Is there a group?

[Deja Letov]

Does anyone know of a merchant group, that focuses more on the business aspect than on the building aspect of things? Specifically, the stuff we talk about here on the forums for the most part but maybe in a group chat for example. People that we could share our monthly numbers and know if Mp sales are down for everyone or just ourselves specifically or pass around marketing ideas. I know we share a little bit here on the forum but I know not everyone is comfortable (or even interested) in sharing actual statistical data on sales with the world. If anyone knows of a group like this, I'd love to know about it. :)  Thanks!

[Pamela Galli]

I have not found anyplace where merchants are better informed than here. Not even close.

There is the inworld group Second Life Commerce Merchants, which has some well informed ppl.

[Deja Letov]

Thanks Pamela. I will check that group out.

I agree this is a great place to come and discuss, I just wonder if a smaller group might allow people to be slightly more open to things because I know it's not always easy to share information publically.

[Czari Zenovka]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I have not found anyplace where merchants are better informed than here. Not even close.

There is the inworld group Second Life Commerce Merchants, which has some well informed ppl.

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Definitely agree.  I'm in that group as well, however, I find the majority of questions are approximately a week behind what we've already been discussing on the forums.  I generally respond with, "You can find that info/discussion on the SL Merchant Forums."  I had one person say I didn't have it listed in my groups and how could s/he join?  /facepalms  I think it took about three tries to get the person to understand I was talking about a "forum" not a "group."

I know I should be after 5 years but I am still amazed at the percentage of SL residents who have no idea a SL forum exists.

 

 

[Deja Letov]

I was talking to a few of my merchant friends the other night and they were discussing marketing ideas. I assumed they had been on the forums, afterall, it's where all the cool kids are, but nope. Neither of them went on the forums. They said they really didn't care for the forums.  I tried explaining the benefit but honestly, some people just don't get it. They want to go it alone I guess.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Yes Deja, back in late 2009 I founded an SL Merchants group that was dedicated for Merchants of SecondLife.

It was called the SL MERCHANTS group.  It started as a simple Google group.  Within a couple months with ~ 100 users registered I noticed that the Google groups was not an effective place for hosting the community.  So I moved it to a new platform with several private and a few public visible forums.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/SL_MERCHANTS/index.php?act=idx

The reason I created it in the first place was because of the major Free / Clutter Tax Roadmap that LL Commerce Team roled out that was single-handedly the most explosive hated policy to be announced by the Commerce Team (during the Pink Linden's era ).  Myself and several other noticed that the SL Forums run by LL was too restrictive and did not allow Merchants to communicate privately among themselves and more importantly to speak freely about strategies that were not in LL's best interest (i.e. moving to competing Merchant sites and grids and establishng a Merchant's association).

The private forums were very popular for a while with great discussions and no fear of LL Moderators overseeing us and removing content they didnt like.

I even established forums that were public and ALLOWED merchants to post new product announcements for anyone to see.

But eventually the anger on the Freebies Roadmap  / Clutter Tax died down, several merchants / products left, and it became clear that the roadmap was yet another poorly conceived and impossible to execute strategy.  Interest in the external Merchant group died out and everyone went back to this forum.

It would be great to have this SL Merchants group come back to life but it is near impossible to reach the critical mass of users / conversations needed to keep it alive - like SLUniverse is able to do.

If you want to see all the private forums and threads in the old group just IM me and I can approve your registration. 

[Pamela Galli]

We had and may still have a Super Sekret Merchants forum that you had to file a ticket to be admitted to -- a holdover from Xstreet and the previous forum here -- but I stopped checking because there were no new posts. 

THIS is where the Commerce Team have stated they will post updates. THIS is the forum that the Commerce Team will sometimes read and respond in. 

The mods do a pretty good job here -- you may notice we really do not have trolls or a lot of squabbling here, and that is because those ppl have been banned. YOu can carry on a conversation here. I just ignore whatever drive-by trolling there is.

OTOH there are tons of good merchants from Xstreet who no longer post here, a loss for everyone. 

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

here was the list of forums in the SL Merchant Group (including most of the forums you cant see unless you were registered)...

 

[Deja Letov]

Thank you Toy! I registered and Ill send you a message in game.

[Toysoldier Thor]

I saw you and "ISA" listed at new registered users that wanted to be validated.  I validated you both.  Obviously the threads in the forums are older (june 2010 and earlier) but you can get a flavor of how well it was working for a while and how the topics in the private merchant group could give more freedom for merchants to talk without LL overseeing / moderating nor customers watching.

I could easily send a bulk email to that membership to ask the 87 members (some likely have left SL) if there is any interest in re-igniting the merchant forum.  Sadly as great as it would be for this MERCHANT group to be alive and well, I would strongly predict that - like last time and like most other user groups/forums - about 10% of the members will be actively posting content and discussion and the rest will just quietly lurk and not get involved.  This is what kills most groups quickly.

I tried REALLLL hard to stimulate thread talk and posts but unless there was a critical mass of merchant members, the amount of new content generated was not enough for the lurkers to stay interested and not enough for the active participants to interact with.

[Deja Letov]

Thanks Toy! I will be pouring over the old threads...even if it is just for informational purposes. But if you ever start it up again, I'm on board!