Elvina Ewing

not everything. I can't see how not raising the prices will displease anyone. It seems to me it should please all customers, and the only losing part will be me. Or, as LustyLexxi said here above, i might even be a bit of a winning part too, if many other merchants raise their prices and i won't. exactly, so you are only confirming that there won't be much new fresh blood to expect.

you are missing the point. There will be no new blood because it's not attractive anymore. It has absolutely nothing to do with pride. It's just business. People will leave when they can't pay their bills anymore. If they said they would but haven't yet, it only means they have found a way to come by, that time. They might now, still. Some, others already left, a few more will probably leave now. But each time LL do this, there are less and less that are still left, and less new blood is coming by because it's now even less attractive, so if you do the math it will eventually run dry. It already is and it's a fact. But ignorance is bliss, so yeah whatever. I'm done repeating myself

haha ok, if you think so. The reason Blueberry and Truth are so huge and famous is because their work is brilliant. If there were others that can match their skills, they would have already been big and famous themselves. There are, too, but not many. If Truth decides to quit tomorrow do you think there will be others to replace her? Magicka and others like it are already there, and the new Truth will not come out of nowhere. Simply because it is not attractive anymore to create for SL for 3D artists with Truth's skills, as i already said up above. So, the result: SL ends up be a poorer place because Truth (and others like her) left, and no one new and equally good have come by.

thank you Mollymews

so does everybody else. There are as many purses as opinions, and i don't want to lose my customers' purses because they happen to disagree with my price raise.

are you suggesting that i have to increase the prices on my items to offset the 5% cashout fee? No can do. I can't afford losing even more sales. I see lots of people here on the forum shout "go raise your prices merchants, we the customers understand, we will still support you". The truth is: this is only your own opinion. You can only speak for yourself. To see if the majority of my customers agrees with you i will have to make a poll or just go ahead and try it out, and if you prove to be wrong and most people will not like the raise so much that they go elsewhere to shop then i will lose even more sales and valued customers. In the current dire position i cannot afford to lose customers/sales. So thanks, but no thanks, i decided to absorb the losses. Again.

and where do you think those others will come from?

exactly. And that on top of already steadily declining sales is only adding insult to injury. And before you start with "improve your product, release new stuff regularly, keep up", i already do. This is how i managed to thrive for 11 years. But there has to be someone to sell to, even if you are the most brilliant and talented creator (i am far from that but i continuously been learning and striving to get better). The platform as a whole has been steadily declining over the past years, and the sales only reflect that. But i digress... This new 5% cashout fee is where i draw the line for me. I will not quit and not stop but i will now start actively looking for other sources of income. SL will become secondary, and depending on how well i do elsewhere might completely disappear from my priority list. I can bet there are many more merchants like me, and some probably even been put into much dire positions than me where their entire livelihood is at stake. What will happen when more and more good creators are driven out of SL? Do you think more new ones will come in their place? I honestly doubt that. High profits in SL belong to the past. Newcomers will struggle soooo much more than we had to, to stay afloat, and honestly: a good and self-respecting 3D creator can do so much better elsewhere with their skills. It's just not attractive anymore, and LL has made sure of that.

i'd like to see what's gonna happen if either McDonalds or Burger King raise their prices by 100%...

I know, unfortunately i have a large store and moving is very bad for business. I still get angry IMs sometimes about how an old LM from my store now takes people to somebody's home...

*I* didn't see any reduction on *my* rent. Not even a 1$. And my landlord seems to be doing just fine to this day. I was hoping he would indeed need to compete, but apparently not at all.

1) The fact that there are at least 2 Lindens watching that thread and replying, and that Grumpity seems to have been losing sleep over it shows that they are listening. Who says they are not going to change their mind? The changes have not been made yet, btw, only announced. Maybe you should go and read the thread and see for yourself. The point is very far from moot. 2) SL is doomed in a way that everything and everybody is doomed: everything comes to an end. Sooner or later. But certain unwise decisions will have the tendency to speed things up a bit. 3) If LL continues treating their customers in this way there will eventually be not many left to sell to. So it's not about *me* leaving and you know it.

The point here is - we eventually *will* stop. And that will mean LL is shooting themselves in the foot. I could say lots more on the subject, but there is already a 10 pages long thread about this on General forum, and many other people already said it there better than I could. I saw you were posting on that thread too, so you probably have already read all that has been said. So I'm not going to waste my time since the main point seems to have been lost on you anyway.

i am not sure i understand what you meant to say by that. What *I* meant to say was: it's not only merchants who will pay the fee, but *all* who make money in SL one way or another (and take it out). But for *all* those whose RL entirely depends on their SL income it will be a very noticeable hit.

