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Earn your 10% MP Fee LL


Rya Nitely
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LL, you call it significant improvements, we call it minor tweeks. You change things that should have been there for us since the beginning - things that were faults with your system and then you charge us double for fixing things. Some things that come to mind that need fixing -

Top selling items 😕 what does this mean? If I sold 1000s of some outdated item several years ago, this is my top selling item, although it hardly ever sells now? Why would I need to know that?

What we need is top selling within a certain time period - past 12 month, past 3 months, past month - this would be useful. Also the ability to see how often one particular item has sold within a certain time period.

Best Selling on MP Store - I don't know what this means either, because when I filter for best selling on my MP store, these are not my best selling. Relevance is more like best selling.

Ability to Edit listings directly in Manage Items - hit edit and get editable boxes directly in manage items to change prices etc. This is what we had in the Xstreet days.

Inform customers about redelivery - Customers don't know they can redeliver items (or how), and so it takes us more time to explain it to them that it takes to just do it. Send out an email to all members or put it on a banner on MP for a couple of months.

I don't know what other improvements have been made because I probably don't use/need it, but I'm sure I (and others) can think of many more fixes that need to be made.......

without extra charge, since we are already paying too much for what we don't get.

 

 

Edited by Rya Nitely
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Clean up the listing form - The entire layout needs a total revamp to make it user friendly but those silly popup thingies for selecting category and addings pictures and related tiems are by far the worst parts of it.

Get rid of autofill in search - The way it works today it's useless.

Embedd demos in main listing

...

...

...

 

But Rya, how many threads like this are there already in this forum? How many times have merchants told LL through other channels? They've never listened before, what are the chances they'll do this time?

Edited by ChinRey
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1 hour ago, Rya Nitely said:

You're right Rey, I guess there's no point. Just put up with it, is all we can do 😞

I just wish we could get some kind of response from Linden Lab (and no, Dakota's occasional non-answers don't count). Anything is better than being stonewalled.

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In all cases @Dakota Linden has mentioned a Market Place Jira... or something or other... where we can put in feature requests. @Dakota (or another Linden in the know) - can you please post  the URL for that again? Clicking the Help link on MP only takes you to the "How to shop" article.

I'd like to propose some feature requests there as well. One example: If I view a listing and it says "You purchased this..." then add a "Redeliver" link to that very notice. LOL 

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55 minutes ago, TVTuner said:

Ok, let me show you what that means then. Here's one of the JIRA's that have already been filed:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-2249

It's about the order history, one of the most important tools for a merchant. One problem with it back in 2009 was that you only got 14 orders listed on each page. (Another more serious problem is that the list doesn't actually tell you what you sold, only order number, buyer and amount but that's another topic). Obviously that means a lot of flipping from page to page if you have a little bit of sales in your store.

It took Linden Lab exactly one year and one day to implement a solution: increasing the number of orders per page to 15.

Edited by ChinRey
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4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Ok, let me show you what that means then. Here's one of the JIRA's that have already been filed:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-2249

It's about the order history, one of the most important tools for a merchant. One problem with it back in 2009 was that you only got 14 orders listed on each page. (Another more serious problem is that the list doesn't actually tell you what you sold, only order number, buyer and amount but that's another topic). Obviously that means a lot of flipping from page to page if you have a little bit of sales in your store.

It took Linden Lab exactly one year and one day to implement a solution: increasing the number of orders per page to 15.

Snarling at me isn't going to do you any good.  I can assure you that venting your spleen in the forum isn't going to win any favors.  I won't file the JIRA issue for you, either.  Sounds like a valid issue though.  Take it the right direction, maybe get some fellow merchants to help with the descriptions and such so you don't sound confrontational in JIRA.  It's VERY easy to sound confrontational when you are emotionally invested in the issue.  Confrontational bug reports and feature requests are sometimes hard to understand and take seriously.  Also, it's bad form to attempt to awaken the zombies in JIRA in an effort to support your position.  Your fellow merchants can help with support too but don't go all-out and make it a 10,000 signature petition.  What you likely should do is concisely describe your current workflow, as bound by current conditions, then describe your desired workflow, then describe what would have to change to permit your desired workflow.

Edited by TVTuner
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4 minutes ago, TVTuner said:

Snarling at me isn't going to do you any good.  I can assure you that venting your spleen in the forum isn't going to win any favors.  I won't file the JIRA issue for you, either.  Sounds like a valid issue though.  Take it the right direction, maybe get some fellow merchants to help with the descriptions and such so you don't sound confrontational in JIRA.  It's VERY easy to sound confrontational when you are emotionally invested in the issue.  Confrontational bug reports and feature requests are sometimes hard to understand and take seriously.  Also, it's bad form to attempt to awaken the zombies in JIRA in an effort to support your position.  Your fellow merchants can help with support too but don't go all-out and make it a 10,000 signature petition.  What you likely should do is concisely describe your current workflow, as bound by current conditions, then describe your desired workflow, then describe what would have to change to permit your desired workflow.

