Inworld Marketing and Advertising Best Practices

[Luna Bliss]

Phil, I totally understand your frustration regarding all the changes that cause in-world stores to have less visibility. I love the store I worked so hard creating, with the gardens below, and to have the Marketplace shoved down my throat (if I wanted my store to survive) wasn't what I wanted....another huge task...it takes mega amounts of time to make those listings and get them up on the web. But the fact is, I don't think many stores will survive in the future that don't have a MP presence.
The good news is that since I started getting more listing onto the MP my sales are finally improving, so ironically my best in-world marketing at this time is to have a good MP presence. And I"m looking at how it's beneficial in other ways too -  for example, all these photos I take of my content and all the descriptions I write - all of this packaging can be taken to other grids. Who knows, maybe SL will even be connected to other grids one day and deliveries will go to multiple grids.
So get that stuff packaged up Phil !

One best business practice I'd like to share regards how I make the connection between the MP @ my in-world store. I've started putting out an info cube with an URL giver in it next to my in-world store items so that shoppers can click this and go directly to the item at my MP store. I know, at first I thought this might be stupid since I'd be getting less money if they purchased it on the MP, but I believe it actually increases sales overall - you can see all the details of the item so much better on the MP - so much more detail than a note card can provide (and note cards often don't open). Plus, there is a certain percentage of people that seem to trust purchasing @ the MP store more than in-world.

But back to the changes SL forces on us, it is very hard to keep going sometimes with so many changes. Many of them seem like errors in judgement, and probably some are and some aren't, but what can we do but keep adapting as best we can. This recent plan...the march to Sesame Street/Disneyland...seems like a big error to me at this time (I hope I'm wrong though). We are pretty much dragged along as SL tries to find fame and fortune, and most of the time they don't seem to see that the people already in the world are the ones they should be focusing on (well, the ones that are still left anyway). In other words, it's a niche market...but it's a big world and could create a big niche - can't this be enough?

[Jura Shepherd]

 

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Luna Bliss wrote:

One best business practice I'd like to share regards how I make the connection between the MP @ my in-world store. I've started putting out an info cube with an URL giver in it next to my in-world store items so that shoppers can click this and go directly to the item at my MP store. I know, at first I thought this might be stupid since I'd be getting less money if they purchased it on the MP, but I believe it actually increases sales overall - you can see all the details of the item so much better on the MP - so much more detail than a note card can provide (and note cards often don't open). Plus, there is a certain percentage of people that seem to trust purchasing @ the MP store more than in-world.

 

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That's pretty cool Luna, thanks! That's also a clean and fairly simple way to send an item to an alt, or as a gift to a friend.

 

[Robert Galland]

Nice post, Luna.

Phil, you were kind enough to share some advice with me about search last year.  I have to echo Luna's advice in an attempt to return the favor.  I also suggest you consider getting your items prepped for the Marketplace and get a presence there.  Whether you agree with why we have to adapt or not, we have to or we face fading away. 

I did not put too much effort into Xstreet and had some less than professional looking pictures etc.  I spent the bulk of my New Years weekend updating all of my imagery etc. on the MP and the results were immediate and have been worth it.

Good luck.

[Rene Erlanger]

 

 

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

 

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Rene Erlanger wrote:

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

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So I'll put a challenge to you Mr. Shepherd ... trot out the names of those "Zero Investment Successes" and lets see how much of that Zero is really quite a bit larger than you make it out to be.

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It get's tiresome reading the ramblings of a Corporate shill! :smileytongue:

He thinks of investment as being only in monetary terms, when in fact it's the time spent (man-hours)....an opportunity cost.

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I don't really think that needed a disclaimer that I was talking about up front monetary cost. Or that a hobby turned business isn't a cost as all hobbies are cost, otherwise the government says you're a business over a certain threshold.

Or that until you're an actual business whether you consider time an investment or not is pretty arbitrary, unless it's actually on your books and factored into your accounting. Otherwise it's generally nothing more than personal preference to use as a factor in costing. The whole time-as-cost-thing isn't engraved in stone, it's an entrepreneur-ism

.

Takes more work to nitpick out details that can't all be covered in a forum post than a simple understanding of what someone meant, or might have meant. I think that particular time sink might be considered a time related cost as well.

About those advertising and marketing practices you find useful and worth sharing, anything?

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Shows your lack of knowledge about value of  a business.....unit cost per product includes cost of materials, cost of labour and indirect costs.....in SL, theres not so much cost of materials, other than uploads, buying textures, buying full perm sculpties etc......most of the cost related to the SL business are Labour intensive (including ideas & design) , you can't simply dismiss it.

 

• 1. Material
  • A. Direct material (uploads, sculpties, textures, scripting services, full perm animations & poses etc etc)

• 2. Labor
  • A. Direct labor

• 3. Overhead
  • A. Indirect material  (cost of adverting your business, holding events or in-world shows etc)
  • B. Indirect labor (labour related to the above)
  --------------------------------------

In general :

 

• 1. Production or works overheads
• 2. Administration overheads
• 3. Selling overheads
• 4. Distribution overheads (not applicable, you could count 5% LL commissions on Marketplace at a stretch)

You can not ignore the investment of labour, it's a opportunity cost.....i.e could I spend the same amount of time developing a SL business elsewhere including RL.....would it be better to work for McDonalds for 50/ 60 hours per week than investing time in a SL business? Would i get more income? The SL time is very vaulable indeed....in fact the most critical costs to a in-world Merchant.

Its slightly different for Land Barons....as it involves greater monetary investment  as well as labour investment. Again the similar arguments hold true, would i get a greater return of investment (e.g 5,000 USD for purchasing say 10 sims) or investing in stocks, or from interest in savings account or from some other financial instrument. Again cost of labour still needs to be considered (i.e the cost of spending time filling those sims with clients, managing those sims and advertising those sims)

You cannot ignore time spent in SL developing a business if it's not merely a hobby.

[Rene Erlanger]

 

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Luna Bliss wrote:

One best business practice I'd like to share regards how I make the connection between the MP @ my in-world store. I've started putting out an info cube with an URL giver in it next to my in-world store items so that shoppers can click this and go directly to the item at my MP store. I know, at first I thought this might be stupid since I'd be getting less money if they purchased it on the MP, but I believe it actually increases sales overall - you can see all the details of the item so much better on the MP - so much more detail than a note card can provide (and note cards often don't open). Plus, there is a certain percentage of people that seem to trust purchasing @ the MP store more than in-world.

 

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There are Marketplace signs (sold or given freely on MP) that can be placed in in-world stores...a click will take you straight to the Marketplace Store. I have those in most of my in-world shops.....it's particularly useful for gifting, if one doesn't have a gifting system set up in-world store.

 

[Gavin Hird]

 

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Rene Erlanger wrote:

 

There are Marketplace signs (sold or given freely on MP) that can be placed in in-world stores...a click will take you straight to the Marketplace Store. I have those in most of my in-world shops.....it's particularly useful for gifting, if one doesn't have that facility set up in-world.

 

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Could you provide a link for this. I have the old xstreet signs, but I have not found any new with updated logos on....

Thanks,

[Phil Deakins]

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Luna Bliss wrote:

So get that stuff packaged up Phil !

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Not me, Luna. LL's overall treatment of its paying customers was a big reason why I decided to close the store long before the marketplace arrived, and I've been letting the store run down ever since I made that decision. It's been a year and a half so far and it's still paying enough to make it worthwhile, so it's still open. In the last 6 months or so, I've seen LL's continual unscrupulous treatment of its paying customers concerning the marketplace, and I've posted about it, that's all. If the marketplace had never existed, it wouldn't have made any difference to me. I'm still going to close the store when it's no longer worth keeping open, because of LL's bad treatment of their paying customers over the years, and there's no way in the world that I'd let them have a cent more than is necessary - so they'll get no commissions on sales from me.

