Czari Zenovka Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Sorry to bring this up again, but I thought I had this issue sorted in my mind, but now I'm rethinking it. Background - When I first began selling I used mod/trans perms since I personally liked being able to hand off an item to an alt, a friend, or even put it in a yardsale. The latter is not really applicable for me anymore. Maybe a year or so into owning my store I received an IM from someone who had purchased an item saying she was disappointed it was not copy instead and that most of the items she sees (talking furnishings, not clothing) are copy. I provided her with a copy version.A month or so ago I took an informal poll on the General Forums as to which set of permissions people prefer. It was almost 50/50 with slightly more tilting to copy due to SL's propensity to eat inventory. I changed the perms on my items to copy/mod, except for specific gift-type items.As I've been doing hunts and looking at other merchants who sell similar items, the permissions are all over the board, but I am seeing quite a bit mod/trans. I definitely like to offer mod perms to give the customer freedom to resize or retexture and am concerned about a customer messing up a mod/trans item and not contacting me to allow me to correct it.The other issue is pricing. Several merchant friends have told me my prices are way too low, but when I priced them I felt it was commensurate with the product/my building level at the time. I'm in the process of creating new items and pricing them a bit higher. I also plan on revamping my older products and can then increase the prices accordingly.My dilemma boils down to:1. Copy/Mod/No Trans - Customer can mode an item to their heart's content and not have to worry about messing it up. Downside: Customer rezzing an infinite number of the item and, due to my lower pricing, I'm losing money.2. Mod/Trans/No Copy - Customer can still mod the item, plus be able to give it as a gift, transfer to an alt or friend. Downside: Customer breaking a mod. Hopefull said customer would contact me, return the item, and allow me to replace it.Decisions, decisions.What has worked for you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aveline Stein Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Personally i set my items no mod/copy/trans or mod/copy/no trans. Unless you wish to offer the same item with different permission sets, you are never going to please everyone. Make a decision and live with it. The voices in both the copy as well as transfer camp seem to be almost equally vocal. edit: Purely from a convenience point of view as a merchant, copy items are easier to handle for me by far. No worries about someone asking for their 3rd replacement item because they 'lost' it, and it is easier to do things like updates or have redelivery terminals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 Aveline Stein wrote: Personally i set my items no mod/copy/trans or mod/copy/no trans. Unless you wish to offer the same item with different permission sets, you are never going to please everyone. Make a decision and live with it. The voices in both the copy as well as transfer camp seem to be almost equally vocal. edit: Purely from a convenience point of view as a merchant, copy items are easier to handle for me by far. No worries about someone asking for their 3rd replacement item because they 'lost' it, and it is easier to do things like updates or have redelivery terminals. Agree with your post Aveline, and thank you for responding. For your copy/mod/no trans items, do you set them at a higher price than if you offered them mod/trans/no copy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alicia Sautereau Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 With you on that, copy/mod for less headache Personally tho, i won`t buy "no copy" items Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 Alicia Sautereau wrote: With you on that, copy/mod for less headache Personally tho, i won`t buy "no copy" items Thanks, Alicia. Many people responded the same way on no copy when I posted in the general thread. Then I had a couple of people who responded they would only buy transfer items. Definitely can't please everyone. Think I'll just stay with what I'm doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aveline Stein Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Well, back when i used to have transfer items and made the switch i kept the price the same. But i make accessories so people are not likely to wear or place multiple copies around the grid. I can understand different pricing between copy and transfer versions with furniture somewhat, but for me it is mostly a nuissance. The last time i was shopping for lamps and found some very nice ones, but they were priced 350L and no copy and i needed about 20 of them. Yeah right. Like i am going to spend 7k on the same lousy lamp. >.< Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deja Letov Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 I think you know where I am on it. When I first started my furniture shop years ago it was the "norm" to to make everything trans/no copy. Pretty much everyone was. Nowadays, anything new I make is copy/no trans. And I am slowly going back through my inventory and changing permissions on older items to copy/mod as well. I price them exactly the same as I did my trans items. The real reason i started doing this was because of the Marketplace and SL's habit of eating inventory. I've had to many people have me redeliver trans items because they say they didn't receive it from the marketplace or sl ate their inventory, or sometimes had their items on group land returned and it was some where cluttered in the huge soft linked return set. Plus now that I'm using a networked delivery system, I don't even have to be online for them to get a redelivery of a copyable item So it's really all about ease of use for me and for the customer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 Aveline Stein wrote: I can understand different pricing between copy and transfer versions with furniture somewhat, but for me it is mostly a nuissance. The last time i was shopping for lamps and found some very nice ones, but they were priced 350L and no copy and i needed about 20 of them. Yeah right. Like i am going to spend 7k on the same lousy lamp. >.< Great example. So, knowing that *some* people - and I have no earthly idea of what percentage of my customers it would be - would want say 20 copies, then the idea for me would be to offer them copy at a price I'm comfortable with knowing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 Thank you for responding, Deja. It is definitely easier re: customer issues to offer copy items and knowing that a larger established merchant is now choosing copy/mod confirms my decision to stay copy/mod myself. Most of the items that I have seen lately sold as no copy (and often no mod) are usually more expensive items so I thought maybe there was some correlation along the lines of higher end items are generally no copy. (No this isn't anything to do with the "greed" thread...just musing and trying to learn to be a better creator/merchant as I go along.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 I have three brands. Each brand has it's own permission settings. Dynamic Curtains: all products in the shop are no copy/trans/mod (by menu). Madame Haute Couture, all products are copy/mod/no trans. cYo, all products are copy/mod/trans. Once choosen for the permission settings for the brand I never changed mind about this. The products for my oldest brand, Dynamic Curtains, I devellopped together with a scripter. We have been talking about how to set the permissions for several nights. It was clear that the curtains had to be mod, but besides that, copy or trans? We develloped all kind of 'what happens if... '-scenario's, and then judged about what permission settings would be best in that case. We were both sort of nervus to make a choice. I do not remember all arguments we discussed exactly, there were a lot.But one of them was 'no copy | trans comes closest to shopping in realility'. Another one pro no copy|trans was that each item would keep the same value for each resident. For example compare a copy item in the hands of a landlord who rents out 70 furnished houses, to a copy item in the hands of a small guy with just one house. The landlord profits 70 times as much from the copyability of the item then the little guy. And another argument was 'house stylists' must be able to transfer. I knew a few people who offered services as house stylist. They knew every respectable furniture shop in SL, had a great taste, and found people willing to let them style their house. After the styling was done, the items needed to be transfered to the owner of the house, who payed the bill as well ofcourse. These stylists never ever bought any no transfer item. In the end we choose for no copy | trans combined with a very affordable price. Cheap enough to buy a few at once (at least cheap enough in those days). It worked, above expectation. Right from day 1 that we opened the shop, the curtains started selling. Our expectation was: we open the shop, we show to some friends, we work out a marketingplan and then let's pray that the plan will work. But from the moment we opened the shop people we had never met before dropped by and started to buy. During the years we have had many customers who asked for a copy in stead of a transfer version. We refused, in many cases they still bought several sets of the curtains. We got builders who asked for a builders version, or offered ten to twenty times the price for a copy version. We refused, and after some teasing and begging most of them decided to look for copyable alternatives. What we started to do in stead of making copyable versions was giving 25% discount to high volume buyers. Dynamic Curtains has been doing pretty well during the first three years. And sales are still good. Ofcourse good in 2012 is something else then good in 2007, there is a lot more competition now, there are many shops specialised in just curtains now, there are curtain shops that offer copyable curtains