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Marketplace shouldn´t allow freebies or dollarbies anymore


Marina Ramer
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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Did I say it sucks?


Thanks for the info about IMVU, Medhue. I have been hanging around for some weeks there last year, looking for expansion of my markets. I never came any further then uploading one single texture. In advance I was looking if it would be an interesting place for meshes.  But I don't have 3d max, and that is what you need for their plug-in to work with. So I just did not examen very deep when I came acrros that.

When it comes to login-numbers, my opinion is that a part of it is what we would call 'fake traffic' in SL. They have for example about 20 Facebook-like, Farmville-like games out there. You have to login to be able to play them. You don't have to go in world at all, you play them in a browser window and they are very populair. Not only do these games pump up the traffic number, they also take money out of the in world economie, since people can buy items that are hard to get in those games with IMVU credits.

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Rene Erlanger wrote:

Firstly, freebies could impact your business in a big way . Let's say we had a talented Sculpty creator like yourself, creating similar items to you, but had the selling principles of Alicia.....i.e make them all free to the public. It's my guess, .you would certainly feel the effects of lower sales....unless you were an ace Marketeer.


When I would come across such a merchant, I would have a talk with him. I would try to convince him of the value of his talents. When he is really talented I would try to get him interested in working together. I could invite him to release his works under my brand. That brings him a customers base that is prepared to value his talent for what it is worth at the current market, and for me it stops the undercutting of my prices. For both a win-win situation.

 

 

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Chelsea Malibu wrote:

 

Common products like those I and many others sell are going to be tough in the future.  Unique products like Sassy makes will always do well since they are niche and proprietary in many ways.

 

I agree with the above paragraph.....there are certain areas one could still excel in SL in terms of sales. Niche sectors, unique products, innovative products, breedables and Games are the way forward in this current market of stagnant growth.

I'm not sure one could make SL products entirely free.....LL would still incur hosting & maintenance costs for their Marketplace website without earning any commissions. They could charge to list Freebies...but .who would really bother uploading their free products and then pay LL to do so??? Not many  are going to pay Tiers or rents to place a shop and load it with just Freebies....even current Freebie centres have some products set for sale at low (or normal) prices in amongst their stock.....or surrounded by shop rentals on the outside of the Freebie zone

Would LL give you free land to host a shop of Freebies? ....that would be a lost of Tier income to them. Heck, have a freebie shop at ground level and a skyhome up top......lots would join in that racket for Free land.!!

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:


Rene Erlanger wrote:

Firstly, freebies could impact your business in a big way . Let's say we had a talented Sculpty creator like yourself, creating similar items to you, but had the selling principles of Alicia.....i.e make them all free to the public. It's my guess, .you would certainly feel the effects of lower sales....unless you were an ace Marketeer.


When I would come across such a merchant, I would have a talk with him. I would try to convince him of the value of his talents. When he is really talented I would try to get him interested in working together. I could invite him to release his works under my brand. That brings him a customers base that is prepared to value his talent for what it is worth at the current market, and for me it stops the undercutting of my prices. For both a win-win situation.

 

That would be a very good solution.....as long as they buy into it.

There are some talented creators in SL that believe  that all items should be free throughout SL and not interested in making money....so it's not so clear cut sometimes.

I remember running into such a creator way back in 2007...she was selling quality Avatar products which she created and was selling them at just 1 Linden dollar each.  We spoke...but there was no convincing her that those products were more valuable than her pricing......she wasn't interested in turning it into a profitable business (Well it might have been profitbable but she did have a large slice of land!)

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Chelsea Malibu wrote:

 

Common products like those I and many others sell are going to be tough in the future.  Unique products like Sassy makes will always do well since they are niche and proprietary in many ways.

 


Like now, there will also be people who buy common products. But it will be harder to convince people to shop at your place. As long as SL is a living organism, there will always be people that shop just because they love shopping. There will always be people that re-skin en re-dress and re-hairstyle their avatar over and over again, just because their avatar is worth it. There will always be people who want to belong to the rich in SL and spend to show that they have a rich second life. Like you say, for the price of one night going out, you can have a month fun in SL. It is relatively cheap amusement. 

Nobody is in need of anything in SL. You can have as much fun, or as much dear friends when you spend money then when you don't. People don't buy 200 pairs of shoes because they need them, 5 pair freebie shoes might do as well, but because they are emotionally pulled towards buying shoes. To trigger people on this emotional level when you bring your brand to their attention will be more and more important in your sales strategy to survive. For products: quality, originality and  a wow-factor. You need at least one absolute 'wanna-have' in your brand.