 

[Rene Erlanger]

 

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Gavin Hird wrote:

Could you provide a link for this. I have the old xstreet signs, but I have not found any new with updated logos on....

Thanks,

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https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/SecondLife-MarketPlace-Merchant-Sign-Boxed-wInstructions/1798639

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Customisable-Marketplace-Sign/1752854

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Marketplace-Sign-Link-To-Your-Marketplace-Store/1751654

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Marketplace-Merchant-Sign/1639745

[Gavin Hird]

Ah! Brilliant!

Since there is a XSTREETSL category where the magic box is, and there were no signs there, I assumed they never had been moved over. 

Perhaps some Linden person could consolidate these resources to the same location?

[Luna Bliss]

YW Jura

Rene...thanks for the kind words the other month when my business was doing so poorly. I like those signs, but would be good to check for script time...a simple URL Giver script might use less time and cut down on script usage if you place a lot of them.

Phil...yeah it can be a hard decision...when is any thing/person so corrupt or so troubling that you totally write them off.  I would just hate to see you not do something you enjoy because of your bad experiences here.

[Luna Bliss]

" Nice post, Luna.

Phil, you were kind enough to share some advice with me about search last year.  I have to echo Luna's advice in an attempt to return the favor.  I also suggest you consider getting your items prepped for the Marketplace and get a presence there.  Whether you agree with why we have to adapt or not, we have to or we face fading away.   "

Thanks Robert.  Yes Phil helped me once with Search too, and was why I was more motivated to offer some support myself.

[Phil Deakins]

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Luna Bliss wrote:

Phil...yeah it can be a hard decision...when is any thing/person so corrupt or so troubling that you totally write them off.  I would just hate to see you not do something you enjoy because of your bad experiences here.

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I didn't actually have any specific bad experiences with LL as such, althouth I'd consider their unscrupulousness with marketplace a bad experience if I weren't already in the process of closing, and their failure to provide paying customers with reasonable support would be another. I merely watched them do so many things against their own paying customers, many of which didn't affect me at all. Probably the biggest single thing was the homestead fiasco which cost people a lot of real money - entirely through LL's fault. It didn't cost me anything but that, along with many smaller things, turned me totally against LL and caused me not to want anything to do with them or with SL. The only reason I'm still trading is because I'm not stupid enough to turn off a flow of real money while it's still worth having.

LL generates that sort of feeling in lots of people much of the time. I'm not an unusual case - many people have shut up shop and gone because of LL's doings. They know they do and they don't care that they do it.. As I've said many times in posts, there are some good Linden employees but the decision makers are incompetent to run Linden Lab and Second Life.

[Marcus Hancroft]

I came to the Merchants forum because I have been working recently on creating products (I'm proud of each of them) and I'm ready to start selling them!  I've been scouting around for locations to open a small store and wanted to see if there were any suggestions here or ideas on how to set up a small location inworld (a mall store or something).  I have found a couple of places I like and I could easily pay the rent box and proceed to open.

That would be foolish though until I understand how inworld stores work and the things I need to do outside of simply making the vendors, rezzing my products and crossing my fingers. 

I have had a very successful seller in SL who has many satellite stores and a huge main store (and who is also a friend) tell me that in SL, "like breeds like."  In other words, I need to put my inworld store in areas where the same sorts of products are sold and not put it in a totally unrelated area. 

So, I came to this forum to find out even more. 

I've read every post.  Thought about every viewpoint expressed here, and, I gotta tell ya folks...I'm not sure now WHAT to do.  I don't want to open a small store and then have to close it a month later.  I don't want to have to lose part of my sales to commissions (I would actually change my prices to reflect the commissions, so they would be more expensive to purchase on the Marketplace than they would in an inworld store).

Hearing about all these places that are closing, land that is getting abandoned, a search function that is hit or miss, makes me wonder if it's even worth the effort.  :smileysad:

[Dartagan Shepherd]

@Marcus -- Don't sweat it, it's like any other risk, but like everywhere else, only you control the amount you risk.

