because my heart wouldn't be into it. One of the good things about the goth market is that it gets the general public at Halloween, all so big tie in to the vampire scene, and Victorian age Gothic revival. This is true...but it's only for a month. My sales are definitely great in October! But I thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXtX9u7_6F8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela Galli Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 I starte selling Thanksgiving dinners in Aug. :-) Great research, Deja, thanks for sharing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 hahha OMG such a great song Phaedra! I think i should post their lyrics outside my shop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 Pamela Galli wrote: I starte selling Thanksgiving dinners in Aug. :-) Great research, Deja, thanks for sharing! And your dinners are so amazingly yummy Pamela Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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