Madeliefste Oh

Luna Bliss wrote: Madeliefste, your sculpt maps are expensive compared to many, but they are good quality, and I have purchased them. However if my business was not doing so good, and I saw sculpts for half of what you charge, or freebies, I'd buy those instead. Freebies do contribute to the decline of the economy - not the only factor but they do contribute. Thank you for being my customer, Luna, I highly appreciate it. Now and then when I'm around in my shop I have a talk with customers. My general impression is that most of them have businesses that are doing fine. Though I have also buyers who don't sell anything at all, but build for their own fun, the largest group are builders en creators who are in good standing, business wise. They can afford to pay a bit more for the quality and the easy of use with the Photoshop files, and the product where it becomes a part off will sell enought to gain the investment back in an overseeable time. Because they have a good brand already they can afford, and because they can afford the brand can profit from the advantage of investing 'above medium'. That is about how it works.

Rene Erlanger wrote: That would be a very good solution.....as long as they buy into it. There are some talented creators in SL that believe that all items should be free throughout SL and not interested in making money....so it's not so clear cut sometimes. I remember running into such a creator way back in 2007...she was selling quality Avatar products which she created for just 1 Linden dollar. We spoke...but there was no convincing her that those products were more valuable than her pricing......she wasn't interested in turning it into a profitable business (Well it might have been profitbable but she did have a large slice of land!) Yep, that is possible. Then I guess I would give it a try to see is she is willing to devide the market. When for example I see she has a lot of avatar attachment sculpties. I could try if she is willing to come to a sort of agreement that attachements will be her specific terrain as a sculpter, and we stop doing avatar attachment but solely concentrated on rezzable objects on land. Then when she is also not willing to that, I will just give up and go on with what I am doing. She has just like me only two hands. I know how much time it takes to make my objects, and it will not be much less for her. And in the end we will both make our own ideas with our own handwriting as creator. I can only pray that there are still some people alround who fall for my ideas and handwriting, and are happy to pay for those. Or who fall for the excluvisity and don't want to use a product in their creations that soon will appear in every shop who doesn't want to invest relative large amounts in sculpties.

Chelsea Malibu wrote: Common products like those I and many others sell are going to be tough in the future. Unique products like Sassy makes will always do well since they are niche and proprietary in many ways. Like now, there will also be people who buy common products. But it will be harder to convince people to shop at your place. As long as SL is a living organism, there will always be people that shop just because they love shopping. There will always be people that re-skin en re-dress and re-hairstyle their avatar over and over again, just because their avatar is worth it. There will always be people who want to belong to the rich in SL and spend to show that they have a rich second life. Like you say, for the price of one night going out, you can have a month fun in SL. It is relatively cheap amusement. Nobody is in need of anything in SL. You can have as much fun, or as much dear friends when you spend money then when you don't. People don't buy 200 pairs of shoes because they need them, 5 pair freebie shoes might do as well, but because they are emotionally pulled towards buying shoes. To trigger people on this emotional level when you bring your brand to their attention will be more and more important in your sales strategy to survive. For products: quality, originality and a wow-factor. You need at least one absolute 'wanna-have' in your brand. When you know to combine quality and originality with excellent marketing and emotional binding of your customers, you have a good chance to survive.