A good general rule is to not over-extend your efforts. Start with a small store, and at least some of your Marketplace traffic may drive people to your store to look at your products, aside from any marketing efforts of your own.

Don't expand until you're comfortable doing so, either with resources you're willing to spend or do that slowly from only profits that you put back into your store and your expansion.

It's only as much risk or chance as you decide to make of it and no one can ultimately tell you whether to test the waters with a toe, or to dive right in.

In any case, have fun doing it and don't extend your risk beyond your fun, and ability to enjoy what you do!

[Marcus Hancroft]

Howdy, Dartagan! 

Thank you for the info!  UPDATE:  I decided to open a small store on a small parcel I liked a lot on a commercial sim in Lionheart!  I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it and decided right then and there to snatch it up before someone else did!  So, I got my parcel, opened my store and set the land to show in search.  Also, I have listed most all my products in the Marketplace.  So far, my sales at my inworld store have been great!  (at least *I* think they have been), but the MP has produced absolutely nothing. 

I thought about placing a classified ad but, I have no idea how much money to pay to make it worth it.  Are classifieds even worth the expense?

Reading the other forum about Boosting Sales In The Marketplace tells me that search is broken and enhancements are a rip-off.  So, I'm hesitant to spend any of my money on them.

I am constantly creating new items.  But because the parcel I have is so small, there's only so much room and I've been down to only 3 prims left at a couple of points.  As a result, in this first week, I have changed several products around inside the store.

I am going to start having special sales and "Buy one get this free item" sales at my inworld store.  Hopefully this will bring people back to my store more often.  I've thought about creating a store group, but I decided to wait to do THAT until I see how the store does in the long run.

[Relm Foxdale]

@Marcus

You seem to be in a competitive market, so that might explain why your sales are slow. I don't have advice to give there because I'm not in one, but I figure the principles that usually apply are 1) make good products, 2) make a lot of products ("a lot" is not defined, but basically, keep making), 3) provide good support, 4) start small (usually the SLM first), and 5) use the free tools available in SL and on the SLM (it's interesting how many people don't use "show in search" or related items). Of course, distribute LMs with your products, too.

Then you have other areas to look at, like product quality, price, permissions, in-world location, and the big ugly elephant in the prim room, marketing. That one comes in many flavors and is often not free. It includes store groups, freebies (group or in general), blogs (your own or someone else's), paid ads on the SLM, in-world classifieds, and hunts.

It takes time to get things moving at a good clip, and even if you're doing decently, you may never make a ton of money. Some people are happy just to cover costs. 

Definitely, though, enjoy what you do. You may get little return on your business in money, but if it makes you happy (and whatever customers you have happy), that's the best gift of all (OK, that was corny).

Re the thread in general...

I've found that satellite stores are a wash. I've generally thought of them as large ads, and it's true that simply being visible to people can really help--I've found several good stores because they had in-world satellites. But sales at those satellites have been poor, and in my case, I have no idea if they help sales overall. My group is quite small. Even a freebie doesn't seem to encourage membership much. I have a paid classified ad, and I don't know if that helps. Frankly, I think I'm largely relying on the SLM or SLM-to-in-world traffic (people either seeing it in-world or following the LM from something they bought on the SLM). But I've never asked, so...

Automatic subscribos are, IMHO, a bad idea, as I've muted several residents over those things, but I guess they also work, just like any spam.

This may be an iffy thing to say, but I think posting to forums (this or "the other" that we can't name) helps. I've come across lots of businesses from their owners posting to threads with the store in their signature or discussed in their post.

[Luna Bliss]

Marcus...

I would definitely get a signature going in here.

I create sims for others, and often I refer various parts of these (homes, scripts, furniture) to other people I've discovered in these forums.

I can't do that if I don't know what you make.

[Marcus Hancroft]

 

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Luna Bliss wrote:

Marcus...

