In-world sales not doing as good as they did when we first started?

[Voodoo Schnyder]

Is anyone else noticing how inworld sales are oddly, not doing as well as xstreetsl sales? Which is odd because when I used to sell 70% more inworld then in xstreetsl, I reopened my shop inworld and on marketplace not long ago, maybe it just needs some time or is anyone else experiencing the same?

[Triple Peccable]

Definitely!

Here is my post from an earlier thread:

I'm not sure LL understands the long term consequences of the big push to get buyers to use the Marketplace instead of inworld, especially when coupled with the current search placement algorithms.

In my case I sell only high end, expensive items. I have created a successful inworld business with these products, and I've made it to the first page of the inworld search results. This has enabled me to easily pay tier on a substantial amount of land for the last few years, and still have some left over for profit.

Now, however, it seems very few are shopping (or searching) inworld, so all the effort and money I am spending to achieve the good search results is being wasted. Since the Marketplace search results are so heavily biased towards free and cheap products, my business has dropped by at least 50% (and is still dropping).

It won't be long before I will have to get rid of about $350 USD/month of tier (and advertising), keeping only a 512 plot for my inworld store, all because of the way Marketplace searches are ordered. I can't believe I am the only one facing this issue, so in my opinion LL will continue to lose more tier while increasing the abandoned land glut until something changes. The extra commissions they are collecting by encouraging buyers to use the Marketplace can't even come close to the money being lost as merchants give back large chunks of land.

I don't think any Lindens will read this, but on the off chance one does, please try to see how the current Marketplace search algorithm is killing the higher end expensive products, how that negatively impacts so many merchants who have been paying a lot of tier over the years, and why that tier is now in the process of being lost.

In my opinion, either more weight needs to be given to the higher end products in the Marketplace search, or the inworld search placement should factored in when ordering the Marketplace search results. All I know is that if something isn't done they will for sure lose a chunk of change from me, and probably many others as time goes on.

 

[Ann Otoole]

There are too many changing factors to make any judgment. Some people like to shop in world. Others like to use SLM.

However at some point, if in world sales are almost nonexistent while SLM sales are doing fine, then there is little justification for maintaining an inworld store when you can tier down and have more fun money from SLM sales. After all premium residents get to use premium sandboxes for building and soon there will no longer be a need for land on which to set magic boxes.

One seriously disparaging factor is LL refuses to mandate all third party viewers use the new search. The result is a large number of potential customers never see your optimized for new search location. Meanwhile those potential customers wind up going to bot infested locations whose owners don't care that using unregistered bots is against the rules because LL will not enforce that rule. LL needs to level the field and mandate TPVs use the new search by way of turning off the old search service.

Also it is easier to make your SLM ads more attractive and optimized for search than it is for in world stores. So the migration of sales to SLM is almost expected for those who take the time to manage their SLM store properly.

 

IMHO anyway.

[nikita Jefferson]

I could go into a lot on this subject, but for LL MP is purely a money maker, they tax every sale which they cannot do inworld.

Yes LL has every right to make money,it is all their servers, but in the process in world shopping has dropped drastically.

I recently updated my MP store, made all new displays and added more items, i also did what one is nt supposed to do, i key word stuffed, i listed all i had on all items, related or not,but i did have everything i listed in the store.

Sales were so good i had thoughts of whats the point of a store inworld, but that was just a thought,i will always have an inworld store.

Then i got a message from LL on my MP store, they had taken an item off because of excess keywords.

So like a good girl i re did all my keywords propery, sales dropped to 0, now my inworld shop was doing better since i tweeked inworld search.

I had one MP sale in 11 days,so i changed the keywords in MP again, late in the evening, now sales have picked up, i also had enhancements too by the way.

Unfortunately keyword stuffing is the only way to get noticed

There is just so much on MP its too easy to get lost in the thousands of pages, search dresses, 14000+ pages so my dresses are lost somewhere in that lot, skins 6500 pages, avatars 33000 pages, all my main items.