for half the price we ask for or no copy curtains. Those have certainly gained a some of our potential customers. In the golden years it could easily happen that someone came in and bought 20 curtains. We don't see that type of customers anymore in our shop, people buy about 3 or 4 curtains at most at one time. So we must conclude that every customer that bought more in the past become a customer of a shop that offers copyable items. But still this did not made us doubt about the permission settings. And though a lot of competion is trying to beat us with lower prices and evenridicilous low prices, we also have never considered to lower our price. It is good as it as. Past have proven that this business model has worked for this type of product. The price must not be compared to what other merchants ask for their items, but the price must fit to the budget of your customer. We, very young, unexperienced creators, had picked a price just following our intuition, and sales have proven over and over again, that this price was just right for this product. So why change? When I go lower, my competitors might anwers by lowering prices as well, and after a price fight we probably end up in same position to each other again. The only effect will be that both of us have lost. Because a price competion brings us both in a more difficult position towards Linden Lab. The tier price isn't changing while we lower our prices. And the number of people who are buying curtains stays about the same as well. By lowering prices we all need to make more sales to be able to pay our tier and still stay profitable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alicia Sautereau Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Just have to reply to this Some people think it`s funny to set no mod on expensive items, but here is the issue that atleast prevents me from buying that sort of stuff: Learn to frigging align! and let us edit certain child prims so that we can fit/change parts to our needs! Recent example: I bought a house for fun, yay! It was pre-decorated, yay! It had a broken light controller, yay... I tried to fix it, no mod! ya... Trash, YAY! Went out and bought another house, ya...y... It was pre-decorated, ya`sob I use v3 on max setting and the house looked like it was orbiting the sun at, well, 2 meters? Please don`t guess, no mod, thank yay we have trash! I have some clothing, they use prims, yay! Physics on the creator`s client must have been default 267G (gravity) Try to change the physics to be less 0 gravity with jumping all over the place, fail, no mod I have more clothing and the creator liked using adjust scripts, i`ll skip the repeat, you guess it, i`d rather wear a plywood cube and atleast be able to adjust it by 0.0001 as i see fit cause of alignment issues If you think expensive things should be no mod, for absolutely no reason besides of "others are doing it", just don`t, really, don`t. If you make a duplicate of an expensive item that i like and mark it with a higher price and modifiable, i`ll still buy it from you then cheaper with "no mod" I went to a place that sells jewelry, false advertising another thing, but when looking around for the heck of it and rezzing their giant posters i noticed something funny: A couple of prims priced at l$30,000, were unaligned and i could see gaps by just zooming on the picture! No wonder it was called an "exclusive"... Then i saw some bracelets, necklaces and some facepalms (ok, last was mine by looking at each poster) So i`m sorry, no mod, expensive pixels and imperfections that might have been missed or just sloppy work, no thanks from me atleast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alicia Sautereau Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Been to your shop and actually likes some of your items but... No copy = no buy Sorry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 21, 2012 Author Share Posted August 21, 2012 @ Madeliefste - Thank you for that post. I'm always interested in the reasoning people go through to set perms, prices, etc. Obviously well thought out. @Alicia - Yes, modify perms are a must for me and wouldn't sell something that couldn't be modded, excepting the obvious items within the build that have licensing regulations, ie. those I purchased from others for the build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Oh I still forgot something: failed deliveries. Believe it or not, but failed deliveries with no copy items, happen about ten times as much, als failed deliveries of copy or full perms items. Where the shops are next to each other on the same sim, work with exact the same vendor script. That is a minus of no copy items. Since their is no technical explication for the high difference in delivery fails, you are tempted to conclude that some of customers just fake that the items did not arrive, to get one for free. But you can never know for sure... and neither do you know who is honest and did really not get the item, and who are the ones that play the trick with you. But you must respect them all. You cannot take the risk to accuse a