Madeliefste Oh

Your targetgroup is "ridiculously immature, has no editing skills or is being novice about SL"... that is a target group that will cost you time anyway. There are several possible ways to approach this. You can help every single customer who has a question about your products. That will take a lot of time. Or you can think of ways to cut down the time for customer service. You can for example write a good FAQ for your products, and put it in notecard that you include with the product. Or a 'how-to-use' notecard. Or you can have a website where you explain the use of your products. Write it all in simple language. Attaching demo version is also a way to cut down your customer service time. It will give your customers the possibility to try before they buy. When they are not satisfied with the demo, they will not buy and they will save you the harrassment. Do not feel burdened to miss some buys, because of demo's. You can better have no buyer, then an unsatisfied buyer who is taking your time, and is telling all his friends not to buy at your store, to start a fight with you or to hang around in your store telling other customers not to buy (and all other kind of molest they can think of). In the time it takes to handle these kind of customers you might as well make a few new product.

They are just as meaningless as the five star review that say: "love it, 5 stars" "awesome" "wonderful" You have no idea what they like.

Don't loose your valuable time on quarrel with customers. Give them what they want when you consider their question as reasonable. Or refuse when you feel abused. When they start narring, just mute them. You must get rid of the emotional **bleep** between you and your customer. When think in terms like 'I don't believe those lies', you create a conflict. Between you and your customer, but also for yourself. Because you can never be 100% sure, even when all of your intuition screems that a person is not honest with you, there is still a little chance you see it wrong. And that makes you 'playable' for the fight seeking customer. You can change your point of view on the matter. A non satisfied costumer is not only asking you something, he is also giving you something: an idea to improve your product. It might not always be a useful idea for the specific product that the complaint is about, but at least you can consider it for future products. A complaint is a free advise. Ofcourse it is flattering to hear "I really love your so-or-so product", it boosts your ego. But it does not give you any insight in what else people want. The 'what else' is what you can learn from people who expected something else from your product then you gave them. That is worthful information for your business. Focus in these kind of interactions with your customers on that information. What is he telling you that is useful for future products, or for an update of the product?

Thanks for the reaction in your blog, Natales. It's always a sort of gamble to choose the best moment to cash out. And ofcourse it is smart to keep USD's to pay your tier before you cash out, and have some on your Paypal account in case you want to pay for goods in USD. You best avoid that you have to exchange your Euro's to pay for your SL. The best rate I have had in the 8 years that I cash out, was about 5 years ago, it was like 1000 usd = 820 euro. Then it began to sink quickly, the last five years it was always below 750, mostly in the range between 720 and 730. So I was pleasant surprise to see this rate of 909, last few days it's going up and down and up. Today you get 927 for 1000 USD. It might still go up a bit, it might stabilize, or it might go down again. This devaluation of the euro has to do with measures from the European Central Bank. There might be other factors in financial markets that influence the exchange rates, that I don't have knowledge about. I cannot oversee the world economy... I'm not a financial expert, I'm just a simple SL creator. And what I see this week is the best exchange rate for USD-EUR since the last 8 years. It might be that next month I blame myself that I sold my dollars too early. Or I might cheer that I did not miss the hype... Only time will tell... There is just one thing for sure: the Linden Dollar has been more stable for the last 8 years than the euro.

De value of the euro is to devalue. This means that for European merchants it is an excellent time to sell your linden dollars and exchange your USD to euros. Since 7 years the exchange rate has not be so good as it is at the moment. Compare the exchange rate (as used on Paypal) for the last few years: March 2012: 1000 dollar = 736 euro March 2013: 1000 dollar = 745 euro March 2014: 1000 dollar = 707 euro Today: 1000 dollar = 909 euro

*waves to Pamela* It was all about the cliche "Real life always comes first". I'm glad to have time for my second life again.

The first half year I was active in SL I worked as a graphical designer. I made logos, advertisements, design for products boxes and so on for entrepreneurs in SL. My first costumers were friends I met on the grid. Later I found customers by mouth to mouth advertisement, and also by checking the 'wanted' forum and the 'in world employment' forum. In the last one you can also advertise your service. Make sure you have a portofolio somewhere online you can show to potential customers. For me it's 8 years ago I did this work. There was work enough in those days, there were a lot of starting businesses who could use the help of a graphical designer, and there was money enough to pay you. I don't know how the market for this kind of services is nowadays, but when it's your passion, go for it. Good luck!

Some items don't use the buy option, but the pay option instead. Or it could be that the item is a show example, and you have to buy the item from a box in the shop.

Tasman Perth wrote: I have a mesh dae file that I've converted via Meshlab from obj to dae. Why would you safe your meshes as obj in the first place? Why don't you export them right away from your modeling program to .dae files?

