To RODVIK - Request meeting with Merchants on CommerceTeam concerns

[Pamela Galli]

That may be true, Innula, but I don't see how any of the ways the SLM is botched for merchants has thus far provided any benefit for customers (except maybe handing out our merchandise and then refunding the money, but only dishonest customers would appreciate that, and from experience I know that is a small minority).

 

I am sure most merchants, if presented with an either / or choice between doing something benefitting the customer or the merchant, would choose customer, because the easier it is to buy the more it benefits merchants in the long run (so it is never really and either /or choice, which I did not think you meant to imply).

 

 

 

[Innula Zenovka]

My point was that I suspect the MP is regarded by LL as a bit of an expensive white elephant that needs a lot of attention, and the amount of staff resources they can devote to it must be limited.    For various reasons, I think they're likely to be far more interested in fixing things that directly affect the customer (botched deliveries, for example) than things that primarily affect merchants (ease of uploading stuff, payments for enhancements not being messed up, and so on).

[Toysoldier Thor]

This entire topic on LL's Commerce Team and Marketplace issues & Rodvik actually taking initial notice of how serious the customer concerns are in this area of this company has received some growing SecondLife community publicity.

A popular SL blogger Nalates Urriah posted a full blog on this thread and the growing issues that have been brought up in this thread.

http://blog.nalates.net/2012/10/13/second-life-market-place/

You all might find it interesting reading.

[Perrie Juran]

---

Medhue Simoni Wrote:

Finally note - Rodvik, if you want to get SL moving back into the right direction, it would be wise to make it easier for customers to find the right merchants, as we help our customers much more than simply selling them products.

---

Oh the book I could write on this!  With out its Gift Economy, users helping users, I don't think SL could last a week. 

As I've said before, the single biggest key to retaining New Users is retaining Old Users.  We are after all the ones in a World that is user created, the ones who make it happen.  We are the ones who build the places people go to and come up with the ideas of things for people to do.

And we are the PRIMARY TECH SUPPORT for the new user.

I wonder if the Lab realizes how much Tech Support it lost when it decimated the Main Land rental market with the implementation of Linden Homes.  The Land Lords and Ladies were primary contact points for help for the new users.  Maybe there is a correlation there.

If we are not happy campers, that is going to rub off on the new user.  If we are not excited, if we are not enthusiastic about SL, that is going to rub off on them.

I keep a folder in my Inventory, my own favorite places.  Any time a friend says to me they are bored I pass them a LM, tell them to check a place out.  And I always get a favorable response back. The number of Landmarks I have has been dwindling despite my being an avid explorer.  Because old users have left.  And that is not a good thing.

There is too much low hanging fruit that's been hanging too long that needs to be addressed.  This is critical to retaining the Old User.

I love SL, I really do.  But sometimes it frustrates the heck out of me.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

---

Toysoldier Thor wrote:

 

A popular SL blogger Nalates Urriah posted a full blog on this thread and the growing issues that have been brought up in this thread.

http://blog.nalates.net/2012/10/13/second-life-market-place/

You all might find it interesting reading.

---

Great summation post of this thread by Nalates.  Thank you for the link, Toy.

 

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Dear Rodvik,

 

Toysoldier started this thread with an open letter to you on the 8th of october. You answered only on the 11th. In France we would call this the speed of a snail. But well, at least you answered and thank you for this. 

Compares to the time you are taking to fix the issue with the displaying of wrong pics in the market place stores that has been pointed out via this forum and the jira and even tickets since march 2012; well, indeed, this time, your answer came close at the light speed.

But to be honnest, your answer doesnt tell much. Of course its already nice of you to tell us you and your team are reading us, but it wont be enough to fulfill us. We'd like to know quickly what are your intentions for making this market place working in a right way, and to beguin, when will we get delivery notifications, and when, finally, will these unrelevant pics disappear from our market place. Of course, there are a lot of others things to fix, but damn, ive never suspected that a company like yours could take more than 7 monthes to fix the issue with these wrong displayed pics on mp stores. For me, SL was a serious company, with competent team but after this, its not the way it looks. Really.

