Help keep animal food free in Second Life

[WADE1 Jya]

Right now, animal feed packages bury all choice of other SL animals on SL Marketplace, giving the illusion to customers that all SL animals require food.

Animal Food is all you see on marketplace when you look for animals, it appears for almost any search terms & occupies all the top pages.

Eventually, I think this could lead to a situation where all animal sellers in SL require you buy food to keep them.

Why's that?

I predict that -- if categorization on SL marketplace remains as is -- those sellers who want to have your animals eating free food (or not require food at all) will eventually be squeezed out, or start charging for animal feed in order to remain visible on SL Marketplace.

Can you comment, watch, or vote for this JIRA (feature request) to help keep animal food in SL free?

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4016

The idea here is just to change the way the Marketplace "Animals" Category is organized -- give the animal sellers who don't want to charge you for food a little more visibility :) letting the customer see more diversity of animal choices :)

Thanks :matte-motes-asleep-2:

[Emma Krokus]

Offer free animal food? ;D

 

(Freebies sell well...) 

[WADE1 Jya]

An excellent idea! & I do :matte-motes-asleep-2: all my animals either do not require food, or if they do, the food is free always.

A lot of people in SL like low-maintenance animals that don't need food or much attention even...

The appearance now is all SL animals need to eat & are high-maintenance.... so some people never learn otherwise...

It is a general assumption I face daily now - oh these animals do need to eat right? where do I buy the food?

Many of my creations are wild animals.

Humans are not supposed to feed wild animals, they take care of themselves *jokes* :matte-motes-big-grin-squint:

[Naiki Muliaina]

Consumables would deffo be the right place for animal food. I thought by the title you were asking all animal food to be given out free

[Perrie Juran]

Some screen shots of what you are talking about would have been nice.

I did check the Marketplace and you are right, when you choose the main category, "Animals," food badly dominates the listings.

I've had am Australian Shepard from VKC for years now and totally love my puppy.

[Kolby Nissondorf]

Breedable horse food needs to be cheaper!

[Mickey Vandeverre]

.To be honest...this sounds like a wee bit of an ad for your product line. 

It also sounds like a wee bit of a slam for some folks that did quite well with product and marketing and services.

At first glance...it reads like a request that is different from asking for a new category in the marketplace.

Lindens are answering questions in the commerce forum!

Perhaps a request for a new category in that forum.

But the way you have this worded...is a wee bit awkward.  It almost sounds like you are making a case against some other merchants that offer product that is in high demand.

 

[Canoro Philipp]

i think is fair commerce to sell animal food.

it may be a drain of money, based on emotional attachment, but its fair.

linden lab gave us the possibility in lsl code to do things that dissapear after a while so we can sell stuff that include it, so they have the right to include it in their products.

imagine if they take the instruction out, nobody can make an object that dissapear after an amount of interactions or a time frame, many people who use that code will be affected.

i have seen some good ideas with that code, like one that you rez the package of goods in your hand and automatically open a folder in your inventory, copy all the contents, and delete itself.

its not wise to stop that code from happening, it has potential.

about a separate category for animal food, i agree, animal food is very different from the animal itself (unless the animal happens to be a carnivore), if we have categories for similar things like vehicles, we should have a category separation in this things that are so different.

[WADE1 Jya]

Oh hey Mickey :matte-motes-smile: Sorry if the communication is awkward, this is not to do with just my product line, when you look at the poor categorization here on SL Marketplace, the issue effects any & all animal sellers who wish to not offer paid-subscription feed systems, and any animal sellers who want to supply low-maintenance animals which do not require food/care.

I put it here for General Discussion, due to the structure of JIRA (the more people get involved with this JIRA the more likely we see change).

I have no issue with merchants who do wish to offer paid-subscription feed/care packages, it is just not my business style. The issue would be similar to categorizing solar cells and non-rechargable batteries together by sales rank. Any & all non-rechargable batteries would perpetually outsell any & all solar cells, its basic math of pitting consumables against permanent fixtures by demand.

The situation also would hide solar cells bottom rank, so consumer has less choice & misses a viable alternative.

