Advice on marketplace and inworld store

[Roseamenelle]

Hii, so last time i posted on advice on my marketplace and inworld store and did do some of the suggestions told in comments (thank you) but i am still having no sales, and would like to ask for some advice once more if thats ok?: so someone said to flood the keywords with words pertaining to selling product, another suggested lowering the price, and another suggested using my own watermark on my photos in my frames and to put original photo before title, plus put  ''in frame'' since i sell nature photography in frames ( all photos are hand taken by yours truly's own camera, not googled), and did most of those suggestions, but still havent made much progress, so i came back here and kindly wanted some  advice again if theres anything else that would be good.

looking forward to your advice and thank you in advance ^-^

[Pamela Galli]

Didn’t anyone suggest putting a clickable link in your signature. Or having one at all?

[Alwin Alcott]

18 minutes ago, Roseamenelle said:

 so someone said to flood the keywords with words pertaining to selling product,

Art,Photos,Frame,Nature,Wall,Gallery,Artform,Photographic,Decoration,PictureFrame,Landscape,Scenic,Imagery,Image

I think you could improve the keywords, these aren't very "catchy" and not telling what you want to sell, a bit to generic, and the same in all your products.
On the picture is a tree .. where's that in the keywords?

[Roseamenelle]

well someone else suggested them, and ok might try to do that then

 

[Alwin Alcott]

10 minutes ago, Roseamenelle said:

well someone else suggested them, and ok might try to do that then

 

if you go too generic people won't find your products, i'd also put inworld pictures as sales example

[Roseamenelle]

like what kind of inworld pictures? you mean like sl photography or something else? @Alwin Alcott

[Chic Aeon]

The sad truth is that art doesn't sell all that well here. Sculpture? Yes, better. But 2D art is everywhere. Real Life photography isn't as popular as INWORLD photography --- and again, neither are big sellers.   Sales are down in general over a year ago --- for many people if not most. Less people to buy. More people selling.    So honestly -- and I say this to be helpful -- it is unlikely that you will sell much art work. These days you either need to have pretty exceptional building (meshing) skills as well as texture skills --  as well as a "niche" that very few people are filling to make a go in retail.  

 

So it may be better to just enjoy SL and forget about making money. You don't have to spend any real life money at all to have a good time here, so selling is NOT mandatory.    I wish you all the best.  

[Roseamenelle]

i am learning blender atm, and taking classes at blender benders, and watching tutorials too on youtube

[MarcCross]

HI  Roseamenelle

Maybe put a link to you MP and In World store in your profile also, and include in your picks. As you move around SL people might see a store they do not know a nd and check.  I could not find anything in search  when I logged in

Edited January 11, 2020 by MarcCross

[Prokofy Neva]

13 hours ago, Roseamenelle said:

Hii, so last time i posted on advice on my marketplace and inworld store and did do some of the suggestions told in comments (thank you) but i am still having no sales, and would like to ask for some advice once more if thats ok?: so someone said to flood the keywords with words pertaining to selling product, another suggested lowering the price, and another suggested using my own watermark on my photos in my frames and to put original photo before title, plus put  ''in frame'' since i sell nature photography in frames ( all photos are hand taken by yours truly's own camera, not googled), and did most of those suggestions, but still havent made much progress, so i came back here and kindly wanted some  advice again if theres anything else that would be good.

looking forward to your advice and thank you in advance ^-^

I think you have a built-in problem in that RL photos don't sell as well in SL as photos of SL. There's something jarring about photo-real that puts people off.

You could consider using your photography skills to take good *SL* photos and they may sell better.

But regardless, to get noticed by the market, you can't just put keywords in search or put a picks on your avatar, you need to go rent a mall so that you will get shoppers to see you, or get into a gallery sim, or get into an event. This takes time and research but that's how it's done.

[Codex Alpha]

The SL Marketplace is broken, due to the misuse of keywords listings and other: It is actually 'keyword spam', which contributes to the MP's demise - and there is nothing any of us can do about it. If I were to 'help' improve the MP by reporting every single listing that used keywords unrelated to the product, I would get carpal tunnel syndrome. Most listings are simply abused due to ignorance or simply are attempts to game the system.

