Madeliefste Oh

Blog from Sassy Dirval: http://secondmarketing.wordpress.com/

Ai Velde wrote: I agree that first and foremost, us merchants should focus on doing what we LOVE. I will never consider doing something I don't love, and while I do feel a desire to withdraw an ok amount of money from my profits in SL to have some extra pocket change IRL, I have always considered the income a bonus. I've always sold my stuff cheap compared to similar products pushing 1000$L, because I do it for fun, and that should be all merchants' priority I think. Because IRL, we are often forced to be in jobs that aren't our "dream jobs", usually out of necessity. However, in SL, you can design your own business that you can be successful at. You have the ability to choose what you want to do, and profit from it. Unfortunately, that's often not something we get IRL. SL gives you a blanc field of possibilities and what you do will it depends on many things, your character, your personal history, your financial position and so on. I'm very glad I have the luxury to do what I love and that I don't have to make comprises between my creative drive and making money. But I can imagen that people are in a different position and feel the need to make different choices, and I don't blame them for that. I think most merchants like the creative part of the work better then the marketing part. But when you know that the difference between doing and not doing the marketing is some hunderds dollars less for you to spend a month, there is a tension between doing what you love and making money. I can understand well when people choose for the money, and consider this less attractive part just as 'work to make money'. When you for exampe choose to depend on SL for your income in the booming years and you could make 3 times as much as working for a boss. And now a few years later you work even harder for your money, while you have more products on the market and much more knowledge how to run your business, but you can hardly make the salary you had at the job you left, how much of 'doing what you love' can you still afford? You will have to be smart enough to survive; that's a whole different position. But when you are free enough to do what you really love in SL, it's not only best for you, it's also best for your business. There is one other thing that I consider very important for your business, no matter how good you are at something: keep improving your skills. That are the tools to express your passion, the more you master your tools, the more of your love will shine from your products. From what I have experienced and seen from others is that people relate very different to virtual goods then to rl goods. People don't buy products because they need them, they buy them because they lóóóóve them. And this love for the product by the costumer is best felt when you have put the love into the product ánd you have sharpen your tools so much that you can express your love in your own creative language.

Then they are taken down by LL. You need to send in a ticket to ask for the reason. They will explain what was wrong and set them free for you to list them again. But don't make the mistake to ignore the reason given in the ticket, and relist it like you think it is right.

Not all people shop in the same way as you do, that's the first thing you must realisize when you decorate your property to bring people in a shoppingmood. You try to attempt people by putting them in a surroundings that relaxes them, so they also feel relaxed when it comes to pulling the wallet. But you have all kind of shoppers, with different shopping habits. The group that is sensitive for your strategy is just one group. When I was a fashiondesigner I shopped the most when I was about the release a new design, when I needed shoes to go with a dress, or hair, or jewelry, or different shape or a or some new modelposes. I couldn't do my photoshoot as long as I or the model I worked with didn't have the right accesoiries to go with the design. So it was browsing xstreet for possible fits, hopping over to the shop to get demo's, judge them on their purpose, if yes then buy, and back to the photo studio to do the shoot. When I want to relax in SL I go sit somewhere with a friend, to have a nice long talk about all and everything. I don't care to much for the surrounding while I have good talks with friends. Or I go to explore places, sometimes beautiful sims that friends recommanded to me, but often art exhibitions or art contests of such. And sometimes even shops... but shops I like to explore to relaxe are strange shops, the sort of unreal shops, where the merchandise is more about art or fantasy then about commerce so to say.

Amiryu Hosoi wrote: What strikes me in the answers is that not a lot people actually want to take the time to explore inworld shopping area. In my eyes a good shopping area can be an attraction an sich. It is always good to sow down a bit and enjoy the wonders of SL Ami You might get different answer when you ask this question not at the merchants forum. The general customers have different shopping habits then most merchants. Of course there are exceptions, but in general you can say merchants don't want to loose much time on shopping while their time is valuable. In the general audience there are much more people who have in world shopping as a hobby. This last group might be easily impressed by attractive shopping area's. For making decisions like these it's important to know your targetgroup and focus on their preferences.

