LarryLow Kappler

Paula001 Goldschein wrote: who cares who is who? every avatar/account is an alt when it comes to our rl avatar.. Yes you're right, who cares who is who :smileyvery-happy: But i would consider posting here a serious answer any longer since the only intention for the topic creator was to advertise the services here. Yeah topics in the forums can also be faked. See the best example here. Some would call this stupid others call it hidden advertising. Come on, recap the topic: Avatar 1, empty profile alt, 87 days old says: "Hey there is a great service available you can find it easily on the marketplace.......It's perfectly acceptable in the TOS.......It's great .... " And once it comes to critical words then it's time for Avatar 2 (Same person as Avatar 1, empty profile alt, 84 days old) to defend it and saying that he will certainly be trying this with his store. And later in the thread suddenly the sales have gone up 300% ? So what now? I thought he will be trying it first?? Another friendly "it's within the TOS" has been placed... And last but not least this person is not able to take any criticism. Seriously, this HIGH percentage of more sales because of a few more reviews is very unrealistic.. And talking about such a high percentage in the public is rather a popular method to trick people. So don't be fooled.. 300% sounds much but when you sell 4 products instead of 1 then you have also 300% more sales. All in all not provable if it's because reviews or other factors! But i doubt that he did the maths since the only intention was to advertise the service here. LL could moderate now and close/delete this thread because it's obviously faked, but i doubt they will do. I only posted my opinion and respect others and for me it's all said now That's why i'm not longer available in this thread. But as the previous speaker says: Who cares

Torleyman 84 days old - Maxmady 87 days old Both empty, Both started here today?! . well, I don’t believe in coincidences. Finally we know why he didn’t post with the main avi. But I think everyone can imagine now who he is :matte-motes-sunglasses-3:

Torleyman wrote: LarryLow Kappler wrote: PS: Even if it's allowed by LL, it's at least morally wrong, so please don't tell me about morals! Larry your profile states: "On the move! Got a lot to do detecting thieves. My clients are mostly merchants and creators, But feel free to IM me." Sounds like you've got some skin in the game to me..... Posting out of financial interest by any chance? Maybe this disrupts/negates your business in some way? Morals? :matte-motes-delicious: :matte-motes-bashful-cute::matte-motes-kiss::matte-motes-yawn: Oh well, i am detecting thieves my friend, since 2007.. BUT i do it for free. And that's why i have good contacts with a lot of merchants and creators in SL. So... again.. i give nothing on your reasons since you have no courage to post with your main avi. So i'm not longer talking to You!

Torleyman wrote: LarryLow Kappler wrote: Dubious practice to game the marketplace, however gaming the MP is allowed by LL so feel free to do what you want. But I would consider paying money for something that isn't relevant for the majority of customers. Most do not read reviews as well as they don’t write any, so why paying to get any? And hundreds of bogus reviews will definitely not increase sales. So there are no good reasons why to do it. It’s actually a waste of money. Actually Larry I have to politely disagree with you on that one. Reviews affect marketplace ranking. And actually someone is far more likely to buy something if it has a review than if it doesn't. Countless times I have passed up on buying something because it did not have a review to say that it was an decent product. Plus I am not sure that this is bogus reviews they are talking about here. I mean, one of the nice things in sl is that people do have morals about what they are doing for the most part. I will certainly be trying this with my store! The next ALT who has no MP Store wants to try it? Why aren't you posting with your main avi? Afraid? Hey this would be a very good chance to advertise your store but you're posting with an alt ? Very odd! To your answer, you cannot prove the way how reviews affect the rankings, nobody can, unless you know LL's secret relevancy formula! Of course they affect rankings in any way BUT not like "The more reviews the better ranking". That is definitely not the case. So I give nothing on your reasons. And that you only buy items with reviews is your thing, most customers do not care. But as i said: It's your decision and i respect the decision. But i have my own opinion, so deal with it! And If you have the money to give away, then do! And here some Info from good old Real Life. In many countries in the world it’s actually decided by the courts that rewards for reviews are NOT permitted by law. And that’s a fact! The reason for this is the Reward itself that will encourage people to leave rather a positive review, and this is in quite a few countries against the law. So, happy LL that there is obviously not such a law in california.. PS: Even if it's allowed by LL, it's at least morally wrong, so please don't tell me about morals!