I went to the last page a while ago when i searched avatars, i was near the last page

I much prefer my inworld shop, it's a hobby for me ,i am always up there doing something,

I also shop inworld to support inword shopping, in the long run MP is destructive to the concept of a 3d world, mainly inworld shopping

ah but MP shopping is so much easier, of course it is, humans like the path of less resistance and don t have to travel around a silly 3d world shopping waiting for stuff to rez

 

[Pamela Galli]

I thought there was only one search now.  My inworld search on Phoenix / Imprudence seems the same as the website search.

[Darrius Gothly]

One tiny factual error Ann:

---

Ann Otoole wrote:

One seriously disparaging factor is LL refuses to

mandate all third party viewers use the new search

. The result is a large number of potential customers never see your optimized for new search location. Meanwhile those potential customers wind up going to bot infested locations whose owners don't care that using unregistered bots is against the rules because LL will not enforce that rule. LL needs to level the field and

mandate TPVs use the new search by way of turning off the old search service

.

---

The "old search service" was turned off some time ago. No matter which interface is used, the results all use the new SOLR/Lucene based In-World Search. The GSA's are not used for In-World Search All any longer (and may even be de-installed .. but that's just conjecture on my part).

[Ann Otoole]

Sorry folks but I have been corrected over and over by very knowlegable and experienced people that the old search continues to be maintained and available in third party viewers. The only person that can correct this divide on opinion is rodvik if he so chooses to investigate and make sure traffic has been erased and no longer affects any search. Given the complexities of LL and their hardware and internal politics I have my doubts rodvik could verify a damn thing about what his staff is doing. But he should. The CEO should be like a submarine commander knowing every damn thing about the system/submarine. There is no excuse not to.

[Nalates Urriah]

Ann and Triple both make good points. 

I have seen my sales decrease too. About 80%.

The Lindens working on SL and MP search are trying to create a 'fair' search. The result is a mess that is mostly unusable. Google concentrates on getting results that help searchers. LL's effort to be fair to those in search and give everyone an equal chance to be in the results and prevent any kind of gaming search (called Search Engine Optimization in the rest of the world) is hurting merchants, customers, and LL.

There also seems to be some effort to channel merchants into purchasing LL advertising enhancements. I have yet to have success with them. I've never earned the cost of the ad or enhancement back.

The commerce team in charge of the MP and search is hard to communicate with and provides little information about projects, fixes, and current problems. If you participate in the in-world group Second Life Commerce Merchants, you find most merchants are very frustrated. Frustration is so high and common place the commerce team can't post without getting flamed. The User Group and Office Hour meetings common to other project teams are avoid by the commerce team. I suspect the meetings would quickly go out of control and devolve into flame wars.

Frustration is so high civil discussion is almost impossible. There is little if any trust the team can fix search or understand what is needed for the MP.

We are in at least our second year of failing search. Phillip talked about it in SLCC 2010. Many of us think things have gotten worse since then.

If you are interested in what is happening with search, you can follow those issues at: DGP4SL Blog

As best I can tell there is no way to follow developement in the Commerce and Market Place Projects. For instance, Direct Delivery was rolled out to the Le Tigre release channels today. One would only know that if they follow the Server Developement projects. Not a peep from the commerce team.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

---

nikita Jefferson wrote:

I could go into a lot on this subject, but for LL MP is purely a money maker, they tax every sale which they cannot do inworld.

Yes LL has every right to make money,it is all their servers, but in the process in world shopping has dropped drastically.

 

---

It doesn't quite work the way you seem to think it does, Linden Lab cannot bank that "tax", they can bank tier payments from inworld stores.

The commission fees are a means to an end, but it's an indirect route of income for LL, not a direct one and it's difficult to quantify how much money it generates.

[Ann Otoole]

All I know is not trying at all on SLM is producing better results that busting rear end in world. So I see little point in paying tier for in world stores when I could do vastly better focusing all energy on SLM.

Others' results may be different.

