which niches are emerging? any ideas?

[Minthel OHare]

hi I was wondering recently for people who want to start up a new business in SL (with good modeling and texturing abilities) which niche in market would be better to focus

ie : mans fasion or animesh or games ... wondering your observations or guesses

[Alyona Su]

Men's fashion is lacking when compared to women's. Also, setting design aside, if you do only Maitreya, Slink, etc - you will be only a single raindrop in an ocean. Thus, you should opt to cover the less popular bands also, such as Tonic, Belleza (Venus), Eve, etc. There are a lot of people who use these brands and they have a lot of money to burn.

It comes down to the basic two models of retail: Low-Margin, High Volume (such as Maitreya-only creators hope for) or High Margin, Low Volume (users of the less-supported bodies are often willing to pay higher prices for the support). Here's a genuine tip: Most Avatar-accessory creators are making a huge mistake: They bundle every body version of their creations into a single box. A smart creator will create a specific box for each body: One box for Maitreya, on box for Tonic, one box for Slink and so on. This way they can actually know which version of their creations sell more. If a particular brand does not sell very much or nothing at all, then they can safely discontinue supporting that brand.

As it is now: When a product sells, they have no idea for which brand of body the buyer is buying it for.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Alyona Su

[ChinRey]

58 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

Most Avatar-accessory creators are making a huge mistake: They bundle every body version of their creations into a single box.

Yes, ideally that's what you want to do but there are several flaws in the way MP works:

• Search ranking depends a lot on sales figures and it's calculated for each listing individually. Split your sales across multiple listings and your ranking will drop like a stone.
• With the very limited bulk processing options we have, creating listing is a significant part of a merchant's task. With separate listings for each color avriant of each rigging variant plus demos for each and every one and fatpacks, you may well end up with close to a hundred listings for the same outfit. That's easliy ten hours or more of work just uploading the images one by one, never mind all the other tedious tasks you need to perform.
• Related listings are very important and you want to show off as much as possible there. But there are only eight slots and they are static. You set them once (through the most awkwardly designed piece of UI ever seen in the universe) and they never change.
• With no way to organise your MP store, you want to keep the number of listings down. A hundred almost identical listings sorted in an all but arbitary order will make it very hard for any customer to find what they are looking for and many are likely to give up and shop somewhere else.
• The inworld Marketplace interface is even harder to navigate than the web one and once you have a hundred or more listings, it's all but useless. That's the only place you can change the content for a listing so with that many of them you can just forget everything about updating and upgrading existing ones.
• MP doesn't provide merchants with any meaningful way to see how fast an item sells. To get that vital piece of information you have to shift through your entire order history and assemble the statistics yourself.

So if you want to survive as an SL merchants, merge listings as much as possible.

Edited December 16, 2019 by ChinRey

[Minthel OHare]

On 12/16/2019 at 6:34 PM, ChinRey said:

Yes, ideally that's what you want to do but there are several flaws in the way MP works:

• Search ranking depends a lot on sales figures and it's calculated for each listing individually. Split your sales across multiple listings and your ranking will drop like a stone.
• With the very limited bulk processing options we have, creating listing is a significant part of a merchant's task. With separate listings for each color avriant of each rigging variant plus demos for each and every one and fatpacks, you may well end up with close to a hundred listings for the same outfit. That's easliy ten hours or more of work just uploading the images one by one, never mind all the other tedious tasks you need to perform.
• Related listings are very important and you want to show off as much as possible there. But there are only eight slots and they are static. You set them once (through the most awkwardly designed piece of UI ever seen in the universe) and they never change.
• With no way to organise your MP store, you want to keep the number of listings down. A hundred almost identical listings sorted in an all but arbitary order will make it very hard for any customer to find what they are looking for and many are likely to give up and shop somewhere else.
• The inworld Marketplace interface is even harder to navigate than the web one and once you have a hundred or more listings, it's all but useless. That's the only place you can change the content for a listing so with that many of them you can just forget everything about updating and upgrading existing ones.
• MP doesn't provide merchants with any meaningful way to see how fast an item sells. To get that vital piece of information you have to shift through your entire order history and assemble the statistics yourself.