So well, lets say you were so busy that you didnt notice that poor merchants was complaining again and again about this but now that you said yourself you have read the entire thread and you keep doing it day after day, so you can not ignore anymore this problem. So i think legitimate that we expect now a fix for this specific issue really soon (really soon doesnt mean at all 7 monthes more, i bet you have understood).

 

@Toysoldier, thanks for having pointing out the mp issues and to have start this thread, i couldnt contribute before and add my voice to yours and to all the other pp who have writen here because of my busy rl schedule this week. So i wont add more, i think a lot have been said in a lot of these great posts i enjoyed reading.

@Faye. ive been really sorry to read your story. Except the loss of your inventory, i can say pretty much the same than you on the remaining of your first post and yes i guess the inventorty drama added to all what you said before has been too much.. i cant even imagine how i would be in such case. Some merchants are enough lucky, and they deserve it by their work, to have enough incomes to pay all they expenses with them and even turn L$ in rl money, but the majority of us, have still to put rl money in sl to make our business running and so we need a lot of passion and trust in our sl creation work to keep standing up. But sometimes, even this is not enough.

[WADE1 Jya]

In my eyes, efficiency, regularity, & speed of communication are vastly secondary issues. Who cares if we're all up & chatty day in & day out, or if this iron curtain remains standing between LL and SL's end users? If nothing much works correctly & the platform continues to shrink, nothing else matters. If everything works semi-okay at least, & the platform is growing, I am perfectly happy with essentially zero communication.

I do not believe LL is interested at this point in making the MAJOR INVESTMENTS into SL that it needs to survive. Their vision is entirely focused on the new non-SL products while SL flounders in semi-abandonment. The only changes SL sees anymore are very poorly implemented & are things nobody asked for or wants. Most of these changes are quite arguably only done for cost-cutting measures to make SL cheaper to operate.

I view the present situation as a big red flag that at the executive level at LL, SL is viewed as a product failure. They feel they've tried everything, and now feel SL is something only to cost-cut & monetize, not something worth investing resources into... they think it is only useful to them at this point as a revenue source to scoop cash out of into emergency diversification. You would not see things as they are today if they truly believed in a future for SL. This long-term executive viewpoint that there is no sense in trying anymore has coalesced into the nasty reality of SL we see today.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

 

Leaving aside the vexed question of whether the L$ is convertable currency or not, I cannot believe that the 5% transaction charges on MP sales amounts to much. How much is a cup of coffee in SF -- US$2 or thereabouts? So every L$10,000 spent in the MP amounts to enough commission to buy someone at LL a coffee at lunchtime . Lord only knows how much people have to spend there in order to pay the salaries of people who're tasked with maintaining and improving the MP.

 

---

Originally just went to look up that actual number for marketplace gross sales that was in the last quarterly report to be published: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-in-Q3-2011/ba-p/1166705

Of course the charts showing those Marketplace numbers are now gone, but after some digging I was able to get it from a comment I'd made on Darrius blog where I referenced the actual amount. The $1,183,000,000 for that quarter is from their stats:

"Quarterly gross Marketplace sales: $1,183,000,000

5% quarterly commission in L$: L$59,150,000

Converted to real dollars at a rate of 260 (just because), it’s roughly $227,500 USD for the quarter.

Roughly $76,000/month USD gross earnings from the Marketplace commission.

This isn’t complete because it doesn’t include advertising sales or purchases in real dollars (PayPal purchases on thr marketplace, which are inflated substantially from items purchased with L$)."

Agree the point has been made about sinks, value, currency and the important bits now lie in where do we go from here, but knowing the volume of sales the Marketplace is helpful in this context.

 

[Kala Bijoux]

I would like to see:

- demos better tied to products so they do not show up as their own listing

- ability for store owners to make their own sections/categories within their store

- better statistics - how many people who clicked on my featured listings actually bought it? How many people visited my "view similar items"? How did people find my listings?

- a showcase or treasury list as a way for shoppers to share their finds with each other. Think of Etsy's Treasury.  Iris Ophelia wrote a good post on this at NWN a few months ago. Search for term "marketplace" to find it. (I'd post the link but last time I checked it was not allowed to post links in the forums, tho that could be way old news.)