[Ciaran Laval]

---

Ai Velde wrote:

For me, I still keep an in-world shop to cater to people who prefer it. Although having in-world shops seems as if it's on a course of becoming obsolete with certain product types. Anims, prefabs and furniture etc etc will always require in-world stores, among other things. However, in-world skin/clothing/makeup/accessories etc etc shops may end up being a waste of money some day (tier/rent costs and all...). :matte-motes-bored:

---

Right, I've touched upon this before but Second Life has its very own bricks and mortar challenge where some items are better suited to a web based market than others, I agree with you about prefabs, anims and furniture, they are all better viewed inworld, items whereby the picture is a large selling point, will probably be better suited to the marketplace.

[Chelsea Malibu]

I saw a little bump last early last month but it's died down again.  As most of my sales are from my store (just the nature of my products) I noticed a drop off on MP to very, very small numbers now but it was looking better for a while.

I only have about 10% of my stuff in the Marketplace and have considered adding more but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I show up #1 on in world search for Home Lighting but my other keywords make no sense as I see stores with two or three products of the same category that are above me where I have dozens.

Truth is, I have seen incremental depreciation in sales for 4 years now, each year my store gets bigger, my conversion rates go up as does my traffic however, the amount my customers buy is less and less.

I hate to throw up the bad economy flag but I really think this plays a big part. People need things in RL which take priority, SL plays a much smaller importance in many peoples lives as it does mine which in large part is why you see less concurrent and less investment in digital goods.

I have products in Red Light Center and IMVU as well. And though both of those games offer far less detail than what we can do here, those sales are down as well.  Even my TurboSquid sales are down including freebies.

[Ann Otoole]

---

Chelsea Malibu wrote:

...

I hate to throw up the bad economy flag but I really think this plays a big part. People need things in RL which take priority, SL plays a much smaller importance in many peoples lives as it does mine which in large part is why you see less concurrent and less investment in digital goods.

---

 

The best business to be in during bad economy times is the liquor business. If SL is being cast aside to buy liquor then LL needs to be shutting down. I do not think it is that bad yet because SL is an escape from RL. Better to evaluate SLM ads and keywords and general desires of the SL residency and make sure you follow the demand. Times change. Tastes change.

[Pamela Galli]

If there are two operative searches, why do I get the same inworld search results for website and Phoenix/Imprudence?

[Dartagan Shepherd]

---

Ciaran Laval wrote:

---

nikita Jefferson wrote:

I could go into a lot on this subject, but for LL MP is purely a money maker, they tax every sale which they cannot do inworld.

Yes LL has every right to make money,it is all their servers, but in the process in world shopping has dropped drastically.

 

---

It doesn't quite work the way you seem to think it does, Linden Lab cannot bank that "tax", they can bank tier payments from inworld stores.

The commission fees are a means to an end, but it's an indirect route of income for LL, not a direct one and it's difficult to quantify how much money it generates.

---

No?

Think again. L$ is as good as cash even to LL. Residents aren't the only ones that can use it as real money. Otherwise there wouldn't be a 5% commission, after all what does LL need with fake currency? A sink? Really?

It's outside of labor laws, workmans comp and all the icky stuff that the rest of the world has to abide by. There were rumors a ways back that some Lindens were paid in L$, although there was no clear proof of that.

It also prohibits us from having any sort of consumer protection, and legitimate recourse, refunds and what have you.

This is something that needs stronger legislation all around.

[Ciaran Laval]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

Think again. L$ is as good as cash even to LL. Residents aren't the only ones that can use it as real money. Otherwise there wouldn't be a 5% commission, after all what does LL need with fake currency? A sink? Really?

It's outside of labor laws, workmans comp and all the icky stuff that the rest of the world has to abide by. There were rumors a ways back that some Lindens were paid in L$, although there was no clear proof of that.

It also prohibits us from having any sort of consumer protection, and legitimate recourse, refunds and what have you.

This is something that needs stronger legislation all around.

---

Marketplace commission is a sink, yes, that's exactly what it's for. Whether it has created a big enough sink to give Supply Linden room to sell Linden dollars again (which was a good income stream) I don't know, because they don't publish that stat anymore.

Why would LL need to collect Linden dollars? They can print them anytime they want.

You are however correct on consumer protection issues, but that's a different tangent.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

So you don't think LL is capable of cashing out their own currency?

A sink in a manufactured psuedo economy where you make all the rules of said economy.