Let's use "Original Photo: The Forest With Bridge In Frame" as an example.
How would I find this?
So I searched the MP "forest bridge photo" and what comes up?
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/products/search?utf8=✓&search[category_id]=&search[maturity_level]=G&search[keywords]=forest+bridge+photo

Not seeing many results for what I'm looking for...
The listings provided have a combo of the search terms in the title, but all abuse the system with keyword spam - with keywords not even relating to the product they are selling.

The only antidote to this is to be very specific in both your title and in your keywords, and if your description area further describes your product, it will actually show up in Google listings quite well. I've noticed that many SL marketplace items will show up in Google search when I may be looking for reference, because their titles and keywords are excellent.

Also, being found on the MP means people need to be specifically searching for your product - if they're not searching for it, there is no demand.
If they are searching for it, but not buying it - then there may be other reasons why they are not - quality, subjectivity to art, price, etc.

In your merchant area on the site you can find "Top Selling Products" and "Top Searched Products" to see which of your products is being searched the most, and by extension how many sell out of the searches. Learn to use this tool. It isn't great, but it's something to attempt to measure your success.

For myself, I modeled a piece of furniture that I designed myself - it has 0 sales as to this date. Is it bad? nope. Is it too pricey? doubt it, it's near free or dirt cheap. It's just that noone is looking for it, noone is searching for it, and unless it is seen inworld by someone else (due to having a store, or someone else bought it and they see it) - it's dead in the water. So one must adjust to what is in demand and go from there.

Please fix your keywords though: They are too many, not describing the product, and won't help getting you found anyway.
Get into the world and a gallery and see what people like or don't like, what sells, etc.

Also, as Chic Aeon has stated, art isn't a big seller in SL (or Sansar), and especially now in 2020 - where free pictures, photos, illustrations abound and can be uploaded by anyone royalty free. If anything at the base, you can make money selling the actual frames instead - thats where the value actually is. I haven't sold much art, because it seems people are buying them for the actual frames I made instead (display frames, tapestry, kiosks, etc) So try that angle, but then put YOUR art as a default on it.

It is more imperative that people create unique works and advanced works, as more and more people are entering into 3D modeling and competition is fierce - so focusing on what you can offer as an individual will be paramount.

Hope this helps a bit and puts things into perspective.
 

[Fauve Aeon]

• First, you didn’t give a link to the store, someone has to copy/paste your name in the MP to even find your store. Never make it difficult for someone to throw money at you, use every non-spammy ethical method to invite people to buy!
• Second, I can’t tell if these are a flat prim with the frame also being part of the texture or photographs in a more detailed mesh frame. If they are flat, I’d much prefer no frame and be able to put them in a mesh frame. You’ve digitally signed them quite prominently and you don’t specify whether that’s just your watermark for the marketplace or if they actually come with it on the photo. I’d assume hopefully not...but I’ve assumed that before and been quite mistaken. 
• Third, I don’t see a SLURL to go see them inworld. Even a tiny place with a few examples is A-ok for me, I just like to see an in-world sample of someone’s work, especially artwork so I can test out how it looks under my home windlight setting. 

The photographs/frames do not fit my decor style so I’m not your target customer, but I replied because these are three marketing issues that make me hesitate to buy no matter what is being sold. 

[ChinRey]

22 hours ago, entity0x said:

Let's use "Original Photo: The Forest With Bridge In Frame" as an example.
How would I find this?
So I searched the MP "forest bridge photo" and what comes up?
 

😮

I expected it to be far down on a loooong lsit of search results but it doesn't actually show up at all even on such a direct match!

Paging @Grumpity Linden and @Dakota Linden. One of them really needs to explain this.

 

[Pamela Galli]

1 hour ago, Fauve Aeon said:

First, you didn’t give a link to the store, someone has to copy/paste your name in the MP to even find your store. Never make it difficult for someone to throw money at you, use every non-spammy ethical method to invite people to buy!

That’s what the first response (mine) mentioned. She ignored it and still hasn’t bothered to do anything about it. 
 

[Dakota Linden]

"Let's use "Original Photo: The Forest With Bridge In Frame" as an example.
How would I find this?"

Hi!

Try using just Forest Bridge, without the word photo. 

When I did this, the item is the 6th item on the page when sorted by Newest items first. 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Original-PhotoThe-Forest-with-a-bridge-In-Frame/18360950

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Dakota Linden said:

"Let's use "Original Photo: The Forest With Bridge In Frame" as an example.
How would I find this?"

