The Summer Slump

[Chelsea Malibu]

Every year about this time, we see a drop in sales across the board.  Not just in SL but across the entire internet.  As the economy has also been in a slump for most outside China, we are seeing an even greater impact this year in sales across the board.

However, I am not seeing it as bad as I have in the past.  In fact, my sales so far this summer are actually pretty steady and had actually picked up since spring.  My marketplace sales have also grown which I found surprising as I really don't do well on the MP traditionally.

Has anyone else been following there numbers closely over the past couple of years and how has your summer been now that we are near the 1/2 mark?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Good question. We're seeing a bit of a slump but it's nothing that I can't attribute to a series of events that prohibited us from "taking care of business" like we should have over the last couple of months, but it does seem like SL is more stable this summer.

We did used to notice a much more clearly defined drop in sales during the summer months ourselves.

Hard one to track down. I remember Pink saying that summer sales were booming a couple summers ago, but many people were still saying there was one for them. I've heard some people saying they're never affected by it. Would be nice to hear from the commerce team how summer sales play during the year.

From an organic standpoint it seems like we're seeing more new faces, so if it's not due to less spending outside of SL, it could be due to some new moves like Basic Mode in the new viewer retaining more of those 16k per day signups. I would look to customers to see how many of them are new to SL if possible, as one indicator.

Too lazy to go look up recreational spending for this season at the moment, because the lawn needs mowing ... again.

+1 for SL grass.

[Josh Susanto]

No detectable slump here.

 

[Suella Ember]

Not sure what it's like across the pond and elsewhere in the world, but here in England their isn't much of a summer to tempt people outdoors and away from their comupter at the moment!

[amarock Amat]

eh am seeing a small slump....as the stores make less money...i get less folks having cash to spend on advertising ...been told by a few that if their still online, to hit them up once September hits... *sighs8

[Chelsea Malibu]

So far, good to hear.  I really wish we could get more granular figures from the SL financial however, if we did, I'm sure we would all find out the truth about the SL economy and that it is mostly transfers of funds and not really any sales.  Even if they just told us the totals sales volume for the Marketplace, this would give us a better indicator on retail without the addition of money transferred, stipends paid, real estate tiers, etc.

[Pamela Galli]

I have never had a summer slump, but I did see a dip after January that lasted through May, but picked up again the first of June.

 

 

[WADE1 Jya]

I am seeing a little bit of slump right now.

I think this has nothing at all to do with summer time, as my other summers so far in SL I have never seen any difference in sales. The beginning of this year until April, sales were superheated for me :matte-motes-smitten:

I am fairly certain this little slump (about 10% down) is only because I have not released anything new in a little while & all my older stuff is probably beginning to reach market saturation by now. Second Life is tiny like that.

I have made new creations but it is not appearing in Second Life yet. I am just waiting for mesh... it seems a little pointless to make non-mesh stuff now? :matte-motes-bored: Also beaches are too enticing so I am often there & paying less attention to SL during this season.... its my own fault meh :matte-motes-impatient:

[Ziggy21 Slade]

My sales have been tremendous this year, up again on previous years and my animated textures which I sell as a builders resource have been selling particularly well, I see this as a sign that plenty of new residents are joining us, so I am looking forward to a stonking Winterfest.

For some reason, yesterdays sales were particularly bad, so bad at one stage, I was here checking the place was still working, in my experience Summer can be a bit like that, curious unexplained quiet periods.

I think the overall picture looks pretty positive, 1 - 2 years ago all you read in these forums was negativity, people telling us that merchants were leaving in droves, this fabulous store had closed, that ancient sim was shutting down, they were tough times and I think they had the effect of sorting the wheat from the chaff, what remains to a large degree are businesses with a genuine economic reason to exist, led by merchants with the tenacity to plough through adversity and still show a profit.

A little slump can be a good thing, this is the time to re assess your strategy, to make sure you are using the marketplace and other systems to their fullest potential in the promotion of your products, and to think about the approaching season and how you are going extract profit  from it.

 

[Dartagan Shepherd]

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Chelsea Malibu wrote:

So far, good to hear.  I really wish we could get more granular figures from the SL financial however, if we did, I'm sure we would all find out the truth about the SL economy and that it is mostly transfers of funds and not really any sales.  Even if they just told us the totals sales volume for the Marketplace, this would give us a better indicator on retail without the addition of money transferred, stipends paid, real estate tiers, etc.

