Market Place

[Jennivive Grumpypants]

My question, can anyone tell me why so many stores have left Marketplace? Are These stores gone on market place for good? Or is there an issue with maintanance? 

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Jennavive Thespian said:

My question, can anyone tell me why so many stores have left Marketplace? Are These stores gone on market place for good? Or is there an issue with maintanance? 

Second Life Status - Marketplace Unscheduled Maintenance (statuspage.io)

Although it says resolved, there may be lingering issues.  File a ticket.

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Rowan Amore

[Jennivive Grumpypants]

Thanks for responding. It's annoying as heck. I don't want to be T-ping all over the Grid. Sigh

[So Whimsy]

57 minutes ago, Jennavive Thespian said:

Thanks for responding. It's annoying as heck. I don't want to be T-ping all over the Grid. Sigh

You are indeed correct. A large amount of creators have closed their in-world store or left SL completely, after all SL is almost 19 years old. Some merchants also change locations and forget to update their MP listings accordingly.

Sometimes its worth a try to look the creator up in world and check their profile or picks...found their store that way when the mp listing itself sent me off into space.

[Silent Mistwalker]

Some find the fees LL charges for listing on the MP too high, so they only have inworld stores now.

[Ceka Cianci]

2 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Some find the fees LL charges for listing on the MP too high, so they only have inworld stores now.

That plus many will charge less for buying the same thing in world..

[Jules Catlyn]

14 hours ago, Jennavive Thespian said:

Thanks for responding. It's annoying as heck. I don't want to be T-ping all over the Grid. Sigh

Too bad. You are missing a lot of deals by not shopping inworld. Plus as others said. A lot of quality brands left MP.

[Sid Nagy]

7 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Some find the fees LL charges for listing on the MP too high, so they only have inworld stores now.

During the time I had an inworld store, I payed a higher percentage in rent\tier than the percentage that LL is charging me at the moment on the marketplace.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Merchants have overhead costs, no matter how. Just like in RL.

And since inworld search is still a pain in the *** (a lot worse than the MP search), I think most merchants are better of on the MP.
Or at least should continue on the MP when having an inworld shop.
Each item listed is a (cheap) advertisement.
 

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[bigmoe Whitfield]

1 hour ago, Jules Catlyn said:

Too bad. You are missing a lot of deals by not shopping inworld. Plus as others said. A lot of quality brands left MP.

lots of stores tend to move around and never update their landmarks.  I'm not playing hunt the stores.  so if it's not on the market place. I'm not buying it.

[Isaac Ashton]

5 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

That plus many will charge less for buying the same thing in world..

If prices are higher on mp, it's just because they also include the LL fees (10%) so that eventually merchants still get the same amount of L$ for an item sold inworld or on mp. If mp prices don't include the LL fees, then merchants will receive less for a sale on mp than an inworld sale. That's why many merchants have higher prices on mp than inworld.

[Drayke Newall]

2 hours ago, Jules Catlyn said:

Too bad. You are missing a lot of deals by not shopping inworld. Plus as others said. A lot of quality brands left MP.

The problem is that it is near impossible to find stores these days in world as there is no directory or malls for them to be found easily. When the MP started and business's jumped ship to MP and abandoned their in world stores everything shifted and the MP became the directory.

This has continued today whereby people search marketplace first, find the item and then go in world to view the item. Unless some form of inworld shop directory is made or massive malls come back (they wont) then not only will creators suffer but you will also get posts like the OP asking where the stores are gone.

You have to know the stores name or you get no-where in inworld search and even if you do it's like playing pin the tail on the donkey hoping the search listing is correct.

I am with @bigmoe Whitfield and am not going to go hunting stores especially with the terrible new inworld search. I have tried to do that for the past three days with a friend that joined and they in the end just gave up and couldn't bother hopping around anymore especially when even inworld search shows there is supposed to be a store, tp there and then find yourself falling from the sky as the shop has closed or moved with no new landmark given.

Meaning having to then tell the new user if that happens you then have to go to the search listing, click the user name and go to their profile and hope they have a land mark in the pics or description.

That said, in my searches with this friend over the past few days, even I have noticed that MP listings have reduced a lot.

:ETA:

It also doesn't help that for some reason LL have (by the looks recently - at least I can remember it being 200+ pages when I searched last year) capped the search pages of marketplace to 105 meaning if you search for something general or go to a category for a look (with no search parameters) you only get a max of 105 pages of items despite their being over 300+ pages for that search.