[Pamela Galli]

Yes I think that they do not make enough off the marketplace to justify the kind of manpower it needs --  the marketplace is SL's Vietnam: they can't decide whether to bomb Hanoi or just throw in the towel and go home.  

It occurs to me that SL Exchange had several employees -- either they were just part time, and did not earn that much money all together, or they were full time and somehow wrested more income out of the marketplace.  I do know their advertising was useful in many more ways than the currnet "enhancementss' plus you had reporting which allowed you to see which were generating clicks and sales, so maybe they were just bringing in more money than LL is able to. That would seem unlikely, tho, given how much more traffic SLM must get. 

 

I any case, It seems that LL bought Xstreet without a very clear idea of how much they would need to invest in it, both long and short term. 

[Darrius Gothly]

---

Pamela Galli wrote:

(snip) ... I any case, It seems that LL bought Xstreet without a very clear idea of how much they would need to invest in it, both long and short term. 

---

I still look back in puzzlement at their decision to purchase XStreet .. and then trash it for a 100% replacement. I talked with Brodesky during the ANS problems of the old XStreet about the problem it was facing, and he allowed as how the database underlying XStreet was fragile and prone to failure on a routine basis. But somehow the idea of actually fixing it was less enticing than the idea of replacing the whole thing. A decision that, if any of that crew was still around, they would no doubt be regretting.

At any rate, they chose to go down this path. They made that choice in the face of rabid and vociferous opposition from their customers. Any "pains" that choice now gives them are pains they earned on their own. It's something responsible people do .. accept the consequences of their own mistakes. From my knowledge of how you run your business Pamela, I know you not only are aware of this, but practice it with quiet maturity.

If only we could see the same from the Management at LL ...

[WADE1 Jya]

astute observations Pamela . i think the difference was the original Xstreet staff did it more for the love & were happy with less , not trying primarily to make silly amounts of money !

LL is aiming for silly amounts of money ! thinking corporately you just decide a project must hit a certain $$$$$ target & if it does not acheive your goal , you cut resources to the project to dustbin it. this i think is the difference why it was engaging & worthwhile for xStreet staff to do , and it doesn't 'work' for LL - corporate mindset vs. individual mindset .

[Darrius Gothly]

I'd like to add some additional experience to your post Wade. As many of you know, I was one of the many people involved in the development of one of the third-party sales sites: Metaverse Exchange (MVX). I joined the team late, after it was up and running, but when I joined, I became one of the primary developers responsible for writing the code that faced the customers (both Sellers and Buyers). During my tenure with MVX, I was directly responsible for adding such features as the Listing Enhancements and Listing Management improvements. (Making it easier and more intuitive when editing/managing the product listings.)

One of the longest discussions I had with the site's owner and creator involved the method used to place the Enhancements before the visitors to the site. Our primary goal was to make it 100% level and fair, no matter who the listing belonged to or how much they paid in total for all of their enhancements. From the absolute beginning, the underlying imperative was fairness and transparency. We even went so far as to create a post on the Forums attached to MVX describing in plain-language how we picked the enhancements to display, and how we calculated the number of "Views", "Clicks" and "Conversions."

During my entire time with MVX, I never once took a single penny (or L$) in compensation for my efforts. I knew going in that I would not be compensated "on the front side", and instead was content to trust that all of us involved would eventually make out okay if the site actually managed to survive. It was for us a labor of love and very much something that we believed was needed in the universe of Offline Sales for Virtual Products. Sadly the site did not survive and much of the excellent technology we created has been lost. Lost not only in the sense of the ideas behind some of MVX's features have not been seen in any other similar site, but also lost in that the benefits of those features has never been folded into the Marketplace.

One of those features, the ability to create variations of a single listing for such things as colors or permissions, has been requested many times as a feature needed within Marketplace. Personally I saw the troubles it created among the Sellers, partly because it was always contentious getting Sellers that didn't use it to begin, but also contentious among those that did use it feeling they were in a sense being cheated because their total number of listings were much lower than others. (They felt their total exposure was reduced as compared to those that did not fold variations into a single listing.)

