Madeliefste Oh

Pamela Galli wrote: I guess it might come to that. I like having a store, and talking to customers, etc. -- but I do have to spend a huge amount of time explaining how SL works to some customers, or playing 20 questions to figure out what their problem is, to say nothing of those who are rude, and so on, and I would miss none of that. My partner in cYo did some rl work as well. He was for example approched by an rl real estate agent who wanted of 3d picture of a couple of houses they sell. He got their floor plans, builded the wall like in the floor plan, what is easy to do. The most work was putting in the furniture. But since he had made some furniture items already, he could fill most rooms with stuff he had available. In rl achitecture 3D is an important development, its is a very big market. Many architects are learning 3D or working with it already. But their work is about the contruction of the building. For presentations and such they will need furniture and decorative elements, it's all way too time consuming to make it themselves. So I can imagen in the future something like this might be an interesting field for you, when SL can no longer garantuee your income.

Pamela Galli wrote: This is a model that has worked well for you and for me til now -- but things change, and I think this model is vulnerable. I think the complete SL economy is vulnerable. Hours spend online are declining, more people leave at the backdoor then there are coming in at the frontdoor, and price dumping is still going on. It is not inconceivable that one day you need to have another source of income next to SL to make a living out of your content creation. Putting much time the creation of your content is not a waist of time in my opinion. When you invest time in improving your skills, you invest time in your own future. Mesh is not only interesting for SL, there are a lot more applications for 3D objects. In the future you might want to sell your content on other platforms or sites as well. Based on what I make in SL, I am asked to do some custom 3d work for a rl compagny. It pays very well. They told me they will have more work for me in the future.

Kampu Oyen wrote: >I looks like you find it more important to get some sand in the LL machine, than to give your customers a pleasant shopping experience. My customers have only ever had very positive things to say. All the complaints I'm seeing about the shopping experience are related to things LL has either decided to do or have stupidly allowed to happen. There is no amount of sand I could throw into LL's machine, ever that would be significant in comparison to what they are throwing every day that there's an open promotion and a stack of open JIRA's into my own machine, and yours. As a regular visitor of this forum you cannot have missed the complaints from customers about keyword spam on the market place. It's a regular issue for customers.

I see strange patterns in sales as well. For my overall sales it can happen that suddenly there is a day that I hardly sell anything, and then it takes a few days to see the sales getting back to normal. Sometimes there is a reason that every merchant is suffering from, like Valentine days debacle or such, and sometimes there is no reason at all, or at least not a reason that I can see. But apart from that I also see strange patterns on item level. I do have items that have very predictable sale figures. For large periodes an item sell x times a month. And then suddenly, for I reason I cannot declare sales stop completely. I call this phenomenon 'fallen of the radar'. Because it seems like the object has lost it's visibility on the marketplace completely. And it can take weeks before the object comes in sight of the customers again. And then slowly but steadily the normal sales patterns is coming back again. I think that it those cases something is changed by LL, what causes that an item looses his ranking on the marketplace. The opposite can also happen. An item is sitting on the marketplace for some time already and was only sold a few times, and then suddenly it seems to get a visibility boost, inexplicable as well. Maybe a comparable item from a competitor is fallen of the radar? One time it happened to me that a customer declared me such a unexpected boost. She had bought the product and had a question about it. She said 'when I saw it in this blog I needed to have it'. Blog? It turned out that a fashion blogger had used the item in serial of pictures. So the sudden inexplicable rise of sales of an object might have an external reason as well, when you don't happen to know by chance, you will never know what is behind it.

Pamela Galli wrote: I reported a few months ago that ppl seemed wary of mesh. There were a lot of myths going around about it. There was not exactly a stampede to buy it. Mesh sales have been taken off for my brand since Phoenix has mesh integrated in the viewer. Nowadays I don't see much difference anymore in sales for sculpted items versus mesh items. In both categories I have items that sell very good, and items that hardly run. I often get requests from customers to make a specific item for them. When I ask: 'Can it be mesh?', about half a year ago the standard answer was: 'Oh no, please, I would like to have a sculpty'. Nowadays I get that answer much lesser. On the other hand I do get more questions like 'Do you have or plan to make a sculpted version of your this-or-that mesh object? While I never had the request till now for a mesh version of one of my sculpties. Most people seem to have at least two friends who ' have a computer that cannot run a mesh viewer'. Pamela Galli wrote: Now, I would like to report, momentum has accelerated quite a lot. I don't have a lot of mesh stuff because rather than downloading copies off the internet, I am making it, and I am very very very slow - but what I am making (furnishings so far), is selling briskly. Finally. I'm a slow creator as well. Though I work with 3d for more then two years now, I'm still in a learning process and develloping my skills. I also am a detaillist, and I can imagen that counts for you too. The more details you pay attention to, the more time it will cost to make something that fits your own standards. But I think that in the end this eye for details is what often is recognised by customers as 'quality', and above all good quality is what sells in SL.So the disadvantage of working slowly and thus produce less products then when you work fast has it's advantage as well in terms of quality.

