Ciaran Laval Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Sassy Romano wrote: Yes there are different ways it could be offered but then there'd still be outrcy from either side. a) It's not fair, I have to pay to list my items, I can't afford the $100 fee (change price to whatever suits the debate) b) It's not fair, i'm a professional merchant, it's my RL income, others *only* have to pay $100 to compete. Thats's a simplistic view of course and yes there is scope for all sorts of different models though some would argue this already exists in the form of listing enhancements and that those that want to pay for extra visibility may do so. Others argue it makes no difference if you do etc. Then throw into the pot direct delivery that will mean people won't even need land for a magic box, those who are paying for land are not going to be impressed with the idea of having to pay more to sell on the marketplace. The best solution here is to just have a freebies category, as others have suggested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marina Ramer Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Hey Vandeverre thanks a lot for your post! Yes I think you are mistaken about this, you see, I have many best sellers of the total of 900 products I got in total with our two business avies, thats okey and some are on top on th elist and very easy to see because of the sales ranking, so said this, the problem arent those, the problem are my new products, only the new ones. When you upload a new product wich I do almost everyday, it appears last last in last position of last page of that category. So thats why I mean, I have to pay an enhacement FORCED somehow , becausse if I dont, as I alreayd explained, people would have to pass trough a millon pages of freebies, dollarbies and ridiculous lower prices of less than$10 lets say (I call all freebies) to actually reach to see my product. So I am actually right now paying an ehacement for each new product I launch for epople to be able to find it. If youw ant exmaples as I see you like, see for exmaple my last couple pose that I uploaded a couple days ago, its called "Lady & tramp", it appears LAST, of course cause its new, you have to get trough 776 pages I think if you search under "ouple pose"for ex, imagine how less pages that would be between if we get rid of "freebies"? See now? If marketplace team for some reason I suspect choosed to do this, I mean choosed to decide not to charge a fee to freebie sellers as thye actually planned to do when it was the migration form xtreet to marketplace, because this way as its happening now everyone has to pay for an enhacement, I think its worng, very cause they do lot more money chanrging the 5% comission of the item that I will sell, per item than jsut one enhacement fee per month. Regulary my new items sells more than xxxx units a month as minimun so its simple math I did to see this. And yes once I sold a number I become first on list, but stil I had to pay for an enhacement for people to get at least to see my item, you see? thats my point. Gavin´s , are more or less my thoughts, putting a coherent fee to this freebie sellers would bring us better business as well as LL too. Gavin said " This would clearly both serve to remove old content from merchants that had left SecondLife (or no longer paying the listing fee.) In addition it would block or discourage players who spawns alts who are listing free content more or less for the sport of showing off their ripped goods, or play destructive in the market. It could also make it more attractive to hunt for free items in world, increasing in-world presence and visitors to in-world merchant locations" totally agree, Gavin this is what I meant in the end with my posts here. And noone looses in the end, freebie sellers may offers all their stuff ingame, freebie collectors go and get all your want, but ingame, us sellers and LL we do our business. Now freebie collectors will complain of course, but its easy to buy in market without having to move= well, want a quality freebie, go yourself move your butt and get it and AT LEAST bring traffic to a store by visiting? fair enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marina Ramer Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Exactly my point Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marina Ramer Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Thanks for the info toysoldier I didnt know I am much focused on my own numbers and business always so was interesting to read about it, thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Is that what happens to new products loaded up into Marketplace....it goes to the back of queue for all your keywords? So it looks like sales drive it up the Search ladder...is that correct? Relevance being the default mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 hi Marina - I understand about the posting the new product and having it buried at bottom. That's a system fail in the marketplace that you have to figure out how to get around. They've not been accomodating us on that aspect. There are some Jiras that have asked for the ability to arrange your items on your own home store page, so that you may position your new item in whatever slot you choose. They actually gave us that ability a while back, for about 48 hours - one of the best sales days I've ever had - because I went in all day long and tweaked positioning. People do buy directly from your very first page, and do not use the "new" search or a keyword search on your own page all the time - it appeared that many were just purchasing whatever was on my first page that day. I don't think it was a fluke they were doing that - they were buying Christmas stuff at an odd