Rene Erlanger wrote: Firstly, freebies could impact your business in a big way . Let's say we had a talented Sculpty creator like yourself, creating similar items to you, but had the selling principles of Alicia.....i.e make them all free to the public. It's my guess, .you would certainly feel the effects of lower sales....unless you were an ace Marketeer. When I would come across such a merchant, I would have a talk with him. I would try to convince him of the value of his talents. When he is really talented I would try to get him interested in working together. I could invite him to release his works under my brand. That brings him a customers base that is prepared to value his talent for what it is worth at the current market, and for me it stops the undercutting of my prices. For both a win-win situation.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Did I say it sucks? Thanks for the info about IMVU, Medhue. I have been hanging around for some weeks there last year, looking for expansion of my markets. I never came any further then uploading one single texture. In advance I was looking if it would be an interesting place for meshes. But I don't have 3d max, and that is what you need for their plug-in to work with. So I just did not examen very deep when I came acrros that. When it comes to login-numbers, my opinion is that a part of it is what we would call 'fake traffic' in SL. They have for example about 20 Facebook-like, Farmville-like games out there. You have to login to be able to play them. You don't have to go in world at all, you play them in a browser window and they are very populair. Not only do these games pump up the traffic number, they also take money out of the in world economie, since people can buy items that are hard to get in those games with IMVU credits.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: L$ are money, things are much clearer when you stop thinking of it as tokens and think of it as a global pool of real money. There are still fictional elements as it can still be "printed", but that's a matter of accounting and how much money they decide should be in that pool. Money bought goes into a pool, in the case of the marketplace, that money was originally purchased by someone, somewhere. Marketplace takes out 5% of real money. Not only that. The marketplace also sells our goods for USD. In Xstreet you could choose as a merchant to be paid in L$ or in USD. That is one of the first things that changed when LL bought it. Customers can pay in USD, but merchants can no longer receive them, all goes to LL´s pockets, who gives you the number of L$ you ask for the item. You have to pay LL commission for changing those L$ back to USD´s. LL profits two times here. The customer pays the (much higer) usd price for the item. The merchants get charged commission by changing his lindens (so he is able to pay those usd to LL for the tier of his land).

Voodoo Schnyder wrote: So today after mixing up a few very basic keywords to search for specific themed clothes and found a store who had around 40,000 traffic! That's insane, I thought, then went inside and saw lucky chairs, a bunch of people standing around waiting for their letter to pop up... I guess those are all bots or scripted agents that are not reported as scripted agents. But to hide that it is actually fake traffic, the onwer made up a situation where it looks more or less natural that people are standing there doing nothing. Lucky chairs was the ideal solution. I don´t know what is behind it, he might for example have shops for rent and want his future renters to think they will make a lot of sales with so much traffic around. I´m not for ar against lucky chairs, when it fits a business to use them, they must do. I have never used them myself, because I think my shopping audience is not amongst people who have time to wait for a lucky chair.

Marina Ramer wrote: In my case more than 50% of my stuff has no competition, because for exmaple for my furnitures brand the animations I built self and noone else has it in sl, and as that many other brands or articles like my baby stuff too. Said this, when there is no possible competition on the prododuct that you build because somehow it has an unique characterist that only you have it, which differentiates you form the rest, then actually the freebies builders In Marketplace, bothers, why? Someone said, freebies sellers are not competition because they doesnt take money out of your pocket, of course they dont. What I meant with that is this, we all know very well how search engines are on a big % screwed on Marketplace, this plus most of the people, mayority prefers low prices and if its free better.( I made an original christmas table this year, unique in sl for how its built, price 1200, 7 prims. I only sold my oldest table 3 years old wich is 200 prims and costs $250L, like this with tons of more products I can measure people priorizies the price above all, at least the big mayority, even when many wont mind about price and will pay for quality, etc the mayority according to my experience, will buy according to price only) So even when you have a good product, even when you used all keywords, made marketing and all, people needs to pass over tons of freebies and dollarbies pages first to actually reach to find and see your product. I think you make a mistake when you say that 50% of your stuff has no competition, because they have unique animations. Without any doubt you shall have very nice animations, but when the marketplace is your main selling point your customers cannot try your animations before buying. On the marketplace you mainly challange your customer by the look of the picture. There are a lot of other furniture makers as well, begging for the attention of your customers. They might also have unique animation, or maybe no unique animations but unique sculpties they make themselves (and they will have even more low-prims meshes soon). You are all fishing in the same pool of customers. Now take your example from the Christmas table. Who is the customer that buys a christmas table? I most cases your customer will have a home to put this table. So it is a person willing to throw money at his virtual life. There may be some customers who want a new fresh christmas table every year, but the mayority who already has a christmas table, brought in 2007 or 2009 will probably be just glad to use their own lovely christmas table again this year. So the majority of older spending residents is not your first target group, it are the people who spend but don't have a christmas table yet, relatively new users. And those are not around in large numbers, not in those large number we were used to in the past at least. But I'm sure you are not the only one who released a new christmas table. You have to get the attention and willingness to pay your price from a smaller pool of customers, while more creators are fishing in the same pool. Now even when someone in this pool you are all fishing in, decides to get himself a free christmas table, he still will have his premium stipend or the hobby money he allows himself to spend in SL in his pocket. He is maybe lost as your customer, but he is not lost for the market. He simply will spend this money on another item in another shop. Freebiesellers don´t play a role in this proces, they are simply not after the available money in SL. I don´t know your segment of the market, but basicly that doesn´t matter for most of us are in the same position. The number of items available is growing faster then the willingness to buy. The only solution to save each and everyones business is substantial growth of SL: This growth didn´t happen in three years now. If you want your income to grow, or at least to stay stable, your only option is to start eating from the plate of your competitors. And in the meanwhile be very carefull that they are not eating from yours.