For example, there is at current post 64,950 female skins listed when you go to Avatar Components>Avatar Skins>Female Skins (scrap that just dropped by 7 :P). This would mean that at 96 listings per page there should be over 667 total pages of items for that category. Instead there are 105 only meaning 10,080 items are only EVER shown without very specific searches or filters. I feel sorry for those creators that are getting dropped off without realising it.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Ceka Cianci]

2 minutes ago, Isaac Ashton said:

If prices are higher on mp, it's just because they also include the LL fees (10%) so that eventually merchants still get the same amount of L$ for an item sold inworld or on mp. If mp prices don't include the LL fees, then merchants will receive less for a sale on mp than an inworld sale. That's why many merchants have higher prices on mp than inworld.

That's why I brought it up right after Silents post about some leaving the MP and only having in world stores..

 

[Sid Nagy]

37 minutes ago, Isaac Ashton said:

If prices are higher on mp, it's just because they also include the LL fees (10%) so that eventually merchants still get the same amount of L$ for an item sold inworld or on mp. If mp prices don't include the LL fees, then merchants will receive less for a sale on mp than an inworld sale. That's why many merchants have higher prices on mp than inworld.

Land is not for free in SL.
A merchant has to calculate that costs as overhead as well.
Every LI used for the store is a recursing cost factor, sale or not. One can loose money by having an inworld store if sales drop or are too little.
On the mp the space is free. You only pay a 10% when you actually have a sale. One can't loose money with a MP store if sales drop or are too little.
The MP is financially safer.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[niko89bg]

I find using the marketplace kinda annoying so I prefer to go to the stores inword. This is how I found some great deals in the past. Plus, my avatar is a guy so the good items are limited in general and I don't tend to shop for clothes every day to be honest. 

Edited April 13, 2022 by niko89bg

[Sid Nagy]

34 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

That said, in my searches with this friend over the past few days, even I have noticed that MP listings have reduced a lot.

Didn't LL announce a while back that they would start to do something about the clutter on the MP? (I'm not sure).

When I look how much the SKU numbers climb in one day, the time between my two last new listings, there are thousands of new listings every day on the MP.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Drayke Newall]

9 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Didn't LL announce a while back that they would start to do something about the clutter on the MP?

When I look how much the SKU numbers climb in one day, the time between my two last new listings, there are thousands of new listings every day on the MP.

The problem is, what does LL determine to be clutter?

Also as per my edit I found the reason why it seems like there is so little on the marketplace now.

Its because they have capped the max viewable to only 10,080 items or 105 pages at a time. This means that no matter what happens some users items will never be displayed unless you know their store name or they have placed the correct keywords. As I mentioned in my edit there are 64,943 female skins listed but only 10080 are ever shown. To take this further with regards to keywords. Of those 64,943 female skins only 1600 show up when the search parameter is 'white'. I highly doubt there are only 1600 white skin toned female skins on MP.

Even if the keywords are correct, I would dare say that there would be over 10080 'white' female skins on MP which means even with correct keywords creators are going to not have their listing show.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Cinos Field]

A part of it's reviewphobia. No, I'm serious, I can't think of anything better to call it. I've seen several big merchants quit the marketplace and switch to inworld sales only because they got a few bad reviews. Sadly I can't name any of them here, but one even has an angry sign at their shop that explains it.

[Sid Nagy]

Are there really still people who read reviews?
I mean, with a bunch of alts one can polish a one star rating almost totally away with 10 five star ratings for the costs of the item price.
Good pictures, good description, good customer service and demo's when needed should do the trick.

And one can't win them all anyway. Most will buy from one of the competitors because there are so many in the field with good products as well.
A bit of realism and a lack of drama are very helpful, when being a merchant.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Drayke Newall said:

The problem is, what does LL determine to be clutter?

Also as per my edit I found the reason why it seems like there is so little on the marketplace now.

Its because they have capped the max viewable to only 10,080 items or 105 pages at a time. This means that no matter what happens some users items will never be displayed unless you know their store name or they have placed the correct keywords. As I mentioned in my edit there are 64,943 female skins listed but only 10080 are ever shown. To take this further with regards to keywords. Of those 64,943 female skins only 1600 show up when the search parameter is 'white'. I highly doubt there are only 1600 white skin toned female skins on MP.

Even if the keywords are correct, I would dare say that there would be over 10080 'white' female skins on MP which means even with correct keywords creators are going to not have their listing show.