 

When you know to combine quality and originality with excellent marketing and emotional binding of your customers, you have a good chance to survive.

 

 

 

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

When it comes to login-numbers, my opinion is that a part of it is what we would call 'fake traffic' in SL. They have for example about 20 Facebook-like, Farmville-like games out there. You have to login to be able to play them. You don't have to go in world at all, you play them in a browser window and they are very populair. Not only do these games pump up the traffic number, they also take money out of the in world economie, since people can buy items that are hard to get in those games with IMVU credits.

Not sure about that...its like logging into these forums or my Account page or Marketplace.....i would not expect ti to count towards the login numbers of the standalone Second Life client. IMVU's growth curve is well documented....they have a younger user base......as per my graphs on this thread, there are more kids , teenagers & youngsters that log into Virtual worlds/ games than over 25's which Second Life mainly attracts. I think Linden Lab realises that.....hence why they allowed Teenagers onto the Main Grid. They were hoping for a growth boom......that never came!

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Rene Erlanger wrote:

 

That would be a very good solution.....as long as they buy into it.

There are some talented creators in SL that believe  that all items should be free throughout SL and not interested in making money....so it's not so clear cut sometimes.

I remember running into such a creator way back in 2007...she was selling quality Avatar products which she created for just 1 Linden dollar. We spoke...but there was no convincing her that those products were more valuable than her pricing......she wasn't interested in turning it into a profitable business (Well it might have been profitbable but she did have a large slice of land!)

Yep, that is possible. Then I guess I would give it a try to see is she is willing to devide the market. When for example I see she has a lot of avatar attachment sculpties. I could try if she is willing to come to a sort of agreement that attachements will be her specific terrain as a sculpter, and we stop doing avatar attachment but solely concentrated on rezzable objects on land.

Then when she is also not willing to that, I will just give up and go on with what I am doing. She has just like me only two hands. I know how much time it takes to make my objects, and it will not be much less for her. And in the end we will both make our own ideas with our own handwriting as creator. I can only pray that there are still some people alround who fall for my ideas and handwriting, and are happy to pay for those. Or who fall for the excluvisity and don't want to use a product in their creations that soon will appear in every shop who doesn't want to invest relative large amounts in sculpties.

 

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Luna Bliss wrote:

Madeliefste, your sculpt maps are expensive compared to many, but they are good quality, and I have purchased them.

However if my business was not doing so good, and I saw sculpts for half of what you charge, or freebies, I'd buy those instead.

Freebies do contribute to the decline of the economy - not the only factor but they do contribute.

Thank you for being my customer, Luna, I highly appreciate it.

Now and then when I'm around in my shop I have a talk with customers. My general impression is that most of them have businesses that are doing fine. Though I have also buyers who don't sell anything at all, but build for their own fun, the largest group are builders en creators who are in good standing, business wise. They can afford to pay a bit more for the quality and the easy of use with the Photoshop files, and the product where it becomes a part off will sell enought to gain the investment back in an overseeable time. Because they have a good brand already they can afford, and because they can afford the brand can profit from the advantage of investing 'above medium'.

That is about how it works.

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People who oppose the freebies and dollarbies and other cheap stuff are simply overvaluing their own skills, and assuming entitlement to profit to date based on their expenditures to date.

Higher production cost does not assure greater consumer utility, and thus, also does not assure higher market value. 

For every person who won't pay more for something better, there is one who will.

If you can't profitably provide product for that person, then you're simply failing to compete in a free market. 

If you can't find some way to keep your costs below your revenues, maybe you need to get into some other kind of business.

Given your philosophy of risk-free entitlement to compensation for whatever work you choose to do, maybe you could all become bankers. 

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Your comment is far too generalised.....each market sector within Second Life has different behaviour patterns. You can't compare the state of the Fashion sector with say that of Combat weapon systems.

Its not as straight forward.. Most seasoned Merchants have witnessed the evolution of the Second Life economy over the years. With each major change to it, you can attach specific reasons or LL policy changes that directly impacted it.

 

As an example....the development of this Marketplace and then shoving it under people's noses inside the LL Viewer, has contributed to traffic moving away from in-world shopping ot Marketplace. Lots of sims and lands and stores were closed during 2011....many Designers have left SL and some are big names. Tell me who is left on the Quad sims?