But whether the feature is one that should or should not be implemented on Marketplace is not really the issue. The issue is that those of us selling on the Marketplace haven't a clue which way the Marketplace Dev Team has decided. It's one of many issues that has been requested time and time again, and to date it is still on the list of features that resurface from time to time. Until the Marketplace Dev Team says yes or no, it will continue to raise up and make itself known.

Wade, those of us involved in making MVX work did so "for the love of the idea", but we also brought every bit of our professional and human ethics to the job. Yes, it was because we were internally motivated that made us work stupid hours every day, every day of the week, but it was not the source of our professionalism and sense of fair play. Those were things we all gave to MVX, to our own creations, and to every job we held individually outside of SL and MVX.

The lack of "fair play" that pervades the Marketplace, the lack of attention to detail and the desire to do a good job are behaviors that every person expresses in various measure. What saddens me most is that they are expressed so often and so obviously in the actions of the Marketplace Dev Team. Further to the point, it saddens me that the management at LL seems not to care about this lack. If anything, they almost seem to promote it, and at the very least enable it by continuing to support the actions of the team and to support the "Secrecy" that surrounds those things that should be transparent to everyone.

"Just doing my job" versus "Following my dream" will indeed cause people to behave differently, and I think will also result in them performing at different levels, but it eventually falls to the management to make sure the final result never drops below levels of performance that at least meet community standards. My perception though is that the safety net that management should provide .. has not been there. Even though Rodvik has said they remain committed to provide that, I remain concerned that it will not happen.

Forgive my rambling "wall of text" response, but this is an issue that is consuming many hours of my think-space lately. As such, I continue to exorcise that demon by posting .. and hoping that at some point my words will strike a chord and inspire the management at LL to wake up and really invest in making things right by their customers. From my way of thinking, we stand once again at the edge of a critical moment in the life of Second Life .. and it once again falls to the management at LL to choose a path to follow. Despite all that has transpired to this point, I still remain hopeful that they will choose a path that results in positive growth for us all, and not just creates a simulated short-term gain in exchange for the much more valuable long-term viability of the platform.

[Toysoldier Thor]

So in hopes that Rodvik and the Commerce Team are all taking notes and will response with answers and/or actions in the next few days....

Rodvik, this is a question directed right at you as it has become clear to many in the community that you were the one spawned this policy and mandated it to be executed.    Also, no other Linden is willing to explain the reason behind your decision.  they have no legit reason to offer nor will they try to provide one. 

Only you have the authority to answer this question that everyone wants to know WHY

So my QUESTIONS to you Rodvik are:

Why did you force the Resident Jira to be Gagged / Closed so that SL Residents and even LL Staff could no longer collaborate on problems experienced on the grid / marketplace?  Even have the huge outcry from the SL Community as to the logic behind this decision and demands to reverse the decision - you and the LL executive stayed utterly quiet to explain the reasons.

So Rodvik... WHY ?     and would you consider reversing this decision?

 

I am sure you had good reasons as to why you would instruct your staff to gag such a critical SL diagnostic tool that did NOTHING POSITIVE to the SL community nor to your own LL development / support staff. 

But although your decision impacted several communities in SL, it directly further hurt and impacted the Merchants & Customers of MP even more.  That is why this question is completely relevent for this thread.

 

