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Ongoing issue: flood of freebies on all marketplace search results


Belldandy Schmajuk
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This is absolutely ridiculous. I had the number one best selling item in the weapons category and now it is plummeting off the page along with everyone else's items. First page is now filled with freebies. I am sorry but I have to agree that it is quite unfair (and stupid) for LL to do this if it's not some kind of glitch. The reason it is stupid is because I cannot imagine how much money LL is losing on those comissions and fees and listing enhancements that we pay to put our stuff up there. And as was said before, high quality items that people put their blood sweat and tears into, running entire businesses off of are being eaten alive by 0 L$ items that people were using to promote their STORES (which is what LL says the purpose of freebies is) or by items that are a few old prims slapped together with a 2006 script that only half works. Linden Labs is doing real damage to people's REAL LIVES with this one and residents are NOT seeing the nicer high quality items that they really want.:matte-motes-angry: This is no joke.

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I'm sorry but, are you freaking kidding me?

You weapons are at most $40L. Griefer weapons at that.

Best selling is just that, the best selling items. Whether they are $2000L or $1L. 99% of SL users do not sort by best selling. they search for a specific thing and sort by relevance. By the way, most SLers with any money don't buy freebies. So I am not sure what you are worried about.

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Spica Inventor wrote:

hehe. It looks like L.L. finally decided to stop pumping the expensive stuff to the top of the list and have the search listings by relevance based solely by sales volume. Seems things around a 1000L$ where being pumped to the top for a while. I don't know how they are weighting things now, but it seems much less biased toward expensive stuff last I tried my typical search phrase. Hopefully prices will come down more now so that alot more peeps will come in and play the game as a result. ;-)

You certainly have some imagination  :)  but no, it won´t happen.

What is at stake here is the reputation of the system as a set of "clear rules", because in reality no matter which rules are in play (even this aberrant update), merchants always adapt and succeed, because the only path to a sucessful product is quality, sucess wont come from a broken update based on who knows what criteria, and the "official LL aid to the third market world" is really hurting his own pockets since the biggest sellers are being hurt, and hence the commisions for LL are reduced as well, is my guess. What merchants do not like in any market is a set of rules who are constantly broken, or definitly "broken" per se: no rule at all to succeed, just pure randomless, in such an scenario is becomes harder and harder for customers to reach the right products: those merchants who "deserve the sales", I could not put it more elegantly.

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Just saying.....

After thinking about this some I wonder if the change has to do with the impending Steam deal.  They may have changed search to purposely put the freebies and low priced items on top in case a Steamer takes a look to see how much things cost in SL. The pitch being , Join SL as a premium member, get a free Linden Home and all this other free or cheap stuff. 

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

I'm sorry but, are you freaking kidding me?

You weapons are at most $40L. Griefer weapons at that.

Best selling is just that, the best selling items. Whether they are $2000L or $1L. 99% of SL users do not sort by best selling. they search for a specific thing and sort by relevance. By the way, most SLers with any money don't but freebies. So I am not sure what you are worried about.

Well.. just imagine the case of Mr. "I", my beloved competitor, he was ranked mm... 6 in relevance also best selling.. since this update, he lost ground on both categories completely, his product is pretty deep in the list and surrounded by freebies because a flood of freebies got an unfair ranking from one day to another due to some "fine tuning" done by the commerce team (their own words in the reply I got).

But wait!, these "freebies" did not get their position by hard working and steady sales, no!, not at all, they got these positions thanks to a poorly implemented algorithm update by the commerce team on MP, now, can you tell my beloved competitor he must not be angry at all? and that most SLers wont buy freebies while he is not getting a single sale because the system decided to kick him out from the search results?.

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remember that the commission isn't revenue (except in an indirect way but I've not really seen any evidence that the mlp has ever increased the amount of money brought into sl).


Think of this as the first salvo in Rods threat to help make it easier to monetise our products and you'll be fine.

 

edited for spelling, it's too early in the day.

