Madeliefste Oh

Josh Susanto wrote: I was somewhat aware of that phenomenon, but I didn't realize it was much of an annoyance to anyone but me. The people paying the bots were just trying to put a dot on the map anyway, weren't they? I don't know in what time you camped, but what I experienced was that while in the beginning that I was looking for camping spots, I met a lot of people, people talked in open group chat or you did get IM's from people. And it was not hard to find a camping spot that paid well. Then it happened that camping spots closed, or became so busy that you had to wait to be able to camp there. So on the hunt for new spots. And then you came accross camping spots where was no life at all. Just twenty zombies on a dance stand. Nobody who spoke or stopped camping there. I first thought it was a sort or club where members had their own campingspot our so, too keep others out, but later I heared from other campers those are bots, and that they are around more and more, and taking the fun out of camping for both owners and campers. Good camping places started to become more rare. Owners started to use more and more anti bot devices. To stop bots sucking up all camping money they used programs in which you had to respons to a message every two minutes or so, to prove that you were a living person and not a bot. I was often camping while I was working in photoshop... so for me those were just not attractive. I came a across a spot that had camping benches, and that became my spot to sit for a while when I was doing other things. Met a few nice people there, had a talk now and then, bought something in one of the shops in the neighbourhoud of the campingbenches. And then one day when I came all campingbenches were taken. That did not happen very often there, but ok, it can happen. So I decided to wait for a little while. Anybody leaving soon, I asked, no answer. I stood in front of a bench, where three people were sitting. I dont remember exactly, but i think you could sit there for 10 or 15 minutes or so. As soon as one of the people stood up I clicked the bench, but she was faster and set herself again without a word. Next avatar that stood up, exact the same. I decided to be the first at the third spot. I was with my mouse right on the ball and only had to click. I saw the avatar getting stand, I clicked the ball and I was too late. I was just about to give up when a girl arrive that used to camp on the same bench at me, and I told her what just happened. While we were talking the time went fast, and the next chance for us to sit on 'our bench' arrived. She nor I was able to take the campingspot for one of those three avatars as soon as it became available again. That was far from normal. Normally the avatars waiting for a spot where able to click first, just because they were in a better position to click because they were not warped away from the device. So we concluded that these people must use some sort of hud or script or 'how they call all those things in SL'? Later I understood that was my first conscious experience with campingbots. It are avatars that run by programs that are taking over available campingspot. Once bots conquer a camping place, the mutual benefit for both camper and device owner are gone. And that happened more and more.... Long after I stopped camping I heared complaints about zombies hanging around on campingspots, and bots taking over the real traffic. The green dots on the map was a different, those were traffic bots. Those were for other purposes, gaming search and misleading possible buyers of land or renters.

Josh Susanto wrote: Why are there still movie theaters? Because the companies that run them understand why people still go to them, and offer those people that for which they go there. The whole environment in theaters is engineered to make almost any film watchable. But also because its an art form that has depended on development in technology since its existance. The industry is kind of used to adept new invented wheels that support the experience of the viewer, from silent movie to spoken movie, from black and white to color, to all around surrounding. Nowadays 3D is the new lure, and who knows in maybe ten years or so we can go to the movie that smells. You experience will get another boost to stay ahead of other media the also adept comparable technologies, you will actually smell the roses, the sea, the burning house...

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: I still say expiring goods is the single best one to get rid of old goods, put a ceiling on not only freebies but the total amount of goods. That wouldn't sit well with some folks, but it's a solution nonetheless. That is also a direction you can think of, indeed. Not bringing the bottum up, but lowering the ceiling. You might as well say: don't allow merchants to have more then 100 items on the marketplace. When you grow out of your marketplace store, the only solution to offer more items for sale is then to take an aditional in world store. That will both give more visibility for items on the marketplace, and stimulatie in world commerce again. The only weak point is... how many alts does it take to get 500 items in 5 marketplace shops?