• Since the Commerce Team has all but hidden in its shell from the Merchant community since spring 2011, the merchants and even customers of MP have had to support each other more than ever.
• Severe problems that crop up in MP not only impact SL experience (i.e. cant log in or the sim crashed lagged), but a serious problem with MP impacts actual RL $ incomes and accounts of the Merchants and Customers of SL.
• One of the most effective tools in support is for a problem to be openly communicated and discussed and shared among the respective community.  And with almost no open participation from the actual team that runs the MP and in most cases - caused the problem with surprise changes that were not properly tested - the Residents JIRA was an invaluable tool.
• When it beomes clear in the Merchant forums that a problem is bubbling up, a JIRA was often created and even the LL staff engaged in it to help them resolve the problem.
• You might not like hearing this but in many cases it was the SL Merchants that isolated the source of the problem and pretty much handed the LL staf the problem to resolve by pin-pointing the issue - via the JIRA.
• Your LL development & Support staff in all areas (not just MP) during usergroup meetings and forum disucssions used the Resident JIRA as the most effective communications tool to reference active problems with residents.  This was ripped out of their hands too.
• Your decision to gag the JIRA not only was questionable but also ineffective since the function was/is so valuable that the function simply was forced to move into the SL Forums!  If your objective in gagging the JIRA was to hide problems happening on the SL grid (i.e. to hide your dirty laundry from new steam customers), it has not been accomplished as not these problems are more visible by forcing us to create problem threads in the forums that is far more easy for the larger community to find and read.

So, if your decision reduced your staff's ability to resolve problems faster by actively including us in the problem solving, and if your decision worsened the overall SL experience by letting serious problems stay hidden to fester much longer, and if your decision does not accomplish its goal of hiding SL problems......

WHY Rodvik?

Only you have the authority to tell us all why you did it.

[Luna Bliss]

When a new policy forces us to collect our money from customers after delivery failures, depending on our customers good will to actually pay us for what they received, this has crossed over to maliciousness (because LL can easily fix their mistake by refunding the $L, but through willful negligence they are choosing not to).

My concern is that this new policy is setting a dangerous precedent, one in which they feel free to deliver our content through the MP and not pay us for that delivery. If it happens infrequently I'm not concerned and don't consider it malicious, but the fact that the policy regarding failed deliveries has recently changed to where they have no intention of compensating our losses is something we should keep a close eye on.

I reluctantly deal with all the failings of the MP, but this latest development has gone too far. Hopefully this was the act of someone uninformed or making bad decisions and not reflecting a true change in policy regarding how they intend to deal with MP delivery failures in the future.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Ah, Rodvik, ... while we are having all your ears....i have also some other questions for you...

         --- Same as Toysoldier about the jira but well no need to say, indeed.

         --- Do you think your company looks credible when merchants pays for enhancements and they dont see the paid enhancement in the mp ? (this happened to me this summer, i didnt even deigned to submit a ticket, i have a full time rl job and  i work for my sl business as a second full time job, so you will understand i have better to do with my time than going for a lost cause. but guess what ? ive stopped buying any enhancement and specially after reading in this forum about the billing issue that happened just after).

    --- And at last, please answer this, can you explain me by what miracle the items with wrong pic displayed in my market place store, that link to mp homepage and so that i cant sell of course are still (for 2 of them) on my first page in my mp store (classified with relevance filter) before already sold items and considering the fact that the wrong pics items has never been sold ??? Why ??? Is it a new definition for "relevance search ? "... i wasnt aware about this... Or does these wrong items/pics/links have special dispensation ? Are they excluded of the relevance order and appear in the first page no matter what they are sold or not ? Isnt this the obvious evidence that your relevance filter is some kind of doubtful classification ? what relevance is it for these 4 or 5 items with wrong pic displayed and linked to the mp homepage i have in my mp store ? Normally they should have been at the end of the list with the items never sold ... but no. i have 2 of them on my first page and 2 other ones in my second page (with relevance order asked). So maybe im dumb, maybe im missing smth, maybe im wrong on the definition of relevance classification.... but i want you to explain me pls.... because on top to still have this wrong (and for some of them, ugly)  pics displayed since march 2012, they are in my 2 first pages ! so first seen. If you dont mind your company doesnt look serious and credible, i do mind my mp store look good and serious. Otherwise i wouldnt loose my time making adpics on the same style.  

    --- Fix your search by relevance filter so.

   --- And if you have still some minutes after, check the review system that is obviously a cheated system btw....

 

Again Rodvik, thanks for your attention. I know we prob seems rude, but well, you waited 3 days to tell us you are reading us and that we are welcome to tell you what is wrong with mp.... and after 7 monthes, we still have wrong pics displayed on our store and above all in first pages and still not a simple word on this topic from LL... so yes, we want to cooperate with you, we want to help you telling you what is wrong with the mp, but we need acts and a lil more than a " ive read the thread, and my team and i keep reading it day after day". So i hope you will soon give us evidence you have intention to do your part of the job. I wish you good luck, the job to do is huge... 