Funny you should say that right now. I had just finished working on it. ^_^

(See next reply)

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4 hours ago, Oz Linden said:

Jira issue creation can be used for creating either bug reports or new feature requests.

Last time I tried to file an MP JIRA, I was told it belonged to the WEB Project, not the BUG Project and that the WEB Project was discontinued so they wouldn't accept any JIRAs for it. I'm glad to hear that has changed.

I filed a JIRA now. It's here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-227994

But there are a few things I have to say.

I consider this as a test JIRA, mainly to see if you actually can deliver. I chose that particular project because it's so obvious there is no way you can possibly reject it and because it's fairly small. There are two problems with that.

One is that this should not be a topic for a JIRA. This is basic QC! Ten years ago a programmer wrote the code for this, a developer oversaw the entire project and I presume there also was somebody doing basic quality control. All of these people should have caught this right away and it should have been weeded out long before it got anywhere near the eyes of a customer.

The other problem is that this is still only a relatively minor tweak. If this takes you more than a week (and I know it will), you'll need a year before you've managed to upgrade MP enough to justify the old 5% fee and only then can you even begin to handle Rya's challenge in the title of this thread.

As I said, i know you can't do it. (I don't blame you btw. This is something your predecessor should have fixed long before you took over.) But prove me wrong. Get BUG-227994 all sorted out and fixed by Friday this week and I'll be very impressed and happy. If you can't, you've wasted two hours of my life but at least I hope you'll have the decency never to mention JIRA in an MP context again.

Edited by ChinRey
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1 hour ago, TVTuner said:

Snarling at me isn't going to do you any good.  I can assure you that venting your spleen in the forum isn't going to win any favors.  I won't file the JIRA issue for you, either.  Sounds like a valid issue though.  Take it the right direction, maybe get some fellow merchants to help with the descriptions and such so you don't sound confrontational in JIRA.  It's VERY easy to sound confrontational when you are emotionally invested in the issue.  Confrontational bug reports and feature requests are sometimes hard to understand and take seriously.  Also, it's bad form to attempt to awaken the zombies in JIRA in an effort to support your position.  Your fellow merchants can help with support too but don't go all-out and make it a 10,000 signature petition.  What you likely should do is concisely describe your current workflow, as bound by current conditions, then describe your desired workflow, then describe what would have to change to permit your desired workflow.

you sound like a frustrated Linden's alt.

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2 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

TVTuner, is everything going to change now that you're turned ChinRey into a sweet little lovebug?

I won't promise THAT but I read her JIRA post and I like it.  It will get reviewed and considered there.  Not everything passes muster or makes it into the product owner's plans.  I am guessing this has a chance.  Forum posts are more.... random?  Something.

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Well, my recent theory is that not much is going to change for us (the dedicated merchants) because LL believes that catering to our wishes won't change the bottom line for them.  Hence, all the unoptimized & stolen stuff that is shoveled in -- LL has the same bottom line whether it comes from more creatively engaged merchants or the shovelers.

If we want to make a case, I think we should make the one that catering to our needs could actually help LL's bottom line.

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1 hour ago, TVTuner said:

I probably do sound like that.  I also probably feel like a severely used chew toy.

Aww, sorry about that. I remember when I was new to this and Sassy and Pamela and the other old timers kept telling me how hopeless it all was. It broke my heart too.

Anyway, this is much older than both you and I (and Oz too) are in SL. Linden Lab has always treated the average content creator/merchant as s**t. They are always happy to exploit the small and medium scale merchants who provide the bulk of the variety of content SL has always depended on but they've hardly ever bothered to lift a finger to help. And now they've increased the already bloated fee for the shoddy merchandise services we are forced to use because they have a monopoly on everything.

I do not believe a single word any Linden has to say about this. Whether they are lying or (more likely I have to admit) don't know what they're saying doesn't matter. Talk is cheap and only action counts.

For those who didn't get the meaning of my "test JIRA", it's all about replacing clumsy home-knit bodges with the kind of bog standard solution "everybody else" use. Even LL themeselves use some of them elsewhere (such as here on this forum). A half decent web programmer working on half decent code should be able to do this work in less than a day, or - if you like - in less time than what a single merchant adding 100 new listings will save from it.

If they can't do it in four days it must mean either that they don't care or that the MP code is in such shambles it's beyond repair.