 

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Rene Erlanger wrote:

Well, that's fine..I miss you too! lol

Most of your forum ramblings are out their for the Birds ........It's incoherent mumbo jumbo!!

My Bad!

Keep forgetting that around here Marketing = Incoherent Mumbo Jumbo = For the Birds

Suppose I shouldn't be complaining.  Certainly does keep the competition to a minimum.

Page 18 - still no magic phrase

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>As an example....the development of this Marketplace and then shoving it under people's noses inside the LL Viewer, has contributed to traffic moving away from in-world shopping ot Marketplace.

That is: moving from inefficient use of land to less inefficient use of land by means of sticking the whole shop in one box, in many cases.

The next step, DD, should further such efforts. But we'll no doubt hear the same complaints from the box rental people that we have so far heard from shop rental people.

The core complaint boils down to the fact that doing something less inefficiently hurts the business of those who are invested in the inefficiency.

LL has decided not to continue to invest in such inefficiency, as has always been their right to decide. This may turn out to be a good decision or a bad decision for them, but that's their problem. It has so far been a good decision for me, but I would have to support it in principle, as a sincere capitalist, even if it hurt my SL business. 

People who are sincere about capitalism only when it assures them a profit, personally, are not sincere about capitalism at all.

>Lots of sims and lands and stores were closed during 2011....many Designers have left SL and some are big names.

Sadly, yes. I get that.

But, applying the same protectionist principles that might have kept them around, we might have to run our computers on vacuum tubes and municipal direct current power grids that require us to plug in within a mile or two from a coal-burning power plant. 

Do you find such a scenario preferable to the current situation? Really?

>Tell me who is left on the Quad sims?

It's capitalism. LL's bottom line isn't really about "who" or "where". 

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Hey Rene! Welcome back! Great to see you here and engaged.

Ok, I think this is gonna be my last comment on this topic, at least for now. I've already stated things I think are obviously bad policies from LL on marketplace freebies, so I will go more into other thoughts here. The problem with freebies being promoted has to do with value. If people perceive no value in the things that they acquire, then the attitude will be that SL has no inherent value. Even when you look at land, if the items that people want to place on the land have no value, than what value does the land have? What does any1 care if they lose their land? You just get a different 1 later and fill it with all your freebies again. For a merchant, the land can have some major value, as people can't find you if you don't have land. Of course, LL has pretty much destroyed the value of land for merchants, as our land and owning it for years gives us no advantage at all anymore. See, having a f'd up search engine doesn't just make a mess for consumers, it destroys land value.

To me, the bottom line is, that keeping freebies inworld, and off the front page of search results, adds value to every part of SL. Promoting freebies on the marketplace creates the opposite snowball affect that permeates through the economy.

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Rereading everything, I'm caught by the question of whether or not SL is a game.

I think whether it's a game, or what a game is depends upon one's personal choice of approach to the thing.

Dancing is not a game.

Or is it?

Some people dance just for pleasure or exercise.

Some people dance competitively.

Some people get paid to dance as a serious job.

Imagine you're a professional stage dancer who has to face periodic re-auditions.

Now imagine a bunch of ravers and other random people from Craigslist start showing up to the auditions; more each time.

And, guess what...

Some of them will dance for free, or almost for free.

Some of them dance almost as well as you do.

Some of them can even do moves you can't do, but which audiences want to see.

OK.

Now, instead, imagine you're the person administering the auditions...

 

 

 

 

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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.

Both SecondLife and iOS are rich content delivery platforms that are used for the gamut of education, music, commerce, media experiences, gaming, person to person communication, sex, dating, exploration, building, running serious business processes etc, etc. 

The difference is that iOS has only professional developers who delivers both free and paid for apps and services (you must be a member of the developer network.) In SecondLife there is really no formalized framework for creators, developers and merchants as you have for iOS. In sum I'd say iOS is far more successful than SecondLife in this respect. 

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I agree with you Renee and Luna, and not only on those examples, my point is more also the bad visualization that our products have in marketplace because the millon pages of freebies that comes up first.

Again more than 50% of my stuff has no competition not only because animations that they can try at my mainstore before buying, but also because the unique sculpties I make for them (I dont use anymore the full perm packs that I tried on a beggining for the simply fact that everyone could have and sell the same so you just cannot compite) so 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...

