second life economy Has Second Life a fleeting weakness or I'm just imagining things ?

[Pierre Ceriano]

I'm getting old and probably becoming a pessimistic old fart. But it seems to me, however, that things are changing profoundly on Second Life and the purpose of this forum topic is to understand how and why. I am not going to talk only about business but also about the attendance of Second Life in both qualitative and quantitative terms. I don't need Second Life to make a living but Second Life is my main hobby and I finance it through my sales.

From an economic point of view, I have never made so many things, I have never participated in so many events. I also organize events. And yet my sales remain stable. Sometimes anarchic: one calm day, the next day explodes. I sell old stuff on the Marketplace and new stuff almost exclusively in-world. Strange, no?

I participate in events such as hunts, with things given free of charge. Well here too visitors are decreasing.

Generally speaking, I find that Second Life lacks punch, and this has been the case for at least 6 months. So I would be curious to know your feelings and your experience. Not just "I'm fine, thank you" or "It's total *****...", but what explains your optimism or pessimism. I too will come back to my experience through your comments.

I would also like to point out that the aim here is not to shoot red-hot at Linden Labs. Let's try to sort things out and be constructive. 

Thank you in advance and hugs !

Pierre

[Marigold Devin]

Peaks and troughs I guess.

Perhaps there are many more merchants and creators now than there have ever been, so the money that everyone has to spend gets spread across more merchants and creators.

From my own viewpoint, I see people come and go. I took a break for a while myself (I've taken several breaks, from months to years at a time since 2012). 

My optimism comes from something new and shiny perhaps, like the seasonal items. My pessimism comes from when a dress that should fit me does not fit me. Or the attitudes of my fellow residents. Or my own attitude can be my downfall at times. 

Do you participate in things like the 55 linden dollar Thursday or anything like that? I have found some great vendors that way, something for everyone on this type of thing. Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising and these note cards which are sent out weekly are helpful.

The newest Linden Homes - for quite a few years now - have caused an increase in sales of home furnishings, I am sure. There is indeed a thread running on these forums that acts like a showcase for the creativity of the residents of Bellisseria, and the merchants who supply to same. 

 

 

[Polenth Yue]

I don't have that event experience because I do a small number of once-a-year events and sometimes the shop and hop. The biggest event for me is Fantasy Faire, which doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon. Sales were up this year there. Shop and hop comes in next. Sales and gift handouts were about the same this year, but at good levels, so nothing to worry about. For hunts, I do ones connected to those once-a-year events or Twisted (though that's been taking a break).

The issue with monthly events and hunts is everyone is trying to get in on the act, so there are far more events than people to visit. Merchants burn out. Customers become much more selective. Everyone ends up spread out very thinly.

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

It's not just you. I've always had kind of niche products and never really had to do events or advertise and did well. I've been very fortunate. But for the last year or so, things have been very bad year over year. I'm talking about half of what has been traditionally normal.

Some things that have changed for me

1. Customers who come and make huge bulk orders are basically gone

2. More low cost items selling more than higher end products

3. Massive droughts in sales where I'm making like a quarter or less of what would be normal

4. Poor search placement, older products being shown more. Even results when just searching my own store aren't what I expect. And I'm used to doing SEO from my other work

5. High end products aren't selling and instead it's very cheap builder's kits or older builds

6. The good times that would be offset by sales droughts are not nearly as good as they ever were

I really don't know what's going on. I blamed SLMP search for a while, because the results were bad. But they have improved a lot and things are still rather poor. I've always noticed a pattern with sales where things would get good, SLMP/billing/etc would have maintenance and have problems, sales would dry up, then lower end stuff would start selling, eventually moving to higher end stuff and great sales until the process repeated. But it feels like now that process is broken and it never gets past SLMP/billing/etc maintenance and "entry level" product sales.

I have no doubt events have become saturated and they're not what they used to be. But I have never even done an event and have done well (I thank the market I'm in being not overly competitive), and I'm still having lots of problems.

This is definitely, for me, the worst part of the year in sales and I usually get bummed this time of year. But even comparing year over year (i.e. this 2023 sept to 2022 sept) things are bad. And they weren't actually very good in 2022 either.