So if you want to survive as an SL merchants, merge listings as much as possible.

thanks for your reply ChinRey . those will be really very useful for me. well I ve been reading forums and came across a comment >>

"If a creator is successful enough they could wait to cash out till they have more than enough lindens to cash out with the max fee of $500usd essentially giving them a transaction discount. Then again only very few can achieve that. "

I certainly not earn that much but, I wondered what it is, where I can ready more about it, ? I didnt see anything about it in SL offical site submenus, or I didnt notice 

ty

[Minthel OHare]

On 12/16/2019 at 6:34 PM, ChinRey said:

Yes, ideally that's what you want to do but there are several flaws in the way MP works:

• Search ranking depends a lot on sales figures and it's calculated for each listing individually. Split your sales across multiple listings and your ranking will drop like a stone.
• With the very limited bulk processing options we have, creating listing is a significant part of a merchant's task. With separate listings for each color avriant of each rigging variant plus demos for each and every one and fatpacks, you may well end up with close to a hundred listings for the same outfit. That's easliy ten hours or more of work just uploading the images one by one, never mind all the other tedious tasks you need to perform.
• Related listings are very important and you want to show off as much as possible there. But there are only eight slots and they are static. You set them once (through the most awkwardly designed piece of UI ever seen in the universe) and they never change.
• With no way to organise your MP store, you want to keep the number of listings down. A hundred almost identical listings sorted in an all but arbitary order will make it very hard for any customer to find what they are looking for and many are likely to give up and shop somewhere else.
• The inworld Marketplace interface is even harder to navigate than the web one and once you have a hundred or more listings, it's all but useless. That's the only place you can change the content for a listing so with that many of them you can just forget everything about updating and upgrading existing ones.
• MP doesn't provide merchants with any meaningful way to see how fast an item sells. To get that vital piece of information you have to shift through your entire order history and assemble the statistics yourself.

So if you want to survive as an SL merchants, merge listings as much as possible.

thank you for ur reply Alyone, very useful information for me

[MoiraKathleen]

On 12/16/2019 at 6:35 AM, Alyona Su said:

Here's a genuine tip: Most Avatar-accessory creators are making a huge mistake: They bundle every body version of their creations into a single box. A smart creator will create a specific box for each body: One box for Maitreya, on box for Tonic, one box for Slink and so on. This way they can actually know which version of their creations sell more. If a particular brand does not sell very much or nothing at all, then they can safely discontinue supporting that brand.

As it is now: When a product sells, they have no idea for which brand of body the buyer is buying it for.

I can understand why you're suggesting this, in terms of a creator being able to know their market and know that they are spending their creation time most efficiently. 

However, I'm not sure that, as a consumer, I would buy very much - if any - from a creator who packaged clothing as you suggested.  I have three different bodies, and it has only been since BOM came out that I have definitively chosen just one to wear all the time. Prior to that I switched between them, and I appreciated that almost all of the clothing I purchased included versions for at least 2, and oftentimes all 3, of the bodies that I used.  I have not seen anyone boxing a clothing item separately for each unique body - at least not so far - and because of that, I would not buy the same clothing item 2 or 3 times in order to get a version for each body that I own.  There are many clothing creators out there, so I would pass that one by and find one that included clothing for multiple bodies in one sales box. 

[Alyona Su]

6 minutes ago, moirakathleen said:

However, I'm not sure that, as a consumer, I would buy very much - if any - from a creator who packaged clothing as you suggested.

I'm willing to bet that you would purchase, because we make purchasing decisions based on the quality and style and feasible-use of the product; not on how it's packaged. If Blueberry started following this paradigm, will you stop purchasing from them if this were the one and only change in their current retail process? I think not.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Alyona Su

[MoiraKathleen]

50 minutes ago, Alyona Su said:

I'm willing to bet that you would purchase, because we make purchasing decisions based on the quality and style and feasible-use of the product; not on how it's packaged. If Blueberry started following this paradigm, will you stop purchasing from them if this were the one and only change in their current retail process? I think not.

If one of my often-purchased from clothing creators changed to that paradigm, it's very likely I would stop purchasing from them if I was able to find what I was looking for from other creators where I also shop. 

Clearly, it's the creator's choice as to how they want to package their items, but I wanted to mention my perspective as additional food for thought on that subject.