I would definitely get a signature going in here.

I create sims for others, and often I refer various parts of these (homes, scripts, furniture) to other people I've discovered in these forums.

I can't do that if I don't know what you make.

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Howdy, Miss Luna!

I just added a sig line for my posts as you suggested.  I'll work on a sig line logo like you have and insert it as soon as I am satisfied with it!  I hadn't thought about doing that until I read the posts in this forum! 

Again, I am really satisfied with my store!  So far, I haven't had a day where I have had zero sales!  I know that probably won't be true ALL the time, but I have covered my rent and made enough to get more textures, etc!

About classified ads...I have NEVER once, in almost 3 years in SL, EVER looked at them.  Until yesterday.  Using the keyword "flowers," the advertisement at the top of the list was a maker of jewelry, tuxedos, dresses and wedding items!  And how much did they pay for THAT ad??  Over $42,000L!!  For a one week ad??  There is NO way I could afford that kind of money.  So, my ad would be buried deep in the list if I only paid $100L, or $50L.  So far, I can't see the expense.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

I would concur with Relm that generally satelite stores from your main inworld store are generally a wash - not money makers.

In theory it would make sense that if you can get your product into the stream of many different traffic flows that are generated by mall owners throughout SL that you should make a lot of additional sales.  And that these additional sales should more than make up for the weekly rent the mall owners charge.

I believed that theory.... for quite a while.... I tried placing my products in about 8 different themed malls - many of them pretty high traffic.  General theme, Gor theme, builder theme, kiosks, stores, ad banners... 

I just recently closed the doors on my most recent satelite store in what was supposed to be a promising builders mall connected to a heavy traffic main store run by the mall owner (after running there for 3 months).  at the end of the 3 months I was only a little ahead after paying rent - but the trending was that there were no more sales happening.

The reasons I belive that satelite stores do not generally work (at least from all my experience) are:

 

1. Many Mall owners promise you that they are active in generating the mall traffic with all these events (afterall that is the only value you are getting from renting a store from a mall - TRAFFIC).  But most mall owners break their promise or they have no effective means / talents on getting and growing traffic to their mall.  So, your pretty little store sits in this pretty designed mall and it may see 3 or 5 ppl walk by your door.
2. Many of my customer for my products (and I would think for many categories of SL products) do not WINDOW SHOP / BROWSE random malls to find something to buy.  I would think the exception might be clothing - but I make landscape terrains sculpty packs.  My customers are master builders, merchant reselling builders, sim designers.  They cannot be bothered randomly browsing around laggy inworld malls in search for landscape terrains... they are efficient and often use the best search tool available right now for SL products (SLM - even though its broken and LL broken it further recently).  So, for me to put any effort and money toward setting up and running a store in a mall has proven to be breakeven at best - a money loser normally.
3. Somewhat related to the last point - most merchants that have inworld MAIN STORES will focus all their advertising, promotion, search, PR, LMs, Notecard handouts, SLM content, etc. on promoting only their main store.  Which is the right thing to do.  As such... the satelite stores will not get any of the sales generated from these sources of customers - nor should it.  Remember, your ONLY OBJECTIVE for satelite stores is to hopefully get sales from some of the traffic that the MALL GENERATES.  That is what you are paying for - NOTHING ELSE!

So, advise for you... once you are convinced that you want to continue to be a merchant (after testing your sales in a rented store), make a commitment and find a store that you are very confident will be around a long time (best option for this - although most costly is to buy your own land - as no one can take it out from under you) and set up your MAIN and ONLY store.  For the first while until you are well established and sales are steady and are not bored - dont waste any time with satelite stores.  Its a distraction of your efforts/money where you should be putting everything in place to point ALL YOUR PROMOTIONS TO THIS STORE INWORLD.

Also.... really really really spend some time understanding your potential target market.  Then put plans in place how to best be in-stream with these customers.

