Current Marketing/Advertising Discussion

[Alyxen]

What works for you, what doesn't?

I thought it would be nice to have a discussion of marketing in today's SL.

For my store:
Store Sells - FP Material Mesh, Skyboxes, Clothing, Textures, etc. 
Store Locations - Half on marketplace, all in world.    Size - 1500-2000 items. 
Marketing approach - In world groups and word of mouth get most of our sales and traffic, but that is generally low results. I haven't really tried any marketing services. I have tried fairs and hunts, those seem to be popular but its hard to guage how well those work without close monitoring. I've also tried classifieds and events, which don't seem to do anything either.

MM/LL seem to be worthless, with any of the people that come in for those generally not buying anything.
I also have a pay what you want section, but that didn't get as much excitement/use as I thought it would. 

That is just a little about my store, what about you? Have any tips and tricks you would like to share for everyone? Any favorite groups or events? Let's have a great discussion!

Also, first time poster - I'm not sure about the rules here, but it might be best if we left store names out of it so it is not and does not break down into advertising.

[Nutria2016]

First time poster here.

I haven't had any fantastic results with advertising though Listing Enhancements and SecondAds. It's really disappointing, I spent so much time and invested plenty of money on learning the ropes, creating and adding textures and animations to furniture.

I launched my store about a week ago, with a few products. So far I've only made two sales. I'm sure I could make more sales if I could get more traffic in (which is what these paid advertisements are supposed to be for in the first place), but I'm slowly losing hope.

My goal was to at least make $20 a week.

Wish I knew some better advertising services other than Listing Enhancements and SecondAds. I've also been buying ad space from populated areas.

I've read that the marketplace went though a change recently, and many sellers have experienced lower sales because of it. Guess I started at a bad time.

[Rya Nitely]

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Nutria2016 wrote:

 

I launched my store about a week ago, with a few products. So far I've only made two sales. I'm sure I could make more sales if I could get more traffic in (which is what these paid advertisements are supposed to be for in the first place), but I'm slowly losing hope.

 

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I'd regard myself as successful. I'm about to give up my rl job and live on my SL income (I have 3 stores under different accounts).

When my partner and I started creating and selling back in 2008 we had NO expectations, only a little hope.

We made our first sale about a week after listing an item on the old MP called Xstreet. We were so excited. We saw this as huge encouragement. Slowly we noticed people coming inworld to see our stuff. Every step forward was met with unexpected surprise and delight, because we never had high expectations. We were humble. And so, feeling highly encouraged, we continued on.

Soon our income was covering the tier for a homestead, then two and then three. Then suddenly we found we had an excess of L$, and could cash out. We were overwhelmed by the success.

Now, we both work a lot less and earn a lot more -  enough to provide a modest RL income.

None of this happened through careful planning, advertising, strategies, marketing or high expectations. It was simply good products, word of mouth, and enjoying every minute of it all.

And it takes time for it all to happen. 

Two sales in a week? You should rejoice, feel encouraged, because it could have been none.

[Nutria2016]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

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Nutria2016 wrote:

 

I launched my store about a week ago, with a few products. So far I've only made two sales. I'm sure I could make more sales if I could get more traffic in (which is what these paid advertisements are supposed to be for in the first place), but I'm slowly losing hope.

 

---

I'd regard myself as successful. I'm about to give up my rl job and live on my SL income (I have 3 stores under different accounts).

When my partner and I started creating and selling back in 2008 we had NO expectations, only a little hope.

We made our first sale about a week after listing an item on the old MP called Xstreet. We were

so

excited. We saw this as huge encouragement. Slowly we noticed people coming inworld to see our stuff. Every step forward was met with unexpected surprise and delight, because we never had high expectations. We were humble. And so, feeling highly encouraged, we continued on.

Soon our income was covering the tier for a homestead, then two and then three. Then suddenly we found we had an excess of L$, and could cash out. We were overwhelmed by the success.

Now, we both work a lot less and earn a lot more -  enough to provide a modest RL income.

None of this happened through careful planning, advertising, strategies, marketing or high expectations. It was simply good products, word of mouth, and enjoying every minute of it all.