Kampu Oyen wrote: What I've done is to suggest to other merchants that the preferred merchants shouldn't be allowed to exercise a planned monopoly on a keyword function which LL, itself, is using to spam the whole market. What you have done is suggest to other merchants to is to use this LL promotion for getting visibility for their underperforming items. You stimulate them to abuse the promotion. This will lead to irritation of customers who do want to shop with this LL choosen keyword. I looks like you find it more important to get some sand in the LL machine, than to give your customers a pleasant shopping experience. By the way; why are you posting with this alt, Josh?

Tiffy Vella wrote: You are good to know your customers so well. Wish I could say the same, but I bump into some in the store, then run away slowly as I don't want to freak them out. You are also good to have a proactive tutorial already available It is very different when you sell to the general shopping public then when you sell to creators. I have a curtain shop and a ladies fashion shop as well. I don't know the customers that buy the products from these shops neither very well. Now and then someone lets you know they love your products and now and then someone complains about a product, but that is only once in a blue moon. I don't produce anymore for these brands, and I rarely visit the shops, but in the time I was there much more I was often in doubt about should I let the customers alone to shop, or should I interact with them. Since I as a shopper like to shop on my own without any interference from the merchant, I often choose for that strategy. I also had periods that I welcomed people in the shop and asked if they were looking for something specific. Some customers really love this personal attention, others tp away as soon as you start talking to them. In the five years I have these both brands I never got a clear image of who my customers are. I think its the nature of the products that makes this proces of learning who you customers are a lot more easier for my current brand. My end product is the begin of a new creative proces by other creators, and it happens a lot that I get questions from customers about products. It can be all kind of things from "what font did you use for the jewelry box" to "I want to make an earring from your lantern, is there a nano version available?" Those questions often lead to sponteanous talks, that are both pleasant and bring me a lot of knowledge about my customers. When I find myself explaining for the fourth or fifth time the same thing to a different customer, it is about time to write a tutorial about the subject. Specially in cases where it is more easy to explain by showing in pictures then explaining inwords. It costs a bit of time to make a tut, but in the long run it saves time, and it is a good service to offer to your customers.

When there would be a punishment for keyword abuse, the gaming would be over soon enough. Something like: get two warnings when abuse is found and approved by LL, third time people game the keywords their marketplace store is closed for a week. X times leads to a permaban from the marketplace for the seller and all alts. I would be curious to see how soon the search on the marketplace is 'repared' by such kind of measure.

When I first started selling sculpties with Photoshop files I thought that my objects would be mainly be bought by beginning Photoshopper or Gimpers. But the skills of my customers turned out te be very different, there are customers who have more experience with Photoshop then me, and there are customers who have never touched any graphical program at all. For the latest group I made a basic Gimp tutorial, that is available on our website. If I could do just one tutorial I would make this one again.

My question is not about the what Lindens do or don't, or what conspiricay of theory you have about the whole idea of madstyle, my question is about customers. I looks to me as if you don't care at all what kind of shopping experience your customers have, as long as you can get a cheap ride for your underperforming products.

I did several new listings since MP is on DD. I haven't experienced any problems. (I got rid of all magic boxes and was fully on DD when I did those new listings).

Kampu Oyen wrote: >Why? Because everyone else's underperforming products are just as deserving to get a boost from it; not just Tiny psychedelic bear avatars that haven't yet learned how to roast a marshmallow (or have they?) And customers, do they deserve it as well to see everyones underperforming products, while they are actually looking for something from the sixties?

Kampu Oyen wrote: I have specifically encouraged people to use the keyword "madstyle" for any product that is underperforming Why?

I have no proof it is like I think it is, it is just my impression. But I think you have this marketing team that thinks out these campaigns, and then when they have decided what it will be for coming month, they contact the collegues from marketplace so they can set the 'tag' on the marketplace and let the residents know about the campaign. So I think someone from the marketplace team did post the message, because (s)he was told to do so. But not because MP team is the responsible team behind these campaigns.