Rene Erlanger wrote: IMVU derives most of it's income from their Catalog shopping site, and subscriptions to upgrade to VIP status (you can select your own name then and not "Guest"...plus you're allowed to be a Developer and use their creation tools.) IMVU says something different: "IMVU generates most of its revenue from the direct sale of virtual credits, used to purchase virtual goods such as clothing, animations, room decorations, hairstyles and music." (source: imvu.com/about/faq.php) But IMVU has a complete different system. You can not only sells things you create, but you can also allow others to make derivatives of your product. (You can compare it with the full perms sellers in SL, they allow others to add their own creative work to the original.) But in IMVU the system works so that the one who made the original also gets paid a royalty when the second creator sells the derivative product. The original creator is the one who decides what the height of the royalty fee is. By the way, also interesting to know, the CEO of IMVU has a background as marketeer.

Rene Erlanger wrote: I recently wrote some numbers down in a General Discussions thread ....and through some rough calculations provided from LL data which was publically available until Sept 2010......that about 25% of the monthly logins support (financially or creatively) the rest of the grid who play for free and not contribute towards the SL economy. I'm happy to pay my part of the costs so others have the oppertunity to play for free. My analyses is that they don't harm the SL economy at all, as long as the number of residents that do spend money in SL is stable enough to keep the economy going. Nobody has real basic needs in SL, avatars don't need money to survive, we don't have to feed our avatar. People buy virtual goods because they want virtual goods, not because they need them.As long as the demand for this luxury is high while the production is low, the prices will be high. But when the tide turns and the offering on the market is bigger then the demand the prices will start to fall. We have no meganismes to lower the production when we see the demand falling. We don't destroy our stocks, not only because we are just individuals in a large and cluttered system we cannot oversee, but also because it is our own 'creative sweat and blood'. We are simply not prepared to kill our darlings. So to keep the system running in a way that is satisfying for the merchant community as a whole the only solution is grow of demand. The longer this growth stays out, the more we will be forced to eat from each others piece of the cake. I think SL has still a lot of potential to grow, LL missed a big part of potential customers. It is still not to late, but they must hurry up a bit. Growth can safe us for a pretty good time... but after a certain time we wil end up in a comparable situation as we are now. First some of us and in the end most of us will become victims of our own eager to create. Because virtual goods are not consumed, once made they can exist forever. Even when we grow a lot one day we will reach the point of saturnation again. And then, what then?