Rene Erlanger wrote: Have you seen some of the beautiful women clothing that are free or given freely to existing customers via their Group or through a Hunt or MM Boards or whatever? No but I can imagen. Because when you don't give away freebies out of generosity or as a fan of the open source community but as a marketing tool,then you are not going to give away something that does not reflect your skills. Now for example after you discover a certain dress is populair in three colours, but you did never ever sell one in oceangreen. Then why not let this oceangreen one work for you as a marketingtool to show your skills. But those marketing tool like hunts and MM boards and such are NOT the problem I understand in this tread.

Rene Erlanger wrote: A woman can get by just wearing Freebie items and never having to spend a nickle!. It has always been so, and it will always be so. And for the majority that is exact fine, because they do not choose to spend a nickle. And no matter what you try, you will never convince them to become your paying customer. But why are you specially pointing to woman? None of my female friends still walk around in their newbie outfit or in 2007 found freebie outfit, but some of my male friends do. Seems for men even easier not to spend a nickle on clothing.

VonGklugelstein Alter wrote: Something related to this is that when you are in a V2 or V3 viewer and you are trying to find the profile of someone you have to click on tabs to see the profile, which means most people will never actually see a profile... if you search for someones name the very first thing that should come up is the Profile Text That is not hip, that is not enough Fakebook like... in 2012 you must not find out about a person from what he says about himselve, but from what his friends have to say to him and what he says to his friends.

Gavin Hird wrote: To be able to list your products on the marketplace you must be a registered developer. Registration has a cost, and it must be renewed annually. I do agree with being a registred developer. To protect the grid for illegal content, which will be more and more an issue in the future, anonymous selling must stop, actually anonymous uploads must stop. The only cost that registration should have is giving up your anonymosity. It should be enough when LL has your personal information. A minimum price is established for priced items that can't be undercut by anyone. This is a mechanism that has worked pretty good both on iTunes and Apple App store, and has also been adopted by Microsoft for their mobile marketplace. That would not be so bad at itself. A minimum price can for example be 10 linden. But the same thing that many now are trying to find a solution for will be there again as soon as such a new structure arrives. The lowest price category will be cluthered soon with 10.000nds of items that take away visibility for higher price items. Alternatively items can be listed for free. If you list items for free, they will not be profiled or even returned in any regular product search. You have to explicitly search the free items category. Search results in the free items category are not given any boosts or relevance, but are returned in random list order as default. The shopper can then sort the list according to newest / oldest. This is to prevent both gaming of the list, but also remove some of the merchant clustering in the search results that we now see. Demo items are not returned in regular product search, but can only be viewed via a regular item that has a demo item linked to it. If you search for the word demo, the search engine will only list regular products that has demo items linked to them. Access to the demo is as per above. For the rest I don't see much problems, or things not being fair to anybody in the same way.

Luna Bliss wrote: I'm concerned about the newer merchant starting out - I just don't think they have a chance to compete against all the freebies filling up SL now. Sure there may be some niche markets like Josh's hole business, but for the most part new merchants have no market anymore. And yes there are many hobbyists who aren't interested in selling and happy that another person might even want their creation, but I still think a big draw to SL is the satisfaction of creating and selling your content, and when many of these newer people can't do that they get frustrated and leave. That is a valid argument in my opinion. When you are starting now in SL there is not much that you can think of that is not available already in SL. You must have a lot more to offer in originality or skills then merchants had who started five years ago to be able to fight yourself into the market.But even with good designers skills it might be impossible for a new creator because of lack of marketing skills to gain any visibility in the wide range of the lower priced items. But I don't see the solution for this group of creators in limiting just one group on the marketplace. I can agree with placing freebies in a freebie category that can be browsed separate from the items that have a price. But apart from that it is not up to us or to LL to decide what somebody does with an item he owns the copyright for. When he wants to offer this it for free, he is free to do so. But actually I think you are right, and it would be fair as well. Just a simple rule like you are allowed to place max. 3 freebies on the marketplace, not matter if you use them as marketing or give them just out of generosity.

Tari Landar wrote: Sigh. Yeah sometimes rl sucks. On at least one occasion, this is why I closed up a perfectly profitable store. Why did I not let it run, despite the profit rolling in? Because I wasn't even sure I'd be alive six months from then, much less in SL. Sometimes life gives you a perspective you just can't ignore. Profit wasn't as important as quality of life, to me, back then. May sound dumb, because, well, who doesn't need money? But that's the honest truth. I wouldn't change my decision back then anymore than I'd change it now if I faced it again. Which is a likely reality for me. I'm so sorry to hear, Tari... I wish you all best with your health.