Dubious practice to game the marketplace, however gaming the MP is allowed by LL so feel free to do what you want. But I would consider paying money for something that isn't relevant for the majority of customers. Most do not read reviews as well as they don’t write any, so why paying to get any? And hundreds of bogus reviews will definitely not increase sales. So there are no good reasons why to do it. It’s actually a waste of money.

Yeah, the thing what they still call „Marketplace“ is full of purchased reviews.. And they’re all saying the same – “Wow good product” – “Wow nice product” – “Wow great product”.. They are all very short and not very informative because the only reason people leave them is a bribe. Now one can ask do I want to get hundreds of meaningless fake reviews or do I prefer few honest and informative reviews.. I would prefer the latter. Reviews written by real satisfied customers. However the LL allows it, as long as you bribe people for positive and negative reviews, which is a very stupid rule in their ToS because they have no control about it. If the ratings are really part of their secret relevancy formula then they usually HAVE TO stop it. But you can be sure they don’t give a **bleep** about the rating system or if someone is gaming the system. They don’t give a **bleep** when someone purchases products with an armada of alts or pays people to increase the relevancy, because THEY earn. And as long as they earn they will not stop anything. Only reason why they switched over from Xstreet to Marketplace? They wanted a better money machine for themselves. And they were successful. Marketplace is good enough to fill their pockets. But that’s it. For everyone else it’s still a pain!

Be aware that there are also animators out there who sell full bvh animation files for you to upload to SL and allow a full perm resale. For example Inf Designs (Just google it). Only restriction is not to sell the Bvh files. This is what many sellers of those engines do, so your purchased engine animations are probably not copybotted. But i would compare the animations to be sure. You can talk to me i-world, i can probably tell you if your purchased engine has illegal animations included..

They'd never admit it but the marketplace is essentially broken (200+ jiras and more to come) and it's impossible to fix it all. Not now, not in years. It never worked as promised in 2010 or as Xstreet and It's a LIE when they say they can fix it all !! But as long as THEY are not in the red with their wannabe e-commerce project, it will remain this way. No matter if merchants are in the red. The Lab can easily cope with it. The question is, how patient is the vast majority of merchants? How long are they willing to wait? I think we all know LL's poor and unprofessional working methods. So the future of MP is pretty uncertain.

Rival Destiny wrote: Are there any professionals working at LL? Nope!

Scout Schwager wrote: See how long you would last in the RL with an e-commerce system like this. This system is not comparable with any e-commerce platform, because real e-commerce websites work pretty well and they are reliable. However, this what they call "e-commerce" cannot be taken seriously. It's just a weak system with countless major bugs without any service stability plus a bunch of non-experts working on it. So what do you expect ? It's like you compare a Porsche with a playmobil car.. And the Lindens are the kids who are playing with that playmobil car with no idea what they are doing...

Broken since marketplace introduction - Today, almost 2 years later - still broken - Will not get fixed the next few years because they don't know how. That's the sad truth!

Yeah and I have some more critical words for the LL because it has to be said. But before I forget to say something about the relevance.. Yes they froze it on purpose (and not only the relevance), so that they can work on their other major bugs, the crossover listings for example.. They might be easier to locate when it’s not changing all the time. But this is just another proof that there aren’t working any professionals in this commerce team. The fact that they HAVE TO disable a major functionality in order to work on other self created major bugs says it all. Therefore LL: Hire real experts in this field or keep your fingers off the e-commerce! Sry to say, but it seems You have no idea how to handle it and you had 2 years of time (not to forget the over 1 year beta testing of DD) plus you have absolutely no idea how to treat your customers. You let them even pay for YOUR major faults and all what they hear from your side are excuses. Its time to grow up, start to communicate and consider new ways. Period!

Well, it’s year 2 after the SL Marketplace introduction and all what I hear from the Team is “ yes we fix it… we are working on a fix … soon , soon and soon…” That makes me wonder, what kind of people are working on that so called fixes ? Are they professionals ? I would say It’s pretty clear they are not. Otherwise this e-commerce platform would work flawlessly. After almost 2 years customers can expect a little bit more functionality and service stability. So IF somebody is still hoping that the Marketplace will be fixed someday in the near future, do not believe it, cause it’s an illusion! Don’t plan long-term. For the LL It’s high time to hire REAL professionals to do that e-commerce job instead of making half baked decisions all the time and rolling out one bug monster after another at the costs of the customers.