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Belldandy Schmajuk wrote:


Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

I'm sorry but, are you freaking kidding me?

You weapons are at most $40L. Griefer weapons at that.

Best selling is just that, the best selling items. Whether they are $2000L or $1L. 99% of SL users do not sort by best selling. they search for a specific thing and sort by relevance. By the way, most SLers with any money don't but freebies. So I am not sure what you are worried about.

Well.. just imagine the case of Mr. "I", my beloved competitor, he was ranked mm... 6 in relevance also best selling.. since this update, he lost ground on both categories completely, his product is pretty deep in the list and surrounded by freebies because a flood of freebies got an unfair ranking from one day to another due to some "fine tuning" done by the commerce team (their own words in the reply I got).

But wait!, these "freebies" did not get their position by hard working and steady sales, no!, not at all, they got these positions thanks to a poorly implemented algorithm update by the commerce team on MP, now, can you tell my beloved competitor he must not be angry at all? and that most SLers wont buy freebies while he is not getting a single sale because the system decided to kick him out from the search results?.

You are stuck on the "best selling" filter.. i have asked many many people in SL that use the MP how they sort things... number one answer: RELEVANCE!!

Get off your high horse and deal with it. Are you still selling things? if so stop complaining, if not perhaps you need to revamp things.

 

 

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Screw it, you know what. i went onto the Mp, under the avater accessories>jewelry>rings catgory and hit best selling.... you spout off about freebies and cheap items pushing the "high quality merchants" off the fromt page. Just to point out, JCNY has a 10L mood ring in the 3d spot. perhaps you need to rethink which merchants are to blame.

 

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Rival Destiny wrote:

So you are saying that LL has deliberately 'fine tuned' the search system so that their revenue stream will generate far LESS revenue?

Is this some new kinda masochistic marketing trend?

 there is no tuning..it is their default template which is higest sales volume and age > oldest first as the algorythm..

Incompetent marketing trend is more acurate.

 

 

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Belldandy Schmajuk wrote:

But wait!, these "freebies" did not get their position by hard working and steady sales, no!, not at all, they got these positions thanks to a poorly implemented algorithm update by the commerce team on MP, now, can you tell my beloved competitor he must not be angry at all? and that most SLers wont buy freebies while he is not getting a single sale because the system decided to kick him out from the search results?.

Couldn't have worded it better myself. So true!

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Drake1 Nighfire wrote:

Just to point out, JCNY has a 10L mood ring in the 3d spot. perhaps you need to rethink which merchants are to blame.


I'm sorry I have to disagree with this statement, and correct me if I've read or taken it wrong. I have a few inexpensive items myself, lost leaders, to encourage people to take a look at my store. This is common business practice and happens in RL all the time. That's busines. But even my inexpensive lost leader items, i do not expect, nor do I want preferential treatment for. I had always thought LL filtered those cheaper items and they were not placed as important, which is exactly how I would want it to remain.

I don't think good merchants who sell very quality items should be made to feel bad because they have a few cheap lost leader items to bring people into their stores. This is LL's responsibility to make this right. When you walk into a store in RL you are not faced with rows and rows and rows and.. (you get the idea) of cheap and free items before you reach the higher ticket items at the back of the store. That would be rediculous.

I feel very fortunate to have a business in SL, I have enjoyed many aspects of it, what I don't enjoy is this constant change which almost always affects the money going into my pocket. Having a business in RL you have to deal also with economy, world disasters, holidays etc that affect sales, but having a business in SL... add to those things the constant change in how people find your store that can plumet your sales on any given day/week/month. We are at their mercy and it is a very helpless feeling to sit and watch the sales flop and know there isn't really anything you can do about it. Even if they change it this time, we just wait for next time...

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Drake1 Nightfire wrote:

 

Best selling is just that, the best selling items. Whether they are $2000L or $1L. 99% of SL users do not sort by best selling. they search for a specific thing and sort by relevance. By the way, most SLers with any money don't buy freebies. So I am not sure what you are worried about.