Hi!

Try using just Forest Bridge, without the word photo.

But what if somebody is specifically looking for a photo of a bridge in a forest? Add the word "photo" to the search and Roseamenelle's listing is gone from the search result. Enter the entire title and there are no matches at all.

Now, me and Google at least believe that the purpose of any search engine is to make it as easy as possible for people to find the most relevant search results. Obviously LL has a different opinion here. I suppose we have to agree to disagree but I really think you should at least explain what your point of view and probably also produce a manual how to use the MP search engine.

 

Edit:

I think I found the ideal solution in an old thread here. May I humbly suggest LL adopts this as the official and recommended way to search MP? It's far better than what we have now.

 

Edited January 14, 2020 by ChinRey

[Dakota Linden]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

also produce a manual how to use the MP search engine.

 

 

 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Dakota Linden said:

 

Yes, that's a start but it doesn't cover topics like which search words (such as "photo" in the case we use as an example here) will break the search.

Nor does it cover...

Oh never mind. This isn't actually going to lead anywhere, is it?

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

5 hours ago, ChinRey said:

But what if somebody is specifically looking for a photo of a bridge in a forest? Add the word "photo" to the search and Roseamenelle's listing is gone from the search result. Enter the entire title and there are no matches at all.

Now, me and Google at least believe that the purpose of any search engine is to make it as easy as possible for people to find the most relevant search results. Obviously LL has a different opinion here. I suppose we have to agree to disagree but I really think you should at least explain what your point of view and probably also produce a manual how to use the MP search engine.

Google doesn't have filters or categories. The Marketplace does. So it might be prudent to use filters and categories in a Marketplace search instead of relying only on keywords like you would with Google, seeing that Google has orders of magnitude more searches to feed through its algorithm.

[LittleMe Jewell]

On 1/13/2020 at 11:06 AM, ChinRey said:

On 1/12/2020 at 12:36 PM, entity0x said:

Let's use "Original Photo: The Forest With Bridge In Frame" as an example.
How would I find this?
So I searched the MP "forest bridge photo" and what comes up?
 

😮

I expected it to be far down on a loooong lsit of search results but it doesn't actually show up at all even on such a direct match!

 

8 hours ago, Dakota Linden said:

Try using just Forest Bridge, without the word photo. 

When I did this, the item is the 6th item on the page when sorted by Newest items first. 

 

I have learned that extensive use of AND and OR and NOT works best for MP searching, especially detailed searching.  

If I enter "forest AND bridge AND photo", then the listing is first in the listings returned.

 

I have also made note of the above mentioned Google method, because sometimes all of the AND/OR/NOT usage in the world still won't manage to penetrate the mystery of the MP Search World.

 

[Dakota Linden]

18 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Yes, that's a start but it doesn't cover topics like which search words (such as "photo" in the case we use as an example here) will break the search.

Nor does it cover...

Oh never mind. This isn't actually going to lead anywhere, is it?

 

Hi!

Actually, it will.  If you have a tip or trick when searching on the Marketplace, please add it as a comment to that Search thread.  

One thing to try to remember when searching on the Marketplace is to not try to use generic terms.  If someone searches for an item and the search returns too many listings, then remove one of the terms. 

In the case of the Forest Bridge Photo, seeing that there are hundreds of items with photo showing up, then remove photo and try the search again.  Which in this case, resulted in the item showing up on the search returns, as the 6th item. 

Another thing to remember is categories.  If someone is looking for an actual photo then the best way to eliminate the vast majority of any chance of false positives is to go directly to the Photos category and search there instead of searching the entire Marketplace.  Or search the entire Marketplace and then dive down into the categories to progressively eliminate all of those other items in categories that have nothing to do with photos. 

 

[Pamela Galli]

 

 

16 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

 

I have learned that extensive use of AND and OR and NOT works best for MP searching, especially detailed searching.  

If I enter "forest AND bridge AND photo", then the listing is first in the listings returned.

 

I have also made note of the above mentioned Google method, because sometimes all of the AND/OR/NOT usage in the world still won't manage to penetrate the mystery of the MP Search World.

 

Also some people don’t know how to use inventory search like this, or do not know it exists. Even people who have been here years. 

Edited January 15, 2020 by Pamela Galli