Rene Erlanger wrote: Yes, there are more skin sellers...but that's partly due to that sector changing a lot over the last few years. In the earlier days, skin artists created Skins from scratch...and there were very few that could do it well! . Nowadays there full perm skins with PSD files being sold that allows you to develop a series of skins relatively quickly. ..by just adding few different coloured lipsticks or eyeliners. Bingo! , you ve become a skin creator and can sell your skins for a 100L a piece.....even though not being responsible for creating the original base skin. --------------------------------- This also came up when the demand started to declined. The full perms skin sellers are competitors who did choose not to beat you by lowering their prices, but by introducing a different business model that allowed them to ask even higher prices for their work. They became business to business suppliers. They focussed on a smaller targetgroup (creators and wannabe creators) then other sellers who focus on the general shopping public. These business models caused that people who don't have the skills to make a complete skin on their own, can 'play the make-up artist' and sell the results of their creative add to the skin at low prices. Since there is also no need for an inworld shop since we have the market place, these make up artists don't have to make their pricing so that they can pay their rent out of it. The only costs that they have is the investment in the skin kit. (And since they enjoy to do make-ups they're probably safing to buy the next kit as well.) Of course this is hurting businesses of original creators. Though there are customers that buy goods for status, and are proud to wear or own only the highest quality products, the majority won't pay 2000 linden for a skin, when they can get about the same quality for 100 linden. These 'clone products' are spoiling the market for a lot of original creators. One man's death is another man's bread. I guess the full perms merchant is doing fine (as long as that market is not oversaturnated). --------------------------------- This requirement of feeding the monster with Freebies & Dollarbies in Second Life is a fallacy.......IMVU which has 3-4 times as many monthly logins (3 million Avatars) doesn't rely on their products being made free....yet their membership continues to grow, year in and year out! Look at Catalog (IMVU's version of Marketplace) with 6 million products...no freebies there for the consumer. The Content provider might foresake his own commissions (Credits) to make it as cheap as possible to the Consumer....but it's still not Free. IMVU Consumers have different ways of earning "free Credits"....pretty much like we have Sploders or camping or in-world contests. These acquired free "Credits" can then be used to buy IMVU products...but again, those IMVU products themselves are not Free.....and they have members as young as 13 playing IMVU. That's why I think, this equivilant of an EU mountain size of Freebies in SL is a nonsense.......it's become a bad "habit" over the years, and kind of expected by both Consumers & Merchants alike! As soon as you become a paying member in IMVU you get freebies thrown at you all the time. Not directly by merchants, but by IMVU. LL could use the head of marketing from IMVU. IMVU didn't grow because the have a better or more easy product then SL, IMVU is far behind SL. They just know better how to attrack people and have better strategies to make people return and stay.

Rene Erlanger wrote: 3+ years of quality freebies hitting the grid..be it from Marketplace or in-world Stores, has had an impact on the SL economy. You're kidding yourself if you don't think so...not only does it "eventually" effect pricing (i.e downwards), but changing the perception of SL consumers (especially new ones) that SL products should be cheap or even free! Can you imagine that sort of scenario playing out in Real life (hypothetically as there are always real costs attached)...even the likes of Walmart or Tesco would have a hard time staying in business if farmers started giving away their products freely! To a lesser extent due to economies of scale, large stores like Walmart, Tesco and other Superstores have driven small local or family owned businesses out of lot of towns ....as these Superstores are able to offer quality products and quality food at much cheaper prices. (not to mention wider variety too)........so why shouldn't quality freebies & dollarbies eventually have an impact on the virtual marketplace too? 3+ years of flooding the grid with quality Freebies is bound to take it's toll eventually. I agree, 3 years of quality freebies might have impact somewhere in the market, somewhere way back, at the end of the long tail. It has effected the business-in-a-box kind of merchants, that 5 years ago were able to generate more then their rent for a parcel by putting up such a shop, those didn't survice. And the merchants who build up a shop by repacking and selling freebies did not survive either, those were blown away by high quality freebies as well. But that is a sector of the market that has never been a threat to you in the past. You sell to people who are willing to spend in a very different price range. You sell to people who don't choose to live their virtual life as a freeloader. You sell to people who are happy to pay you when you make something which is exactly what they want. Or when you make them something that is not exactly what they were looking for but that is so smashing that they just cannot resist to buy. Your problem is not the production of quality freebies that arose last three years. Your problem is the production by other merchants, who have about the same skills as you, who produce a comparable quality and who are in the same segment of the market and reach the same audience with their marketing techniques. The number of customers didn't grow, but the number of people sellings skins did grow, and the number of available skins is growing day by day. In a time there are 100 skins available and there are 1000 people who want to buy a skin, your competitors are less in your way, then in a time where are 1000 skins available while only 100 people want to buy skins. When the golden years were over, and the fight for the favor of the customer became harder, the price dumping started. When you can no longer beat your competition by higher quality or smarter marketing, the only thing that seems be left to make customers spend at your shop in stead in your competitor's is undercutting the price. Anyone can see that is not going to work in the long run for the economy as a whole. But people tend to care more about their indivual income then about the future of the virtual goods market. It is not the freebies that droves the price down, just simply because free can never be beaten by a lower price. It are your competiters who could not win by creating better products of using better marketing techniques. Those are to blame for the current misery. I think one of the mains points is that a lot of us are driven by something different than common sense. We keep producing more and more in a world where demand drops. No rl economist will advise you to do so. But at least now we have a CEO who understands why we are doing so. Because "creating is the best thing there is, except for what you do in the bedroom", we go on with what we are doing: oversaturnating the market due our creative energy. Now when this same CEO can cause that we don't loose 99% of each subscriber, but let's say just 90%, it would solve each merchants problem for years, and I would be a happy camper :matte-motes-tongue:.