I know mine.  I know my customers are very busy ppl working heads down on projects and making their own money.  As such, they are also very efficient when they are looking for landscaping terrains for a build that they are missing and need.  Most of them gravitate to the SLM search and look for exactly what they are looking for.  That is why - no matter how much effort I have done to try to get my customers to shop in my inworld store - most still buy from me via SLM.

Finally, having a store filled with amazing products might seem like the #1 way to be successful.... I can tell you that this is not the #1 way to be economically successful... it is MARKETING MARKETING MARKETING!!  (btw - awesome customer service with new and existing customers is considered highly effective marketing)

If you dont think this is the case - my SL business is a perfect example.  Over the pas 2 years I have ended up creating many weird and wonderful lilttle products (most I have taken off the market).  But during these same 2 years I have ended up creating 6 Landscaping Terrain packs that I am proud of.  Only 6 right now.  Last time I built something new for my store was last August.  One would think my business would be going down the tubes since I dont put out a new product every week or month.  Well, NOPE.  I have generally a steady healthy weekly sales flow every week - 98% sales on these 6 packs.

Why? because I spend all my time to make sure any of my customers that I do get are given the best service they have ever got.  If they have questions, I will happily give them answers.  I will often go the extra mile and go to their land to show them samples of my different terrains if a customer is curious or concern which of my packs to buy.  I have often spent 1 or 2 hours with a customer.  If any of my customers have had problems in their sales because LL's SLM sales process screwed up, I will fix the problem as soon as i can.  I will even monitor my sales and if a customer wrongly bought two products that they didnt need to - I will get back to them and rebate them on the unessesary buy.

Why do I do all this for one sale? Not just to ensure I get that one sale.  If it was just because of that reason, I would be losing money.  I cater to my customers because my best advertising and marketing is my own customers!  When they are totally happy and satisfied after buying one of my packs, most come back to buy the others.  Many will remember me and my products and will tell their fellow builder friends.  I get their sales too.  I have no figures but I bet that about 40% of my sales are from referrrals.

Then there is marketing to get your name out... do everything you can to get your products and your store brand name noticed.  That includes what Luna laready said - get a forum signature banner.  Participate in forums - the SL ones and the more busy 3rd party ones like SLuniverse and others.  Be in twitter, be inworld groups, put your store and products on your inworld profile. ANYWHERE YOU CAN GET YOUR PRODUCT AND NAME OUT - do it.

Building incredible products that you know ppl will want is very important - but MARKETING THEM IS YOUR #1 focus for success.

[Rya Nitely]

Marcus, as creator your name is on every item you sell. Once you get enough of your items out there and displayed in SL they will advertise themselves. If the item is good and eye catching people will find you - make sure all necesssary info such as inworld store and marketplace link is in your profile . This is the only marketing I do and my sales reach new records every month. The more I sell the more exposure my creations get, which leads to more sales. Most customers have told me they found my brand this way, and I get IMs all the time asking where this or that item can be bought.

This wouldn't work for everyone but it would for you. I've never paid for advertising, except a couple of enhancements, which didn't really pay off.

I am also not a believer that twitter or posting etc. generates a significant amount of customers - but just my opinion. Or maybe in my case it doesn't. I post because it's fun, not to get customers.

One more thing, sculpted plants are not my main market, but because people know and trust my brand they sell very well - they come for boats they take home plants.

Your 1 prim plants look good and if they sell everyday then you are heading the right way, the rest is just time and work to Increase your inventory and gain more experience in building and texturing, which only comes with time and effort - I think this is wiser than spending time posting and tweeting.

[Madeliefste Oh]

 

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

I would concur with Relm that generally satelite stores from your main inworld store are generally a wash - not money makers.

In theory it would make sense that if you can get your product into the stream of many different traffic flows that are generated by mall owners throughout SL that you should make a lot of additional sales.  And that these additional sales should more than make up for the weekly rent the mall owners charge.

I believed that theory.... for quite a while.... I tried placing my products in about 8 different themed malls - many of them pretty high traffic.  General theme, Gor theme, builder theme, kiosks, stores, ad banners... 