time! So, to me, that totally proved, at least for 48 hours - that particular function is so important. But for some reason it did not work propery and they scrapped it, and we've not a heard a thing about it. You can work around it. All of that stuff that I mentioned to you, will get your new product on page one within about 48 hours if you work hard. That's exactly why you need to do all of that stuff. If it doesn't get product to page one, then I consider repackaging or repricing or trying something else. I don't recall ever repricing, though. I did the other night on something, just to experiment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Glad to see you starting your twitter Me explaining to you how to use twitter might be like someone trying to explain to me how to use Blender. There will be a gap! or the thought processes might not ever work right. I don't think I will ever have a Blender skill, no matter how much help. But might learn enough to make a dent. I can't really give tips on how to use it, since everyone is very different. I can't even give an example from SL, because everyone uses it in an entirely different way. I do not personally use it the "right" way on the SL account - I mainly like to chit chat there. Today, you got off to a great start - if you check tweetreach, you will see potential impressions there, as numbers, those are not entirely accurate as to eyeballs, but it's fair indication for comparison of where your message is going. just type your name in there to check - you had 6600 impressions a minute ago. You had several people retweet for you right off the bat - that just builds for you each day - it passes your name and info along. Keep that in mind for promotion - but also keep it mind for personal stuff too. Reciprocation is huge. My SL account doesn't work nearly as good as the others, because the SL population is not a huge retweeter for me. I have same problem communicating there, as I do in forum. You will do much better than I do on that. And you can't tweet off promotions all day long, That doesn't work for anyone really. I hope you have fun with it and I hope you see what I was talking about in action on your own stream Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 Marina Ramer wrote: When you upload a new product wich I do almost everyday, it appears last last in last position of last page of that category. So thats why I mean, I have to pay an enhacement FORCED somehow , becausse if I dont, as I alreayd explained, people would have to pass trough a millon pages of freebies, dollarbies and ridiculous lower prices of less than$10 lets say (I call all freebies) to actually reach to see my product. So I am actually right now paying an ehacement for each new product I launch for epople to be able to find it. Still it would only be a temporary solution for the problem laying underneath. It might work in your benefit for let's say a year or so. You have to buy less enchancements and you can take more money out of the system. But when you are in the top 100 of the marketplace you are in the way for about 99,7 % of the merchants, who also want more visibility thus sales. We keep on producing and producing. Among those producers will always be people that charge prices that seem ridicilous to you. You just have to wait a while and the products between 11 and 20 linden will be so in your way that they will FORCE you to pay for enchacements to gain some visibility. I would say: profit from the current situation even if you have to buy enhancements for to being a top 100 seller. Without growth of SL it only stays as long as it lasts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Not sure if i done this correctly....but when i pressed top selling products with all ratings ticked......they were predominantly foods for Meeroo & Amaretto Horses ( I guess that's understandable as the Breedables are constantly eating) and then several Freebies and 1 Linden products. The only item that seemed to be their on its own merit (in top-12) was the NHC Media Centre at 699L Wow, I previously quoted an incorrect figure....it's nearly 2 million products listed! Great to see MystiTools right up there (13th)....a great gadget! I've had mine for 3 years now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Ciaran Laval wrote: Then throw into the pot direct delivery that will mean people won't even need land for a magic box, those who are paying for land are not going to be impressed with the idea of having to pay more to sell on the marketplace. The best solution here is to just have a freebies category, as others have suggested. Yes and the two other related things that i've asked for are:- With each listing, show the last logged in date of the avatar. It's already public anyway if you're in a common group. Require re-listing every x days otherwise it gets removed. I don't think it's too much of a burden to require serious people to re-list after say 30 or 90 days or whatever would be deemed suitable, paricularly with direct delivery, it becomes even more important to remove dead/dormant sellers who cannot offer support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela Galli Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 If you have hundreds of items, as I do, you would spend a lot of time relisting, which I would not want to do. At all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Madeliefste Oh wrote: Marina Ramer wrote: When you upload a new product wich I do almost everyday, it appears last last in last position of last page of that category. So thats why I mean, I have to pay an enhacement FORCED somehow , becausse if I dont, as I alreayd explained, people would have to pass trough a millon pages of freebies, dollarbies and ridiculous