[Elvina Ewing]

On 12/19/2019 at 1:55 PM, Minthel OHare said:

thanks for your reply ChinRey . those will be really very useful for me. well I ve been reading forums and came across a comment >>

"If a creator is successful enough they could wait to cash out till they have more than enough lindens to cash out with the max fee of $500usd essentially giving them a transaction discount. Then again only very few can achieve that. "

I certainly not earn that much but, I wondered what it is, where I can ready more about it, ? I didnt see anything about it in SL offical site submenus, or I didnt notice 

ty

As a merchant you can only cash out a certain amount of USD per month. You can find your own trading limits here >> https://accounts.secondlife.com/lindex/economic_limits

On this page it also says: " If the limits listed above don't meet your needs, you may request a review of your account to increase your limits. Include information about your needs. We'll review your request, and if appropriate create additional limits or make adjustments to the existing limits "

So you cannot just sit and wait until you accumulate enough USD to cash out more than 5000$ in one go, to get some kind of withdrawal discount, because your limit to withdraw will most likely be less than that. Only if your store truly generates so much income that there is a need for you to withdraw more than 5000$ per month will LL consider to raise your withdrawal limits.

[Artorius Constantine]

Animesh accessories. Low LI and rigged, must be FP or creators can't use them and creators need them the most, but at the least copy & Mod perms would sell to a lot of people with animesh they want to customize. It's really an empty market niche.

Low Poly/ LI rigged mesh clothing, especially shoes & hair. There is One FP Animesh hair available on the MP and no decent low LI shoes. No Male hair at all. There's a lot of room just in the rigged hair dept. for low LI animesh hair.

It's hard to create new Animesh looks if they all have the same hair and just texture shoes. Things like a guitar that is rigged for animesh, tons of guitars on the MP, not one that's rigged let alone FP. I'd buy a full set of rigged FP instruments right now. Things like drum sticks. Drink cups, fairy wands, hats etc. I spent 3 days creating and rigging a simple cup in Blender just for a bartender. I am not a fan of Blender lol. A violin would let me create a wandering violinist. A rigged Falcon would let me create a roaming Falconer NPC to walk around villages. Hand weapons like swords and guns. Rigged mesh, Low LI and preferably FP options for Animesh creators.

 

[Lucia Nightfire]

16 hours ago, Artorius Constantine said:

Animesh accessories. Low LI and rigged, must be FP or creators can't use them and creators need them the most, but at the least copy & Mod perms would sell to a lot of people with animesh they want to customize. It's really an empty market niche.

Low Poly/ LI rigged mesh clothing, especially shoes & hair. There is One FP Animesh hair available on the MP and no decent low LI shoes. No Male hair at all. There's a lot of room just in the rigged hair dept. for low LI animesh hair.

It's hard to create new Animesh looks if they all have the same hair and just texture shoes. Things like a guitar that is rigged for animesh, tons of guitars on the MP, not one that's rigged let alone FP. I'd buy a full set of rigged FP instruments right now. Things like drum sticks. Drink cups, fairy wands, hats etc. I spent 3 days creating and rigging a simple cup in Blender just for a bartender. I am not a fan of Blender lol. A violin would let me create a wandering violinist. A rigged Falcon would let me create a roaming Falconer NPC to walk around villages. Hand weapons like swords and guns. Rigged mesh, Low LI and preferably FP options for Animesh creators.

 

Aside from body shape support, which is partially available on aditi now, one of the other alleged follow-up features for animesh is attach point support.

If it comes to fruition and is done correctly, one of the many benefits will allow people to accessorize their characters without having to find and rig content.

They can use any of the multitude of great existing content that is out there now.

This means, for example, if you want to put a book, sword, gun or cup in a character's hand, it can be resized to fit in the hand and have its pos/rot adjusted to so hand placement looks correct, allowing the same object to be used by many characters without having to rig/upload new assets for each.

This is just one out of over half a dozen benefits attach points could bring for animesh.

 

[Artorius Constantine]

Shape support and attachment point support would solve a LOT of issues.

 

Would love to see that happen. 

[Cackle Amore]

On 12/19/2019 at 12:17 PM, moirakathleen said:

If one of my often-purchased from clothing creators changed to that paradigm, it's very likely I would stop purchasing from them if I was able to find what I was looking for from other creators where I also shop. 

Clearly, it's the creator's choice as to how they want to package their items, but I wanted to mention my perspective as additional food for thought on that subject.

I'm certainly on your side with that. People selling an item with all the colors of the rain split into a dozen products are just making such a cluttered unattractive mess of their store, and not to mention, basically charging full price for a color change that probably only took them less than a minute to do for any single color. If anything, it's them that are making the mistake, not those that bundle them together. It's all the same item anyways, and that's where most of the work was along with the initial texture. The color variants take little to no effort to make afterwards.

One of the main benefits of bundling is it just makes your store look nice and tidy, and more consumer friendly too.