honest person, so the consequence is that you are now and then giving away an extra example, while all of your intiution says 'he is just playing the same old trick I've seen so many times already'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alicia Sautereau Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 I don`t have a problem with no-mod parts in some one`s build/item, aslong as i don`t have to fix parts of it because of gaps or overlappings The house example, the no mod parts made me trash it, but the other misalings/gaps i`ll just grumble abit and fix it as i`m an align freak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela Galli Posted August 21, 2012 Share Posted August 21, 2012 Madeliefste Oh wrote: Oh I still forgot something: failed deliveries. Believe it or not, but failed deliveries with no copy items, happen about ten times as much, als failed deliveries of copy or full perms items. Where the shops are next to each other on the same sim, work with exact the same vendor script. ___________ I have heard this same comparison by others who kept track. Interesting statistic, isn't it? I use a notify on rez script. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spica Inventor Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 Don't be a greedy merchant. Right now there are twice as many things with copy/mod perms when compared to mod/transfer perms on the marketplace. If it was up to most of the customers it would be more like 10 to 1. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 22, 2012 Author Share Posted August 22, 2012 Spica Inventor wrote: Don't be a greedy merchant. Right now there are twice as many things with copy/mod perms when compared to mod/transfer perms on the marketplace. If it was up to most of the customers it would be more like 10 to 1. ;-) Heh...at my prices I doubt I'd be considered greedy either way. I do plan on sticking with mod/copy though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunshine Juneberry Posted August 22, 2012 Share Posted August 22, 2012 I really like items that are copy for making outfits. i put together an outfit i like and make a new outfit folder. It's also easier for me to find..."oh wheres that cute skirt i like"....its in the cute skirt folder ....the shoes i like are in this folder...the same shoes different skin shade are in another...right at the top of my inventory. As for MOD...I've bought so many nice things that just will not fit me...they get thrown in trash!!! total waste of money. Now i really think twice before i ever buy anything NO MOD. Unless they have resize scripts that will let you resize/reposition single prims...single axis...its hard to get them to fit correctly without being MOD. I personally sell all my items as Copy/Mod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted August 23, 2012 Share Posted August 23, 2012 When it comes to worn or attached items, I absolutely prefer copy/mod. Even with resize scripts I would want MOD so I can tweak thinks to fit right. When it comes to objects that are going to be rezzed, I'd like the option to choose and would pay appropriately. Landscape items as an example. Maybe I only need one or two copies of a rose for landscaping. Buying no copy for less wouldn't bother me. But if I were making a whole field of roses, I would pay a premium to have them copy so I don't have to buy 50 individual copies. These would be my overall preferences. sunshine Juneberry wrote: As for MOD...I've bought so many nice things that just will not fit me...they get thrown in trash!!! total waste of money. I have contacted Merchants with screen shots when I have been unable to fit a No Mod item that had resize scripts. They have asked if my shape is transfer. Mine is full perm so I have sent a copy to them and they have sent me back a copy of the item modded to fit my shape. That is what I call great customer service! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 23, 2012 Author Share Posted August 23, 2012 Perrie Juran wrote: When it comes to objects that are going to be rezzed, I'd like the option to choose and would pay appropriately. Landscape items as an example. Maybe I only need one or two copies of a rose for landscaping. Buying no copy for less wouldn't bother me. But if I were making a whole field of roses, I would pay a premium to have them copy so I don't have to buy 50 individual copies. These would be my overall preferences. Ok that was strange. I typed in a whole long response and when I saved it just had the first two letters of my post. Gah! Instead of retyping all that again I will summarize...lol. Thanks, Perrie. As a merchant who sells small home furnishings, whether to offer mod/trans at a price point that if one wished to purchase multiples it would still be reasonable vs setting a higher price for mod/copy, knowing that, in my case, the number of people who would buy a LOT of the same item is relatively low. I'm comfortable with my permissions (copy/mod) and price point currently and, as another merchant told me recently, that is most important. I start second-guessing myself when I see comparable products to mine priced quite a bit higher at no copy. OTOH, I've also seen some amazing products that surpass what I currently offer at lower prices. Thank you all again for the great, well thought out responses. I really appreciate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