Josh Susanto wrote: .------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------And why was it really done-away-with? Regardless of the official explanation, I suspect massive pressure from people with paid accounts who saw camping as attracting (as James Watt would say) "The Wrong Element". Yet another example of cutting off the bottom rung of the ladder. Without camping, I wouldn't have got very far. I suspect something very different. I think campingbots were the main reason. They were taking too much money out of SL.You could easily make 20 linden an hour with camping. Some smart guys found out that if you can use what we now call 'scripted agents', you can make a good sum of money in SL. When you can manage to have 200 bots camping for you, you can make 200x20 = 4000L$ an hour. When you can avoid crashes you can make 24 x 4000 = 96.000 L$ a day with just camping.

What happens next is that the bookshop is closing in the mall, because it cannot compete with internet bookshops anymore. Wallmart expands. Few months later the perfumery stops, Wallmart expands. Half a year later, both the toy shop and the jewelry store close down. Wallmart isn't interested to expand any further. The shops stay empty. The pet shop starts a webshop, the giftshop and thehousehold items store do the same, which gives them a reason to close their shop a few months later. What is left after a while is an almost empty mall, where you can only find the wallmart and a small liquor store. Now when this small downtown store didn't rebuild in the meanwhile in an attempt to look modern, it might become a succes again, not because it can compete with wallmart in price. But the authenticity of the shop, gives people a shopping experience that they really enjoy. At least that is what some leading people in marketing predict, the future is all about the EXPERIENCE.

Gavin Hird wrote: I am actually more interested in understanding why people think they are entitled to flood the market with any amount of free stuff, and in the process completely undermine the business model SecondLife is built on. That's simple: because LL allows them.

Josh Susanto wrote: >And other factors... such as whether you create your own textures or you just grab something from a website without asking permission from the IP right holders.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you have a specific accusation, I'd like you to make it, please. The discussion was about whether it is profitable enough to sell very cheap items. You were pointing to factors that play a role like the value of money in the country where a resident lives. I added a factor that also plays a role, it's a different time investment in a product when you make your textures yourself, then when you just grab them from the internet without asking permission. When you make them yourself the paid out rate per worked hour, is much lower then when you just grab them from the internet. What about that makes you ask for a specific accusation?

Luna Bliss wrote: I think the reverse is true - that many give up because their efforts are devalued (they can't sell anything because so much is free). Many who enter SL still want to earn some money..it's a big draw. Yep, Luna.. I party agree. Also many give up because their efforts are devalued. You think that is caused by freebies, and I think that is caused by competition. And we both cannot know for sure, because we have no hard figures at all. The only figures I have seen that relate to this is that the number of merchants has grown substantial at least till 2010, while the total concurrency has stayed equal. So they are more people now after making some money versus people willing to spend money... then in for example 2007. So on the total population the number of buyers have decreased while the number sellers has increased. I haven't seen anything that indicates that people who do spend money in SL are spending less money now then in 2007 because there are more freebies available. I never saw any figures on how much avatars spend on virtual goods at all... and I have no idea if this amount is increasing or decreasing per person.

Tari Landar wrote: But cutting out the little guy because he sells something for $0L that others are trying to sell for say $50L, isn't the solution to the concurrency problem. In fact, it won't help it at all. It'll push the little guy away....one less person in sl. Multiply that by however many little guys there are, and you've got an even bigger problem. That is exactly my problem, it will push people away. The power of creating is not something to take lighty. Though there are people who "just slap some textures on some prims" to make some easy money, the most part of people who are creating are involved with their act of creating. And though the product that comes out might not meet everybodies taste or quality standard, it still is the results of someone's creative labour. Someone working with Gimp for the first time may be as proud of what comes out as a designer with 20 years of Photoshop experience. And when you are proud of your result you want to show it. It's simple as that. Now when you take away this possibility for people to show this result of their creative proces, you are going to make a lot of people unhappy. Also highen the barriers for people to create or sell in attempt to protect your own market, will in be unsatisfying for the majority of SL merchants. Because the majority exists of small merchants. We must give them no reason at all to leave the grid out of frustration that 'elitist merchants' try to put them in a different class or rank. We all had a day where we for the first time opened a graphical design program, or learned how to write a code, or rezzed our first prim. Just because people are not skilled yet, it is no reason to exclude them for the tools that are available for each and everybody. Apart from that they are active participators in the SL economy, they might even be your customers.