Maybe that is the way LL is regulating the MP a bit.
They have all the statistics about stuff that is on the MP like forever and never sells or are from a merchant that hasn't logged in for a year or more.
That is all usable to influence search results, if the right person organizes the the search engine.

And merchants can do a lot themselves too to show up.
Use realistic keywords, descriptions and name your store and products meaningful. Place them in the right category.
A decade ago I was a reasonable successful door and window merchant. Guess how the stores were named?
Door Store and Window Shop. 
Use the KISS method. (Keep It Simple Stupid)

And that ends my free merchant tips episode for today. 

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Ceka Cianci]

20 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

Are there really still people who read reviews?
I mean, with a bunch of alts one can polish a one star rating almost totally away with 10 five star ratings for the costs of the item price.
Good pictures, good description, good customer service and demo's when needed should do the trick.

And one can't win them all anyway. Most will buy from one of the competitors because there are so many in the field with good products as well.
A bit of realism and a lack of drama are very helpful, when being a merchant.

I never pay attention to the one and five star.. If all they have is five star, then I just don't read any of them.. I'll give the review pages a glance for the in between ones though..

Edited April 13, 2022 by Ceka Cianci

[Drayke Newall]

1 minute ago, Sid Nagy said:

Maybe that is the way LL is regulating the MP a bit.
They have all the statistics about stuff that is on the MP like forever and never sell or have a merchant that hasn't logged in for a year or more.
That is all usable to influence search results.

And merchants can do a lot themselves too to show up.
Use realistic keywords, descriptions and name your store and products meaningful. Place them in the right category.
A decade ago I was a reasonable successful door and window merchant. Guess how the stores were named?
Door Store and Window Shop. 
Use the KISS method. (Keep It Simple Stupid)

True and agree to keep it simple, right keywords and categories, however the capping to 105 pages is the first I have seen any website or marketplace do on the web. If you go to any marketplace on the web, all results are visible no matter the number of pages.

Personally, I think it is a bad idea to cap search results and believe LL would be better off spending their effort in more meaningful MP improvements.

I mean lets be honest, even their categories on MP are not the best. Why the need for Avatar Accessories, components and appearance? From memory one of those Avatar categories was phased out but LL couldn't be bothered sorting the items from that category into the others so they just left it.

Then you have hair. Rather than keeping the main category 'hair' as just a header category with no items allowed and then use the subcategories of Short, Long, etc. They have the subcategories as well as the main categories as listable. So what happens? Out of the 240,000+ hair items for sale on marketplace only 1/8th of those listings are in the subcategories meaning that the majority never show.

MP is a mess, has been for years.

[Sid Nagy]

I totally agree that the MP is a mess.
Millions of items there.
Good luck sorting them out, with a lot of merchants having their junk listed without ever logging in.

A new marketplace from scratch could be a possibility, with a new url and all, with the old one available too for s transition period of lets say 2 more years.
So merchants would have the time to transfer their items that they think that are still worth listing.
Just like they phased out xstreetsl in the past.
It would be THE way to get rid of all the ghost merchants with their junk dating back to the prim era.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Arielle Popstar]

A lot of clutter could be cleaned by simply combining demo and full versions of an item on one page instead of two. That and allowing for a drop down menu on a product page listing all the different colors and shades a Creator sells an item in instead of a page for each. 

[Sid Nagy]

Coding these possibilities is relatively easy I guess. But who is going to regroup all the existing merchandise?
Still existing merchants will grumble a bit, like with every change, but  what with all the former merchants who called it a day somewhere in the past and left their junk online.
That's why I'm in favor for a brand new marketplace, with a better keyword and category system and better listing features. Of course with a grace period to change to the new marketplace.
The existing merchants will grumble a bit, like with every change, but they will use the grace period to change to the new marketplace.
The ghost merchants will go into the history bin, where their stuff belongs in the first place.

Add: An LL should code something in that new MP like if the merchant isn't online for a year, all their stuff is taken offline, only re-deliveries still possible IMHO.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Maitimo]

I always, always shop on the mp first. If I find what I 'm looking for, then I will look inworld (if there is an inworld store) just in case its cheaper.

It is impossible to search inworld stores for a specific product. Even searching for a general theme is next to impossible. Just try searching menswear, and see how many stores you get that don't sell menswear and never have.

And I avoid the monthly events because the products there are all priced out of my budget. 

So if I can't find a creator's stuff on the MP, I will never know they even exist.