Kampu Oyen wrote: >And, why in the world are you trying to influence what sells? Aside from holidays, let the market take care of itself, it doesn't need intervention. I doubt it is the commerce team who runs these campaigns, I think it comes from the general PR department. I think the aim of the campaign is not so much to influence what sells or to help some mechants generate visibility above others, though this might be the effect of the campaign.The aim is to get more residents in SL. The core product of LL 'virtual land' is not an attractive item to pull people towards SL. The content we produce for SL is more attractive to advertise with. People need to come in world and stay for a while before they will be willing to spend money on owning or renting virtual land. The port must be wide open, because only a limited percentage of all users will end up with owning land. So everything LL can do to attrack more people and have them stay around for a while is good for LL, whether it is advertising for christmas, halloween, vampires, breedables, beachwear or stuff from the sixties.When they manage to reach this goal, growth of userbase, it will be good for you as a merchant as well. But the weak point is...they are losing more people at the backdoor then that are gaining on the frontdoor.

Yep, I had an Ngon with six points.

I was able to solve it by making an extra cut (yellow line). But I'm still curious, why the model doesn't upload good without this cut, while the front side shows right without this extra cut. So if anybody has an explication for it...

I made a model that looks different when I upload, then it looks in my 3d prog (C4D). There is one face too much on the model in SL. The strange thing is that the frontside shows normal in SL, but both front side and back side were contructed the same way. Can anybody tell me what is happening here. Why do I get one extra face in SL? And how can I get rid of it?

Another issue with this 'opportunity'. You have to add the keyword "madstyle" to your listings. But editing your listings has a negative influence on the ranking of your listings. So the question is: will the visibility you gain by taking part in this promotion compensate enough for the visibility you loose by editing your listing?

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: True, I hate to venture too far into conjecture territory, but this thing has all the signs of some independent arrangement with LL. They wouldn't touch the MB scripts at "all". You would think way back before DD they would have said "let's build a direct pipe (our own version of llGiveInventory) rather than rebuild an entire delivery system. Rather than sanely re-work XStreet they decided to do a from-scratch project (always something to be avoided where possible). It reeks of some independent deal for the acquisition, that they couldn't legally modify MB code or further modify the old XStreet code. The way this team operates doesn't seem to have any sort of accountability to LL. Most management would be looking for new hires about now. I've often thought because of the way things appear that the commerce team gets a commission or their pay from how the marketplace performs, which would explain how and why they optimize it for themselves rather than a product that meets bare minimum ecommerce requirements for their customers (which aren't many or unreasonable). It seems far too autonomous to be part of a responsible company. Rod won't even touch the issue, so doesn't look like much help for management. They're leaking customers, banning more, losing trust, etc. How much incentive do you need before you jump in and get HR involved? Aside from not bearing the same legal responsibility as all other business in the U.S. Funny money (to them) or not, would love to see an independent audit on this puppy. But who knows, making sense isn't on the feature list. Who knows... we might as well be victim of Coffee and Power. Maybe in this whole year they did nothing but cutting the job in small pieces that can be bit on at the Coffee and Power site...

Thanks for the comment, Irene. I'm from the years that you could actually get support by contacting live chat. When the live chat person could not solve your problem himself, he brought you in contact with somebody in the lab that was able to solve it. Since the time of M. Linden, the quality of the support has dramaticly reduced. Whenever I contact live chat since then, I never get an answer that I can not find myself in the wiki or elsewhere. In some cases you even have to educate the support person first before he actually understands your question. Each contact with live support leads in the end to: File a ticket. Till some months ago the answers that came from ticket persons were more or less satisfying. But last few times I had to contact them, I did not get the support I needed. I one case I even got an answers that was not even true.To me it seems that now the quality of ticket support has been reduced well.

I have a profile problem as well. For me the feed is not showing up anymore. Seems there is nothing that can be done about it, at least not someting I can do myself, live support cannot help, and the ticket persons cannot help either. In the ticket support was suggested to me to uninstall all viewers from my computer, restart computer, download the youngest SL viewer, install that. I did so, but it did not help at all. Problem still is there. I filed a jira (see: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4537) Your problem might be related, can you please add it to the jira?

see: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Stuck-initializing/td-p/1465771 and http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/Merchant-Outbox-doesn-t-recognize-existing-store/td-p/1472229

Ever seen a bear that is both green and healthy?

Actually I planned to leave all in boxes. I didn't want to do the extra work of unpacking for the only reason that LL thinks it is more handy for newbies to get folders. But since I saw that marketplace can show the content that is in the folder, I changed my mind. It is important information for the customer, what the content of a product is. You can write it down in your listings, but the possibility for the customer to check for himself and see each permission on every single part of the product, is nice additional information that I want to offer to my costumers. I have all my items in DD now, and 90% of them are in folders. The 10% that is still in boxes are items that need land to be rezzed anyway. Apart from that, the objectname is exactly the same as the box name, and the permission is also the same. So in that case unpacking doesn't give anything extra, I will leave it like that.