Obviously, solar cells would need a seperate space to fairly compete alongside. In the real world this naturally happens (usually) because, unlike the SL Marketplace, there is not one master catalog for all products, one distribution node.

A "Consumables" category opens up the market again, presenting the customer with more clear-cut visible choices. It is not working against anyone or hurting anyone, it is about creating a fair & diverse market, not an artificially homogenized one.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

I agree. My RL pets keep me busy enough, but if I wanted to buy a virtual pet, I'd definitely want one that doesn't require costly food and doesn't die on me. Anything else is just a pyramid scheme. If LL want to support these tamagotchi businesses, that's their decision, but they should definitely have their own category to avoid confusion.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Naiki Muliaina wrote:

Consumables would deffo be the right place for animal food. I thought by the title you were asking all animal food to be given out free

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Also a great idea Somebody ought to reverse-engineer the food scripts and distribute them for free :matte-motes-evil-invert: (Just kidding. Mostly.)

[Cato Badger]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

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Naiki Muliaina wrote:

Consumables would deffo be the right place for animal food. I thought by the title you were asking all animal food to be given out free

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Also a great idea

Somebody ought to reverse-engineer the food scripts and distribute them for free :matte-motes-evil-invert: (Just kidding. Mostly.)

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Reverse engineer? Does this mean you want your pets to be vomiting all over the place? Or worse, ejecting it from the other end?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

I would LOVE to know what the numbers are on those breedable pets and supplies.  Numbers gal here!

I betcha anything that influx of interest is keeping this place alive.  Or close to it.

And I betcha anything all those hits to the animal pages are keeping some animal businesses alive whether they sell breedable pets or not.  That stuff pans out.

I know all about not having proper categories.  And I'm not a "team player" according to LL, so doubt that I'll ever get a request for a new category handled, and if that's the case for someone....

...what you do while you're waiting around for the category to appear is produce something that will fit into the categories that are selling.  Very Simple. 

If that's not your "business style"....that's your own choice.  But to pussyfoot around with a subtle movement to diss the businesses that have a different style...probably shooting yourself in foot on that.  There isn't anything wrong with someone that has a business style that either creates or supplies a market or need, and expects to get paid for their efforts.

If those are top sellers...and yes, they would be, to keep appearing on front page...get hip.

Great looking banner you have there.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

Personally, I find it ethically questionable to artificially create a need by reducing the lifespan of a product, or by designing a product to require regular costly maintenance, if it could just as easily be built to last forever and require no maintenance at all. That is akin to producing light bulbs that burn out sooner or hosiery that is designed to rip.

Of course you could argue that in this case, the customer is usually aware of this built-in flaw at the time of the purchase. And I agree with your argument that any popular virtual item and hobby helps keep SL alive and boosts the economy, which is in our all interest.

However, what is definitely not in the interest of shoppers is a Marketplace search for "pets" that turns out several pages of pet food, healing kits, passion pills, growth potions and whatnot. Not only does this falsify search results and make it hard to find actual pets, it also discourages newcomers from buying any kind of pet when they see that these maintenance supplies cost a thousand L$ or more.

PS: What makes this even worse is that the customers of some breedables brands are reselling the hatchlings, eggs or whatever on the Marketplace, which means that the same article (e.g. chicken eggs) is listed over and over by dozens of people. This should definitely not be allowed, imho.

[WADE1 Jya]

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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

But to pussyfoot around with a subtle movement to diss the businesses that have a different style...probably shooting yourself in foot on that.  There isn't anything wrong with someone that has a business style that either creates or supplies a market or need, and expects to get paid for their efforts.

If those are top sellers...and yes, they would be, to keep appearing on front page...get hip.

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So... getting hip is finding some way -- any way -- to begin charging my customers repeatedly?

I never have done this in the past & I don't wish to do this in future... :matte-motes-asleep-2:

Not so subtle a movement either (if you look at the JIRA... it is not just me), other major SL animal creators are on board behind this proposed category change. I am "dissing" nobody, it is merely an issue of addressing incorrect product categorization.