161488303349 Posted August 25, 2012 Share Posted August 25, 2012 about the field of roses and the lady with the lamps i bought a whole bunch of wild flowers. they were quite nice and reasonable price so i end up buy about 30 of them. they were no copy can know why the vendor sell no copy. if they were copy then i wouldve only bought 6, one of each, and then fill up my whole parcel for like 1/5th price or less maybe + i think sometimes that can learn off the animation makers about bulk buys. like can get copy/notrans or nocopy/trans. at one shop where i get quite a lot of dance anims then can also buy the nocopy/trans ones in packs. more i buy then the pack cost less i think would be good if people who made flowers and trees and lamps and curtains and stuff where you need more than one kind did this. like make some of each kinds and put in a box and sell the box. some people do this already but not all that many i find Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 25, 2012 Author Share Posted August 25, 2012 16 wrote: about the field of roses and the lady with the lamps i bought a whole bunch of wild flowers. they were quite nice and reasonable price so i end up buy about 30 of them. they were no copy can know why the vendor sell no copy. if they were copy then i wouldve only bought 6, one of each, and then fill up my whole parcel for like 1/5th price or less maybe + i think sometimes that can learn off the animation makers about bulk buys. like can get copy/notrans or nocopy/trans. at one shop where i get quite a lot of dance anims then can also buy the nocopy/trans ones in packs. more i buy then the pack cost less i think would be good if people who made flowers and trees and lamps and curtains and stuff where you need more than one kind did this. like make some of each kinds and put in a box and sell the box. some people do this already but not all that many i find Thanks, 16. Offering both permissions is the ideal; it covers all scenarios. It is more work to set items up with varying permissions but, in my case, my store is so small that I could do so. I do have some of my items "bundled" and sell the bundles for less as a set than each piece individually. I do this a lot for holiday items that can be given as gifts. What I have found, however, is that I sell few, if any, of the bundled items. I've never tried it with my curtains. I may think about that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
161488303349 Posted August 25, 2012 Share Posted August 25, 2012 yes you need quite a lot of curtains to fit a whole house so maybe will work. main thing is getting the amount right i suppose somehow + but on another matter one thing i dont see a lot of is complete kits for Linden Homes. is quite hard to make a whole home set for them. with the limited prims. the ideal for them is about 80prims altogether i think, so home owner got some left over for rezzing boxes and things have chatted to some people about this but they say is quite hard to do well. i say back to them that if is hard for you then think how much more hard it is for newbie. is why most of the linden homes end up empty or not much stuff in. they just need like curtains, floor coverings, maybe 2 or 3 pictures, a bedroom suite (dont have to be Adult) a lounge, small side table with say a lamp and some flowers in a vase, and maybe a kitchen unit and a table and 2 chairs. and a simple radio maybe with the new LI now then someone will have a proper go at it. like make a rez box with everything in for the style of house. newbie then drop on floor and everything rez exactly where is supposed to be i think about it sometimes. the rezzer. can know where to move it to and orient with a script i think because the house prims for each style are all uniquely named. so should be able to detect them and move/orient the box to the right place on rez would be quite good that i think if was done Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Czari Zenovka Posted August 25, 2012 Author Share Posted August 25, 2012 16 wrote: one thing i dont see a lot of is complete kits for Linden Homes. <snip> they just need like curtains, floor coverings, maybe 2 or 3 pictures, a bedroom suite (dont have to be Adult) a lounge, small side table with say a lamp and some flowers in a vase, and maybe a kitchen unit and a table and 2 chairs. and a simple radio I have a Japanese Room (which I need to update, built it long ago) that I advertised as perfect for the Linden Japanese-style homes when they were new. When I'm out at other furniture type stores I do see a lot of room sets put together, usually sets for separate rooms, but your idea *would* be a good one for the Linden homes, especially with the lower prim limits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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