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You know, agree with this. I think the old statistics were mostly irrelevent to a merchant. For instance user to user transactions, while we could pick that apart all day long, the churn factor of L$ made it kind of fictional from a merchant standpoint. Every transfer of funds to alts, every affiliate and split vendor would be in that mix.

Giving us a bit more of the financial picture would be nice in very broad strokes. I remember hearing at one point a ways back that the total amount of L$ in play at any one time was $125M USD for the taking. Well! That I can live with, it tells me there's plenty of movement to the economy and I'm willing to accept that there's a lot of churn going on.

But absolutely, sales volume and the like would be most welcome. Mentioned in an offhand way at one point that it'd be worth paying for detailed stats such as current best selling items, most used search terms, etc. Those are stats you can sink your teeth into.

@Suella: Bring some of that summer boredom to this side of the pond, our 4th of July is nice, but people insist on setting off explosives that pass as fireworks at 3am for two weeks after the holiday until their supply finally runs out. Thinking of  guided rockets with a melted cheese payload as a counter measure.

@Ziggy: Some good points in there, glad to hear you're doing great, you deserve it.  Time to author a new book entitled So You Want to be an SL Merchant? Must wear many hats, be stubborn as a mule, be willing to accept time warp when you realize the sun is coming up, have the SL viewer GUI permanently burned into your retinas, etc.

[Ethereal Faerye]

I'm an SL merchant for the 4th year now, its like every summer. Enough sales to keep paying the rent on everything and thats about it. It usually picks up around the end of august/september. It doesn't really worry me. Same thing every year and across all types of merchandise.

[Lasher Oh]

Ah the good old summer slump thread. Now I know for sure that the seasons really have changed. It's good to see that in this constantly shifting world of ours that there are still some things we can rely on year on year :-)

^L^

[Pamela Galli]

Yes and there is also the Winter Slump and the Spring Slump.  In some places, a Fall Slump. I have never known SL to be without  a Slump.

[Madeliefste Oh]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I have never had a summer slump, but I did see a dip after January that lasted through May, but picked up again the first of June.

 

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I have neither have had any summer slump, i´m a merchant for more then four years now.

But I experienced the same as you, Pamela, a dip in January, that lasted .some months. For me it started picking up again in the end of April. I had some new releases at that time as well, while I had no new releases in the periode between January and April.

[Pamela Galli]

Sales shot up in Dec and Jan, then slowly went down through May, which was the slowest month this year. June was about the same level as Feb-March.

 

I kind of inquired around and I did not see many other merchants following the same pattern, and nothing changed about my marketing, so I have to conclude that ppl just did not like what I was making then. Then in June they did. :matte-motes-big-grin:

[Medhue Simoni]

Ha Ha! Well, I can't say I've seen any real slumps in the summer. What I can say about this whole year, is that it has been very erratic. The swings from week to week are perplexing for some1 that, for years, never saw more than a 5%-10% change from week to week. Usually up, lol.

[WADE1 Jya]

Agreed Medhue! Perplexing indeed. Erratic describes what I see better than to say a "slump".

I think its because lately Lindens are tweaking about a billion things all at once with every facet of the platform.

 

Stop working so hard to improve our world guys! :matte-motes-evil:

 

Haha just kidding I am very very happy they are doing it!

What I am seeing is very erratic sales approximately per 8 hour period. Zooming sales, like better than ever for 8 hours, then it will suddenly almost stop dead for 8 hours... then settle to somewhere inbetween for 8 hours.

It is not consistent with concurrency or any timezone so I suspect it is due largely to "technical difficulties".

Seeing new highs and new lows close together makes things seem pretty unstable :matte-motes-stress: I saw the same activity near the end of last year. Then January to April was like the storm broke and its calm business as usual. Now we hop back on the rollercoaster :matte-motes-impatient:

Today I kept crashing out of SL earlier & predictably sales hit a rough patch, although nothing on Grid Status page to indicate any known issues :smileysurprised:

 

[Medhue Simoni]

If you ask me, I think this is all related to the inworld search and all the constant changes it goes through. This would also explain why you, me, and I think many, see surges, cause multiple times a day the ranking order is changing. I serously hope that this is not going to be the normal way that search will work, changing completely every few hours. I would much rather have a consistant ranking in search.

[Pamela Galli]

I have given up on search. I have thousands of houses rezzed inworld -- those will have to be my billboards.

[Gunner Grun]

Slumped so bad I closed, hard to compete against 99 linden homes every week. Oh well more money in my RL pocket.