So again this brings no business for us or LL and for LL this is a business in the end so they should help th epeople who bring them more money, us sellers , not freebie sellers. Freebie sellers should be gone form market or at least as minimun to be forced to pay an uploading coherent fee on this market.

 

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Not to take anything away from some great advice you're giving there, but just wanted to pick at one thing. You're right about doing a search and sometimes not having freebies in the way. Here's where the volume of freebies becomes apparent ...

I'm shopping along, not sure exactly what I want but I know the kind of thing I want, so I'm browsing categories. I'm budget minded, so I'm sorting low to high. How many pages of L$0 do I have to get through in any given category before I spend anything?

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Dartagan - I have been plugging in phrases for three days now, trying to figure out what you all are talking about!  Half of it has been for actual shopping - and I cannot see it.  Even on very general phrases!

If I do not see it TRYING, ON PURPOSE - I really do not know what you all are talking about.  I use the "relevancy" general search.  If it's less than 500L it's probably ok.  You all keep telling me that your products are "high quality" and you want to get paid for them.  I agree you need to get paid to some point, so I AM YOUR MARKET.  If I'm your market, that you keep saying you build for, then I'm not going to punch in price adjustments on the search.  Why would I do that, if I'm your market???

Even if I was competing in a freebie dominated search, I could get on page one with some google hits.  I just told how to get to page one in the most basic sense.  I'm not going to give all my marketing secrets in a public forum, so that I lose all of my own page one positioning.  That would be stupid.

I have not been promoting for months.  I started yesterday.  Right now, a tweet that took 3 minutes or less to prepare, will work all day for me.  A pic I posted last night for product that isn't even packaged yet, will work all day, while I go to another job.  When I get it finished and attach a marketplace link - you damn sure better count on that one being on page one by next Monday.

eta: not to mention, I have to go do the same this morning for 3 other businesses that are all totally unrelated!  If it had not been for coming in here to spell this out - I would have been done with that an hour ago, already - on 4 unrelated businesses, and ready to go do other stuff!  Geez.  So I'm not going to buy an "Time" arguments one bit.

 

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I'm going to give you the prize for getting as close to the magic phrase as anyone is ever going to get.  I'm not sure what that prize will be - maybe pat on the back.

Magic Phrase:  "How do I get to Page One?"

You figure that out, and your business is solid all day long.  While you sleep, even, while you take a hiatus even.

If you're trying to get to page one for less than 100L - looks like you can even do that.  But if you are telling me that your market is "high quality" - why the heck would you be concerned about catering to less than 100L?

And before Rene gets here and starts 10 pages of no one is buying over 100L - that's a complete crock.  Even if it were true, then you need to adjust your pricing for the market.  But it's just not true.

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Josh Susanto wrote:

 

People who are sincere about capitalism only when it assures them a profit, personally, are not sincere about capitalism at all.

It's capitalism. LL's bottom line isn't really about "who" or "where". 

 

I wouldn't get too comfortable with Marketplace, as LL has a history of reversing their strategies. :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

Linden Lab's main income source has always been from hosting Land onto their Servers and charging customers via a Tiering system.....that has not changed!

What will be interesting to see are the figures of "increased LL commissions through new Marketplace" versus "Lost of land tiers to those that were effected by these Marketplace changes/ visibility"

We know there are 900 Estate sims less than in Jan 2011....it will probably be a mix bag of Homesteads & Full sims ($125 & $295) /2  = $210 average Tier price per sim for argument sake => 900 x 210 x 12 => approx $2.4 Million less tier income for LL during 2012.....those sims are gone!!  

$2.4 Million USD will be approx 615 Million Lindens. Now add in all the plots of lands dumped on Mainland during 2011. I wouldn't be far off in saying that LL are going to lose around $3.5 Million USD tier income during 2012 from both Mainland & Estate tiers

That $3.5 Mill USD converted, represents nearly a Billion Lindens !!! Do LL make that from Marketplace commissions during the same period?

Supposing they continue to lose more income from Estate Sims & Mainland plots (Likely to be Commercial areas) from abandonments during 2012?  As money talks, my guess is that you'll witness another LL strategy change....with emphasis on growing Tier Income and that could mean improving things for commerical activities in-world.

Alternatively...they might let SL run it's course and focus on creating other products as per Rodvik's statement....therefore diluting the Land tier system and reliance on it  for their overall Income & profitablility.

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