Help with sells

[Janie Starflare]

Hi! I'm new to selling on marketplace and I've sold a few of my things but I need advice on how to get more of my stuff seen so more might buy my items. I've used the listing enhancements,blog feeds, and promos before and they help a bit.

[Dark Larkspur]

Well now; that is a complex question. I am sure there are at least as many marketing theories as there are merchants, and probably more. And I suspect, some have a few tricks they would prefer to keep secret. But; lets start with some reasonable and logical things that can be done in a practical way.

Make sure; while you are still new; you have a store name and logo that you are extremely happy with and never change it; unless years from now you feel you can freshen it up without messing up your ability to be recognized.

I treat Listing Enhancements like a Holiday Ham; once in a while for a special event is fine but it is not for everyday. Marketplace provides sales on comission basis with no constant rental fee as in an in world land based store. Take advantage of this and minimize your expenses.

More Products, More Products, More Products; the more variety of models, types, styles, colors, even choice between no copy or transfer versions of the same product; increase the odds that you will have something for everyone.

You did not say what types of things you sell; but there are some basic ways to promote those also.

High Fashion clothes would benefit from being seen in some of the Runway Model events and rubbing elbows with your potential customers.

Club Clothing can be shown off by the Hostess at Events (Contest Boards) you choose to sponsor via the prize money and some free items for the Hostess to wear.

Homes and Vehicles can benefit greatly from an inworld location where they can be displayed and or demo tested.

On Marketplace; use as many high quality pictures as you can stand to upload; it is free, and pictures sell.

Use the Related Items feature to the fullest. For Example: You have a line of skirts in various colors, available seperately, Create one in basic black or white and list it at a reduced price and associate it with all your other colors at the standard price.

Have freebies or cheapies that have other items associated with them that you want to promote (FREE compared to listing enhancements)

Be Patient; Marketplace sales start and stop and go up and down all the time.

Be Consistent; pick a fair price and stick to it; Sales are fine, but cutting your price in half all of a sudden because you suddenly decide you set it too high, is personally difficult for me; as I feel bad for any who purchased the product at the previous price.

Be more than Fair and Helpful; when Marketplace totally messes up a delivery; I just give the Customer the item in world with no regard to whether I got paid or not; that Customer will make an effort to try and purchase from you in the future, and may, in the process, tell unknown numbers of friends that they found a new store for them to shop at.

In Closing; it may be of interest to note; items under $10L can not use the profit split / distribution function.... Items between $10L-$20L may give slightly more comission to the operation of the Marketplace System. And of personal interest to me: the ability to sell no copy items such as breedable animals, is still not functional, to my knowledge.

[Princess Verwood]

Dark has already mentioned some very useful things. It sounds like you're looking to find out how to better market your products/business. I posted this as a response to an earlier post on the forums but it can still very well work here:

Also don't forget to search the forums. There can be a wealth of information and links for the very question(s) you have. Google as well on how to start and market a Second Life business can turn up some good results if you just do a little research yourself. Here are two links I think that can be really helpful and that I believe that I found here in the forums at one time.

http://synzcreations.wordpress.com/about/marketing-a-new-business-in-sl/

http://mistletoeethaniel.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/the-content-creators-supplementary-guide-to-busine...

[Spica Inventor]

Well let me put it this way. Peeps are much more likely to search on Price: low to high than Price: high to low. So therefore don't overprice your products if they are common enough where the search results may come up with so many product hits that peeps wont even bother to look through them all or even much of them to find yours. Eventually if it sells relatively well, then it will climb to the top three pages of the all important relevance search results. ;-)

[Nefertiti Nefarious]

Start with the listings...changes here are free and easy and affect how easy you are to find in search.

The TITLE must describe the product well enough that the potential customer can decide right then if it's possibly what they want, and click on your product to see more.

EXAMPLE:  "*W*D* Anime Neko Top - Sister Kitty"  doesn't tell me what you are selling. Except it covers the top of a character,

Leave out the stray characters like *W*D* because no one searches for them and get right to the description: what it is, what color and what features.  It's a ...  mesh tube top with anime neko ... and give the color.

If there are several color variations, list each one separately if you sell it separately.  Or, if they all come in one box, call it a bundle. I can't tell from your descriptions what I'm getting.

Leave "value judgment words" (cute, fabulous, thrilling, etc.) out of the text. If it's fabulous, the pictures should make it clear how fabulous it is.

PICTURES ... where are her arms in the tube top picture?  Take pictures of the product in a real pose in front of a real background and upload them. Don't  edit in fancy backgrounds and add fancy text. It gets in the way of sales. And your editing is not well done - practice until you can lift the product image off without odd things happening to the edges.

[Janie Starflare]

Thanks all Your advice will help!

[Sea Warcliffe]

On Marketplace - the ONLY parts of any listings that are considered for search are: 1) the item name, 2) the features and 3) the keywords.  Fill out these areas with good descriptors and keywords for your product.

Related items are free advertising for you at the bottom. As are additional pictures - people love pictures.

For getting eyeballs on your stuff in-world, try different things to see what works: hunts, satellite shops, sales groups, themed sims or areas, MM boards, lucky chairs. And of course build up your own sales group and offer them discounts or previews or exclusives.