I just recently closed the doors on my most recent satelite store in what was supposed to be a promising builders mall connected to a heavy traffic main store run by the mall owner (after running there for 3 months).  at the end of the 3 months I was only a little ahead after paying rent - but the trending was that there were no more sales happening.

The reasons I belive that satelite stores do not generally work (at least from all my experience) are:

 

1. Many Mall owners promise you that they are active in generating the mall traffic with all these events (afterall that is the only value you are getting from renting a store from a mall - TRAFFIC).  But most mall owners break their promise or they have no effective means / talents on getting and growing traffic to their mall.  So, your pretty little store sits in this pretty designed mall and it may see 3 or 5 ppl walk by your door.

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Having a lot of satelite shops has been a good sales strategy for some segments in the market for a while, but that time is past.

Before I learned to make sculpties I had a ladies fashion brand in SL. At the top time of this brand I had 25 profitable mall stores in world. That sounds great, and that was great, but there is are some facts behind you must not oversee: I have rented at at least 100 malls, to find out which were profitable and which were not.

I depended very much on the activities of the mall owner to generate ´real´ traffic. I have worked with many mall owners and some were really talented in doing there job. Some also asked very high prices, like for example 12 L$ per prim. But it was worth the money, tehy made you sell 4 or 5 times the amount of rent you paid because of the traffic they generated.

During the second half of 2009 the rl crisis was first felt in SL, more and more of my well selling satelite shops in malls became unprofitable. There were also situations where my shop was still profitable, but the mall owner gave up, because he could no longer make the place as a whole profitable.

In stead of searching new shops, I started to close satelite shops, because they started to cost more then they brought it. For a while I have also measured the traffic that satelite shops brought to my main store. But even that combined with the sales in the satelites was not worth to keep the satelites open.

But in the beginning of 2010 I still had about half of the satelite shops I uses to have, all profitable. The mall owners were excellent business people who knew how to run a mall in a profitable way. They were slapt in the face by LL twice. The first time was when the in world money became one with the xstreet money. In the first weeks after this happened sales stagnated a the half of the mall spots I still had. Mall owners were despaired putting out extra advertisement, organised extra events, tried new search strategies and so on the bring back the traffic. I gave them credit for the time being, not one of them managed to bring the mall traffic back to the old level.

The new marketplace was the killer for the mall owners who have had resist all storms so far. I had to give up the rest of my satelite shops and concentrated on my main shop and my new business. I is hard break up the relationship with people you have worked with for years and who have proven to have talent for what they do. I cannot blame any of them for not taking enough care of their place. But in the end you also cannot go on to pay them money for a service they cannot deliver anymore. Though its not the fault of these mall owners, you still have to break up the business relationship you had with them.

I think I have enough experience to say:  Don't waste your time there, malls are dead.

 

[Marcus Hancroft]

 

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Rya Nitely wrote:

Marcus, as creator your name is on every item you sell. Once you get enough of your items out there and displayed in SL they will advertise themselves. If the item is good and eye catching people will find you - make sure all necesssary info such as inworld store and marketplace link is in your profile . This is the only marketing I do and my sales reach new records every month. The more I sell the more exposure my creations get, which leads to more sales. Most customers have told me they found my brand this way, and I get IMs all the time asking where this or that item can be bought.

This wouldn't work for everyone but it would for you. I've never paid for advertising, except a couple of enhancements, which didn't really pay off.

I am also not a believer that twitter or posting etc. generates a significant amount of customers - but just my opinion. Or maybe in my case it doesn't. I post because it's fun, not to get customers.

One more thing, sculpted plants are not my main market, but because people know and trust my brand they sell very well - they come for boats they take home plants.

Your 1 prim plants look good and if they sell everyday then you are heading the right way, the rest is just time and work to Increase your inventory and gain more experience in building and texturing, which only comes with time and effort - I think this is wiser than spending time posting and tweeting.