Maybe you can make 10x more money with my brands then I can, Mickey. And probably you would enjoy it 10x more as well. We all make our own choices. Of course like everybody I like it when my products sell well, but the money that is involved just doesn't make my heart beat loud enough to take the dull work of marketing on my shoulders as well.I'm not starving, I can choose to put my artistic needs above my financial needs. When I would experience a kick or a lot of joy in promoting my products I would probably make different choices. But since that is not the case, I choose to be the artist kind of merchant, in stead of the marketing type.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: I guess I don't understand at all, then. You sound really cranky lately, as though you've hit a roadblock, yet don't consider marketing necessary. I just don't get that at all. This is indeed one of the strangest things I experienced in SL, and I would not have believed it when I did not have experienced it myself, but some products or brands just start selling, without any help from marketing. It happened to my first brand in SL, and it was more luck them wisdom that it happened. But as soon as I had build a shop and put out the merchandise the stuff started selling. Things like appearing at 2 on keyword search helped a lot, but I had done no effort at all to finetune my parcel for search, because I simply had no clue about that in those days. Right from the beginning we were there we started to sell around 300 items per month. And this stayed so for two years. Later I did start to promote this brand, but despite all attempts and advertising, the sales did simply not grow above this 300. And then again when we stopped all promotion campagns and advertisements again, the sales were neither going under this 300 a month. So for this particulair brand my conclusion was plain and simple: marketingsmethodes seems to have the same influence as just letting it be and attrack it's own 'natural' shoppingaudience. The brand is still exists nowadays. I didn't do any marketing for it for four years now. I just let it be. And the most strange thing is: it is still profitable. I sell a lot less ofcourse. It is around 50 per month now, and much less stable sales. Might happen that one month I sell 100 items from the shop and next month just 20. But I'm aware that it is not so easy for each and everyone. I had a ladies fashion brand as well... so believe me, I did my duties on marketing an promotion. It takes so much time away from the actual love that drives you: creating. That's one of the reasons I gave up on fashion. Doing all this promotional work to gain visibility simply became to hard for me. I spent more time on marketing and networking then on creating itself. If marketing is your love, SL is your paradise. But for me my love was putting my ideas in pixels in Photoshop. And the needed marketing for my brand kept me just too much away from what really drives me: the act of creating. I couldn't find a good marketing manager for my brand, and I got more and more in conflict with myself about spending so much time on marketing. One day I simply decided to stop the promotional work and with that the whole fashion as well. That was it, inner problem solved. This was a desaster for my sales figures, of course, but still one of my best decisions in SL. Now I have a sort of 'easy going' brand that is not too hard to find for my target group. I do some marketing for this brand, but not too much. In this case it is less 'exist thus sell' as in my first brand, (different times now as well), but there is a pretty good click between the willingness of my target group to seek and the visibility I can generate by doing an easy going marketing, devoting my time mainly on creating and customer service. Maybe I can sell more when I devote more time to marktening. Maybe not, I don't know, I didn't try out. The time I can spend on creating versus the time that is needed for marketing is in good balance now, for me to feel happy with what I'm doing in SL. When I need to pay a price for that in the form of not being seen by potential customers, than I can live with it. I'm doing fine. Ofcourse, the economical tide could be better, and LL, ofcourse LL could help a lot better as well, but all with all I'm still not unhappy to be a merchant in SL.

