What's the stupidest thing you have done running a business?

[Pamela Galli]

For me it has to be what I did recently. Set out boxes of new bedroom sets, and instead of Give Notecard script, I put a Give Contents script. Yes!  So all you had to do was touch the box to get the contents, as many times as you like!

[Cathbodva Clarity]

Forgot to put the items in display for sale. And the vendor were not ready yet... so wander why in the first few days i had no sales at all...

duh

 

giggles

[Ellie Oddenfen]

Building a crappy pair of wings as a newbie (they were like 100 prims) and swooping around a sandbox asking people to buy them (no one would have bought them even if they were free).

[Suella Ember]

Pay too much attention to what other merchants are saying and doing.

Before I get jumped on, I don't mean that in a nasty way! Merchants sharing thoughts and ideas can be a great thing. However, in my early days as a merchant I spent far too much time looking at what other merchants were doing under the mistaken assumption that I had to do the same sorts of things to be a success. I also believed what I saw other merchants saying far too quickly without doing my own research.

I was stupid and naive. Now, i still look at what other merchants are saing and doing, but I don't immediately assume it is right. I do my own research, I decide what is right for my business irrespective of what others are doing and I recognise that there is more to success that just copying others and blindly assuming that the first thing i read must be right. 

 

 

[Medhue Simoni]

This morning, I made a skipping animation. After I finished it, and uploaded it, I needed a stand with the same position for the arms, as it was a skipping animation while holding something. NP, I just changed the legs and stuff, then I saved the new stand, overwriting the awesome skip animation I just made. Booooooo! Bad me! I really did like that skip animation. Good thing i uploaded it first, lol.

The dumbest thing:

Way back in the earlier days, I made some pole dancing animations, having no idea how much people would pay for them. I sold them full perm for 2500, to 1 person and then realized my mistake. I had clubs rushing to buy them for over 1500 a piece with only mod/trans perms. Then 1 day I created my own dance pole and set it out for sale. Ooops! I forgot to set the price, so it defaulted to 10 lindens, and 3 hours later I had sold about 100 and realized what I did. I was such a newb!:smileytongue:

[Rya Nitely]

I spend way too much time trying to please customers. And I haven't got to the point of saying no, which I should. An example is a customer this weekend who didn't like the animation in the boat because it was too feminine and could I change it please? Yes, of course. 'Oh now this one is good but I don't like the way it .......' 'OK I will try try again with another animation.' This took a couple of hours. For a boat that cost L$450.  Now I usually do these small mods for free, but they take a lot of time. Stupid way to run a business when I have a list of things that I planned to do, left undone because I'm spending the time trying to please one customer.

[Ry0ta Exonar]

Not a biggie, but one day I was looking over the sales confirmation e-mails from MP and saw someone bought the same item twice, so I thought it was a double purchase and gave him a refund for one.
Later I went to my merchant home page and found he bought one as a gift to another avatar.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I had a scavenger hunt once for the group members, a while back, and can't remember the specifics, but I set out all these boxes that were packed with gifts....all over the store like an easter egg hunt sort of.

There were maybe 50 or 60 set out, and took me all afternoon to do that.

So anyway...called the group members in to start the deal, and it was supposed to work great if each person got one or two boxes each.

I think about 30 showed up all at once, and the boxes were tagged so that you simply just buy it for zero, then take it. 

But as the boxes were being taken, was watching the transactions come in, and one gal was clicking every one of them, bam, bam, bam....and ended up with all but two I think!  And the other gals were all standing there wondering where they all went.

So in group chat, had to say One per person please!  Asked them to give me about an hour, so I could set them out again, then called them back in....and the same gal came back and DID IT AGAIN!  She took all of them again.

Anyway....that concept did not work.

[Phil Deakins]

When doing something with one of my 1000L beds, I inadvertantly left it for sale at 10L. I didn't notice until the next day when I saw that one person had bought five of them at 10L each. I corrected the price of course. That was the stupid thing but it didn't stop there.

The guy who had bought them IMed me, saying that he'd bought two of the beds by mistake, instead of just one, and could he swap one of them for an 800L sex sofa. I admired his pluck  I told him that he'd bought five of them by mistake and no, he can't swap one of them.

[Chelsea Malibu]

How many words can we put into a post?  LOL  :matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

I don't think there is room here to talk about all the stupid things I've done in my 5 years of running a business in SL.  I recently spoke at Zindra on staffing and everything I talked about, I realized that I had learned by doing something stupid first.

 

[Ellie Oddenfen]

I also have a hard time with being too nice to people, some noob with no money with come up to me in a sandbox and say something like:

noob:"nice skin where'd u get it"

me:"I made it"

noob:"can I have it"

me"ok"

And I end up giving hundreds of lindens worth of stuff to strangers cause I just can't say no!

[Ziggy21 Slade]

There are so many stupid things I have done, but here is one that leaps to mind.

I sell seasonal gift givers, I have a 4th of July one that gives sparklers and hats, I always set one up in the store so people can see what it gives. Because I am selling the giver, the gifts have to be Copy, Trans so the new owner can give them away too.

It never occurred to me to change the perms on the gifts in the givers in the store, so people were just coming and collecting the freebies and sticking them in their own object with a give script - doh!.

What alerted me to this **bleep** up!?, a random person contacted me and told me a Linden (who shall remain nameless) was standing in a welcome area giving out my stuff!.

[Blot Brickworks]

Temp  Textures say no more............took ages to sort out......................now I am ultra carefull. ish.:matte-motes-shocked: