How do I expand my business?

[Sonya Zarco]

Currently I have a store of a medium size and steady monthly income, but I realize I don't have enough time to make large amounts of content, and often I spend hours working on ads, previews, sending notices, etc. and end up tired, and work less.

How can I grow my store business to make more content, I have a feeling that if I hire someone to make products for the store that they would end up separating and making their own store after a while. How did you do with such things, grow your store into bigger business?

 

Thank you,
SC

[Parrish Ashbourne]

 

 

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Sonya Zarco wrote:

Currently I have a store of a medium size and steady monthly income, but I realize I don't have enough time to make large amounts of content, and often I spend hours working on ads, previews, sending notices, etc. and end up tired, and work less.

How can I grow my store business to make more content, I have a feeling that if I hire someone to make products for the store that they would end up separating and making their own store after a while. How did you do with such things, grow your store into bigger business?

 

Thank you,

SC

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I don't run a business and, therefore, whatever advice I may provide should be taken with a grain of salt, if not entirely dismissed... but, I intend to give it anyway, as it's pretty much just common sense.

If you have the ability to create content for your business, but find yourself overwhelmed by the marketing aspect of running your business, why would you consider hiring someone to create content for you, rather than hiring someone to do the marketing for it instead?  That way you could spend more time creating things and delegate the responsibility of selling those things to someone else.  Such partnerships can be very effective, if you hire the right person.

...Dres

[Poenald Palen]

I would look into automation. Bots can handle some things and trim of minutes of log in and fussing time. Maybe usign a chat only non-graphical client may help.

Another method is to maybe find simpler items to make, or automation and templates for your 3D workflow. Time saving plug-ins may not require a huge time to learn and may make things faster.

Pre-fabs are what some people do, modifying them to make them much more distinguished and have your style may help to save time on creating new items.

I remember one person just renting out part of his sim, if you have more land than you need maybe partnering in a way like that OR using affiliate vendors and announcing each time you add one to the store.

But, yeah I bet they would go solo. It is the rest of the stuff you would want to hire out. You count your money, your customers and all that and have them drop in for event running/hosting or whatever else.

Making affilliate vendors is what some people say is good. Others sell your stuff and maybe help them out with some info on events that can be run and point them to the wiki.secondlife.com site page on events.

 

That is off the top of my head, I am sure you may be able to brainstorm some more stuff. Argh, I need to go.

[Sonya Zarco]

Thank you for the wonderful suggestions!

The store is on another account, clothing only shop and I hope to expand it towards accessories, skins. The whole general apparel in attempt to cover everything and try to make it one of the larger stores on SL!

I will work on making something different and new, some clothes with different prices and gifts in the store to keep the traffic going and such.

As for bots, for what I can all use them? Group inviter, anything else?

And I am thinking about someone to take care of marketing or ads perhaps, though first I would have to figure out their tasks and wages, luckily its much less on SL.

S.C.

 

[Poenald Palen]

Bots? Despite the hate I have heard people use them for groups somehow. Like I said, just stuff I heard about. I imagine all the plug-ins, options and all that are available from bot sellers. I mean, groups themselves are sort of automation because you can announce to many at once, but beyond that I do know they handle sign-ups yeah, you have experienced what I have as well I bet lol. Some hate those, but I remember someone saying they stood around and when people TP'd in they sent them group joins and it didn't hurt their business but expanded it. Maybe they where lying to destroy the competition lol.Not sure, just some stuff off the top of my head.

Another one is to build the most in demand stuff, and maybe that means have voting or asking customers you chit chat with what they want most.

I wanted to do this myself, put up a few potential builds names, maybe some concept art work and then have customers vote. I never did that though, so I can't say if there is a good response or if it works lol. Just another idea that may help focus so your build time is spent with most impact on the bottom line.

[TheG0t]

Coffe, coffee and coffee!

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

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Sonya Zarco wrote:

I don't have enough time to make large amounts of content, and often I spend hours working on ads, previews, sending notices, etc. and end up tired, and work less.

How can I grow my store business to make more content,

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Easy ... for the next month, make new stuff!  Just new stuff.  Send out a notice that tells your fans that, and lock yuour doors and create.

Simplify your ads - make a nice template and reuse it. Save the creativity for the products.

Automate sending notices if possible.

[BadEddy]

Hi,

I don't know what you sell and for how much so it's hard to say but my first advice would be to maybe review the price of your item. Personally, with items selling at an average of 1000-2000L a piece, I find it easier to take it easy and just release an item ever few weeks. This leave me all the time in the world to do the marketting and build without rush. If you are spending lots of time making many many items you later sell 50L, maybe you can consider reviewing that. 

Another thing is your marketting. Merchants gets all kinds of marketting propositions: "join our hunt", "join our event", "join our super low price weekely sale", etc, etc. Then there is the endless search for good satellite stores to rent and ad boards and midnight board and so many other things. In my experience, most of those gave me lots of work and little result. What does not work for me might work for you that's right but I doubt they all work well for anyone. Anything that's a time eater, scrap it and focus on the few that works very well for the little time they require. That will leave you with more time to work.

Try new markets!

For every action you are taking for your business, check how much time it takes from you vs what it brings you in return. You want to aim for max result with little time. If this is not what you get, try something else or try it differently. 

[Krueger]

Hire a marketing expert.

That's what I do.

I setup businesses in SL as a hobby, so I have limited time.  Saying that though, with the right marketing, you can take even a hobby to 3 figures (USD) on a daily basis.

The key is to think outside of SL as well as within.  Get someone who can grow traffic and PR to your business beyond SL.  That's where you make the money.

[Rhonda Pinion]

You could, instead of expanding out your business out of your preferred range of creation, coordinate and cooperate with creators of jewelry, shoes, etc. that would compliment your style of clothing that you sell. They may be thinking the exact same thing. "I would like to expand in to clothing to expand my store, but don't have the energy, etc." Let them concentrate on what they are good at. You each have your own client base, but, they should "over flow" in to each other's stores. I have seen this done quite often.

And together you could hire a promotional manager and spread the costs there.