"99% of SL users do not sort by best selling. they search for a specific thing and sort by relevance."

How do you know that?

Actually, when I am looking for something I expect RELEVANT results in response to the search term I entered REGARDLESS of the price.  So the "sort by relevance" is not only redundant, it is dumb, dumb amd dumber to have in the drop down.  No matter how you sort, be it by Best Seller, Newest, Price, etc, the results should be relevant already.

After enterring my search term, the first thing I do is change to display 96 items.  These are no longer the days of the 300 BAUD Modem.  I have a 12MB connection and my computer can handle all the data.  What I don't want to do is click through a hundred pages.

From there I will either switch to 'best selling' or 'priced low to high.'  I am always looking for the best bang for my buck.

But on a side note, talking about relevance, upon searching for "ring," after switching to 96 items, the results suggested for me 4 cl*t rings, a half dozen belly rings, several n*pple rings, but NO  c*ck rings. It wasn't until I got to the second page that they figured out I have a ding-a-ling and not a hoo-haw with one item listed.

 

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Rival Destiny wrote:

When I search, I use 'newest first'.  I think this is an individual choice.  Also, I may use other search categories, but most prevalent is 'newest first'.

I may refine my search terms after the innitial results.

But you know, if the seach engine was done right, if for instance I was searching for C*ck Rings, I should be able to click on that and tell it, "More Like These."  Now if Marvin ever gets a GF, he may be interested in buying her a cl*t ring for a gift.  In that case I should be able to select one and say "more like these."

 

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the OP stated that JCNY only had a freebie on the front page  (I'm assuming the 10L item is what she calls a freebie) and all of their other best selling items were getting pushed down the list due to the other freebies.. as i stated many times, perhaps the freebies are selling better than the higher priced items since a lot of people have less money to spend in SL.

I have no issue with anyone having freebies, i have an issue with complaints that the freebie are outselling the higher priced stuff. You can't have it both ways, either you want them to be sorted by best selling or not. price should not enter the equation. if you don't want to see freebies set the min price to $50L.

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"You certainly have some imagination  **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" />  but no, it won´t happen.

What is at stake here is the reputation of the system as a set of "clear rules", because in reality no matter which rules are in play (even this aberrant update), merchants always adapt and succeed, because the only path to a successful product is quality, success wont come from a broken update based on who knows what criteria, and the "official LL aid to the third market world" is really hurting his own pockets since the biggest sellers are being hurt, and hence the commissions for LL are reduced as well, is my guess. What merchants do not like in any market is a set of rules who are constantly broken, or definitely "broken" per se: no rule at all to succeed, just pure randomless, in such an scenario is becomes harder and harder for customers to reach the right products: those merchants who "deserve the sales", I could not put it more elegantly".

 

Obviously it was deliberately changed as I have monitored it regularity and haven't noticed this direction change happening yet. And it's not the third world LL is considering, but it seems they may finally be thinking about the other 90% of the 1st world population instead, and how it would be good to have a growing population base in S.L. instead of a shrinking one.  I have long understood that S.L. was deliberately made for the rich and the greedy and in reality for those making six figure salaries (and they often throw money around without a second thought, justifying the great price differences on like items in many cases), and the merchants that cater to them (marketing efforts by L.L. trying to convince peeps as to the opposite asside), , but S.L. was slowly dieing from that special preference, so it would appear that they are starting (finally) to change their tune out of necessity. I hope land tier prices are next. Further I hope, and it should start now, that the quality item selling for 100 L$ will now finally outpace the sales volume of the similar quality item selling for 1000L$. It will be good for everyone involved for that to be the case. ;-)

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"in all honesty i think freebies and demos should have their own tab at the top, like merchants/stores and none of those items should show up unless you use those tabs. I really dont need to see merchants/stores with the same name as my search word".

I've said the exact same thing before which is exactly why L.L has not changed it I believe. We need to use reverse psychology when it comes to L.L. me thinks. hehe ;-D

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