lower prices of less than$10 lets say (I call all freebies) to actually reach to see my product. So I am actually right now paying an ehacement for each new product I launch for epople to be able to find it. Still it would only be a temporary solution for the problem laying underneath. It might work in your benefit for let's say a year or so. You have to buy less enchancements and you can take more money out of the system. But when you are in the top 100 of the marketplace you are in the way for about 99,7 % of the merchants, who also want more visibility thus sales. We keep on producing and producing. Among those producers will always be people that charge prices that seem ridicilous to you. You just have to wait a while and the products between 11 and 20 linden will be so in your way that they will FORCE you to pay for enchacements to gain some visibility. I would say: profit from the current situation even if you have to buy enhancements for to being a top 100 seller. Without growth of SL it only stays as long as it lasts. I told her what to do with a specific item, took half an hour out of my day, gave away way more info than someone should, and offered to do it for her, to learn from. If a person passes that up, they do not want to be helped, they just want to blame someone else for not working hard enough. I'm not sure what you mean by being in the top 100 sellers? I must have missed that part, but do I understand correctly that Marina has a list somewhere and is saying she is on that list? Is that public? If it is, and that is correct, then that could explain a whole lot. A whole lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Mickey Vandeverre wrote: I'm not sure what you mean by being in the top 100 sellers? I must have missed that part, but do I understand correctly that Marina has a list somewhere and is saying she is on that list? Is that public? I don't know about a list, but in the begin of the discussion she wrote: Marina Ramer wrote: Happy toshi, I am on top 100 merchants of Marketplace, please have at least an idea of who I am, before you make a comment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Thanks, I see that, now. Interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 I can only see top 100 for products....can't see anything in terms of MP Stores. Not sure that would be a good thing to show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sassy Romano Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Pamela Galli wrote: If you have hundreds of items, as I do, you would spend a lot of time relisting, which I would not want to do. At all. Not necessarily, it could be a "select all". Just *something* to force a pro-active re-list action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Toysoldier Thor wrote: So... as you can see.... agressive advertising and formal marketing have not be any factor in my success. Your strategy works for your target group. I have about the same experience as you, that's logic, we have the same target group. The more you know about your target group, the more you can fine tune your marketing. For example when you know that the builders and creators spent 90% of their time in their own workshop and hardly travel in SL, you also know that in world advertising won't help your sales. Neither won't participation in hunts, fairs, x dollar mondays-tuesdays-etc and so on help you any further. We have an easy target group, in several ways. It is easy to find out about the characteristics of your target group. It's a relatively small group, still big, but small compared to general shopping audience. But when you have a more general product it is not always easy to find out who you targetgroup is and how to approach them. For example when you make ladies clothes you tend to think 'all female avatars' are my targetgroup, or maybe: I make what I like, and people who like what I make are my targetgroup. I think that often people find out what works for their brand after they started marketing. For one brand it might work to advertise in in world fashion magazines, while that is only throwing away money for another brand. While for one brand participating in hunts seems the only way to get some sales, others do better not to disburb their existing customer base with freebie hunters all over the place. While finding out what works for your brand, you are in the same time learning about your target group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Sassy Romano wrote: With each listing, show the last logged in date of the avatar. It's already public anyway if you're in a common group. Require re-listing every x days otherwise it gets removed. Good ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Madeliefste Oh wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: So... as you can see.... agressive advertising and formal marketing have not be any factor in my success. Your strategy works for your target group. I have about the same experience as you, that's logic, we have the same target group. The more you know about your target group, the more you can fine tune your marketing. For example when you know that the builders and creators spent 90% of their time in their own workshop and hardly travel in SL, you also know that in world advertising won't help your sales. Neither won't participation in hunts, fairs, x dollar mondays-tuesdays-etc and so on help you any further. We have an easy target group, in several ways. It is easy to find out about the characteristics of your target group. It's a relatively small group, still big, but small compared to general shopping audience. But when you have a more general product it is not always easy to find out who you targetgroup is and how to approach them. For example