I am a 'search on marketplace, buy inworld shopper'. From the moment I tp to a shop from the marketplace I must be able to find the item I saw within 5 minutes. In small shops that is no problem, but large shops have a good chance to loose me as a customer. When it'snot clear on the landingpoint into which department I should go to find the item as saw, I'm gone. When it takes ages for signs that can guide me to rezz, I'm gone. Flying or not depends... when I can easily cam around it's ok, though I prefer the possibility to fly. When I really fell in love with the item I saw, I might give it a bit more time to find the item, and depending on the price and what it is, I might even decide to buy it straight from the marketplace. But in most cases I don't have to much patience to walk along al the nice merchandise someone has also for sales, I just want to see the item from the marketplace rezzed inworld, or be able to fit a demo of it. You must make it very easy for me to find it, to have me as a customer. The more things you can take out of the way between me and the desired item, the bigger the chance I spend my money at your shop.

I have one very big wish: MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR MY CO-CREATORS TO CHECK THEIR SALES I'm the seller in a multi creator brand. None of the people I make revenue distributions to do receive any stats about our sales. So on monthly base I'm downloading the stats to filter out the sales of my co-creators and send they by email to them, so they have a clue about what products they we have sold and to whom.

Hello Ai, I'm glad to hear you are so proud on what you have archived. You should be! You earn it, actually anybody who is creative in SL earns it, but not everybody gets it. It's admirable you were able to make a profitable business starting just in 2010. Thumbs up! My story has a long and a short version. The short version: I consider myself as a 'hobby that got out of hand merchant' And the long story: I came to SL because I was fascinated by the idea that the world was made by her residents, and very soon after my arrival I felt I wanted to attribute to this creative world. But then in 2007 I had no idea what I could make. I visited a lot of shops and I saw a lot of common and a lot of strange things and the more I saw the more I got the idea that everything was there already. But during my shop visits I saw a lot of places that did not present their products in the most profitable way, I saw ugly logo's, ulgy advertisements, ulgy productboxes and so on. I wanted to contribute to the beauty of SL and I saw a role for myself as graphic designer. I started camping to cover my texture uploads costs and within a few weeks had my own graphic design studio. I had made some friends in the meanwhile who had their own business in SL, and after I had made some examples I could show in my studio, I simply started asking them for design jobs. I asked low prices, I started with making advertisement boards for 200 L$. While I considered earning 20x my upload costs as a good deal, my clients told me I should ask more for my work. By that time I really had no idea what kind of income you can generate in SL when you have good Photoshop skills. I raised my prices to 500, same effect: clients gave me tips and said I asked too less money. I raised my prices again... and again, and again. One of the things I liked to do most was design logo's for SL businesses. You cannot design a logo for somebody out of the blue, you must know what the business is about, what the owner stands for, what kind of customer the brand must appeal to and so on. So apart from having a very close look at the products I also had an intensive talk with the brandowner before I started sketching. I have dear memories of that time, those talks were often a discovery challenge, both for me and the store owner. Some people had a very clear picture of their SL business, but most of them had not. And my questions to get the info out of my customers that I needed to start working on the logo made them think about their own businesses in another dimension then they were used to. They learned something from me, but on my turn I learned a lot from them as well. I learned a lot about doing business in SL, about the practical aspects, about the commercial aspects and maybe even more about the personel aspects. I learned for example that (not always, but in most cases) people's SL businesses are very close to their soul. SL businesses are businesses driven by passion. One day I walked into a mathematician in SL, he did scripting work in SL, he had made some things for his friends, just for fun and for the beauty of scripting. The showed me some things he had made, and they were wonderful, but so badly textured... I just felt these things deserved better textures. After we had talked a few times and seemed to like each other good, I suggested to start a business together, with products scripted by him and textured by me. He told me he had no brain for business at all and he was not sure about making a business in SL but he loved to cooperate to make a beautiful object together. We started with making a curtain together. I was very exited about making a business and to apply the knowledge I had gather through logo design for other SL businesses. I made textures for the curtains, I made a business plan, I designed a logo, I designed product boxes, I builded a shop next to my design studio, while my partner was working on the scripts. He turned out to be a perfectionist, something I recognize (I can spend time on one pixel being in the wrong place.) In the meanwhile I was still working as graphical designer for others and I did