[Medhue Simoni]

It should also be pointed out that the ratio of product sold on the MP was lower the last time that they reported sales. Today, this ratio is significantly higher. I would also like to point out that the money made by LL on enhancements is likely more than what LL made on sales. Whatever the number, money made on enhancements is not some insignificant number. My last point would be that the MP supports the inworld activities, and if there were no MP, LL's bottom line would be signifcantly impacted.

[Medhue Simoni]

As far as communication goes, I've never found user group meetings to be all that useful. They might seems useful at times, but my opinion is that they give a false sense of usefulness. I feel this way because not every1 can be involved, and those that do get involved are there because they have the free time.

I'd rather see a monthly forum discussion with the Lindens. It can be more productive for every1. A group of Lindens would only have to donate an hour or 2 each month, and every1 could put in their 2 cents or concerns. My suggestion would be to have the forum meetings on the first monday of every month, with the head Linden giving their final statements or answers the following morning. In this case, each of us could come to the forum topic when it is most convenient to us. For the Lindens, they would only need to start the thread, and then periodically comeback to it and comment as time permits during that day, with the final statements on the next morning. I would also suggest that each post made be limited to the topic and replied to linking topics. A new topic would require a new post to the original thread, but with a renamed header.

IMHO, the last thing LL needs is more physical meetings.

[Toysoldier Thor]

There have been a few that do not see a need for restoration / establishment of weekly Marketplace User Group meetings - generally for their beliefs that according to them its a waste of time, or they do not personally believe there is value, or it couldnt be structured to allow all to attend.

Those opinion are acceptable and if these individuals do not see value nor wish to participate in these weekly meetings - no one would be forcing these people to participate.

As long as the Commerce Team does not take these opinions to mean they should not restore them.  Although there is no perceived value to them, there is clearly a "bigger picture" value that these meetings would have to repairing the seriously flawed relationship that currently exists betwen the Commerce Team and the Merchant community.

Among the long list of things that are wrong with MP and the LL Commerce Team... the huge communication wall that the Commerce team has built is one of the top factors.  Solving this problem by NOT deploying increased frequency of meetings and forcing the two sides to 2-way engage interactively is NOT a solution.  The solution to walls that were created from a lack of communications is.... MORE COMMUNICATIONS.

for the small amount of time it takes up of the commerce team's time, the value of having these 1 or 2 hours of your week invested in these meetings would be huge.

So, Commerce Team, please establish the semi-weekly or weekly Commerce User Group meetings.  For those that do see value in these meetings - we will make sure to attend.  For those that see its a waste.... they simply do not have to attend.  I suspect many will attend as many do believe there is a need for this frequently cycling 2-way interaction.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

i agree with you Medhue. This sound a better idea. First people who live far from San Francisco time zone, we  be also able to be part of the discussion. Second, this will encourage people to discuss quietly and with more objectivity than in the fire of a live meeting. And third, because even the one who are not part of the thread, whatever the reason, will still be able to read and know what have been said by everyone who joined the debate.

So yes, good idea. But both sides have to respect the contract, otherwise it will be useless .

 

PS to Toysoldier : i know what you mean, but you have also to understand that not everyone is living in usa with us time zone. so unless this group are planning to work for 24 hours following, i dont see how this could be working in an equal way. i dont think europeans merchants are less important than us one (neither more), but will we be forced too to wake up during our nights for our voice will be heard ?

and what propose Medhue is a regular meeting too, with both parts participation, but just the way is the forum and not a live meeting. So i still think his propostion is more equal.

[Toysoldier Thor]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

---

Innula Zenovka wrote:

 

Leaving aside the vexed question of whether the L$ is convertable currency or not, I cannot believe that the 5% transaction charges on MP sales amounts to much. How much is a cup of coffee in SF -- US$2 or thereabouts? So every L$10,000 spent in the MP amounts to enough commission to buy someone at LL a coffee at lunchtime . Lord only knows how much people have to spend there in order to pay the salaries of people who're tasked with maintaining and improving the MP.