The real world economy is also very bad. I had a lot of RL work lined up this summer with a lot of people promising me tons of work. It never came. One RL place I work for had a ton of clients cancel a ton of work. Another had a million dollar house and the $300 check they wrote for some small work bounced when cashed on the same day. I think things are very bad in RL, more than anyone is admitting. Which is actually very scary to me. I have been selling in SL for a long time, I've noticed that usually recessions are great for SL because it's a lot cheaper to have fun in a virtual world than to go out and have dinner and some booze. In fact right now that's even truer, because a dinner for two with booze is easily $50+ here in the states. But that shift when people would come to SL instead seems to not be happening either. It's pretty scary because it makes me feel a lot of people don't even have the money to avoid RL and instead buy a parcel and build a home or hangout or whatever. I think it's easy to point the finger at LL and SL but there's a bigger picture here and I really don't think it's very good. I think people are struggling to pay for food and dropping $20 on a mesh body or something isn't really a luxury a lot of people can afford.

This post is getting rather long winded, but I will make one complaint about SL and LL, and it's the reliability of the grid and SLMP, which completely reduces user's ability both to find and purchase content as well as to use it. As an ecommerce site SLMP is horribly outdated, slow, and shows irrelevant stuff way too much. I always say that people should consider if Amazon worked like SLMP. Sometimes pages throw 500 errors, sometimes your order doesn't go through for 12 hours. You search for NIntendo and get SNES games instead of Switch. But I think a lot of people have lost patience with trying to buy things and being able to use the things they've bought. There's so much fighting for people's attention on the internet and honestly their dopamine receptors are fried. They have zero patience now. And if things aren't working they just leave and don't care.

Also, this is a hot button political topic so I'll try and present it in the most reasonable way. But people from developing countries have found SLMP is a way to make money and they have driven down the prices of content.

Quote

From an economic point of view, I have never made so many things, I have never participated in so many events. I also organize events. And yet my sales remain stable. Sometimes anarchic: one calm day, the next day explodes. I sell old stuff on the Marketplace and new stuff almost exclusively in-world. Strange, no?

This, definitely, and it's demoralizing me for making content for SL like none other. I finally set up in world vendors and yes, that's the stuff that sells mostly in world while old stuff keeps selling on SLMP. Why spend money and time making new stuff if it's not going to sell and you're just going to end up coasting on old stuff? My sales are so low that a major build costs so much it's no longer worth doing anymore. There's something massively broken technologically with the SL platform. And guess what? All these people being shown old, outdated stuff think that's what SL is and that's all that exists so they get discouraged. If you're not making stuff like you used to, you are seeing sales drop massively. Being an SLMP merchant isn't about creating new things and making more L$ now, it's about trying to make enough stuff so you can still make as much as you used to. In the last year I have never sold so much outdated, sub L$100 products ever (excluding my cheap sculpty rock pack people seem to love for some reason I'll never understand).

In fact I used to get excited when I got an email about a sale. Now it's more an annoyance because it's probably some L$99 thing I made in 2015. And I'm in a pretty unique situation to analyze sales because I'm working on a new search engine and sales analysis platform and I imported the last like 5 years of sales data and have been making web pages and doing all sorts of cool queries to look at things.

Anyways, this ended up much longer than I thought. But I do feel strongly that there is something very wrong with SL on a technical level and it's not making any progress at improving.

[Love Zhaoying]

22 hours ago, Pierre Ceriano said:

Generally speaking, I find that Second Life lacks punch, and this has been the case for at least 6 months. So I would be curious to know your feelings and your experience. Not just "I'm fine, thank you" or "It's total *****...", but what explains your optimism or pessimism. I too will come back to my experience through your comments.

I am pleased about all of the "positive changes" and "improvements", whether planned or still in-progress.

Many will definitely benefit "new users", such as the Welcome Hub.

However, many do not apply to me or fall within my interests, such as:

- Linden Homes

- Senra Avatars

But, advancements in LSL Scripting functions and the possibility of a good new Mobile Viewer are positive points for me.

Many of the other "extremely important" improvements are "still in progress" which interest me "somewhat" but not too much. I think those will improve the quality of Second Life overall, including:

- Advanced graphics

Sorry if my list is poor, I saw a squirrel over there * chases after *

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

42 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I am pleased about all of the "positive changes" and "improvements", whether planned or still in-progress.