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Thank you for this, Rya!  I appreciate the nice words about my stuff!  I DID however have a head slap moment when you said to be sure my MP store is in my profile.  OMG...why didn't I think of that?!  :laughs!

I'll be sure to put my MP link in there when I log in next.  Thanks for the info and the positive feedback!  :smileyhappy:

[Luna Bliss]

Hi Marcus

It's great that you're doing so well right off the bat.
I agree with most of what has been posted here regarding how to grow your business.

I thought of one more thing though to emphasize strongly...you might want to specialize in some aspect of your plant business. Not that you wouldn't have a wide selection, but from observing the way SL is moving I think most businesses need to find their niche and make themselves unique in some way (if your goal is to be profitable).

You commented on classifieds, and it can be really hard to figure out if these work. At some point you might try experimenting a bit, but like you said, when an ad is so far to the bottom it doesn't have much value. I experiment by placing an ad and then removing it, but I really can't tell for sure if it makes a difference due to so many variables, but I know some creators are sure it does or does not help. I've heard talk about classifieds not working well in the new viewer and wonder if that's fixed yet.

One way low priced classifieds could work for you is to take a 50 $L ad out for something you specialize in like 'vines' or 'shrubs' or 'desert plants'. These types of plants might show up higher in Search even with an inexpensive ad.  I once needed a particular type of vine for a custom job that I had no time or talent to paint and it would have been nice had it shown up in Classified Search.  I finally thought to message a friend who luckily had it.

I can't emphasize enough, as Toy did above, the importance of marketing these days. I have a friend who makes high-quality sculpts as does Toy..  However it's usually Toys sculpts I buy because Toy is always out there showing off his new stuff while I have no idea what my friend is creating - and I even talk to my friend on Skype from time to time.

One more idea is to make a little book (a fake one where you click it and link to your MP store) and send that to your customers ever so often. This idea was given to me by a gardening store friend, and this reminds me that I need to get busy right now and do it...thanks for the reminder

[AmyNevilly]

Hmmm. Well lets see.

We're experts in inworld marketting.

Via SecondAds we provide advertising in over 1000 locations at once.

Via Gold Hunt you can drive massive traffic from our 5000 hunters. 

Oh - you could put up an adboard in your shop window maybe also...or pay one of those 500L$ adboards

[Sassy Romano]

My view on malls...

In the beginning, Mall spots delivered most of my sales, since then main shop gets most sales by far and malls spots have reduced hugely.

Is this due to a change in shopping habits or wrongdoing by LL or other forces?  I'm pretty certain that many people will click the "see my main store" LM giver and go there or if they like their first purchase will go to the main shop so as the brand becomes more established, it's inevitable that a main store presence will dominate sales but I wouldn't say that "malls are dead".

I track all LM's given at a mall spot, I keep track of rent and I keep track of main store sales by someone who took an LM from a mall spot within a 2 day window.  If they then buy at main shop, I attribute that sale to the mall spot.  This gives a fantastically different view of some of the mall spots which by themselves would look like they weren't worth it but when compounded with the value of their traffic feed to mainstore can swing their overall value by a huge amount.

I have this view as a single web dashboard so can see at an instant the status of every spot, rent, profit, LM's given etc, referred sales.  From this, I don't call malls dead at all though of course some spots are better than others.

I'm a firm believer that the mall owner has a huge part to play too and simply rezzing a few booths and expecting mall renters to pay their tier while they go off and play is not a great partnership but quite prevalent.  When the rents dry up, so does their income and poof goes another spot.

The value of mall spots is in advertising and brand building and yes that mall spot might be a cost but so is an adboard which are hugely expensive for what they offer.  Typically L$200 a week for a single ad!  You can rent 20 prims in many malls for the same.

You can have the glossiest, slickest main shop you like, you'll probably get one for huge prims and very low cost in a region called "no traffic" and remember, Coca Cola doesn't just bottle drink and then place a single line advert in the phone book.