not plan to give up on that, because I loved what I was doing 'dress up businesses in a visual way'. My wish to make our own business was actually more driven by the urge to do this whole process of imagebuilding for our own brand, than by the wish to earn money. By that time I was well paid by my design customers, they were happy to pay me 5000 L$ for a design. I used to make two or three designs a week, while my tiercosts were no more then 500 a week, I considered myself in a very good wellbeing in SL. (Though I made enough money I never cashed out. I spend some on art, clothes, hairs, shoes, charity and to tip artists and the rest I saved on an alt with the idea I might need to buy a premium account later to have my own land. But the money kept coming, by doing what I best liked in SL I had gathered about half a million linden dollars by that time.) In stead of my business partner I was very convinced that we would find a market for our curtains. While I had visions selling hundreds of them, he had the idea we would be lucky if we might sell ten or maybe twenty. Before I started thinking about how to price the curtains, I had not orientated on other curtains in SL at all. I started visiting shops that sold curtains and I discovered a few things: there is not óne shop that is selling only curtains, and most of the curtains were low quality and none of the curtains moved so realistic as ours. At the moment you are very enthusiastic about the project you are working on, you might see all through colored glasses, but the more curtains I saw the more I became convinced our curtains were simply the best moving curtains in SL. After an intensive period of beta-testing (which was absolutely necessary before my partner dared to offer his newborn to the world), we could finally put the curtains in the store. We decided to sell them for a very reasonable price (200 L$). I invited some friends to visit and share my joy about this new project and most of them said: you have the best curtains I've ever seen in SL. (How proud were we?) The shop was there, and we did not have the idea the the product would sells right away, we were still thinking about an official opening with a party and a some dj's. But on day one the curtains started selling. Friends were my first customers, and they recommended to their friends. Within the first week sold 20 curtains, next week 40 and it kept growing, the first month that Dynamic Curtains existed we sold about 100 curtains. Within three months we sold about 300 curtains a month, and that seemed to be the limit. For quite a long time, about two years we sold that amount of curtains. (In those years lot of customers have IM'd one of us to say we have the best curtains in SL.) I considered it as a miracle that this product started selling just by being there. We didn't have promotional campagnes, we didn't advertise, we didn't invite press, we didn't have events, campers or magic chairs. We just set the curtains for sale in a shop and listed our products on slexchange an onrez and they started selling like hot buns. Me and my partner shared the profit 50/50. So we made roughly 30.000 a month each. By that time I started cashing out. Also a bit driven by my partner, who always told me: your money is safer on your rl bank then in SL. I thought he was right. After all it's a virtual world just driven on software, you never know what can happen. My first cashing out was with mixed feelings, knowing it was the smartest thing to do, I still felled a bit sorry I would never see my avatar hold the magical amount of 1 million linden dollars. But once the magic ban between sl money and rl money was broken I started to cash out on regular base. It's through Dynamic Curtains that I discovered the power of selling to the masses. Till then I only had done custom texture work for SL merchants. And though I enjoyed that kind of work very much, this results with the curtainshop made me think again about my future in SL. As a graphic designer you get only paid once for your job, by selling virtual goods you get smaller amount per customer, but you get customers over and over again. You can work on new products, while the ones keep selling. Besides the financial gain I enjoyed the contact with the customers. Not only because they keep telling how they lóóóóve your product, but also to help them solving possible problems. Because you are proud on your product, you want your customers to enjoy it, not to stick it back in their inventory because they experience problems. Beside of that it opens your eyes for needs that customers can have that you did not think of. You can use that knowledge to improve your product and future products. With my design studio I had been working with a fashion designer for a new logo design and some product templates. I was just in my period of doubt, when she asked me to restyle her whole brand. New productpics, new boxes, new shop design, the whole thing. I was very honored she trusted me so much that she put her whole brand imaging in my hands, and in a good mood I started studying some big designers in SL that my client had admiration for, to see how they were doing their imagebuilding. Some of those big designers made the most wonderful outfits, very well designed, very well textures, just top quality. But I also saw shops that were quite good with imagebuilding, but where the merchandise itself was not carefully Photoshopped. Now and then I was so idle to think I would do a better job on those clothes then this famous designer. While I was actually browsing these topnotch fashion brands to see how to distinguishes the brand of my client from her concurrents, I started to get eager to try