Many will definitely benefit "new users", such as the Welcome Hub.

However, many do not apply to me or fall within my interests, such as:

- Linden Homes

- Senra Avatars

But, advancements in LSL Scripting functions and the possibility of a good new Mobile Viewer are positive points for me.

Many of the other "extremely important" improvements are "still in progress" which interest me "somewhat" but not too much. I think those will improve the quality of Second Life overall, including:

- Advanced graphics

Sorry if my list is poor, I saw a squirrel over there * chases after *

 

I am actually quite concerned that the focus on PBR and mobile viewer has left not enough people to focus on maintaining and keeping SL running smoothly. Given LL's business environment, I imagine a lot of people are really excited to be working on those projects, but when "SLMP is throwing a ton of 500 errors, can someone look into it?" type of things comes up there's probably a lot of crickets. I'd imagine there's a couple really awesome Lindens doing all the dirty work and they're totally over worked.

[Love Zhaoying]

54 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

I am actually quite concerned that the focus on PBR and mobile viewer has left not enough people to focus on maintaining and keeping SL running smoothly.

..there is a LARGE number of fixes in the most recent viewer release.

Except the ongoing Marketplace search and listing issues, exactly what is not running smoothly, can you give any recent examples?

[Love Zhaoying]

On 9/29/2023 at 12:30 PM, Pierre Ceriano said:

I'm getting old and probably becoming a pessimistic old fart. 

Responding to the Title of the post: "Has Second Life a fleeting weakness or I'm just imagining things ?"

In my opinion, it is not an "either/or" proposition.  In fact, Second Life may have a "fleeting weakness" AND you may be imagining things!

 

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

6 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

..there is a LARGE number of fixes in the most recent viewer release.

Except the ongoing Marketplace search and listing issues, exactly what is not running smoothly, can you give any recent examples?

Well. I leave my SL dashboard pinned as a tab in my browser and check it often. There have been a few weeks where just clicking a link or reloading the page gives a 500 error. And then the status alerts show up. Sometimes it's so bad I have to retype in secondlife.com again to get it to work. I'm not sure if it's a hosting problem or a code problem or what. But if you have the luxury to check SL web properties often, 500 errors, long loading times, etc tend to crop up a bit.

I also watch the status page often. I've always noticed a correlation between sales being bad and billing and other types of maintenance, with the cycle I've stated in my other post about maintenance, low cost sales, high cost sales, maintenance, repeat.

SLMP is running quite nice right now though.

[Sid Nagy]

I see SL as a hobby. So is my tiny marketplace store. What I earn in SL stays in SL. I pay tier and other expenses with my procedings.
There are months that I make more than I need and months where I see my stash of L$ vanish and there are even months that I have to pull my wallet to buy a few Linden dollars to stay afloat. Hobbies cost money and if I would have taken golf or snooker as a hobby that would be far more expensive each month, than what I pay out of my pockets for Second Life yearly.

I don't do events, because I don't want the pressure of deadlines and the continuing need to produce new stuff.
It's my hobby nothing more, so if I produce nothing new for a while, that is perfectly okay for me.

SL's economy has its ups and downs. Always had and always will. My thought: Better a slow economy in SL than in RL.

Edited September 30, 2023 by Sid Nagy

[Love Zhaoying]

14 minutes ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

Well. I leave my SL dashboard pinned as a tab in my browser and check it often. There have been a few weeks where just clicking a link or reloading the page gives a 500 error. And then the status alerts show up. Sometimes it's so bad I have to retype in secondlife.com again to get it to work. I'm not sure if it's a hosting problem or a code problem or what. But if you have the luxury to check SL web properties often, 500 errors, long loading times, etc tend to crop up a bit.

I also watch the status page often. I've always noticed a correlation between sales being bad and billing and other types of maintenance, with the cycle I've stated in my other post about maintenance, low cost sales, high cost sales, maintenance, repeat.

SLMP is running quite nice right now though.

I find it interesting that most of what you list seems to be "website-related", not "in-world" issues. Just an observation!

[Flea Yatsenko]

20 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I find it interesting that most of what you list seems to be "website-related", not "in-world" issues. Just an observation!