Animal Food, Health Kits, Passion Pills or whatnot.... none of these items are Animals. These items just sit on top of the "Animals" category.

For example: Let's imagine products like "Gasoline", "Batteries", and "Transmission Fluid" begin to appear, sealing off the top several pages of the Vehicles category. As long as there is even a handful of subscribers to "fuel" or whatnot, all vehicles (whether they need gas or not) will be perpetually buried under these non-vehicle consumable items.

Potential Customer:

Oh... looks like I gotta buy gas all the time to drive a car in SL. This is expensive. Well, that sucks... I don't want one then....

See the way this marketing technique accidentally becomes misleading & confusing to all potential vehicle customers?

[Mickey Vandeverre]

Well, there's so much going on in that category that it would probably be constant effort to keep an even playing field there...but there are ways to get around that when you see yourself lost in all that. 

I don't see anything wrong with asking for other categories...probably should have done that months ago on this particular product line.

I would lay some wagering money down that the "newcomers" that want a pet that breeds is rather large. 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

The market was there.  Not sure if they created the market, or if it came from another venue...didn't study it too much...(probably should)....but people are buying the stuff.  And having a ton of fun with it.

If you're not comfortable offering similar products...no need to keep implying some kind of ethical judgment on it...and that's what I'm reading...but I'm weird.

Lots of other things you could do to keep up.  I really don't feel like giving marketing advice to someone who doesn't grasp that drawing people in to participate on a large scale that requires consistent log-ins and perhaps land and homes and furniture and clothes and shoes and jewelry and ao's and huds and this and that and meeting new friends that are into the same hobby...and going to concerts with them and events and .................

...if you can't grasp that, then marketing advice is wasted.  But I checked your marketing on those pages and it ain't all that great.  Tons of room for improvement. 

That particular product and everything that goes along with it.......you're not grasping?

eta:

I went back to the general category and typed in:

free cat food

free dog food

free monkey food

and I don't see you there

I don't see one featured listing under 100L - huge opportunity wasted there if you really want to be a philanthropist

went back again and I don't see that you have anything listed with these keywords:

free pet dish

free food dish

free food dispenser

free animal food

I don't see anything free on your marketplace page either.

and if someone does not snag the above keywords and opportunities within the next 48 hours...I just might.  wow - totally missed opportunities there!

 

[WADE1 Jya]

Yes. I suppose... I could go do that :matte-motes-bashful:

I could pull the free unlimited food from each of my animal packages with feed options.... & relist free single-use food each separately in the "Animals" section. I could easily begin tomorrow to dump pages & pages of superfluous listings there.

....that is kinda why I made the JIRA request... (this shouldn't be an acceptable next move) :matte-motes-bashful:

Your suggestion might (or might not) serve me well as a personal marketing tool. However, that's beside the point, it's incorrect to categorize items this way, presents less choice to customers & I sure don't want to add to the mess.

[Paul Hexem]

I'm just gonna speak up and back you on this one, Wade.

 

All these animals that die if you don't buy them food ARE a pyramid scheme, and the food is cluttering the marketplace worse than it was cluttered before.

 

When I go looking for a new pet raptor, I want to see animals, not ways to feed animals that I'll never own.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

Personally, I find it ethically questionable to artificially create a need by reducing the lifespan of a product, or by designing a product to require regular costly maintenance, if it could just as easily be built to last forever and require no maintenance at all. That is akin to producing light bulbs that burn out sooner or hosiery that is designed to rip.

Of course you could argue that in this case, the customer is usually aware of this built-in flaw at the time of the purchase. And I agree with your argument that any popular virtual item and hobby helps keep SL alive and boosts the economy, which is in our all interest.

However, what is definitely not in the interest of shoppers is a Marketplace search for "pets" that turns out several pages of pet food, healing kits, passion pills, growth potions and whatnot. Not only does this falsify search results and make it hard to find actual pets, it also discourages newcomers from buying

any

kind of pet when they see that these maintenance supplies cost a thousand L$ or more.

PS: What makes this even worse is that the customers of some breedables brands are reselling the hatchlings, eggs or whatever on the Marketplace

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The food is pretty much the primary revenue stream for the makers of a breedables line.