fashion design myself. And that's how it happened that I returned with leaden feet to my customer to tell her that I was not going to take the job to restyle her brand. For a while I kept doing smaller jobs for clients I had worked with before, but I didn´t take design requests anymore from new businesses. I started my fashion brand Madame Haute Couture in the place that was once my design studio. That was in spring 2008, it was still a good time for starting up a fashion brand in SL. With Madame I had a very different experience then with my curtain shop. My designs started selling, but not with the same ease as our curtains. I learned that fashion needs promotion, promotion and promotion. In the beginning it was kind of interesting to find out about marketing techniques and to experiment with several of them. But be in the long run it turns out that you spend more time on promoting your items then on designing them. Though Madame has made me good money for about one and a half year, much more money then the curtains already did, all the work that was needed from promotion began to feel as a heavy load to me, it kept me too often away from what I actually like to do in SL: creating. I tried to work with a marketing manager. Two times I invested a great deal of time in working someone into the job, and both times it didn't turn out well. But every time I made a new design for my brand, I started to hate the promotional round that should follow more and more. And then one day when I was in a promotion dip I put myself for the mirror and asked: what do you really want? Is it more important to keep this money stream coming my way, or is it more important that I enjoy the things I do my spare time? I decided for the last. I have an RL job that I can live from, the SL money is some nice extra money, but I don't need it to survive. I'm in SL because of my passion for creating. That the results of this creating bring a nice amount of extra money in my rl pockets is very cool, but it's not the ultimate aim. One of my most important discoveries is that in SL I have the luxury to do business in a way that suits me. I can work with my own moral standards and under my own conditions. My decision was not only driven by my growing hate of the promotional work, but also by the fact that I found a new exiting field to explore: sculpties. Now and then I had bought sculpts for my fashion designs, but I often became frustrated about how hard they were to texture. To get more grip on this texturing of the sculpty I started to learn some basics texturing skills in Blender. And the more I did get a clue about what Blender is able to do , the more it started fascinating me. Being so completely into learning something new, made it quite easy for me to decide not to be the marketing slave of my own brand any longer. I stopped promoting my products and of course the results were dramaticly for my sales. I often feel that it's more luck then wisdom that I'm a successful merchant is SL. Like with this last step I made... it was not a matter of overseeing the market or knowing that the sculpty businesses would bring me better business opportunities then the fashion industry in which it would become harder and harder to survive. It's pure luck that Blender came on my path just in het right time. I combined this new skills that I was learning with somethings I was already very skilled in (Photoshop) and that was the start of my fourth company in SL. And this became my most successful brand so far. I enjoy this business in many aspects. Making good quality sculpties is still a challenge, texturing them nicely also, I'm still learning and developing my skills. I work together with another sculpt/texture artist and a scripter, except that it's nice to talk about each others work it's also comfortable that the business is not on your shoulders alone. But the best of all are our customers. The target group our brand aims for, builders and creators, is an excellent group of customers. They know how to search the market and find the things they need, they have a good developed eye for quality and they have money because most of them they are selling goods themselves. The money I make with my curtain store and my fashion brand has become less and less in the time being. Both are still profitable businesses, they still sell more then they cost in rent, but you must not think in large amounts. More in terms like: good enough to do some shopping in SL now and then. But I don't care so much for shopping anymore, I already have enough skins, hairs, shoes, and my own hand made clothes. I have most tools I need to have. So I don't spend much anymore in SL, even the small amounts often go into the RL direction now. I don't make enough money in SL to make a living in RL, I make about the half of it. I could stop working full time and quit half of my job. But I don't. To depend partly on SL for my basic income feels to uncertain for me. I know I'm in a luxury position. I could afford to stop doing the promotional work for my fashion brand and focus on what I really like, because I don't depend on my SL money for a living. I don't think I would have taken that step when this was not the case. I'm also not so hurt by changes that LL makes and that harm my sales. Ofcourse you can wind yourself up about the way LL treats its merchants, and it still hurts you in the wallet, but some less SL income doesn't mean I won't be able to cover my rl expenses. So regardless of whatever LL does, I feel I'm a free, independent, innovative and happy creator. Apart from the cash I also take those feelings with me to RL. So in the end SL gives me both a material and a non material form of wealth.