Hi greek, It are YOUR terms and conditions, so you must make your own choices what you find important. At one hand you must protect your own rights, but on the other hand you must give enough rights to your customer to work with your templates in a comfortable way. Think of the next choices to make: Right to distribute: What permissions may the textures have that second creators make based on your template? Price minimum - Are creators allowed to give away their creations for free? (For example as hunt item). - Is there a minimum price creators must ask for creations based on your templates? World - May the creator use his creations in other grids (like for example InWorldz) or is the right to upload and distribute limited to Second Life. Creativity - Are creators allowed to sell the item as is, or must they add something of their own creativity before they are allowed to sell? Alts / business partners - Is the creator allowed to share the full perms version of his own creation with his alts, or is the permission limited to the avatar who bought the template? - Is the creator allowed to share the full perms version of this own creation with business partners? (For this last point keep in mind that IP rights are real life rights. Though you sell rights through an avatar, it is still a deal between you and your customer, also the RL person. In case with templates your customer has to download your product to his computer to be able to work with your template. Though you CAN limit the use to the buying avatar, it is more user friendly to allow the use by alts. Your product is still on one single computer, whether your customer uploads his creation with avatar A or avatar B. It doesn't hurt you and makes the use of your product more flexible for your costumer.) I don't sell templates, but full perms meshes and sculpties with Photoshop files. I made terms of use I feel comfortable with for my own business. You can have a look at my marketplace store to check them and use as starting point for your own text. When you sell png files as templates, you have to do with the SL TOS rules. When you sell Photoshop files you cannot deliver you product in SL itself, since you cannot upload the PSD files directly. So actually for PSD files you have nothing to do with the TOS of Linden Lab. You are not harassed by them, nor protected by them. The weak point for sellers from PSD-files is that you sell a product in and for SL, that you cannot deliver directly to the buying avatar. So you need to find a way to both let customers download your work and force them to agree to your terms of use. You can use third party services for this (make sure you do agree with all conditions of these services for both you and your customer) or set up your own system. For cYo we have build our own system. Our products with Photoshop files contain a download laptop that people can rez in SL. After rez the laptop gives a time limited link to the Photoshop file, but before our customers can download the file, they must agree to our terms of use. They get a pop up menu with the message: "I’m aware that I’m going to download a copyrighted psd-file. I agree with the terms of use. I shall not sell, spread or give away this file for free. I can use this file to make my own textures to cYo products. I can sell or give away my products based on this psd-file with limited rights in Second Life. (only copy, only trans, copy|mod, or trans|mod)." There is an 'I agree' and a 'No' button. Only the 'I agree' button opens the link to the file.

So every merchant has to redo his old marketplace listings again.

- The possibility for one merchant to have different shops in the marketplace - The possibility to give another person permission to edit your marketplace listings - For multi creator brands: the possibility to join products of several creators in one single shop - For shoppers: a 'follow-this-merchant'-field. When the field is enable, the customer receives an email when the merchant has placed a new item in his marketplace shop. - A single listing for products that come in several colors or sizes.

In general it is between 1 and 500 usd per item. Each creator has it own tariff. It depends on several things, for example: must the item be exclusive for you? Must the item be textured? How professional is the creator? Exclusivity is an expensive factor. I do make custom items now and then (not clothes, by the way). When my customers want exclusivity I charge RL rates (this comes to 50 usd per hour). However when the customer doesn't need the item to be exclusive, it means I can sell the item to others as well. In that case you will pay the same price, that the item will have when I sell it in my shop. For pants for example the price will come out somewhere between 800 en 1200 linden dollars.

I asked for: - filter by user lisenced - filter by item boxed or in folder - exclude store name and merchant name in search results for items - show creator name(s). A merchant doesn't have to be the (only) creator of an object. Make it possible for the customer to see the original creator(s) of several components of a product - land impact low to high, include only items where the land impact is indicated - What is new since my last visit? This must function for keywords and for stores. Keywords: when I look for 'black boots', I can choose to only see the ones listed since my last search for black boots. Stores: when I visit a store, I can choose to get only the new listings since I last visited this store. - Make it possible to list the real land impact of an item; an item can have 0,5 or 1,5 land impact, but this cannot be indicated in the current marketplace

According to a study by Adobe 80% of the world wide population feels that creativity is critical to economic growth. What do you think, how is that for Second Life?

Your sleeves look good, once textured it will have a natural look. I think the pleats in your top are too much point shaped. The fabric in your reference pictures seems thin, like fine woven cotton.However the pleats you have look give the impression that the fabric is very thick, like heavy canvas or velvet maybe. Looking at the picture the pleats seem more broad and more flat. It's also a bit more bloused at the belly. It would look natural when the fabric falls party over the belt.

That might be the case, Chic. I work in Cinema 4D. Though I would think the principle of ambient occlussion is the same in all programs. When you bake the texture itself, (the diffuse map) that is different. Lights can do a lot to make it look good. You can bake as well shadow maps that are influenced by a light source.