Most of these also require active servers to keep running - servers that track genetics, lineage, perform the breeding functionality, and so on - in addition to aging a pet out of the breeding system and tracking food and other forms of 'game scoring'.

- So there does need to be a cost applied somewhere. The question then become how much is ethical and how much is too much.

 

The 'secondary markets' of selling the unhatched offspring is one of the major things that drives speculators into breedables. Most of them are sold entirely inworld due to the uniqueness of each pet.

Meeroos moved into marketplace recently due to hackers attacking its sims. Prior to that they sold everything only or mostly inworld (not sure) - and only third party people, to include some of the hackers, sold on marketplace.

It would be useful to simply have a category in Marketplace for 'food' and a category division for breedables and non-breedables.

 

[madman626 Fall]

I ageed with this 100% I believe  Wade is just piss off because she can't keep up . And who is she to tell they she believe ppl don't know what they want ,, if want to feed I will but if I don't I will keep looking tell I find one that don't have to have feed. My take on it is she think ppl are so dumb they don't know how to look for nonfeeding pets.

[Mickey Vandeverre]

not sure if you're getting what I'm saying.

I think that people know how to type in a phrase to search.  SL isn't super easy to navigate from 1st day forward - you have to have a few skills.  Even people without skills to navigate a virtual world still know how to type two words or a phrase into the google search to get to the web site they want. 

Wordpress gives me all the keywords that were typed in to get to my site - they are generally three word phrases and they are specific.

I just typed in sofa and I get 9500 listings.  a lot of them are sex beds on the first few pages.  I don't make sex beds.  I suppose I could write some blog posts that say sex in the virtual world must go!  So that I can get my plain sofas up toward the top.  But have a hunch that 75% of the people come to virtual world for virtual sex. 

I typed in kitten and got only 1200 listings.  That's workable.

I typed in dog - 4665 - decided that I should narrow that down, and typed in labrador, and you're number one for that.

animals has 38,716 - - - building components, which is a bit of a mess, and doesn't make a ton of sense....where you would go to buy a house....has 139,446 listings.

you've got it pretty good there in your own categories.

My hunch on the 75% that come into virtual world for sex is probably a wee bit off....but if the figure were fairly high, and I knew that most of those logged in to purchase a sex bed...doesn't make sense to me to remove my sofas away from all those people buying sex beds.  I want my stuff mixed in with the majority of people are buying.

Selling decorative dog food in a bowl...I don't get what is not acceptable about that.

I've got boxed living room sets.  Not everyone wants the whole living room, so I sell the stuff separately.  Selling the potted plant by itself is like a pet maker selling the food dishes by themselves.

Really don't get what's wrong with that.  And last night there was not even a page full of listings on those keywords. (for the free term - and that is what you seem to be promoting)

And I definitely would not want to be removed from mixing in with the pets that breed and eat....that's for sure.

 

[Mickey Vandeverre]

and I'm a bit freaked by mesh!  that Blender program made me dizzy and nauseous. 

but I've got other plans lined up if I can't keep up with the mesh crowd 

[York Jessop]

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Cato Badger wrote:

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

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Naiki Muliaina wrote:

Consumables would deffo be the right place for animal food. I thought by the title you were asking all animal food to be given out free

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Also a great idea

Somebody ought to reverse-engineer the food scripts and distribute them for free :matte-motes-evil-invert: (Just kidding. Mostly.)

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Reverse engineer? Does this mean you want your pets to be vomiting all over the place? Or worse, ejecting it from the other end?

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Excellent Idea, you could use said 'poop' to grow plants which in turn could feed pets!

[Melita Magic]

Free breedable/animal food shows it is possible.

Most breedable people are in it to get rich, quickly in my opinion, and not too much for the Second Life community as a whole. It is very much an outside business brought in.

Not saying that is wrong. Everyone has to earn a living. But I just never drank the kool aid.

Some of the pets are fun, though. But - I still think no one's ever addressed all customer complaints or wishes, and when someone does, it will make crack look like Sanka.