Well, the majority of the SL economy depends on LL web because most of it is via marketplace. Even if you just want to search for something to buy, you're usually going to the marketplace before in world search. At least that's what I do.

SL grid has become extremely stable compared to what it used to be 10 years ago, with it being closed for a day for maintenance. They've done great there, honestly. But I worry about the web part of things, which is where people buy and sell L$ as well as buy in world stuff for SL. If that part is broken, the SL economy is broken for the same time too.

[Flea Yatsenko]

As an example, sold some nice stuff the last few days. Today I refresh the dashboard and get a 502 error. Haven't sold a thing all day.

[Pierre Ceriano]

On 9/30/2023 at 7:04 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

Responding to the Title of the post: "Has Second Life a fleeting weakness or I'm just imagining things ?"

In my opinion, it is not an "either/or" proposition.  In fact, Second Life may have a "fleeting weakness" AND you may be imagining things!

 

 

And here I must point out that I may be having ideas because we do not have regular official statistics from Linden Labs, particularly regarding sales. Suddenly the temptation to generalize my weaknesses to the entire economy of Second Life. Hence this forum topic: distinguishing between what is my errors and what is due to the "Second Life system".

[Pierre Ceriano]

On 9/30/2023 at 7:30 PM, Sid Nagy said:

I see SL as a hobby. So is my tiny marketplace store. What I earn in SL stays in SL. I pay tier and other expenses with my procedings.
There are months that I make more than I need and months where I see my stash of L$ vanish and there are even months that I have to pull my wallet to buy a few Linden dollars to stay afloat. Hobbies cost money and if I would have taken golf or snooker as a hobby that would be far more expensive each month, than what I pay out of my pockets for Second Life yearly.

I don't do events, because I don't want the pressure of deadlines and the continuing need to produce new stuff.
It's my hobby nothing more, so if I produce nothing new for a while, that is perfectly okay for me.

SL's economy has its ups and downs. Always had and always will. My thought: Better a slow economy in SL than in RL.

Thank you Sid for your very philosophical intervention, which I completely share. Second Life is a hobby that I self-finance with the sale of my creations. If tomorrow my activity completely collapses, my hobby will change: no more simulators, less attendance on my part; perhaps an escape to a cheaper grid, also with fewer interactions. It would be a shame because apart from earning a few kopecs, selling my creations also proves that they are popular and have a use. The subject of this forum goes well beyond financial questions.

[Pierre Ceriano]

On 9/29/2023 at 6:46 PM, Marigold Devin said:

Peaks and troughs I guess.

Perhaps there are many more merchants and creators now than there have ever been, so the money that everyone has to spend gets spread across more merchants and creators.

From my own viewpoint, I see people come and go. I took a break for a while myself (I've taken several breaks, from months to years at a time since 2012). 

My optimism comes from something new and shiny perhaps, like the seasonal items. My pessimism comes from when a dress that should fit me does not fit me. Or the attitudes of my fellow residents. Or my own attitude can be my downfall at times. 

Do you participate in things like the 55 linden dollar Thursday or anything like that? I have found some great vendors that way, something for everyone on this type of thing. Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising and these note cards which are sent out weekly are helpful.

The newest Linden Homes - for quite a few years now - have caused an increase in sales of home furnishings, I am sure. There is indeed a thread running on these forums that acts like a showcase for the creativity of the residents of Bellisseria, and the merchants who supply to same. 

 

 

Thank you for sharing your feelings with us. I note down a line of thought and two ideas for something to try. (Letters and orange font = thoughts / Numbers and green font = Ideas to explore.

A / Perhaps there are many more merchants and creators now than there have ever been, so the money that everyone has to spend gets spread across more merchants and creators. Here the idea that the more the merrier, the less rice there is. As with many observations that we will make on this forum, we will not have conclusive statistics to support them. Which should not prevent us from formulating them: there is no smoke without fire.

B / I too think that the number of creators has increased and that a significant portion of them no longer need to use full perms assets created by others.

1 / Do you participate in things like the 55 linden dollar Thursday or anything like that? No I don't but the idea is under study.

2 / Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising and these note cards which are sent out weekly are helpful and I will add

3 / The use of a subscribing and posting system.