Dora Gustafson wrote: If your object is rezzed you should be able to modify the description. In your inventory you can not. It is indeed my stupid mistake. But it's just the other way around, Dora. I rezzed the object to change the description and that did not work. But I can change it as long as it stays in my inventory. Anyway, thanks for responding both of you!

I have made eye templates with the purpose to be able to Photoshop your beloved one into your eyes. Except for the picture of the lover that reflects in the pupil the eyes are handdrawn on several layers. For those that might be interested: I sell the Photoshop file with a copyright license. (Use "eye-in-eye" as search term on the marketplace to see them pop up).

I come across the following: I have a prim with a script in it. The prim is full perms for me and the script is no mod/copy/trans. One of the things this script does is read out the description of the prim. I use it to customize some things by changing the object description. Now today I notice I can no longer edit the object description of my prim. Probably this is cause by the script that doesn't have the mod permission. But it has never been like this before. I have tried several viewers, but all give me the same result: I just cannot modify the object description anymore. Has anybody experienced the same thing? Is it an interference of SL, of is there something changed in the permission system?

Bright idea. Thumbs up.

Why is it that LL want 50% of your sales? The more I think about it, the less I understand. Since LL owns the 'printpress' of the L$, the Linden dollar has no value to them, like it has to us merchants. They don't need our L$ to sell them for US dollars, since they can print as many of them as they like. So the financial gain of asking 50% of the linden dollar price from the merchants is zero for LL. For everybody else except LL the linden dollar has a value. LL does not win anything with asking 50% of your L$ price. But for you as a merchants this deal will mean a loose 75% per product. Why would LL want this, while this is not going to make them any real money? Do they want to force price devaluation of virtual goods? Is that what is behind this? And why would they want this? The only possible construction to make money from these dash deals I see for LL is when customers don't pay with L$ but with USD. The marketplace already shows USD prices. Those are way too high compared to L$ prices. So customers will only very rarely buy goods from the marketplace for USD. But the only way to profit from this marketplace for LL is when customers do pay in USD. So that might have made LL thinking of strategies how to profit more from this marketplace. They did not buy Xstreet out of charity, their aim is to make profit from this place. How can you seduce customers to spend more USD in stead of L$? Well by offering them better prices. When the USD price of an item is (temporary) lower then the regular L$ price, for example. Now what if these dash deals are only available to customers when they pay in USD? There we have a nice dash deal that does bring in hard dollars for LL. When this would be the case this will means that LL will make 200% more profit on your product then you as a merchant do. Since they will cash in the USD the customer pays for 100%. And after that you are paid half of that amount in (for them worthless) linden dollars. That is my theory so far, it might change as soon as I get different signals. But what do you guys think? Why is it that LL want 50% of our L$ prices?

