Wilma Philbin Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 We run a PG business and have seen a drastic drop too in sales both in the Marketplace and inworld the last month. Aren't the concurrent logins lower than usual too? (My first post on the new forums!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astolat Dufaux Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 I agree with you. Even though my items are listed as general, I have seen a slight decrease to my SLM sales (but a slight increase in inworld sales -- not sure if they are related), so it has leveled out. I decided to tweak a couple of items that got bumped into M and A ratings for verboten words, because they were fair sellers, and stopped selling once they had been bumped into the restricted ratings. Now back to the general products rating, they don't sell at all with the "adult" search term removed (i.e. "brothel"). I have a business associate who decided to take the word "Gorean" out of her listings, to get them back to a general rating, because her sales went to zero when the ratings were changed by LL. Some of her sales have recovered, but she suspects that removing that search word has lost her about half her (steady) revenue on SLM. I would be curious to know if LL has seen a decline in SLM sales since implementing the rating system. Money talks -- if they are experiencing a major decline in commission revenue, I expect right now they are scrambling behind the scenes for another "solution" to regain that revenue. Having experience in RL retail business, I expect to see fluctuations in sales, especially after Christmas. But this is much different from the typical decreases I see in late winter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Braydon Randt Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 I also sale to the gorean market as my main business, yet gorean is a dirty word because its only goreans that have sex in sl. As we all know .. vampirism is the new abstinance sector. When i came to Sl in 2006, there was gambling, sex, clubs and all manner of ADULT behavour..... because SL was an ADULT place. We all know that kids were on the main grid. As we all know that age verification doesnt work as my friend used his wifes passport to verify and it passed him fine despite him being 37, so it doesnt check diddly squat, Running 2 grids cant be efficiant use of resources. So somethings i do understand. but ........ whats happened? I see there being a few problems here 1. LL attempting to make Sl politically correct to everyone from cradle to grave This isnt a particuly good thing, as sell christian the muslins get upset, sell muslim the hindus get upset, sell sex and the god fearing book bashers get upset. You cant gamble .... as it leads people to being crack addicts and prostitutes. 2. Changes in market Place Does anybody remember when hotmail WASNT owned by Microsoft, spam was rare, you never got offered viagra or university diplomas. Of course you change owners... and it looses that responsibility when its deep in corporate business tratergy. Because you cant use certain words in marketplace .... you say " COMMING SOON!!!" its mature why ... because it could be really saying " cumming" so the adult filter applies regardless, there are ways to bypass the filter..... but u sat there.. and was curious why my medieval dress was mature/adult yet there was a advert for a virtually naked av in general as they had put stars over the nipples and the girly bits. it was ONE word ... gorean that made it dirty.... not what it was, not what it was selling. .. just the word. 3. Sales .... as in 20L days, 25L days .. 30L days .. etc etc. Everyone has devalued their own products by joining sales days. I know i have been approached for 20L Mondays, 25L tuesdays, 40L Wednesdays, 50L Fridays and 30L Saturdays. I am a designer, i dont use templates, I am a blender modeler and reguly spend over L$600 - L$1000 on upload costs, yet many of my peers and friends will spend virtually every days throwing outfits together for the various sales days throughout the week. Do i feel that the item ive created ... that took 2 weeks with texturing and modeling time and L$1000 in upload fees is worth L$500 HELL YES I DO!!!. Not that my things are better ... but my time isnt free, i dont expect SL to pay my rent , but i do expect not to be asked " when will you be selling it for L$30?" We have set outselves up for cheep bargain seekers, when its got to be free ... or next to free 4. "Can anybody lend me $L100 till tommorow..... ?" This about says itself......... Sl opened the doors for more people with no intent on purchasing lindens, or designing their own products to sell. Costs havnt gone down for business, yet what the customers are able to pay .. maybe thats changed All in all ....... their could be a multitude of reasons why SL sales are down, all i know is that when LL messed with the market place... i lost nearly all my sales for three days. I know items that arnt mature or adult were forced into those areas .. yet naked avs looking like vegas showgirls are so clearly listed as "general" Teir isnt less just because LL has reduced your customer base by introducing children to an adult world. Those like me who are a parent RL, will realise that your kids swear when you arnt there ..... they know more about sex than many adults .... this is NOT caused by SL, this is caused by society in general good or bad isnt the point , but i dont WANT to be "nannied" ... i dont want to be " protected" I agreed to the TOS when i joined sl .. that said I AM AN ADULT!!!!! FFS LINDEN LAB ... treat me LIKE AN ADULT!!! ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela Galli Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 Today was a normal business day, both inworld and on the MP, so hopefully there was just some mass resistance to being in SL lately, and now ppl will resume their usual shopping behaviors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astolat Dufaux Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 Fridays through Mondays are always good for me, and especially this month, having my shop in three hunts, things are going very well. :smileyhappy: My business philosophy is never to rest on my laurels -- the market is always going to change, and to survive I must adapt -- finding new marketing opportunities (or creating them yourself, etc). It's just too bad that often the changes that LL implements do more damage than good for merchants -- or so it seems sometimes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryanne Solo Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 I had a ton of shops once, but now, regardless of sales I just dont really see the need. I do have the one of course but I am in the process of updating all my products so it isn't what you would call well stocked. All my stuff is PG and it sells ok but I got over the spend lots of money on rent thing ages ago. Now I have the funds to do anything I want and I love it!. Thats about 2k a week in rent I dont have to pay anymore, About 2k a week that doesnt go into anyone elses pocket landwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 my sales for this week are down about 40% from normal weekly sales volume. Not sure why the reason - if its changes to the SLM or just an anomaly. I did some SLM search tests and even with this KEYWORDs fields search - it seems the search is still heavily weighted by item sales popularity since only my top landscape sculpty pack shows up consistently on the top 1 or 2 pages. Even though all my other packs have almost identical base keywords - they never show up on the top pages. This explains why my top item continues to sell at a pace 2 x that of all my other packs. My other packs would likely sell much better - like my main pack does if they were fairly visible on the front pages like my big seller is. STILL..... LL - FIX SEARCH! You cannot sort by BEST SELLER for keyword search or relevance search. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela Galli Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Another normal sales day. I don't think there was any trend for non- Adult sellers -- just a few days where ppl were not in the mood to shop. But Adult sellers, will be interested if your experience continues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 an imworld merchant friend just told me that this week was the worst selling week she had too. but maybe it was just a bad shopping week mood for SL residents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Vollmar Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 I came here to check if anyone had started a thread about this or if it was just me. Since last changes it is just dead. I used to sell at least 10 items a day in the marketplace before the change, now it's down to 1, maximum 2. I haven't visited these forums in a while so I don't know what the change were. Can someone please show me where I can read about it so I know what I need to change in my listings in order to be seen again? edit: I noticed a drop on sales coincidently (or not?) after the last recent changes, or better, the last two times the marketplace was down last week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TatianaDokuchic Varriale Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Hi Pearl You can find out about the recent changes in the Marketplace March 3, 2011 Release Notes Also, you should take a look at your inventory to make sure that everything is still listed as it should be. It seems that sometimes things drift into the unlisted category without warning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Vollmar Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Hi Tatiana, I had checked that and nothing was unlisted. I used to sell a lot of demos every day too, and not even those are selling. It is really strange. It's been like this specially since the last time the marketplace was down. It's been so quiet that it's almost spooky... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 13, 2011 Author Share Posted March 13, 2011 Pearl, you noticed a change after the marketplace being down because they changed the default search for non signed in members. I was sadened to look at my sales drop this week compared to the week prior and this was with Sunday, Monday and half of Tuesday as normal days (before the marketplace change). I can't imagine what it will be this week with a full 7 days of it. We can all talk about different things that contribute to low sales and I am sure they all play a part HOWEVER...is it coincidence that my sales drop EXACTLY and PRECISELY the moment marketplace made the change on Tuesday? I still have my fingers crossed (and toes) that LL is working on on something to change this. Why would they want to make less money??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Vollmar Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Yes, Zhoie, I noticed that too. I am not the type that complains if I have a bad day, or even more than one, but the difference is so big that I couldn't help but noticing. I would like to know what I have to do to fix this, rather than wait for them to do something. So they changed something that is affecting my sales, what do I have to do get them back to normal then? I fell I am completely in the dark. I have no idea what I have to do. Change the title? Keywords? I am completely lost! I wish they would let us know. I am not against changes, I've learned it doesn't help anyway, but I would like to know how these changes work. I know what the changes were (thanks Tatiana) but not how they are affecting the marketplace, so I can't adapt accordingly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 13, 2011 Author Share Posted March 13, 2011 Pearl, it depends on what you sell. If it's an item that is supposed to be in moderate or adult you can't really put it into general (well I suppose there must be ways I see others doing it) though I would not recommend it. I'd like to say advertising but I have not done enough of it since the new marketplace came out to be able to say it really works. I am also open to any suggestions myself as to what we can do marketplace wise, to bring in some more sales while we wait on LL to possibly change this situation. Since a great deal of my sales come from non signed in browsers (which I have lost now) I need to figure out myself how I can do some boosting. However, I have to say that I'm slowly losing the desire to scramble to figure out what I am going to do after each LL change. It gets tiring. Making money in SL is great but if it becomes too stressful I have to access why I am bothering. Sorry I couldn't be more help Pearl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 13, 2011 Share Posted March 13, 2011 Pearl, It not just you. None of my items are anything other than GENERAL, none of them have unlisted, yet my sales this week are down about 30% for the week. My weekly sales normally fluctuate very little from week to week - its generally like clockwork for me... Sometime on Sat or Sun I liquidate my $L account to near $0l. Through the week my sales will bring my account to about the magic threshold value of $27,000 (just over $100US) - which it hits that trigger about Sat or Sun and then I liquidate back to $0L. I do this almost every week. Some weeks it might take an additional day - other weeks it might make it a day earlier. As of this posting my current account is at $18,000. I am about $9k down from normal weekly volumes this week - about 30% The only change in SL has been the market upgrade. Now, maybe the Japan international events could be a major factor since I am sure a portion of the virtual community is from Japan or intimately involved in the horrid disasters that have fallen on Japan. So, this drop in sales that we are all seeing could be partly a Japan factor - but I was seeing slow sales even before the event started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Vollmar Posted March 14, 2011 Share Posted March 14, 2011 @ Zhoie yes, it gets tiring. I am changing all my pictures to make them go back to the general category, most of them are and were in the general category, so I cannot see the connection. @ Toy I'm not glad to hear it isn't only happening to me, but at least it shows me that I'm not the one at fault. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Insaniac Xue Posted March 14, 2011 Share Posted March 14, 2011 I will keep it short too. lol My sales have stopped, it's not 30% down, neither 50, but more like 95%. Since the latest updates on Marketplace I had one day with 8 sales and 9 days without any. My boots have always done quite well, they are all in General category, and since the update I haven't sold any. My gothic builds haven't sold at all since the updates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhoie Zimermann Posted March 14, 2011 Author Share Posted March 14, 2011 Insaniac, my sales were way down last week and... totally devestating this week. I am afraid to look at my sales now. Before I used to be excited to look at my sales. I would come to my email and see sale after sale after sale flowing in from marketplace...not anymore. Also because Maretplace drives a lot of people to my in world store...those sales are down as well. This is by far the worst ever. I don't even know what to say anymore... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medhue Simoni Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 Well, I don't sell any adult items, except 1 that LL considers adult because of the word Staf. Oddly enough, it has picked up in sales, lol. Overall for me, I don't see any real decline or increase. 2 weeks ago, was about 15% below average, and last week was 15% above average. The marketplace changes do not help, but also consider that the inworld search has been changing on an almost daily basis and I've seen major shifts in Inworld search. Personally, I don't think any of that redzone stuff has anything at all to do with sales. Seems to me that all shifts in sales are because of changes by LL, not shoppers. I'm be a happy man when LL cuts back on the tinkering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nathan Hopkins Posted March 15, 2011 Share Posted March 15, 2011 My experience may be of limited relevance since my business is only about 60 days old and I have a tiny inventory. But... I was noticing what seemed like a natural growth in traffic and sales, and every day had at least 1-2 sales, with what seemed like some momentum building gradually.. Then, I went 6 days without selling anything, and now I've started a new 2 day drought. So just one sale over the last 8 days. I have been reminding myself not to be discouraged, since I am so new to doing business on SL, these things take time, peaks and valleys, etc. But what some of you more established merchants are describing sounds like a version of what I am noticing... just an inexplicable and drastic drop starting about a week ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 So based on the changes that Brooke and Commerce Team deployed last week where they have even further crippled the SLM with this full bore effort to "TEENIFY" all aspects of SL and SLM by filtering out the "ALL BUT GENERAL" items from the vast majority of SLM customers/shoppers that dont log into SLM unless they want to purchase an item, LL Commerce Team has now even further damaged the economy of SL. What boggles my mind is how with all the priorities that any common sense rational business person would belive would be a priority for a company like LL that has been hurting in growth (in residents and revenue generation), LL Management has thrown all that aside and is clearly driven on the #1 priority of dealing how to TEENIFY SLM. Lets make this very clear in case Brooke and the Commerce Team and LL dont understand this.... TEENIFYING THE GRID AND SLM IS DAMAGING THE SL ECONOMY AND CAUSING MAJOR DAMAGE TO A HUGE PORTION OF THE SL MERCHANT COMMUNITY. And yet Brooke's responses to those Merchants that her team's MATURITY FILTERS efforts have devastated in sales is paraphrased as: "awww I am really sorry to hear that and we will see what minor uselss efforts we can do that will not really help you out but it will make it look like we care enough about the merchant community... but suck it up. But f the sales and merchants of moderate and adult content shuts down or is lost - ohh well - LL needs to look like we are a moral outstanding internet citizen and we dont really care if we lose all the merchants that sell all these immoral non-teen content". Sadly, what the LL Commerce Team and LL in general fails to take into account (which is completely in line with how LL has always been and will never change) is that the MODERATE/MATURE content makes up a huge portion of Merchants and Merchant sales. With LL intent to shut down these mature content (actions speak louder than words), LL has removed the L$ from the virtual economy. This means that those high spending Merchants slow down spending on LL Land Teirs and content from other Merchants that sell the GENERAL content that LL wants to promote. So then the economy keeps spiraling as this lowered sales in other GENERAL products will force those Merchants to stop spending. So Brooke and LL Commerce Team. You know what you are causing and I know your team is being tugged by the nose ring from Legal that is forcing you to destroy the SLM economy because of the stupid non-strategic decision last year to TEENIFY the Main SL Grid. But please dont play the role that this is not going to hurt the economy and all will be good when we are done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Couldbe Yue Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 Toysoldier Thor wrote: So Brooke and LL Commerce Team. You know what you are causing and I know your team is being tugged by the nose ring from Legal that is forcing you to destroy the SLM economy because of the stupid non-strategic decision last year to TEENIFY the Main SL Grid. But please dont play the role that this is not going to hurt the economy and all will be good when we are done. even though this is actually off topic, I think I finally worked out who the missing millions are. If you look at the site stats, you'll see the under 17s are a huge group compared to their actual presence in the teen grid. I think they thought they could tap into that market, rather than realising that the kids are probably hanging out here because they get their titilation from the discussions. I'd like to hope I'm wrong but on LL past performance I'd say I'm probably spot on. After all, it is an amazing amount of disruption just for a couple of hundred teen accounts. The other thing to remember is that LL prefers to only deal with a few creators rather than a sea of them. Each change reduces the number of creators and I'm sure they're more than comfortable with it. Assuming the amount of money being spent on the marketplace hasn't decreased then I would say they're more than fine with what is happening. I think the problem they may find is that most people these days aren't happy to keep paying tier when the income isn't there and they've never quite managed to understand that diversity is the key. Hey ho. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 Couldbe Yue wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: So Brooke and LL Commerce Team. You know what you are causing and I know your team is being tugged by the nose ring from Legal that is forcing you to destroy the SLM economy because of the stupid non-strategic decision last year to TEENIFY the Main SL Grid. But please dont play the role that this is not going to hurt the economy and all will be good when we are done. even though this is actually off topic, I think I finally worked out who the missing millions are. If you look at the site stats, you'll see the under 17s are a huge group compared to their actual presence in the teen grid. I think they thought they could tap into that market, rather than realising that the kids are probably hanging out here because they get their titilation from the discussions. I'd like to hope I'm wrong but on LL past performance I'd say I'm probably spot on. After all, it is an amazing amount of disruption just for a couple of hundred teen accounts. The other thing to remember is that LL prefers to only deal with a few creators rather than a sea of them. Each change reduces the number of creators and I'm sure they're more than comfortable with it. Assuming the amount of money being spent on the marketplace hasn't decreased then I would say they're more than fine with what is happening. I think the problem they may find is that most people these days aren't happy to keep paying tier when the income isn't there and they've never quite managed to understand that diversity is the key. Hey ho. I am 99% positive that you are spot on as well Couldbe. As I have already said, the actual actions from Brooke's Team on continually applying more and more MATURITY FILTERS to a larger scope of the SLM service (now even those potential shoppers that are not even officially logged in AND are likely the largest percentage of any POTENTIAL SLM SHOPPER) those actions speak the real truth. And when Brooke's response from one of the User group meetings after her team's first huge blow on the SLM service in January was basically that "we are not removing the changes" no matter how bad it has impacted so many of the Merchants, it makes it clear that LL is doing what they have always done ... BLINDLY EXECUTE A BAD STRATEGY AND IGNORE ALL THEIR CUSTOMER ANGER AND FRUSTRATIONS. One has to really think that LL is truly a business that was purely established as a "LAB" or an experiment by some rich kids to see what happens when you virtualize a world and play with the "factors" of the virtual world. Their #1 primary objective is not to be a successful or profitable growing business with any long term existence in the plans. They are a LAB and they are just here to perform Social Experiments. Sadly there are too many people / merchants / creators that have been deceived into actually believing that LL is a real legit business with a primary driver to be financially successful (which would lead most to belive they would do whats right for their customers and do what will drive MORE revenue for them). Too many creators / merchants have already been burned by LL's constant economy destroying plans, actions, changes in direction. The Teen Grid "experiment" is playing out to be the huge sleeper strategy that is really having some of the most detrimental negative affects on SL (that and the onslaught of SL Privacy Issues). So for all Merchants that have put a lot of investment into SL and SLM and if you are a creator/seller of non-TEENIFIED content... you really need to consider coming up with your own rationalization strategy, or SL exit strategy, or finding out a way to adapt. Because Brooke's team has been mandated to shut down mature content. These actions make it clear. You will basically soon will only be selling your mature content inworld from the back of a virtual truck down by the virtual river. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pearl Vollmar Posted March 16, 2011 Share Posted March 16, 2011 Did I understand it right? People have to log in to the marketplace to see the products even if they are in the general category? :womansurprised: I checked it myself. We can see the general items withouth logging in. For a moment I thought they had made the marketplace kind of a closed thing only for members. My sales are slowly going back to normal, at least demos are going out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now