when you make ladies clothes you tend to think 'all female avatars' are my targetgroup, or maybe: I make what I like, and people who like what I make are my targetgroup. I think that often people find out what works for their brand after they started marketing. For one brand it might work to advertise in in world fashion magazines, while that is only throwing away money for another brand. While for one brand participating in hunts seems the only way to get some sales, others do better not to disburb their existing customer base with freebie hunters all over the place. While finding out what works for your brand, you are in the same time learning about your target group. You are right Made.... Each merchant should spend at least some time trying to figure out who their primary target market is. Then assess how they think, what they do, where do they normally hang out, who influences them, what do they read.... If you are into fashions, then I would thing Advertising and public in-your-face visual model promotion on MP, Flickr streams, Fashion magazines, and even inworld ad posters at popular clubs would sound like good ideas. Also, fashion sales is also influenced by WORD OF SIGHT / MOUTH. As such, the more that your fashions are seen in pulbic - the better chance another fashion addicted avatar will find out who made that outfit. If that is the cae, you should be creative. I would get my fashions on the DJ's and HOSTESSES of some of SL's most popular clubs. Incent them somehow to wear your clothes during their 1 - 2+ hour gigs. (free outfit if they wear it and a PICK that says "I'm wearing a fashion by John Doe". Since I sell rocks and water landscape terrains, none of these advertising techniques are of much value. As you said Made, my/our customers dont typically do hunts and often they rarely leaving their sim unless they are out to buy content for building. That is why I have often come to their lands and rezzed sample sculpted prims right into where they plan to landscape (i.e. a customer wanted to have a rocky shoreline to the edge of a large lagoon - so I rezzed a few sample for them to play with). KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET - then - CATER TO THEM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickey Vandeverre Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 I was studying your business model last night, and I don't think that you have anything at all to worry about with freebies. You've got some aggressive "marketing" in place that seems to be working really good for top positioning. The model you are using is much better than mine, to retain the top spot for longevity. You've clearly gained an edge over competitors with it, concerning placement.... so you should have no problem with freebies. I like some healthy competition to light that fire in the belly, but if I were selling similar products to yours....I would be shakin' in boots. It looks like your highest priced products get the most reviews, so probably best to quit worrying about price and freebies and focus on selling more high end. Looks like that's your market from all the fabulous reviews. You've got all the bases covered, so not sure why you're having problems. But it's clearly not freebies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciaran Laval Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Sassy Romano wrote: Yes and the two other related things that i've asked for are:- With each listing, show the last logged in date of the avatar. It's already public anyway if you're in a common group. Require re-listing every x days otherwise it gets removed. I don't think it's too much of a burden to require serious people to re-list after say 30 or 90 days or whatever would be deemed suitable, paricularly with direct delivery, it becomes even more important to remove dead/dormant sellers who cannot offer support. Direct Delivery may deal with some of the dead wood, if they remove items that aren't migrated over. Relisting was suggested during the old talks about the freebie roadmap, maybe you should have to relist if you're not a premium or concierge customer, make it a perk, if you're no longer a premium or concierge customer then you lose that perk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 .....but re-listing should be a very easy process and not time consuming. Something of the order of ticking an "All products" box and then hitting a "Re-list" button. Plus LL should send an automated email telling you have x days left before your next re-list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 I agree that whatever the solution is on confirming Merchants on MP are still active, it must be a very simple and non-annoying process. BUT, for the reasons mentioned on what some of us thought the old FREEBIE ROADMAP was going to do, there has to be some nominal (and I mean real nominal) fee to pay for listing on MP. If there is ZERO skin in it for a Merchant to dump 100's or 1000's of freebies and 10L items onto MP, they will simply log in and press RELIST ALL. Some cost - even the smallest - will likely have a huge impact on removing not only the abandoned Merchants that left MP (since they wont be there to renew) but also remove many of the freebies that the respective Merchant feels is not even worth spending 10L / year to keep listed. TOY's Proposed Solution to resolve FREEBIES & CLUTTER (abandoned listings) So here is my suggestion (and sounds similar to what was suggested to Colossus back in the fall of 2009). A TWO PRONG APPROACH: The MP commission on all sales of ANY MP Listing would be changed from 5% to 5% or 1L - whichever is the greater. The benefit to this is that if a Merchant believes that a FREEBIE has intrinsic value to him or her (i.e. its