Tips are all very good, but CURRENTLY do nothing! Since the marketplace relevance is frozen since 10 days and nobody knows when it switches back to normal (due to lack of communication), your new product will stay at the last page/rank of your store and on one of the last ranks overall and will never come up.

You forgot its the week before easter. As usual for the LL thats the right time to destroy the next busy weekend. The frozen search rankings plays an important role, but its actually just a drop in the ocean. All i can say is - Happy Valentines Day 2.0

I knew that the LL has become a NON-innovative company the last few years when you see how most things have been handled here and there. But that they forbid now any further development ONLY because they are NOT able to compete with TPVs is just insane! That actually means when TPV developers come up with a new innovative feature that affects the “shared user experience”, they have to ask the LL, if they are interested to implement this feature before they are even allowed to do that. So basically the LL is planning to steal the ideas from others because it seems they have no own anymore. How lame is that.. And this might be the reason why they don’t kill TPVs completely because then they would kill their best source of ideas for the future! I tell you how that will end. Either the LL will decline new proposals right from the beginning, or they will say “yes we do it”, but from experience with this company they will do it 1 or 2 years later (if ever!), while the TPV developers could work it out and add it to their viewer in only few weeks. What kind of company is this that prevents any innovative ideas for a better experience and any future development?? Have they ever considered to shut up and take some of the very useful TPV features and add them to THEIR OWN viewer to make it more competitive?? Or are they just too lazy for anything ? While other companies are fighting for more innovation, newer technologies and ideas just to be prepared and competitive in the future, the Lab prevents it! Well, this is unique in the world... Im using Firestorm because of the user friendly interface compared to the LL viewer and the MANY MANY other unique interface features! And I will keep using it. They will not regain residents on this way. It just shows the immaturity of their company once again!!

You can be sure for the Lab is everything solved now. They dont care about the damage. They never did and will never do! There will be a written apology and thats it. I bet most of the pending orders will fail. However i would contact every single customer to check if they received something or not. It wouldn't be the first time that products get delivered without payment. A further reason to keep your customers away from that marketplace from now on. It can be used as search engine (since this search is a bit better than the screwed up inworld search) but purchases should be done ALWAYS and ONLY inworld. If i were still a marketplace merchant i would be tired of paying that stupid commissions for such an unreliable service. I would try to find a way to get all (or at least most of) potential customers to your inworld store to make a purchase, just to avoid all those stupid problems here. EDIT: Didnt see the CommerceTeam post but just quoting myself: --- There will be a written apology and thats it. --- There you go! *lol*

Its still the oldest misbelief that review ratings affect the search in any way. If you look deeper into the search engine you will very quickly understand that reviews not really have any effect on the relevancy. However a mixture of the price, the number of sold items, the age and impressions is pretty much correct. Nobody but the LL knows the other parameters but its not necessary to know these because selling as many products as possible and for a very long time must be the goal. If you do so, the items will be relevant. I personally like Neferiti's suggestions how to pimp your listings.

Old thread, but must be said! It DOES give undue advantages! The only motivation for a customer to write such a review is a reward.. Otherwise they would NEVER do it. So what do you think how many of rewarded reviews are honest or helpful for future consumers or the merchant himself? I think merchants (should usually) know that rewarded reviews are generally worthless. So why would a merchant still like to get hundreds of biased and mainly useless reviews if not for misleading future consumers?!? The answer was already given! Even if its not against the ToS, but since all those reviews are biased its actually blatant cheating on future consumers and ethical not acceptable. Its just the mendacious bogus morality of a few merchants using this system!