Do the math, tier on mostly small to mid sized parcels of land tier, vs. 5% on a million products.

Then you'll understand why they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot with marketplace vs in-world sales and how they're really not shooting their feet at all.

[Ciaran Laval]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

So you don't think LL is capable of cashing out their own currency?

A sink in a

manufactured

psuedo economy where you make all the rules of said economy.

Do the math, tier on mostly small to mid sized parcels of land tier, vs. 5% on a million products.

Then you'll understand why they seem to be shooting themselves in the foot with marketplace vs in-world sales and how they're really not shooting their feet at all.

---

Cashing out their own currency is what Supply Linden does in effect, he sells Linden dollars direct, that's straight profit, they also make income on commission of resident to resident Linden dollar sales. However Linden Lab don't save commission, it's a sink, it gets destroyed like all the other sinks such as inworld classifieds and show in search place fees.

The only direct commission on the marketplace would be via a paypal transaction.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Right, L$ are sold for real money.

Perhaps the purpose of this particular sink is to cash out even more of that money that was purchased. In that sense, if those sink L$ are cashed out, it's sort of double dipping, eh?

What Supply Linden does or doesn't do is irrelevent, without some comprehensive accounting of how LL itself uses L$.

Sell it, cash out the sinks, print more in the name of economy.

Sounds like another conspiracy theory doesn't it?

[Ciaran Laval]

---

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

Right, L$ are sold for real money.

Perhaps the purpose of this particular sink is to cash out even more of that money that was purchased. In that sense, if those sink L$ are cashed out, it's sort of double dipping, eh?

What Supply Linden does or doesn't do is irrelevent, without some comprehensive accounting of how LL itself uses L$.

Sell it, cash out the sinks, print more in the name of economy.

Sounds like another conspiracy theory doesn't it?

---

Rewind a bit Dart, the only way, the absolutely only way you can turn Linden Dollar water into US Dollar wine is by selling it. There's no other way of doing it.

 

 

[Ann Otoole]

Can't tell because I am not stupid and therefore never enter my SL password into a TPV. But the haters that despise LL keep swearing the search in TPV password stealer viewers use traffic as the main sort.

 

Whatever.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Yes, true. Giving you a hypothetical.

You buy L$. LL makes money.

You sell L$, LL makes commission.

You sell a product on SLM, LL makes 5% in L$.

LL cashes out 5% of all SLM sales.

LL prints more to fill the void in the sink.

In the above scenario, would you rather get tier from small plots of in-world stores or 5% of all SLM sales, "if" you were to cash out that 5% as a company?

Remember, as a company, I would get to waive the fees/commission there as well.

Pink used to justify that 5% and potential listing fees as a way for SLM to support itself. Didn't get the vibe that SLM pays for itself with a sink. What I'm saying is that it's more likely direct income, not a cause and effect of a fake economy.

[Ciaran Laval]

They can't cash out the 5% though, Xstreet could, but they did it the same way as residents do, by selling it. Unless of course the Marketplace is its own independent company, which would put a different slant on matters as they'd be operating in the same manner as XStreet did, but I've seen nothing to indicate they are.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Or unless the company that does the actual transactions is a separate company/entity, which I've heard before. Not disagreeing with you that it's not a plain old sink, but to me at least it's pretty unlikely, given that that sinks in an economy you control aren't really needed anyway when you're making profit on both ends of the sale already. That's a pretty thin reasoning, the whole concept of sinks.

Also, it wasn't needed before as a sink before XStreet was acquired.

Granted, these are things that LL doesn't disclose, and the economy is a throwback from way back, while in hindsight, fixed rates would work much easier against the US dollar than an economy that adds complexity on top of the dollar.

Besides, the whole purpose of a sink, in either case, is that you get less money for your money.

[Ciaran Laval]

Supply Linden sales had all but dried up by the time they stopped reporting the stat, so from that point of view, more sinks would have been advantageous to reduce the number of Linden dollar sales by residents and let Supply Linden fill that void.

Supply Linden used to sell over L$1oomillon a month on a regular basis, that was a damn good income stream.