 

---

Originally just went to look up that actual number for marketplace gross sales that was in the last quarterly report to be published:

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/The-Second-Life-Economy-in-Q3-2011/ba-p/1166705

Of course the charts showing those Marketplace numbers are now gone, but after some digging I was able to get it from a comment I'd made on Darrius blog where I referenced the actual amount. The $1,183,000,000 for that quarter is from their stats:

"Quarterly gross Marketplace sales: $1,183,000,000

5% quarterly commission in L$: L$59,150,000

Converted to real dollars at a rate of

260 (just because),

it’s roughly $227,500 USD for the quarter.

Roughly $76,000/month USD gross earnings from the Marketplace commission.

This isn’t complete because it doesn’t include advertising sales or purchases in real dollars (PayPal purchases on thr marketplace, which are inflated substantially from items purchased with L$)."

Agree the point has been made about sinks, value, currency and the important bits now lie in where do we go from here, but knowing the volume of sales the Marketplace is helpful in this context.

---

Thanks Dart for quantifying the estimated quaterly revenue that LL is making from Marketplace - even if you have only calculated the revenue made from the 5% commission on MP sales. 

I would adjust the caluculation to be closer to the long standing currency exchange seen in Lindex of 248 - not 260.  as such, this would adjust the revenue to :   $238.5K US per quarter or $955K US per year.

And yes - this revenue does not include the US$ sales, Listing Enhancements and Currency Excange revenue. So its very safe to say that LL makes well over $1 million US a year from MP and commerce activities.

And for those that think that this revenue is fake revenue because they are charging %5 commissions charged to us in $L... you need to remember that this revenue is a direct sink and it means LL can remove the respective currency out of the currency account that they cannot touch unless they generated the $L revenue.

As such, it should be reminded to all that LL is not running the MP as a convenience to is SL Resdients at a cost to LL.  They make a nice profit from the sales of our creations on their MP.  PS... if LL decided to shut down the MP and if all the sales went back inworld where LL cannot collect any commissions nor where they could not sell any advertising.... it would directly negatively impact LL's bottomline.

Just to point out that its in LL's best interest to fix MP and restore trust in the MP.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Yes I understand your points on the logistics of the scheduling of the User Group meetings... but...

First of all, there are several other User Group meetings successfully held by other LL teams.  Although its not attended by 100's of SL Residents each week and not convenient for most residents... the fact that some residents do make time and to communicate with these other LL teams has huge value to ALL SL RESIDENTS.  Even if you and I cannot attend these meetings... I have seen the value from these weekly meetings many times over.

As such, even if the Marketplace weekly meetings were to be held only at mid-day SLT times (a time I could also not attend since I have a RL job at the same time as LL's business hours), I would still 100% endorse the idea because I know the Merchant community is huge and enough of my fellow merchants would attend to represents most of the critical interests / concerns I would have.

Also, you say that "we all dont live in the US" and that would be a problem for you.  Well to be honest with you, if I were to live in Europe I would be able to attend more LL user group meetings because it would outside my working hours.  What I am saying is that User Group meetings will never ever be able to accomodate everyone.  That doesnt make the meetings of no value. 

Also, the Commerce Team could have variable meeting days/times each week - one earlymorning SLT and one late evening SLT.  This would increase the range of merchants that could attend.

Finally, having weekly meetings does not mean that the Forum threads lead by LL cant still happen.  In fact I would suggest that the meeting minutes be part of these forums so that all are aware of what went on during the weekly meetings and conversations can continue.

The critical factor to resolve communications issues between LL and Merchants is to get LL to sit down with ANY MEMBERS of the Merchant community.... whomever they are and no matter how many attend the weekly meetings.