Luna Bliss wrote: Having some freebies seems ok - I'm bothered by a freebie mentality when people expect everything for free however. The world you choose to be a merchant in exists for more then 50% out of residents who don't participate in the economy. People who don't want to spend money in SL (or maybe even more general on the internet) are not going to spend money. Maybe a little percentage will surrender after a period, temped by all attractive merchandise they meet on their road, but the majority of them is simply not going to spend money. They are not your potential customers. As long as you can join for free, this group will exist. Of course as merchants we like to see more people buying our stuff. But you won't get them from this group,anyway. They are having fun in this world without money involved. More or less at the costs of people who do participate in the economy and finance the world for others to enjoy. But as long as they are not around to harras or copybot or such, I don't think they do any harm to the SL economy. They might even help, they might be someones best friend, someone who does spend money in SL and has as main reason to stay in SL her best friend. They might be a valued member of a community, a community that garantees some merchants shop traffic. They might the programmers that help a friend to script his merchandise for free. And they might be the hunters that come to your shop grab all that is for free, without never ever buying anything. But anyhow their presence in SL contributes to the culture of free choice and diversity. I don't want to loose them, despite they will never be my customer. They simply contribute to the world by being there, it would be half as empty without them. Luna Bliss wrote: In a speech not that long ago Philip said eventually all content will be free, and that only those providing a service will make money in virtual worlds. Are the game gods working to bring this about, or is he psychic? Do you mean that Time roundtable conferance? Yes, he said something like: in the end all that is copyable will become free. But as far as I understood this was not specific related to virtual worlds, but in general on the internet. Experience is what will makes people pull the wallet in the future, and not stuff. But that is not so new. That is what is happening in the music industry right now. Most artists don't live from their records anymore, but from their concerts. Spreading free music on the internet generates audience for the experience, the concert. But besides by that time Philip had left the lab already for Coffee and Power. What he sells nowadays: services. He doesn't want to build this future on a world that exists of virtual goods that people make for each other. Maybe copybot made him aware of the weak link in his SL system where virtual content drives the economy. A job that someone is doing for another cannot be stolen. Maybe this is what makes it more attractive for him, to design a profit model based on peoples labour, then on the copyable results of peoples labour. Anyway, this great visionair has told us more things: we stood at the beginning of a phenomene that was going to be the next revolution after internet. As much as internet changed the world Second Life was about to become.... *sigh*, at least the man made us dream for a while. He must be a wizzard.

Rya Nitely wrote: What I learnt from this newbie is this - he has been in SL for under a month and is having a great time buying freebies on the marketplace, such as cute little boats etc. I wouldn't want to deprive newbies of this. And why would you want to? This is what makes them fall in love with SL, and stay. They start spending when they're good and ready. But they have to get a taste of it, Freebies give them that. In my inventory I have a pair of pink prims shoes, that I will never do away, no matter how ugly they are. It's the pair of shoes that were my favorites in my newbie days, I found them in a freebie shop and I walked on them for months. I keep them as kind of symbol, they tell me where I come from in SL. For me freebies was not the main thing that made me fall in love with SL. Beautifull sims, visualised fantasies, the fact that the world was build by his residents, meeting people from all over the world, free education in places like Ivory Towers and the Particles Laboratory, an active art community... those triggered me for SL. When all those things that impressed me would not have been there, I doubt I would have stayed because of free clothes, houses or gadgets. Nevertheless freebies had an important function for me: learning. LL didn't tell me that I need a shoebase to make my high heels fit. I learned that by picking up gifts from residents, who were so kind to explain that in a notecard. That's just one of the hunderds of learning experiences I came across while playing around with freebies. Looking backwards I can say freebies were for me the most attractive way to overcome 'the high learning curve' from SL.