4 / The use of groups.

5 / The newest Linden Homes - for quite a few years now - have caused an increase in sales of home furnishings, I am sure. There is indeed a thread running on these forums that acts like a showcase for the creativity of the residents of Bellisseria, and the merchants who supply to same. 

[Pierre Ceriano]

On 9/30/2023 at 12:59 AM, Polenth Yue said:

I don't have that event experience because I do a small number of once-a-year events and sometimes the shop and hop. The biggest event for me is Fantasy Faire, which doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon. Sales were up this year there. Shop and hop comes in next. Sales and gift handouts were about the same this year, but at good levels, so nothing to worry about. For hunts, I do ones connected to those once-a-year events or Twisted (though that's been taking a break).

The issue with monthly events and hunts is everyone is trying to get in on the act, so there are far more events than people to visit. Merchants burn out. Customers become much more selective. Everyone ends up spread out very thinly.

 

Thank you for sharing your opinion Polenth !

C / The issue with monthly events and hunts is everyone is trying to get in on the act, so there are far more events than people to visit. Merchants burn out. Customers become much more selective. Everyone ends up spread out very thinly. A and C evoke the same trend.

6 / The biggest event for me is Fantasy Faire, which doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon. Sales were up this year there.

7 / Shop and hop comes in next. Sales and gift handouts were about the same this year, but at good levels, so nothing to worry about.

8 / For hunts, I do ones connected to those once-a-year events or Twisted (though that's been taking a break).

[Pierre Ceriano]

On 9/30/2023 at 5:05 PM, Flea Yatsenko said:

It's not just you. I've always had kind of niche products and never really had to do events or advertise and did well. I've been very fortunate. But for the last year or so, things have been very bad year over year. I'm talking about half of what has been traditionally normal.

Some things that have changed for me

1. Customers who come and make huge bulk orders are basically gone

2. More low cost items selling more than higher end products

3. Massive droughts in sales where I'm making like a quarter or less of what would be normal

4. Poor search placement, older products being shown more. Even results when just searching my own store aren't what I expect. And I'm used to doing SEO from my other work

5. High end products aren't selling and instead it's very cheap builder's kits or older builds

6. The good times that would be offset by sales droughts are not nearly as good as they ever were

I really don't know what's going on. I blamed SLMP search for a while, because the results were bad. But they have improved a lot and things are still rather poor. I've always noticed a pattern with sales where things would get good, SLMP/billing/etc would have maintenance and have problems, sales would dry up, then lower end stuff would start selling, eventually moving to higher end stuff and great sales until the process repeated. But it feels like now that process is broken and it never gets past SLMP/billing/etc maintenance and "entry level" product sales.

I have no doubt events have become saturated and they're not what they used to be. But I have never even done an event and have done well (I thank the market I'm in being not overly competitive), and I'm still having lots of problems.

This is definitely, for me, the worst part of the year in sales and I usually get bummed this time of year. But even comparing year over year (i.e. this 2023 sept to 2022 sept) things are bad. And they weren't actually very good in 2022 either.

The real world economy is also very bad. I had a lot of RL work lined up this summer with a lot of people promising me tons of work. It never came. One RL place I work for had a ton of clients cancel a ton of work. Another had a million dollar house and the $300 check they wrote for some small work bounced when cashed on the same day. I think things are very bad in RL, more than anyone is admitting. Which is actually very scary to me. I have been selling in SL for a long time, I've noticed that usually recessions are great for SL because it's a lot cheaper to have fun in a virtual world than to go out and have dinner and some booze. In fact right now that's even truer, because a dinner for two with booze is easily $50+ here in the states. But that shift when people would come to SL instead seems to not be happening either. It's pretty scary because it makes me feel a lot of people don't even have the money to avoid RL and instead buy a parcel and build a home or hangout or whatever. I think it's easy to point the finger at LL and SL but there's a bigger picture here and I really don't think it's very good. I think people are struggling to pay for food and dropping $20 on a mesh body or something isn't really a luxury a lot of people can afford.