Rene Erlanger wrote: Madeliefste Oh wrote: I think that removing camping from the grid has had a big influence on the long tail of the market. The majority of the SL residents are not willing to spend any real money in SL. In those day when it was so easy for new residents to make some small amounts, there was a large newbie market to sell to. Because even the people that didn't bring in money, made at least money roll. By forbidding camping LL cut of a piece of this long tail.. that part of the market where small guys make small bucks. When a happy camper in 2007 or so was willing to pay 20 L$ for a funny t-shirt, but this funny shirt started to loose it's value, when this easy way of money making for newcomers was no longer around. That was so true....yet another Jack Linden b#ll**bleep** policy change! :matte-motes-sour: Whilst i supported the removal of Traffic Bots or not counting them as Traffic.....i did not want to see the end of real avatar camping. It stands to reason that it would impact the in-world economy sooner or later. Although I never camped myself.....i heard lots of nice stories, where groups of campers formed friendships that are still maintained to this day! It was a good way to meet people and interact....not all were afk. Yep. I met one of my friends with camping as well. But I have another story as well, from my own experience. I used to camp a lot in a clothing shop, it was a funny camping device where you became a player in a 3 peoples music band. This shop owner had put no restriction on how much money you could make in a certain time limit. So you could leave your avatar there for days if you wanted. Unless you crashed the counter just kept ticking. One thing I did, when I was on the edge between camping and making my own money, is buy an expensive dress in her shop. Because I liked the dress, but also to give the shopowner back some of the money she had so generously donate to me. About one and a half year later, when I was looking across the grid for shop space for my fashion brand, this merchant crossed my path again. She had moved her shop to a bigger space, not only the shop had grown a lot, she had also added a mall outsite her shop, and she had two or three shops that were open for rent. I took one. The sales were never very high there, just a bit above breaking even. When LL bought the marketplace within the shortest time I had to give up on most of my satelite shops, because they were not making enough any more to pay the rent. So I got rid of most of them. And I kept a few, the ones that where still profitable and this one. Not because it was still profitable, but more to give this girl still a chance to improve her traffic. My only reason to do so was because she once made it possible for me to start up in SL by sponsering me with camping money.

Gavin Hird wrote: Ranking top on google means squat when 98% of your new signups leave within the first hour never to return. Over 5.2 million of them do every year. Yep, that is the biggest problem LL is facing... loosing way to much people right after entering the door.

Josh Susanto wrote: >From the (commercial) creator's standpoint – how many would you have to sell to even get to a minimum wage hourly rate for the time you spent creating it?------------------------------------------------------ It's really a question of the value the sales provide to us more than how that value is counted in dollars. This depends upon minimum wage in the country where you live, whether you end up paying any tax on such income, and other factors, such as the actual cost of living (pretty low here). And other factors... such as whether you create your own textures or you just grab something from a website without asking permission from the IP right holders.

The time consuming part is not the hunt for freebies, but unpacking and playing with them. Fitting those clothes, rezzing that chair to see how it looks, putting things you like in such a way folders in your inventory that you can find them back later. Those things will have to happen in world anyhow.

Gavin Hird wrote: The net effect is not the same, because it keeps concurrency low and therefore new signups (16k per day) largely find a ghost town, where there before were campers (and such.) – So they leave, never to return. – Over 5 million per year turn their backs within the first hour. I agree that getting rid of camping was a big mistake. Yeah, getting rid of camping keeps the concurrency low. But how do freebies on the marketplace keep the concurrency low?

