Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Thanks for that Madel......yeah I would imagine your cYo brand would do better here than an in-world store. Your target audience and therefore competition would be a hell of a lot less than say for LAQ in the skins & hair sector. I think for SL brand companies like LAQ or Stilleto Moody, in-world mainstore are still their best income sources. If you map their SIMs....they always have lots of customers, as they don't rely on in-world Search or Classifieds to be found! I think Marketplace is great for certain types of products, scripted gadgets, full perm scripts, full-perm sculpties, building packs, selling franchises, niche or innovative products. I'm just not so convinced when it comes to the popular sectors like fashion, hair, skins....just seems to be so much clutter & noise. I remember a friend that created the "Force Prophecy" gadget back in 2006/7, which was 1 of his only 3 SLEX listings, it made nearly 3 million Lindens (12k USD) in sales over 18mths and was always amongst the SLEX top sellers. It was a unique product and cheaply priced compared to competitors.....and people were falling over themselves to buy it. (you could only buy it on SLEX) I guess "MystiTools" is the equivilant these days (great & popular Gadget cheaply priced).....noticed it was 13th top seller on MP yesterday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Rene Erlanger wrote: Thanks for that Madel......yeah I would imagine your cYo brand would do better here than an in-world store. Your target audience and therefore competition would be a hell of a lot less than say for LAQ in the skins & hair sector. I think for SL brand companies like LAQ or Stilleto Moody, in-world mainstore are still the best income sources. If you map their SIMs....they always have lots of customers, as they don't rely on in-world Search or Classifieds to be found! It think it has less to with competition then with the shopping habits of your target audience. Builders and creators don't want to loose much time on shopping. The less time consuming way and most easy to compare prices and quality is shopping on the marketplace. I have a lot of returning customers, some have checked my mainstore once, to never return but always buy straight from the marketplace. And about 20% is or loyal to inworld shopping, they don't want to use the marketplace for principal reasons, or they do find me on marketplace but always check an item first in world before they decide to buy and some find me even through inworld search or destination guide. I think the target group of LAQ and Stilleto are complete at the opposite end of the shopping habits. They are for people who LOVE shopping. They might take some demo's from the marketplace (because they just love shopping they shop there in moments it does not suite to go inworld) so they at least have a landmark to check the shop later. For these brands a lot is about the shopping experience. The shop, the products, how they are presented, how they are arranged all must aim to the seduction of the customer while they are around. Nothing must disturb the shopping mood. It are not small amounts that people are going to spend and often it's no impuls buy either. They might want to bring a friend to command on the decission they are going to take. This friend who has no plans to buy must be seduced as well while your customer is fitting your products. But apart from that these brands are good at that, they have an advantage that not many of us have: they were very early in the market. They knew to get some sort of fame status before most avatars had to be born yet. Word of mouth does the rest. Then on the other end of the market. Who cares to go in world to overwin lag and search a whole shop to find a specific item when its for 10 or 20 L$ on the marketplace. This risk of a misbuy is hardly worth the trouble of a login. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Yep agreed with the above...especially the type of customers you attract for cYo...time is important for builders and they don't want waste time jumping around from sim to sim. Of course the brand companies have a definitie advantage which they earnt over the years.....however it's a much tougher proposition for the majority of stores in those same popular sectors....both in-world and on MP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 That being said Made, I know one fashion designer that in 2006 2007 was earning about $70K US a year and in 2010 her SL business has eroded to under $20K US. So being in early to the market as a leading fashion designer and gripping a large portion of the market for word of mouth to keep the success going is not the magic bullet. She pushed out fashions and advertised heavily but new factors came into the fashion world of SL that devastated many of these early top fashion designers. Commoditization of the critical fashion / clothing template dramatically reduced the technical barriers to entry as a new up and coming fashion designer. Fashion industry experts and trainers / creators provided excellent skills development to further excellerate the entry of countless new designers with awesome creative new fashions. The industry has become cut throat competitive. The new designer merchants are leveraging new distribution methods that some of the older designs find hard to adopt. Also, with the flood of new and wider options of designs and clothing (because of the commoditization of the underlying creation technology), the natural law of economics kicks in.... prices drop. Finally, the market that we all exist in has not increased (i.e. the population growth of SL has not significantly increased and the number of hours spend inworld per month by the average SL resident has dropped). Plus the RL economy has impacted SL spending too. So the older designers have been attacked from many main pressures... reduced marketshare and reduce margins on all their sales, reduced customer base, poor RL economy. As such, its not a bed of roses for the older Merchants that had a grasp of the market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Toysoldier Thor wrote: That being said Made, I know one fashion designer that in 2006 2007 was earning about $70K US a year and in 2010 her SL business has eroded to under $20K US. I knew quite a few that fit that criteria....that's the advantage of owning 2 Malls for last 5 years, I became friends to many a Fashion designer during that time, so I got a good feel for that sector despite not being a Fashion designer. A lot have left SL or downsized...a couple have passed away too (Zazaz Oz of Rufeena & Wiccan Sojourner of Bewitched R.I.P :matte-motes-crying:) The popular reasons i was given....were increased competition, clothing templates, Freebies & BIAB's and lack of SL growth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciaran Laval Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 With the latest SL viewers having a shop icon that takes you to the marketplace, it's a wise move for any brand to have a marketplace presence, even if they keep their mainstore, the marketplace has been one area of growth. When it comes to splits I hear different things from different people but I've heard from building and furniture creators that their share of sales on Marketplace has risen, which surprises me as they are two sectors where I'd consider an inworld presence far more appealing, I'd never buy furniture or a building without seeing it inworld. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madeliefste Oh Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 Toysoldier Thor wrote: As such, its not a bed of roses for the older Merchants that had a grasp of the market. Now that is exactly why I say all the time: the only way to grow or to stabilise your current position is to eat from your competitors plate. And this is also exactly why I said before: stop making fashion in SL is one of my best decissions. There is only X amount of money around that people want to spend on clothes. Freebie sellers don't take anything from this amount, competitors do. Competing in fashion is just very exhausting and drags a lot of your time from creation to promotion. This is also why the target for my own business is not only about making money. Improving my skills is for me as important, because I believe that in the long run it is skills that make you sell. This 'first generation' of fashion designers came in a world where there was nothing to wear, while new residents dropped in in high numbers, all with empty inventories. There were a lot of hungery shoppers to feed. But this wave of new residents did not only bring shoppers, it brought competitors as well. There are very skilled Photoshoppers among them, and there are people starting to learn Photoshop or Gimp because of what you can with it in SL. There are also people with average Photoshop skills but with excellent marketing skills. Photoshop is not a program that is very hard to master. And since fashion seemed to be thé market to aim on, because people love fashion, most money is spent on fashion, and it is not the hardest thing to make in SL, we now have an oversaturnated fashion market. People want to sell what they make, for some is money the driven force behind this, but for many there are other reasons. They are proud on the result of their creative labour, the appreciation that comes with a sale is even better then the money. It simply feels good when a customers says 'I just lóve your product'. So when selling at high prices doesn't work to get this appreciation, then it is no point to drop the price, till you reach a bottomline where you do get this recognation of your creative efforts. And ofcourse sure this takes customers away from established brands who ask much higher prices. There will always people who choose to have rather 5 good looking outfits for the same price of 1 top notch outfit. 3D is a skill that is harder to master then Photoshop. I was rather safe as long as we had this sculpty market, but now with mesh, it's right around the corner, this next generation of 3D producers. I will keep an eye on them and hope to manage to keep them away form my piece of the cake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rene Erlanger Posted January 11, 2012 Share Posted January 11, 2012 I hear you Ciaran....i've listed ever since the SLEX days, I just don't pay as much attention as I should, then again I've only been back in SL for 6 weeks.......and there were far more important issues in-world that needed attention. MP is a much lower priority for me at the moment. I haven't listed everything (like furniture or poses) as I don't think it's going to radically change my overall sales that much. Just too much competition in those sectors and probably better. I'd just be happy people TP'ing to my in-world shops from my MP listings and treat it as a form of advertising. I think you have to work almost backwards with MP.....look what's being listed and see if there are gaps in the market....and create products to fit that niche. If LL still care about Second Life and are worried about their reducing land tiers....I still believe they will reverse some strategies and make improvements for in-world Commerce l Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nefertiti Nefarious Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Toysoldier Thor wrote: That being said Made, I know one fashion designer that in 2006 2007 was earning about $70K US a year and in 2010 her SL business has eroded to under $20K US. The same could be said for real estate brokers, contractors, etc. Discretionary spending dried up. http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate_u6.jsp?fromYear=2005&toYear=2011 may give you a clue. *********** I make 95% or so of my sales from the marketplace - I'm in the impulse buy category. It will be interesting to see how many products fall off the marketplace when they go to direct delivery. One Linden was complaing that 30% of the addresses he sent something to bounced as undeliverable. That means that many of them will not get the notice and not make the move. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 LL's merchant email list / process of sending email to all their merchants is spotty at best. I know several times that fellow merchants got email announcements from LL and I havent... and then on the rare time I will get an email. I know several other Merchants that also dont get some of the emails that LL sends out. Whatever their emailing system is... it shotty. So it does not surprise me that they have a 30% failure rate... likely my email address to them is considered no good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciaran Laval Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: It will be interesting to see how many products fall off the marketplace when they go to direct delivery. One Linden was complaing that 30% of the addresses he sent something to bounced as undeliverable. That means that many of them will not get the notice and not make the move. If they've sent a notice, I haven't received it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toysoldier Thor Posted January 12, 2012 Share Posted January 12, 2012 I havent received anything from LL about any topic via email. This is normally the case. But strangely if LL is promoting one of their "favored" business partners - they sure seem to find my email address. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >Insisting that SecondLife is a game is as silly as insisting iPhone/iPad (iOS) is a game just because people play advanced games on their handsets and tablets. I do not inists that SL is a game. I insist that those who choose to make a game of it have a right to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 > bad visualization that our products have in marketplace because the millon pages of freebies that comes up first. A) If people are actually searching for your products, why would they be seeing freebies first? B) If people are not actually searching for your products, why should they be seeing them before seeing freebies, unless you're willing to pay for listing anhancement? The flipside of the idea that there should be no free products listed is that maybe there should be no free listings for nonfree products. How do you feel about that? >my biggest problem are not competitors but the time that people would have to take to get to actually see my product if I dont pay for an enhacement, because of this freebies pages... 1) Why not pay for the listing enhancment? Doesn't the quality of your product warrant that, considering the price? 2) If your stuff costs 11L or above, people can see it as separate from freebies by seaching those categories. If they don't do that, maybe they are actually looking for freebies, so why should they have to be distracted with your stuff, instead? The flipside of freebies making it hard for people to see your product is that your product also makes it harder to see freebies. Maybe we could just have LL default the market's front page directly to your own store. Would that be helpful enough, or do you also need them to send out emails to every SL user whenever you make some kind of change to your product listings? >So again this brings no business for us or LL Not true. Freebies pull people to the SLM, where they see other stuff they want to buy. That may or may not be a winning formula for LL, but you're wrong to invoke LL's interest in this issue as essentially the same as your own. They're not in the same boat with you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >You're right about doing a search and sometimes not having freebies in the way. A simple no freebie button function would be an acceptable solution to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >Supposing they continue to lose more income from Estate Sims & Mainland plots (Likely to be Commercial areas) from abandonments during 2012? The assumption here is that the decline in land use is primarily attributable to shift of commerce to the SLM. I'm not at all convinced of that. It seems equally likely to me that decline in land use is due primarily to RL factors. In terms of effects of SLM on land use, though, what I see so far is that LL has somewhat effectively managed to prevent SL from turning into a huge shopping mall where there are too few shoppers, due to the fact that no one can afford to rez anything anywhere because land prices are inflated by overproduction of shopping malls. The mall culture in SL was due to implode at some point, taking both concurrency and land use down with it. But if that's what you would prefer to see happen, why kill off the SLM freebies? Why not kill off the whole SLM? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >Right now, Rene is telling Josh what he CANNOT DO. Josh knows what he CAN do! Moreover, I DO do what I "CANNOT" Do. And I'm really doing it OK, too. Why others do not isn't really my problem, but it's morbidly fascinating to me to consider the question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >Most of these Freebies or ultra cheap items...even the ones containing copybotted content.. Why stop there? You haven't even yet characterized the merchants as drug addicts or child r@pists. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >And now for the Linden Reams the are even announcing a "creators" program. Possibly meeaning that, eventually, new SL content will be "user" generated, only in the sense that those who SL contracts to generate new content will use "user" accounts in order to load it in. When that happens, you won't have me to kick around anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >For my part....i would be satisfied if LL created a "Content Creator Directory" Or they could just create a list of business-licensed people and corporations in RL (listed by LL for a large annual fee), and users could buy all their data from those people and corporations before anything actually gets loaded to SL. Why let regular users create anything in the first place, much less sell it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >awesome word of mouth leads from several of my well respected customers whom are also amazing merchants in their own rights... like Luna, Marcus Inkpen, Xtasy, and countless others I cant thank enough for their business and promotion of my products they have used Yep. Anyone who realizes that my products are what they want have no problem finding them. And it's the proliferation of free copymods that tends to bring people to such a realization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >Seriously do you think the majority of SL residents use the main www.Google to search for Second Life products? I don't know what the proportion is. I DO know that I began to experience a lot more sales after I created this: http://tribes.tribe.net/secondlifemarketplaceproductsearch Thanks for bringing it up, though. It's been a while since I've bothered to feed the spiders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >So thats why I mean, I have to pay an enhacement FORCED somehow No one is forcing me to buy enhancements, and I'm not buying them, and I don't need them. But there's no limit to the number of enhancements LL can sell, so the more people buy them, the less useful they become. Rather than gripe about freebies, why not gripe about the devaluation of enhancements by every additional enhancement sold? If you're actually buying enhancements, I think that should probably be the bigger issue... no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 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. Agreed. I could probably work with a function that delists at some point if we don't log in, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Susanto Posted January 13, 2012 Share Posted January 13, 2012 >I'm just curious what level of incomes are derived from Marketplace with nearly 2 million product listings? Most RL businesses fail within 2 years. Doing bigger deals with more expensive products and more conspicuous listings hardly seems to me like a better measure of success than whether someone is actually consistently turning some kind of a profit; ANY kind of actual profit. I am. If you're not, maybe you could try things my way. Lesson #1: How to Use Freebies... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.
Please sign in to comment
You will be able to leave a comment after signing in
Sign In Now