This post is getting rather long winded, but I will make one complaint about SL and LL, and it's the reliability of the grid and SLMP, which completely reduces user's ability both to find and purchase content as well as to use it. As an ecommerce site SLMP is horribly outdated, slow, and shows irrelevant stuff way too much. I always say that people should consider if Amazon worked like SLMP. Sometimes pages throw 500 errors, sometimes your order doesn't go through for 12 hours. You search for NIntendo and get SNES games instead of Switch. But I think a lot of people have lost patience with trying to buy things and being able to use the things they've bought. There's so much fighting for people's attention on the internet and honestly their dopamine receptors are fried. They have zero patience now. And if things aren't working they just leave and don't care.

Also, this is a hot button political topic so I'll try and present it in the most reasonable way. But people from developing countries have found SLMP is a way to make money and they have driven down the prices of content.

This, definitely, and it's demoralizing me for making content for SL like none other. I finally set up in world vendors and yes, that's the stuff that sells mostly in world while old stuff keeps selling on SLMP. Why spend money and time making new stuff if it's not going to sell and you're just going to end up coasting on old stuff? My sales are so low that a major build costs so much it's no longer worth doing anymore. There's something massively broken technologically with the SL platform. And guess what? All these people being shown old, outdated stuff think that's what SL is and that's all that exists so they get discouraged. If you're not making stuff like you used to, you are seeing sales drop massively. Being an SLMP merchant isn't about creating new things and making more L$ now, it's about trying to make enough stuff so you can still make as much as you used to. In the last year I have never sold so much outdated, sub L$100 products ever (excluding my cheap sculpty rock pack people seem to love for some reason I'll never understand).

In fact I used to get excited when I got an email about a sale. Now it's more an annoyance because it's probably some L$99 thing I made in 2015. And I'm in a pretty unique situation to analyze sales because I'm working on a new search engine and sales analysis platform and I imported the last like 5 years of sales data and have been making web pages and doing all sorts of cool queries to look at things.

Anyways, this ended up much longer than I thought. But I do feel strongly that there is something very wrong with SL on a technical level and it's not making any progress at improving.

D / Customers who come and make huge bulk orders are basically gone. Same here.

E / More low cost items selling more than higher end products. Not to mention :

F / Objects imported from various asset libraries without respecting the Second Life Content guidelines : "Examples of Prohibited Content include: (...) Infringing or unauthorized content, such as content that you did not create or do not have permission to use."

G / Poor search placement, older products being shown more. Even results when just searching my own store aren't what I expect. There's something wrong with the algorithm, that's for sure. The subject has been discussed at length in other forums without a real solution being provided.

H / High end products aren't selling and instead it's very cheap builder's kits or older builds.

I / The real world economy is also very bad. I think we don't need statistics here... and I think it's easy to point the finger at LL and SL but there's a bigger picture here and I really don't think it's very good. I think people are struggling to pay for food and dropping $20 on a mesh body or something isn't really a luxury a lot of people can afford. Although other statistics in the real world (and at least in France) tend to demonstrate that consumers tend to want to keep their spending in the "appearance" to the detriment of essential things. And is the reason I will 

9 / Continue to create both cheap and high end assets. Although I completely understand that this idea is questionable. 

G bis /  I will make one complaint about SL and LL, and it's the reliability of the grid and SLMP, which completely reduces user's ability both to find and purchase content as well as to use it. As an ecommerce site SLMP is horribly outdated, slow, and shows irrelevant stuff way too much. I always say that people should consider if Amazon worked like SLMP. Sometimes pages throw 500 errors, sometimes your order doesn't go through for 12 hours. You search for NIntendo and get SNES games instead of Switch. But I think a lot of people have lost patience with trying to buy things and being able to use the things they've bought. There's so much fighting for people's attention on the internet and honestly their dopamine receptors are fried. They have zero patience now. And if things aren't working they just leave and don't care. Is there a driver in the Second Life marketplace algorithm? The G spot is no longer a source of pleasure but a nest of problems!

J / People from developing countries have found SLMP is a way to make money and they have driven down the prices of content. This joins point F. There is absolutely no quality policy on the part of Linden Labs, whether in the choice of "creators" or in that of the objects put up for sale (Also point K). I think that here we touch on the very origin of Second Life: a beautiful idea managed by hippies at heart. Anyone produces anything. And so

10 / We have to find the right balance between the hippie spirit and respect for the work of real creators.