Gavin Hird wrote: With all the free stuff around on the marketplace, that amount can stay right where is was when they first signed up – at ZERO. So no money enters the system. When I first signed up, i didn't buy L$ either. I first wanted to get a clue what this whole thing was actually about. And while I was getting it, I also found out that you didn't need to invest to get money. There were a lot of posibilities for residents at the beginning of their SL carrier to make some money. There were money trees, there were camping spots, there were free xploders and apart from that is was not difficult to find a paid job, almost every club was looking for dancers. Specialy camping was attractive, because you could make a good som of money with it. I paid for my first skin, hair, etc. with money I made with camping. I also paid my texture uploads with it. And after a few weeks I started my first shop in SL. I had to camp for 8 hours a week to be able to pay for the rent. But I also started making textures for people. And soon enough I didn't depend on camping anymore to pay for my shop rent. I simply could make more by making custome textures for people. I think that removing camping from the grid has had a big influence on the long tail of the market. The majority of the SL residents are not willing to spend any real money in SL. In those day when it was so easy for new residents to make some small amounts, there was a large newbie market to sell to. Because even the people that didn't bring in money, made at least money roll. By forbidding camping LL cut of a piece of this long tail.. that part of the market where small guys make small bucks. When a happy camper in 2007 or so was willing to pay 20 L$ for a funny t-shirt, but this funny shirt started to loose it's value, when this easy way of money making for newcomers was no longer around. It is the biggest group of residents there is: the people who don't put rl money in SL. But when there are ways for them to get some money in hands, that money will be spent. When this possibility is taken away, no money will be spend any longer in the segments of the market that were attractive for newcomers and freeloaders in advance. Or people had to improve their products to be able to reach a different kind of audience, or they could as well stop selling and just give their stuff away, because nobody seemed to want it anymore. Now here we have the beginning of the story of a lot of freebies. Not only a lot of stuf became worthless because nobody wanted to buy it anymore, because the source of income from their target group dried up due to LL, but also people had to find other ways to attract traffic. Giving away freebies is a widely adopted marketing strategy by merchants as a way to attract traffic to their parcel. And actually I see no difference between no money entering because people are hunting for freebies in world or no money entering because they take freebies them from the marketplace. The netto result for the economy is exactly the same.

Rene Erlanger wrote: You make out Marketplace is some sort of new phenomena....i'd like to remind you we could buy items offline and have them delivered (or at least place in "Favourite" folder to buy later) as far back as 2006 with SL Exchange. The only difference between the the two, is that LL owns MP and promote it in their official Viewers which naturally they never did for SLEX. No no, this is not the only difference and certainly not the most important. To be able to shop on Slex you had to put money in your slex account. So you had to go to these terminals first subscribe there, put money in your account, before you could buy anything on slex. Though slex was populair, it was something you only discovered when you were around for a while in SL. And because the marketplace doesn't need subcription, shopping online became possible for all residents in stead of only a group who was willing to subscribe. Now the most important difference is, that a shopper doesn't have to create a shopping wallet at the marketplace first before he can buy there. They can simple use the availabe amount on their account to shop, both for in world and on marketplace.

I also think home and garden is the most logic category for it. But it I guess depends from what angle you look at it. When you are building a house, a sculpted roof, or a scripted door are your building components. But when you build a sim, a house or even a row of houses are your building components.

Josh Susanto wrote: That you're responding to my my message... ....Can I be totally wrong about this? I suggest to put also the font size to minimum, makes you loose even more readers.

I'm a longtime Photoshopper, and when I first started to work with 3d in Blender I experimented a bit with texturing in 3D, but I did not like the results at all. I experimented also a bit with the 3D painting in PS, but I never could get a grip on it. So for some time I did al my texture work just in 2d in PS, the upload to Blender, check, work further in PS, upload to Blender, check, back to PS, etc. It takes a lot of time, but I was at least satisfied with the results. When I started to use C4D I could get a student license for the Studio version, which includes Bodypaint. For about a year or so I didn't even touch it, I was too busy to learn about other options of the program. For texturing I made uv maps and textured the maps in PS. Since a few months I'm more interested in texturing directly on the object, and Bodypaint is a big help. See for yourself, what you can do with it