apromotional Demo tool like my demo pack is OR they just want to be supportive to the SL community and they want to use the MP site to distribute their generosity), he/she would be willing to pay this minimum fee. If they do not see this listing is worth paying $1L to distribute via MP then they will decide for themselves to remove it. The only complication to this model that LL would have to address with this solution (which was their issue with their own solution back in 2009) is that LL would have to be able to draw funds from the Merchant's account for any of the Merchant's Freebie sales since LL could not take the commission from the buyer's funds - it was 0L. Another coding rule to this solution is that the Merchant's account has insufficient funds to pay the commission for these Freebie Sales, the listing would be automatically unlisted and the Merchant would be sent a warning that it was unlisted. Benefit is.... ignored / abandoned freebie listings will auto-delist. A Merchant offering a Freebie Listing can contact support to force the $1L fee be paid by the BUYER if the transaction log shows clear evidence that a single buyer is abusing the buying of a freebie (i.e. as a griefer - buying 100's of freebies from a merchant in order to purposely incur a cost to the Merchant) The second part to the solution is that ALL avatars of SL that are or want to be a MP Merchant would need to register as a SL Registered MP Merchant on the www.secondlife.com website. This will authorize you to open up and run an MP store. On an annual basis (anniversary of when you registered) and 1 month before the anniversary date, LL will send you a notice that you must perform your annual Merchant Registration renewal within 4 weeks. The Merchant would go to this webpage on www.secondlife.com and click on annual renewal. The Merchant would be shown the current total number of listings in his/her store and the renewal fee would be $10L / active listing. Within these critical 4 weeks, the Merchant can clean up and delist any listing he/she feels are not worth listing. These delistings would not be allowed to relist for a minimum of 6 months (to stop Merchants from trying to game the annual relisting fee). The Merchant can go back to the Merchant registration site to check the updated annual fee. When he/she is happy with the number of store listings that he/she will be charged for, he would simply press the PAY ANNUAL RENEWAL FEE NOW button. The funds would be removed from the account and the Merchant is now active for another year. If the Merchant - for whatever reason does not want to renew... then the Merchant's store and all his/her listings gets suspended. The merchant can open up a support ticket to renew his/her Merchant status and store with all the listings if he/she pays the annual fee (not pro rated - as it would be a minimal penalty for letting your registration lapse). This is my proposed solution. I think it would be fair for all merchants. Simple for active merchants to renew. It would resolve all abandoned merchant listings. And it would force large Freebie Merchants to "valuate" their freebies. Freebies have an intrinsic value. This very small fees would force all listings to be at minimum be evaluated since there is skin on each listing existing on MP - as small as this skin is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 I'm just curious what level of incomes are derived from Marketplace with nearly 2 million product listings? Seems like a lot to wade through, even when you break it down by categories. Historically....and i mean going back to SLEX days, it's always represented 5% or less of my total sales in any given month.....hence my non-reliance (or attention to marketing) on it. I can't imagine anyone on MP are earning anything close to the days when the likes of Naughty Designs, ETD, Celestrial City, Redgrave, Minnu Skins, Stilletto Moody where raking in 5k to 10k USD per month in-world. There's far greater flexibility to generate more income in having your own SL Mainstore....as one can use umpteen different techniques in marketing. It would be interesting to see income splits for a SL Brand company like LAQ were she to place all her products on MP. I still believe it would be comparatively less than her in-world store sales....as she's not going to have to compete with 44,000 listings in "Female Skins" for visibility or whatever astronomical numbers are listed for "Hair"...even when you break it down with keywords like "short hair, long hair, brown hair, black hair, pigtails " etc.....it's still going to be a lot of noise.!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Rene Erlanger wrote: I'm just curious what level of incomes are derived from Marketplace with nearly 2 million product listings? Seems like a lot to wade through, even when you break it down by categories. Historically....and i mean going back to SLEX days, it's always represented 5% or less of my total sales in any given month.....hence my non-reliance (or attention to marketing) on it. I depends a lot on your merchandise, Rene. I can confirm for my general customer brands my sales on Slex ware also around 5% always. This was different for my full perms items. About 80% from my sales came from slex for this brand. For cYo nothing has changed, my marketplace sales are still about 80% versus 20% in world. For my other brands is has changed however, in both cases they make now more around 20% of total sales. But I must say I don't do any active marketing anymore for the brands in world. So I'm not sure if only the marketplace as phenomena is causing this difference, or if the lack of marketing is the cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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