K / And guess what? All these people being shown old, outdated stuff think that's what SL is and that's all that exists so they get discouraged. True, and I hope that Linden Labs' decision to clean up the SLMP will have beneficial repercussions. And also

11 / As a creator, we absolutely must clean our SLMP of anything that is old and dated, or bring it up to date.

[Pierre Ceriano]

On 9/30/2023 at 5:16 PM, Love Zhaoying said:

I am pleased about all of the "positive changes" and "improvements", whether planned or still in-progress.

Many will definitely benefit "new users", such as the Welcome Hub.

However, many do not apply to me or fall within my interests, such as:

- Linden Homes

- Senra Avatars

But, advancements in LSL Scripting functions and the possibility of a good new Mobile Viewer are positive points for me.

Many of the other "extremely important" improvements are "still in progress" which interest me "somewhat" but not too much. I think those will improve the quality of Second Life overall, including:

- Advanced graphics

Sorry if my list is poor, I saw a squirrel over there * chases after *

 

If I allow myself to read between the lines:
L / Does the creation or provision of assets by Linden Labs pull the rug out from under the feet of creators? Does having a Linden home or a Second Life avatar limit sales of creator-created homes and avatars? We saw above that this could also boost the interior decoration market, just like that of clothing.

M / Won't improving the graphics create other problems? And in the same vein, this makes me think that

12 / I must adapt my textures to the new graphic improvements already made. 

L bis and M bis / Could a terrorist squirrel be behind Second Life's supposed weaknesses?

[Flea Yatsenko]

One other thing I thought of last night. SLMP search results have been bad for months. I think a lot of people have given up on SLMP and finding things to buy. There's only so many times you can go to SLMP and try and buy stuff and not find anything modern or related to what you're looking for before you give up searching on SLMP. LL said they made more money with the new algorithm. My thoughts are that the results were bad so SLMP wasn't as stressed as much so it didn't have down time and random errors so it had lower, more consistent sales of older stuff. But eventually a lot of people gave up on the older stuff and moved on.

As a merchant it's really easy to write off how bad search results just might be something contributing to bad sales. But for a consumer, that means trying to find something to buy and not being able to find it. It's like going to a real world store and the store is a huge mess with nothing organized or in a nice place with any sort of signs. Just a big pile of merchandise. And the customer is told to go there and find what they're looking for. And if they can't find it, it's their fault for not searching properly. But for customers, that's extremely frustrating and discouraging. They are about to spend a good amount of RL money on stuff, and every frustration is a paper cut that makes them want to spend their money elsewhere.

[ValKalAstra]

As a customer, I used to be a marketplace shopper. There was just something about late nights chatting with a friend and going through various stores on the marketplace - then grabbing demos to check out together the next day.

I've also got some L$ from some sales of my own stuff so it's not like I need to watch my expenses that much. Still, my marketplace shopping time has all but vanished and the primary reason is the search. The changed results are useless to me.

• I either drown in gachas unless I jump through several hoops... And even then some slip by.
• Or I drown in two hundred listings of the same shirt, just in different colours.
• Or I drown in items that still advertise with Fitmesh and flexi.

The search results actively fight me. At some point I stopped caring and looking. Now then my perspective as an extreme niche and small scale creator is that there was a point in time when sales just vanished.

I've recently blown through an ad budget of 10k L$ for advertising in magazines for my niche and in world billboards where appropriate. I've also done passive advertising by just being present trying to be uplifting and helpful in my niche, figuring some might stumble over my profile pick.

The result has been sobering. I have not made back my ad budget. I'm not bitter, I just write it off as supporting cool magazines and communities then but still.

I can't help but wonder and then there are moments where I try to optimise my store page. Find out if I can improve some things and that's when I realise the new search doesn't even show my product unless I search for it by full name. Youch.

I'm not angry or bitter, just befuddled somewhat. Feel like I'm flailing aimlessly.

[Polenth Yue]

A lot of the issues being raised here aren't new (outside of the marketplace search changing, which I've given advice in other threads for how to rewrite listings to get them back up in search). Rather than looking for signs that it's bad for everyone equally, I'd suggest looking at people who are doing fine and seeing how you can apply that to your business.