Marina Ramer wrote: Right now due to many people who “for fun” creates freebies or very low price products, I mean ridiculous low prices, it is hurting our business more and more everyday How can you be so sure that freebies are the cause that your business is going slower nowadays, Marina? When you started three years ago, there were also a lot of freebies and cheap items. Not only in world, but also on Xstreet and OnRez. And you still were able to build up a business. How do you know that it is not the RL economy that is hurting your business? How do you know that is not the fact the there are twice as much sellers on the market nowadays then when you started, and still new ones joining? There is one big cake to eat from: that is the money that people want to spend on virtual goods. There was a time that this cake kept growing bigger and bigger and at that time it was not very hard to be able to get a piece of the cake. With the stagnation of SL in terms of growing, the cake didn't grow any longer, but kept about the same size for a while. But the number of people who want to have a piece of this cake is still growing. But freebie sellers are not the ones that are eating from the cake. Someone with 1000 L$ in the pockets to spend, will still have his 1000 to spend after a visit at the freebee marketplace seller. Freebie sellers or people who give away stuff for fun, simply don't eat from your piece of the cake. The money people used to spend in your shop, is not spend on freebies. It is spend at shops of competitors. It is spend at shops that sells comparable products, maybe at a lower price then you, that is eating from what used to be your piece of the cake. Or it are people that found out a smarter way to promote their products and therefore are pulling your target group to their stores. And I think also that, though the residents number are mainly flat, the cake itself is still reducing. I think in general people spend less on virtual goods, but that is not because you can get everything for free as well. That is because peoples income situation changed. Or because their avatar has already 306 red dresses and 120 pairs of red shoes to combine. Or people start to find joy in creating themselves in stead of buying. Whatever is in your way, it are not the filantropists who give away their stuff for free.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: Made, how many fellow open beta DD merchants did you see in their to buy and sell items with via DD? I didn't count them. But the Aditi marketplace is public, there are about 250 items on now, check for yourself: marketplace.aditi.lindenlab.com/ Finally, did you say that when you bought something via DD, the item landed right into your OBJECTS folder of your inventory as a boxed item? That it arrived as a boxed item is not surprisng since 100% of all merchants in MP only have boxed items to sell. But it went into your OBJECTS folder? At the time I did try it (early November) the objects came to my object folder. There was no DD folder available.

When this beta testing just arrive I took a magic box and placed it in Aditi. The strange thing I experienced was that on the Aditi marketplace web was half of my merchandise listed, while I did not stick these items in my magic aditi box. Next day my magic box came back to my inventory. I had just placed it somewhere where you can rezz in Aditi, and didn't know that there was a special commerce land where you had to place this magic box. After I found out and went there, I placed my magic box again. I cleaned my listings on the aditi marketplace by hand, because synching the box with the marketplace didn't cause the items I did not have in my magic box to dissappear from the listings. I bought a few things from other merchants in the testing program. That worked fine. I had expected to see a deliver folder in my inventory, but there was none. Items arrive just the same way as in the normal grid, boxed. About a week later my magic box was send back to my inventory again, when I remember well it came with a message that the box was not used anymore or some like that. And since then I didn't do any new attemptson beta test.

No problem. How about a subject change? "For the mesh clothing makers"

Tari Landar wrote: I dunno. I stick up for the big guy too, but the big guy doesn't need someone in his corner. The little guy does. Especially the little guy that might not know how to defend himself, or might need some help getting off the ground, making improvements. Call me kooky, but I'd rather see MORE merchants in sl, not less, even ones directly competing with me(and since I don't have a particular area that would be a lot of people, haha). I don't like ideas that would prevent someone else from taking their business plans and moving forward with them. Whether or not they succeed, we shouldn't be trying to stop them. I get that some folks don't want to help others-I don't agree, but, whatever tickles your pickle. But what I don't understand, is giving more reasons for folks to NOT want to join the creative community. We've certainly got room for all. I don't think it would be the aim of a BBB for SL to exclude small guys or hobby merchants. I think a lot of us merchants have proud in providing our customers a good service. Because taking responsibility for your products towards your customers is part of the pleasure that many experience from being a merchant. This 'being loyal' to your customers is an attitude you choose to have or not. Whether you have 10 products in your shop or 500 is not the point. Whether you hardly make the tier of your in world shop by selling your products, or you make a good rl income, is neither a measure for being loyal to your customers. The merchants I want to exclude are the ones that give customer negative buying experiences without taking any responsibility for their products. Recently I heared about a guy who has a light set on the marketplace, price about 2500. The set does not function. He simply doesn't react on IM's or notecards. Last time online: six months ago. So for the customer: money gone, LL does not compensate him. All with all a bad shopping experience that might lead to stop buying virtual goods. Because as a customer you don't seem to have any right at all... And this is the hole where a BBB fits into, in my eyes. We cannot give customers rights, that is not in our hands, but what we can do is give customers a garantuee. Being member of the BBB says something like 'when you buy from this merchant, you can expect respons to your questions about products and to complaints. BBB merchants may have their own store policies, read them carefully, they will act upon these.' But I guess you are right after all... these are mainly paper theories. In practice I would just be a source for drama. We are also each others competitors after all...