Let's make a new third party online Marketplace much like the old XStreet where we can sell our SL goods for US$/EUR/GBP.

The way i see it: LL have opted for the cashing out fee increase instead of the much discussed Marketplace fee increase. A wiser choice, too (from LL's perspective), because this way everybody's paying, not only Marketplace shop owners. Of course, i might be waaaaaaaaaay too optimistic here, and the Marketplace fee increase is still coming up as well, on top of this new 5% cashout fee. That won't surprise me at all. Nothing LL does surprises me anymore. They like to shoot themselves in the foot.

Merchants are not the only ones who cash out. Land barons need to cash out too, and they are probably the ones who cash out the most. So for cashing out $4000 they were paying $100 before, now they will pay $200. That's quite a significant loss.

SL is a sick dying cow, and has been for a few years now, and LL will milk every little drop out of it before it's dead. It is a slow process and will take a few more years, during which LL need to get as much out of it as they can. And they will. 2.5% cashout fee in 2018, 5% in 2019, probably 7.5% next year, or maybe right up to 10%... And why the hell not?? Who/what is gonna stop them? People will not all quit overnight. Do you want to quit now? Probably not. Me neither. Ask your neighbours and friends, they probably won't either. We can take it, we will, what else can we do. So it will take years for SL to die out, and in the meantime get used to the tightening measures on a yearly basis.

while this is most likely true, it is not only the naughty vendors' fault. If hypothetically every merchant used only relevant keywords ever, the Search would still be cluttered with irrelevant results. Why i am so sure of this? Because i was shocked to discover this in my own MP store. I have over 1000 items, and i often have to use search to find something in there quickly. Imagine my shock when i saw the results of the search "xmas" in my own store. The topmost 7 results are... fairy flower dresses!! I most certainly did not used the word "xmas" anywhere in those descriptions or keywords! I even went ahead to check the listings - nope, couldn't find any instance of the word "xmas" anywhere. If this is an example of how the Search works in general, it is no wonder that it returns such poor results for anything. Edited to add: /me slaps myself on the head. Of course those were topmost results, because my search preference was set on "newest first". duh. But anyway. The point stands: the "xmas" search returns 171 results, half of which are fairy flower dresses, so should not be there at all.

the reason i do that is because i personally believe the demos should have no perms at all. At least that is how i would have liked my demos. No mod, no copy, no trans. But due to SL perms system if you uncheck "copy" the item will automatically become "transfer". I however wouldn't like people passing around my demos, and if i could i would have set them to no mod, no copy, no trans. So, i feel that by enabling the actually showing SL permissions in my listing as no mod, no copy, yes trans i am in a way giving free light to people to pass demos around, and i wouldn't like that. It is sad that there are people who have no better things to do with their life than flagging a demo for incorrect permissions. It is in a way a kind of anti-social behaviour, because by unlisting the demo they have denied other customers the possibility to try out this demo for the whole 12 hours... It is even more ridiculous that LL will unlist a demo for actually having more perms than is listed.

One of my items have just been flagged and unlisted for Item Not As Advertised - Item Permissions Not As Advertised. And the item in question is... a Demo!!! The permissions in the listing are not set at all, so they are showing as no mod, no copy, no trans. All my demos listings are set up like that, as i would think that every noob in SL knows that you can't do anything with demos other than check it out. What is wrong with that? How am i supposed to correct the issue? Where is sense in that? PS. i did necro this thread, for the sake of quoting Dakota

In my country we have a saying that can be translated something like "A No you always have, a Yes you can get." So, why not just flag it anyway, but without high expectations, it only takes a minute. If it gets removed in the end - great, if not - oh well, at least you tried.

i suggest you also open a ticket for that. Sure they will tell you to flag it and wait for a review team member to look at it, and probably close the ticket, but at least it will get things moving. Btw, my last ticket about this (last week) have been open for 3 days before it got a first reply. In the past i used to get a response on a ticket within 12 hours. So i'm guessing all Lindens are on a holiday or something...

i totally would be very much aware of that. I also always feel very uncomfortable while eating a banana in the presence of men that are not my bf. Which is why i try to avoid it. It's one of those things shy girls like me are always aware of, like bending over when picking something up from the ground - i don't do that even if i'm wearing pants.

for real?? wow... i was talking about the one that rhymes with "smelly"... i left a 2 star review on one of their products, explaining in detail what was wrong with it... It was there for 3 weeks, and i haven't heard anything from them, no threats or anything... After 3 weeks it finally got removed. I am still wondering what on earth could they possible use as a reason to flag it... I thought being a creator myself i would know how to write a proper review, but i guess when you want to split hairs you can find something "inappropriate" in any review.... I just wonder why when i do that with the reviews in my store it is rarely removed, when that store does that it just magically disappears...