Edited by ChinRey
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2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Last time I tried to file an MP JIRA, I was told it belonged to the WEB Project, not the BUG Project and that the WEB Project was discontinued so they wouldn't accept any JIRAs for it. I'm glad to hear that has changed.

We simplified and consolidated bug reporting and feature requests into the BUG project quite a while ago for almost everything. Internally, we triage that project a few times a week and clone the accepted issues into the appropriate internal project (most of which you can't see). This reduces mis-filed reports and requests and makes it easier for us to do cross-functional triage.

We are regularly doing work on Marketplace - a batch of fixes and changes that prepare the way for others was deployed today.

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8 hours ago, Oz Linden said:

We are regularly doing work on Marketplace - a batch of fixes and changes that prepare the way for others was deployed today.

I know you are tweaking MP all the time, Oz. But what are you doing to improve the services to the regular merchant???

No, forget it. If you don't understand what I mean by now, you never will. Please don't reply, you're good and all you can do is rub it in.

Me, I just wish I had never heard of Second Life. :(

Edited by ChinRey
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@Oz Linden:

After a good night of sleep, I still stand by what I said, but maybe I should elaborate since you may not have read the main thread and haven't been involved much in MP earlier:

The biggest problem with the fixes and changes you do to the Marketplace is the pace. Even today, it's not anywhere near the quality it should have had when it was launched so you're already ten years behind and still dropping. When are you going to have MP up to a standard you don't have to be ashamed of? I mean which century?

All the empty words are a second problem. "a batch of fixes and changes that prepare the way for others" – that joke is worn out now, we've heard it so many times before. I'm not saying you're lying but if this is true, you've spent far more time preparing for changes than it would have taken to build a brand new shiny Marketplace from scratch. Why?

The third problem are the changes you are preparing the way for this time. It's the in-world vendor system, right? You want to close that last little loophole merchants have to avoid MP and MP fees. That means you will have to kill off all the current creators of vendors and vendor add-ons since there's no way you can match them in a fair competition and you also need to find a way to disable SL's built-in free unscripted vendor function. Sorry to say this, but changes for the worse don't really help.

The fourth problem is the kind of issues we have. Look at the JIRA I posted. It's mainly about noob mistakes, the kind that no self-respecting, competent developer or programmer would even think of making. Yes, I am saying that whoever was responsible for MP in the first place was incompetent but how about you? After ten years "preparing for changes" do you still need a JIRA to spot something as glaringly obvious as this?

The fifth problem is LL's attitude. I said that LL didn't have any respect for the average content creator/merchant and the work we do (I may have used slightly different words). Do you know where I got that from? From your boss, Ebbe Altberg. Rya posted the quote in the thread this one is a spinoff from:

"... i do believe that the burden of land owners is a bit too high, and we have other people in the world who are sort-of getting away with not being charged enough or taxed enough"

(https://modemworld.me/lab-chat-3-bento-and-second-life/#mainland)

My jaw dropped to the floor when I read this. I am a landowner as well as a content creator/merchant so I know quite well the difference. If LL believes one of the group is significantly better or worse off than the other, they've totally lost touch with any reality, virtual or physical.

---

For any Linden who thinks merchants aren't charged enough of taxed enough, here's a simple little test:

  • Start a brand new "civilian" test alt
  • Open an MP store
  • Fill the store with about 100 items spread across at least five categories. If you're uncomfortable about selling your own works, five different full perm template based pieces of clothing, each with ten color variants, a fatpack and demos will do (only make sure they belong to different categories)
  • Each listing needs:
    • A carefully designed poster
    • At least three additional pictures
    • A good title
    • A short but consise description
    • Some relevant keywords
    • Eight related items (don't forget that, it's very important!)
    • and of course everything else in the listing form filled out correctly and properly.

You'll probably have faster uploads and fewer timeouts than most merchants since you are closer to the server physically but apart from that, this should be a fairly good simulation of a merchant's MP related work.

How much did you enjoy the Marketplace Listing Experience? How much time did it take? If you're lucky, you'll make ten dollars from something like this. How much is that per hour?

 

Edited by ChinRey
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I seem to remember that one of the rules in the MP TOS says that merchants can set their own creations for sale anywhere they wanted on other sites, but at no cheaper price to disallow bad competition. I might be mistaken, please correct me if I'm recalling this wrong. Well, for starters, cheaper than this there's only free of charge. Add the total fees and we get to next to nothing for hours and hours of work. Secondly, on a personal note, my models are mine and nobody has the right to tell me how to manage them. And as grateful compensation to fuel your business staying up and running, we get nothing except a 40% skim-off from our sales. 

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