Till now I have one mesh product that has a demo version, this is a pair of full perms glasses. We have several reasons why we made a demo for this product, but not for others. - It is an avatar attachment that influences the look a lot. People must be able to try out. - It has three different texture faces that designers can texture. So it s a bit more complicated then the one-texture objects. Designers must be able to have a closer look at the object before buying. - The price is a bit higher then our average products. But for the most of our objects I think we don't need demo's. Most are not avatar attachments and people can come to have a look in our mesh store to see them rezzed in world.

You are not doing anything wrong. It is just not possible. It has do with that c4d put the weight in the bones, while SL put the weight in the skin (or the other way around). Second Life can not 'read' your collada-file.

Actually I have no clue in which category I should list my meshes. They are full perms products that builders and creators can use to make their own objects. So the main category is Building Components. But then in building components I have no fitting subcategory. I can put them in sculpted prims, where I can split up further in one of the subcategories. So for examle my mesh glasses ended up in Building Components -> Sculpted Prims -> Avatar Accessories (but hey, they are no sculpted prims). The other choice is to put it in Building Components -> Other building components, where are no further subcategories (so it all will soon turn out te become one big cluthered pile of all kind of mesh objects). I tend to choose for the sculpted prims subcategories, waiting to see if items are getting flagged for not being original sculpties.

I like the idea. I support your idea that we need to maintain a system of accountability. But I have doubts as well. Such an organisation will only work when a lot of merchants and customer will recognize the importance of such a consortium. But we are with such a large number of merchants, that when enough merchants join to have any impact in the total market as a group, it will also make the organisation almost unworkable. Take for example only the aspect of advertising in world. That will be an attractive point for people to join the organisation. But have a look at what happened to a group like FashCon. This was a group for fashion designers to reach a collective audience with promotion of new releases. Respectable and high quality designers joined this group and customers where happy receive notices from FashCon, instead of losing all their group slots to subscribing to all individual user groups from fashion designers. The formula worked very well for a while. But the larger the group became, the more spammy it became. In the end you had to ignore a lot of 10L$ sales and freebie releases to actually find the new releases from the merchants you really want to follow. FashCon became the victim of its own success, it grew too big and the golden formula of collective promotion stopped working. The latest number I have seen is we are with 45.000 merchants on the grid. Now imagen that 10% is joining the BBB, then you have still 4500 people. And they will try to push you to fill the hole that LL doesn’t want to step into: resident to resident conflicts. Who is going to handle these complaints from shoppers who had a disagreement with a merchant. Who is going to listen to those people who want to warn you that certain merchants do not meet the BBB standards? Who is going to listen to those merchants who feel they did nothing wrong and stayed very polite while the costumer was trying to get the blood out of their nails? And what about the complaints from merchants about other merchants? For example the ones that both choose the name AB creations, and neither of them wants to give up on the name. The ones that have shops next to each other on mainland and what started with a little irritation ends in a big conflict where both try to reach that the other is going to move. And so on and so on. And then I not even spoke about the work involved in starting up the whole thing, educating what BBB is about, why merchants should join and why buyers should attach importance to whether a retailer is or is not affiliated with BBB. A complete other point. You see LL is making small steps in trying to protect their tools for scammers. Small steps, like you need to be five days old to sell on the marketplace, you need to have a verified account to be able to upload mesh. And in the new years blog Rod announced “a creators program” for the Realms tools, to prevent abuse. When I watch this development of protectionism I think one day we might end up with a creators program for other forms of content creation as well. But for the meanwhile, despite all bears I see on the road, I still like the idea. When something like this will come from the ground I will probalby join, as was it just to experience what it will bring us.