Hiding the avatars on your parcel as well as hiding your private chat from those avatars outside is the only thing you can do for your privacy. And thats usually enough. If you have no access to change these parcel settings its time to move. But you simply cannot prevent people from looking into your house using their camera controls. Its possible to see everything in range of 512 meters. But the question for me is, how many people are really interested in looking into your house? If you're living on a busy sim with many intruders daily its recommended to move to a more private one. On my parcel, i have 3 neighbours, and they really got better things to do than watching me and my home permanently. These one or two intruders monthly appear in the public area of the sim, look around and disappear again because they cannot do anything on this sim. But this is SL and you need to learn to deal with it. The LL will never disable any camera controls and a virtual world is usually not really a place with full privacy. There are only 2 ways to get more privacy in SL: 1.) Get your own private island sim and disallow public access (Then you have full privacy) 2.) Don’t have a home in second life (Then you dont need any privacy) 

Rudolf Radford wrote: . . . For example changing from Adult to General does not work. What can I do? Hello, as i can see you are using the word SLAVE in your listing. Just delete that word and you will be able to change to general. There is an adult content keyword filter and SLAVE is such a bad word for the LL.

Im discussing this every day inworld with my clients which are usually merchants. Count me in! Its indeed not against the TOS, seen Here under policies and guidelines.. but im still not a friend of those practices. Paying money, offering gifts or any other rewards for doing something is always a kind of purchase or a service in return for payment. So even if the LL allows it when both good and bad reviews are rewarded, its still a fact that these practices always and only have a positive effect on reviews. (in quantity and star-rating) But there is a lack of quality. It usually ends up in a mass of short and pointless reviews like "good item", "great product", "nice item", "Wow i like it, "i love it".. etc.. Imo its a kind of misleading of buyers because it makes a product more popular than it really ought to be.. Cause a non-rated item always looks like nobody buys it. Thats just a popular misbelief but how should buyers know? Its up to the merchants if they want to pay for a mass of pointless reviews or if they prefer few honest and very helpful reviews instead. I think serious merchants prefer honesty, because they want to learn from their customers. Rewarded reviews are never honest or helpful, because they would never have been written without this reward offer. This is just to keep in mind. So, if you want honest reviews on your products you can only offer good quality items, maybe remind your customers friendly, be friendly and offer a good customer support... And then its in the hands of your customers to leave you a review. You must be patient, but if you get one, you can be sure its more than just a few boring words. And its completely honest.

Hi. I had 7 sims from 6 different hosts so far but i can only recommend 2 of them. All others have truly disappointed me. But doesnt matter -.- > Fantasyland and > AzureIslands The prices are very good (my opinion), the support is excellent and i never had any problems with payment or anything else.

Yes i agree with the question. Well, im not a merchant anymore due to this LL behavior we are talking about all over this forum, but lots of my friends are multi selling merchants and most of the merchants in this commerce forum as well. Selling hundreds or even thousands of great items and getting only a few reviews can be very very frustrating. In most cases people are just to lazy to write a review or others cannot find the function. But the truth is, a very intelligent person at the Linden Lab had the idea to allow only written reviews! Well, this reminds me of ebay. What about you? The ebay rating system is a longstanding and well-working system. So this very intelligent person was so fascinated by this ebay thingy and told it a few other intelligent persons to create it. And they were all happy about it BUT without thinking about the consequences, which is the usual working method of the LL! Unfortunately they forgot the main reason why it’s working so well for ebay. Because it’s a mutual rating system! Customers can rate merchants AND vice versa! But since the word “mutual” is unknown at the LL, we have to live with it! I just hope that this person who had this crackpot idea has been fired and the current “commerce team” is now finally working on it. (And yes there is a reason why "commerce team" is written in quotes) 

Tara Chester wrote: And you call that legitimate? I don't think it's even legal. As an incentive to review the product, and only as a part of my customer support, after every purchase, my magic box sends automated ANS "thank you" message with info that they are always welcome to contact me for help, and review the product . I was thinking of putting a link to the product in the help notecard that goes with it, similarly to LM, which I always try not to put in the product box but in the help notecard. For me, anything else (including your practice) is spam and abuse. Moreover, it's almost "face to face" abuse, and I personally consider it much worse that giving customers lindens for reviews (as long as we talk about small fraction of the price). If people need help, or they want to express their opinion, they will do it, one way or the other. My job is only to make that easier for them, not to boder them by presenting it as a "reminder" or "friendship". You missed the point !! My post was just a suggestion for the LL! I am talking about a reminder added on the marketplace website which informs people THAT there is a review option and THAT it would be very helpful to do it. Could be shown after a purchase. Is this spam or abuse?? I simply call it "Important information" !! (Especially for newbies!)