And it takes time for it all to happen. 

Two sales in a week? You should rejoice, feel encouraged, because it could have been none.

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Congrats on your success and thank you for your words of encouragement. I'm going to keep working on my store so I can see some decent income generating. Advertising seems to be my main issue at the moment.

[ChinRey]

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Nutria2016 wrote:

Wish I knew some better advertising services other than Listing Enhancements and SecondAds.

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I think those listing enhancments are a waste of money for everybody at this stage. The problem is that you pay a flat fee regadless of how many impressions and click-throughs your ad receives and the more optimists there are who pay that fee, the fewer impressions there are for each ad. There are quite a lot of optimists selling on MP these days.

I once tried a 7 day enhanced listing on the MP main page. 899 L$ for 56 untargetted impressions, that's just didiculous. It may be a little bit better now since LL was favoring some advertisers with extra impressions back then and I don't think they do that anymore. But even so, you'd need thousands of impressions to justify the cost.

 

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Nutria2016 wrote:

My goal was to at least make $20 a week.

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There are almost 200,000 registered merchants on MP. The total annual amount of income withdrawn from SL by users was about 60 million dollars a year or three ago, it's probably a little bit less now. That's the net income for all merchants and landowners and... well everybody. There are lots of unknown factors here but these numbers should give us some idea what the average SL builder/merchant makes. Let's say 1-10 dollars a week to keep a good margin of error.

[ChinRey]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

None of this happened through careful planning, advertising, strategies, marketing or high expectations. It was simply good products, word of mouth, and enjoying every minute of it all.

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 That's how I do it too. Somebody buys one of my builds, they see it's good and buy some more. They rez it on their land, other people see it, sees it's good and buy more. It's slow but it works. Every month I make a little bit more. I'm not sure if that's a good strategy for a newcomer today though.

[Alyxen]

The old style of letting people see your stuff on other sims is great, but I feel like for newcomers that is a tough ask. Even though I've been going in some form for years, I still give out gift cards to sims I enjoy or look like they need some charity. Its a nice way to support a sim, but also much faster than waiting for people to buy it naturally, since it could take years to get the word of mouth/viewership naturally. 

That might only work for people that do architecture, furniture, landscaping, etc that you can put out. I haven't really tried anything like that with my clothing lines.

[Alyxen]

What do you all think about gift cards and giveaways? 

I always struggle with being over generous, and think it might make things look 'cheap' rather than a friendly bargain/gift/etc. However, without really chatting with the community about it, I can't get a good feel for it.

[Ela Talaj]

Most of my SL income comes from custom scripting, which is not really applicable to this discussion. I do however have a marketplace store and an in-world store. About 90% of sales come from the marketplace store. I do not use any listing enhancements or classifieds. On average I have about 1-2 sales a day and as most of my items are rather expensive it comes to about 50 USD a week. For advertising I made catalogs in a book format with pages linked to the MP store and distribute them to my in-world store visitors automatically and to new customers in the marketplace store. When I list new products in the MP I also send their descriptions to the mailing list which includes all in-world and MP customers but that doesn't happen very often as sadly I don't have much time to make new products.

[Prokofy Neva]

I will tell you what doesn't work, Alyxen -- announcing that you are "going out of business" and having fire sales.

Tons of people come to your store to buy these items because you are supposedly "going out of business" (like those tacky stores on Fifth Avenue), and you get a high volume of sales from the unsuspecting public, then in fact you don't go out of business.

I once fell for this, then a friend of mine tipped me off to the fact that you do this.

So now I don't shop at your store anymore. The end.

[Prokofy Neva]

I believe strongly in inworld stores, and listing in search/places for $30 a week.

Try different terms and descriptions, I actually think real intelligible sentences work best.

You can also buy ads to place higher in search for any amount. But $30 works pretty well, too, depending on the item.

I'm always amazed that people have inworld stores and don't place their stores in search/places. Sometimes I hear about them then I can't find them because they didn't bother -- and then there is no way to find them unless you randomly come across a Flickr group or something.

You can get a stall cheaply and do your own search add from there but it is worth even a 512 inworld in my view.