It's a good idea to have some cheaper products that are aimed as fun things for end users. Not only because that's extra money, but they will bring people to the shop, where they can see the more expensive goods and services. The market is much more limited when it comes to expensive things or things that are mainly for builders. If you already do that sort of little stuff, some items outside the usual can bring more people in.

Events can be great, but not all events are equal. The same for hunts. I'm surprised more people don't ask about which events have worked for people. Once you find events that work, they're the best marketing. You make money and advertise at the same time, in a way that doesn't annoy the socks off potential customers.

Adboards, marketplace adverts, and malls are frequently suggested by people because they've seen other people suggest them. Few giving those recommendations have personal success with them. Those who do find them useful often have circumstances that don't apply to most. Personally, these things have never worked for me. A shop hidden behind a secret door did work for me, but that's also one of those unusual circumstances things.

[Rowan Amore]

24 minutes ago, Polenth Yue said:

Adboards, marketplace adverts, and malls are frequently suggested by people because they've seen other people suggest them.

As a shopper both inworld and the MP, I have never once looked at an ad board and rarely click ads on the MP.  The way I use MP has always been different , apparently, than others.  Once I've narrowed down to the right category,  then it's No Limited, Newest First.

I do think the one improvement they could make that would benefit buyers and seller alike is a drop down menu for colors instead of pages of the same thing in 3837465 colors.  No other shopping website does that, ffs.

[ValKalAstra]

There was a time when the ad thing did work for me (magazines mostly) - which granted, I'm probably the edge case with a niche product there. Still it more or less stopped with the search changes. So aye, need to dive back in and figure out the arcane workings again.

 

[Flea Yatsenko]

13 hours ago, Polenth Yue said:

A lot of the issues being raised here aren't new (outside of the marketplace search changing, which I've given advice in other threads for how to rewrite listings to get them back up in search). Rather than looking for signs that it's bad for everyone equally, I'd suggest looking at people who are doing fine and seeing how you can apply that to your business.

It's a good idea to have some cheaper products that are aimed as fun things for end users. Not only because that's extra money, but they will bring people to the shop, where they can see the more expensive goods and services. The market is much more limited when it comes to expensive things or things that are mainly for builders. If you already do that sort of little stuff, some items outside the usual can bring more people in.

Events can be great, but not all events are equal. The same for hunts. I'm surprised more people don't ask about which events have worked for people. Once you find events that work, they're the best marketing. You make money and advertise at the same time, in a way that doesn't annoy the socks off potential customers.

Adboards, marketplace adverts, and malls are frequently suggested by people because they've seen other people suggest them. Few giving those recommendations have personal success with them. Those who do find them useful often have circumstances that don't apply to most. Personally, these things have never worked for me. A shop hidden behind a secret door did work for me, but that's also one of those unusual circumstances things.

The new search seems to favor gacha items. I've also seen residents who have stores with 10k+ gatcha items. It doesn't really matter what content creators do. When people are making stores with thousands of gacha, and it's taken me over 10 years to make 300+ original mesh and texture items, gacha is going to drown out original content.

I don't think people understand just how bad the flood of gacha is and how it's flooding search results. The lack of ability for merchants to stack color variants into one listing is also massively terrible for SL and flooding search results. Merchants love it because it's very easy to make color variations of a product, just change colors of the textures. Customers love it because they get more choice. People who search hate it because if they don't like the product, there's a ton of listings clogging up search for something they don't want.

As a merchant, it doesn't matter what kind of products you make or what advertising you do or whatever. Like @ValKalAstra said, there's basically no escape from gacha on SLMP. And if you just want to buy what you want and don't want to leave it up to chance, it's a huge pain.

Gacha makes a lot of money though, anywhere on the internet. and it's no doubt making LL a lot of L$. But it's definitely doing damage to people who don't like gacha and use SLMP.

Things are a lot worse than what you think. I know a content creator who has been making stuff for a long time, kind of niche products, but very popular and very successful. He's always worked a part time job to make SL content. SLMP has been so bad, no matter what he does, that he's looking for a full time job. SLMP's problems are so severe that content creators are starting to reduce what they make (I have) or practically stopping with new content. These problems have always existed but they're so bad it's causing things to change in SL, by a lot.