Chic Aeon wrote: You could also add extra lamps INSIDE the building before baking. You can also (depending on your build) take the roof "off" in blender by moving it to another layer so that the sun shines in from above. This will not be REAL of course but it might give you what you want. I frequently move parts of a build to other layers before baking to eliminate dark shadows where I DON'T want them to appear (under pillows for example - U see the world with Windlight shadows most of the time and I am not too fond of cast shadows built in). I think adding lamps inside the building will not help for ambient occlussion. Ambient occlussion is not caused by lights, you must understand it as self shadowing of objects. It can be in one object, but when you have several objects in a scene, they can also influence each other. When you make a box with a lid upon, the lid will cause shadow inside the box. When you make a box with a lid next to it, the box and lid will not influence each other. Both box and lid will have a bright inside, with a little touch of shadow on the inside corner. Same as with the box example, taking of the roof helps (at least for the upper floor). Because the roof will no longer cause shadow inside the house.

You can see one here

When they cannot process the credit, something is wrong or with your Paypal account and you must ask Paypal to solve it. But first make sure you use the same email adres as for the pay out as you use for Paypal and did not make a typo. When you made mistake there it will also cause that the credit cannot be processed.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Had to revisit this one, upon swinging by again to catch up on posts. Especially to clarify my sarcastic bit that LL is partially responsible in this. Your point is actually a good one, particularly because the first year of these regulations swamped the IRS with reporting that was mostly unnecessary. Many companies didn't understand what did and didn't need reporting and LL being late to the party, seems to be making the same mistakes as the companies that bogged down the IRS in the first place. LL isn't a 3rd party processor, so they really don't need to do this. In fact, they probably shouldn't. Unless by some stretch they've got an agreement with PayPal to handle the reporting and PayPal won't report it under their agreement. This is doubtful. I think it has to do with that LL had to register with the FinCen as a 'money service business', because they are a trader in virtual money. They must now comply with all requirements imposed on financial institutions. But when I investigated a bit furter how it works or non US residents, I came across a lot of people who sell at spaces owned by US compagnies, for example add developpers who sells at App Store or Google Play, photographers who sell photo's on stock sites, artists who sell textures for printable objects, and so on... they all did get these tax forms. People who sell at several selling points, have to reply the forms to each selling point.

Simba Lineker wrote: You have also checked with the trademark offices and find that the name itself is not trademarked either. Then you have the right to use the name for your products. When you simply think this is the best name and you want to keep it, you can tell this person that you are not going to change your product name. In SL you cannot reserve a product name or even a brand name, unless you registrate in RL. This makes it for the other person possible to still use the same name as the product you released. When you don't come out together, LL will do nothing, because its a resident-to-resident dispute. On the other hand, when you don't really care for the product name, simply change it might save you a lot of discussion and irritation between you and this person,

Lindens employees come and Linden employees go. We, the long time merchants, are the stable factor in this market, Pamela. We know the whole history and we have a lot a valuable knowlegde about how the marketplace can be improved for the use is has: serve both merchants and customers in SL. Still we have zero power or influence...

The whole concept of the marketplace is a result of rigid and narrow minded thinking. It is build on the supposition: 'one avatar is one shop'. In the phase where they were rebuilding Xstreet to the current marketplace we have made it clear often enough to the developpers, that we need more options. We have people who cooperate in a way that does not fit the marketplace. It must be possible for a shop to be operated by several owners, or at least the owner of the shop should be able to give permission to an assistant to acces the listings. Co-creators should be able to see their own sales reports, and so on. We also have people who have build up several brands on one avatar. For those it is not possible to split their brands among several shops in the marketplace. There are not even tabs where you can subdivide your merchandise into categories...an option that is handy for big brands as well. In world you can organise your shop in departments, but in marketplace it all cluthers up in one shop. Those early developpers at least heard our needs, but they were not able to program the marketplace after our needs, but more or less promised those would be future features once the basics were done. What actually happened is that Marketplace was released full with bugs, developpers were fired, new develloper team came. Those started with the base that was layed, and focus on rebuilding for direct delivery. They have no clue about our needs anymore, because 'communicating with creators and merchants' seems to forbidden nowadays at LL. We are stuck with a marketplace that completely ignores the social aspect of a social creative world. Creators, who like to work in a cooperative brand, have to choose between trust and holding the brand together on the marketplace. In my brand I have to do with several co-creators. So far I have always been lucky that people trust me to be the seller for our brand. So we can keep the brand together in the marketplace and refer to each others related products. The minus though is I have to do all the work that none of us likes very much: marketplace listings in 6 languages.

I think it's a great idea. I would use such Grease Monkey script when it was available. On the other hand, I wonder how many people are willing to install a plugin? Maybe something like a 'SL Marketplace Black Book', would be something more comfortable for people to use. Something like a website, where residents collect their experiences with scams on the marketplace. Whether it is plymouth boxes, empty boxes, stolen content. Searchable by merchant, by product, by sort of scam.