 

[JoJo Aurelia]

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Trinity Yazimoto wrote:

 

@Faye. ive been really sorry to read your story. Except the loss of your inventory, i can say pretty much the same than you on the remaining of your first post and yes i guess the inventorty drama added to all what you said before has been too much.. i cant even imagine how i would be in such case. Some merchants are enough lucky, and they deserve it by their work, to have enough incomes to pay all they expenses with them and even turn L$ in rl money, but the majority of us, have still to put rl money in sl to make our business running and so we need a lot of passion and trust in our sl creation work to keep standing up. But sometimes, even this is not enough.

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The discouraging part for me was I was not breaking even. So, how could I recreate my inventory, example all the uploads. Many of my textures I could use over and over in other builds, but they were gone, too. The ones I buy, gone, too.  The time to contact each merchant was becoming stressful to explain, especially if I bought so long ago--say one year or more and I am asking for copy. My copy boxes, well, some I find, many were in the file I lost, so up and down I was going trying to figure this all out...but then, I say, "wait," why you doing this? They'll not help me if it happens again, and always they are kind of mean in customer service. They only say for everything: "do clean uninstall and remove all viewers." This is "pat" answer to any problem I had over the years. So, as my help ticket posted on my blog kind of indicates how I was confused because, ok, I frist think I can fix this, then day after day I find this gone and that.  I was used to searching my inventory and the item was there, but it was like, no, it's not there... then discover many other items gone too, as I explained. I was putting money into SL that I don't have....many people are hurting economically.  But I loved SL and I do it to be here.  But when they give me the quote that we play out our own risk, but they take our money at no risk to them, I just think, wait...what is wrong with me? It's not them--it's me, because I am dumb to keep paying when I know they not help. Oh well...I just wanted them to give me copies of MP items and then maybe try find my items, especially all the texture uploads and my skirts I make, and those skirts take HOURS of time to do. Thankfully I didn't lose my folders I had uploaded to MP. Those are intact.  A good thing. But as I say, I was warn out from everything going on in fashion here--and mesh was new wrench and glutting more and more with everyone buying template mesh and texuring same designs--I try some but, really, thought they were not so good--but there are people who are doing really good, and now I'm worn out and thinking, can I make mayself learn this too and be really good or just sorta good?  What is my future anyways with mesh here?  I was just tired of it and the loss was just a wake up call for me.  Others maybe they would push through the loss and slowly rebuild, and I respect that, but I spend a lot of money ( many do) here and just knew I couldn't keep going at that financial rate--$75 each month plus premium account, well that is a lot for me to spend on no guarantees.  I still have love to do it, but just afraid to take a chance again with my real money. So I just need time to think and do other things in Real Life and maybe oneday I'll have ideas about what to do in the future here. I had to walk away to just get new and better perspective. But Linden does not care that I left, they didn't want my money because someone else comes to give them the money.  The last note was just how much time it would be to fix all this. Anyways, thanks all for kind words. I was just sad and depressed as I said and didn't know how to express this loss or what to do about it and I felt alone and foolish for the thousands I invested in building a future on sand.

 

[Couldbe Yue]

I was over in the beta grid the other day and noticed my inventory hasn't been refreshed since about june 2009. So if there's any periodic refresh happening I'm not seeing it, despite going in there a couple of times a year.

The old way it worked was when you first log into the grid it downloaded everything that was in your current live inventory. I can't remember if you said you'd been in the beta grid before you tried to recover your inventory.  If you hadn't then it's possible all it did was pull in whatever was left, which is why there was nothing to recover.  I know this is absolutely no help to you but it might explain why it didn't work.

 

[JoJo Aurelia]

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Couldbe Yue wrote:

I was over in the beta grid the other day and noticed my inventory hasn't been refreshed since about june 2009. So if there's any periodic refresh happening I'm not seeing it, despite going in there a couple of times a year.

The old way it worked was when you first log into the grid it downloaded everything that was in your current live inventory. I can't remember if you said you'd been in the beta grid before you tried to recover your inventory.  If you hadn't then it's possible all it did was pull in whatever was left, which is why there was nothing to recover.  I know this is absolutely no help to you but it might explain why it didn't work.

 

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Oh well... Merchants should have someway to control their inventory backups. I would pay for that extra service. Is this too far fetched?