Thanks for posting. That is a real nice blog, very professional and clearly written.

Darrius Gothly wrote: 1. Everyone gets one and only one I Like This Place Marker Yup, only one. You heard that right. My theory is that by making them rare then people will use them only for things they truly like. If they do choose to sell theirs to someone they will be able to sell it only once. Anyone wanting to pay for that "Advertising" will have to pay a very dear price. The bidding war alone could push the price way out of the reasonable range and put it into the "not bloody worth it anymore" realm. My theory is that it will bring back the armies of alts. When traffic was an important factor there were campingbots and botfarms, when picks were an important factor there were pickbots and pickbuyers. People are always trying to game the system, because gaming the system is profitable. So when you just have one voice, gamers will need a big volume of people to game the system. Accounts are free, so making alt farms is a very low cost (or actual no cost) way of gaming the system. They will arrive the day this 'I like this place marker' becomes reality.

Thanks for looking at it, Gaia. But this was neither the problem. I still don't know what caused it. But I went some steps back and choose another construction for this corner, and now it works fine in SL.

Thanks for you answer Peewee, but this is not working. When I update the mesh from the sculptmap in the way you explained, it still does not show the hook that I see in SL. It uploads though, I can tell because my mesh gets a different x,y,z size. But it does not reproduce the problem I have in SL.

Suki Hirano wrote: I'm fairly experienced in Photoshop but have no experience in 3D. It needs to have a newbie-friendly interface, and doesn't have to be advanced as I just want to create some boots and heels. About two years ago I was in the same position as you are now. I was skilled with PS, and had no experiencen in 3D at all. I gave SculptyPaint a try, but it's very limited. When you want to make boots and heels, it will be too limited for you. I started working with Blender. The best of it is that it's open source, you can use it for free. The first stepts in Blender are difficult, because you have no clue what to do. You can compare the difficulty with Max3D and Maya. But don't let this frighten you. With some patience and study you will start finding your way around in a few weeks. Start by following tutorials. Pratice a lot, the more you practise with the program, the more you are going to understand of it. Like someone else already said: there is no easy route to 3D creation. Or you want to learn it, and then you have to invest time. Or you want an easy ride, in that case you better buy some full perms boots and heels on the marketplace. I think Blender is the best program for a beginner, not the easiest program but far out the best.

I have an editable sculpted kiosk for sale, 1 prim and textures are editble. In case you are interested: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/cYo-Advertisement-Kiosk-for-Posters-full-perms-Photoshop-file/1589931

Can anyone please help me with this problem? First picture is the object uploaded to SL. Second is het same object in Blender. In SL there is a hook showing that is not there in Blender: The problem appears in two of the four corners, left corner under, and right upper right corner. Both other corners look just fine. I use a sculptmap 128 x 32 and stich type is cylinder. What is causing this problem, and how can it be solved?

Pamela Galli wrote: My #1 problem (even ahead of search) is the MP being used as a fencing operation. Not only for copybotted merchandise but for reselling full perm creators' items full perm -- but at a lower price. It is deeply unfair for someone to spend hours creating something that someone else will buy and add to their store for resale with the same perms but a lower price. That´s what it is, very unfair! LL should support the legitimed IP holders, not the infringers.

Thanks for the update, Cerise. And thanks for the script as well, it is very useful.

When it is caused by changes in the marketplace, then there must be merchants who gain more sales where others loose sales. Since everybody is reporting they made less sales, to me it seems that changes in the marketplaces is not the cause. I tend to think there was less money spend on buying from SL merchants.

You might find this interesting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

Thanks for the fixes, Brooke and the rest. Next on my wishlist is: - receive emails when one of my items is delisted - receive emails when my products are rated by customers