Madeliefste Oh

Blot Brickworks wrote: True you can get some bad neighbors but in my experience they never stay long. That's also true. I have seen a lot of neighbours come and go. The ones who stay the longest are other businesses (at least in my area). When I first became a parcel on mainland there was much more residental use of the land, and you very rarely had the change to buy an extra parcel. That changed about two years ago. First people started selling their land, and later most of them just abandonned it. For a while I was widely surrounded by green land. Last half year mainland seems to pick up a bit. At least in my region I see a new pattern. The are some parcels bought by people who have breadable animals and there are other businesses starting up in my region.

Suella Ember wrote: Interesting idea. While I agree with the comments saying that this could potentially result in the merchant making an overall loss on the item during the deal, I think the point is that you need to treat it as a loss leader. If this promotion works well it should, in theory, promote more interest in your business and generate more overall sales and profit. So I'm going to watch with interest to see how this trial works in practice. There have been deals similar to this run inworld before by other residents (with varying success). There are also a number of similar, regular programs where multiple merchants can apply and have an item set at a specified discount price on a particular day each week. I've always been in two minds about these programs - They have their pros because they can act as a useful loss leader to generate more sales but they also have their cons - the main one being that because they have become so widely used and so frequent, they encourage shoppers to simply only ever shop for items at these deals. For that reason, I think there is logic to LL running this deal on a less regular basis. Having said that, I think it would be nice to do somethng perhaps monthly with a few merchants (by application) if the tiral is successful. I think the main issue, in the long run, is going to be the nature on which the item has to be setup. If this trial is successful, I'd hope that LL would try to develop a more structured way to take part. A simple way to flag an existing item to take part, for example, rather than having to list it separately at the new price then relist it at the normal price once the deal is over. I would be interested to hear from merchants who participate in those inworld discount programs: is the theory that bargains bring in new customers valid? I don't participate in those programs, I tend to think it mainly brings in bargain buyers. That still might be interesting for some. When you can sell for example 100 items for 50 by participating in the program, in stead of 20 for 150 while not participating. Anybody out there who has figures about how many bargain buyers become regular costumers of your brand? My impression of these programs so far is that they generate more bargain hunters then regulair customers. I think the effect might be that less people are willing to pay the full price for items, while there are many attractive bargains out there. The power of these programs is that they can reach a bigger group of people then you can do on your own as a merchant. That will count even stronger for the LL program, after all LL has the power to reach the whole resident base, no inworld group can beat them on this. But you can only hope that this strategy brings in new customers to your brand. The effect might as well be that the program takes away customers from existing brands, customers might change their buying habbits because of the attractive discounts promoted by LL.

I often read threads about sales down or sales dead, and see that a lot of merchants are effected. I never recognised this pattern, my sales were always kind of stable (with the normal up- and downs, but overall stable or growing). But this time I also see a decrease in my sales. Not so dramatic as for some of you. But still in the last 10 days I sold about 75% of what I consider to be normal. But I'm not sure or this has to do with the changes in the marketplace. It might have to do with the earthquake, not only Japanese residents having more important things in mind. But when for example 80% of premium holders spend their weekly stipend on Linden bears to support, that is a big sum that is not spend on other merchandise. I would be curious to know if this was the reason, I'm happy to loose some sales for a while when this is caused by acts of solidarity with people who overcome a disaster. I'm less happy when it is caused by further changes to the marketplace.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: Made... maybe they dont like us Sculpty Merchants .... we r not good enough for them We are good enough, we are their future. They will need our skills hard enough once SL becomes a mesh world. :smileyhappy:

For a long term business it is best to make yourself independent. Mainland is a very good option to do so, when you don't have the funds for a private sim. Though there are enough trustable landlords, the weakest point for a business is to depend on someone else land. When they decide to get rid of the sim, all your investments in spreading your landmark will go with them. I think for a small business mainland is the best option. It is cheap to buy, there is a lot of mainland available nowadays, so you have enough chance to grow you business step by step without having to move to a bigger land. You can easily buy new parcels around you. There is just one disadavantage: you can have bad luck with your neighbours. They can put very ugly builds next to yours or they can use an awfull lot of scripts which also lags your land, or they can do things that simply irritate you (for example using gestures all day long). I have my shops on mainland for about four years now. In that time I only had to ask LL once for a restart of the sim.

What I would like to add to Pamela's list: 6. Exclude the names from merchants from the keyword search. You could make a button for search for specific merchants, but don't bring up all products from people called 'whiskey' when I'm looking for a bottle or a glass of whiskey.

I'm sorry to hear this happened to you, Pamela. The only thing LL does for you is delete the stolen item out of his inventory. When you know names of alts of the copybotter they will investigate them too. (I'm not sure, but my impression is that they don't even investigate alts for copies when you don't know to name those alts.) When I had my first IP infringment I asked for the rl name and adress of my infringer. They did not give it to me, though I'm sure they have it, cause this person rents a sim from LL. This person is still active in SL, still has his sim, and is still stealing from people. They know it, and they let him. LL seems to care more about it's copybotters then about their victims.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: And related to the MERCHANT SURVEY..... why did only a portion of the Merchants get this survey? I did not receive it nor did many other merchants PLEASE DO NOT SAY THAT YOU DID SEND IT AND THAT IT MUST BE A FILTER ON MY SIDE... its not true as I have received an email from LL Commerce (you) in early January). I did not receive it either. I don't receive emails quite while now. The last mail I saw from the lab was the one with the promotion of the bunnies.(By the way: did they pay you 50% of their sales for this promotion?)

It is not riskfree, this Dash Deal program. You must make at least 4x as much sales in those 24 hours to 'play equal'. By submitting this form, you agree to the following terms: Your Second Life Marketplace account is currently in good standing. The item that you submit is appropriate for all audiences (adult oriented content will not be accepted). You agree to split revenue with Linden Lab 50/50 (you receive 50%, Linden Lab receives 50%) on your featured Dash Deal item/s. You agree to markdown your item by at least 50% during the Dash Deal promotional period (no longer than 24 hours) So when the price of an item is for example 100 linden, you first need to reduce the price to at highest 50 to give the customer an attractive deal, and then next you have to give LL 50% of the sales. Which means of each sale only 25 will end up in your pockets. I think it is reasonable that LL asks a price for the promotion of the item, but 50%? No, that not a fair deal at all! The work LL needs to do to promote Dash Deals is nothing compared to the time and dedication it takes from a merchant to create an item. I would have been interested to participate when LL had temperated her greed to earn on our backs. But with this percentage, no thanks!

Anders Mistwallow wrote: Ok, what i'm trying to say is: people will get hooked on people, not on customizing avatars. I agree with you on this. Friends is the most important factor to keep people in world. A friend might be even more important then a beautiful or original avatar. But I think that this is only half of the story. Because SL is not a bare chatbox, but a visual word. You 'are' not only what you say, there is this visual presentation of you, your avatar. You need to feel comfortable with it. You need tools to make it your own. Even if you come to SL for finding a relationship, you must first love yourself to love somebody else.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: I would concur with Relm that generally satelite stores from your main inworld store are generally a wash - not money makers. In theory it would make sense that if you can get your product into the stream of many different traffic flows that are generated by mall owners throughout SL that you should make a lot of additional sales. And that these additional sales should more than make up for the weekly rent the mall owners charge. I believed that theory.... for quite a while.... I tried placing my products in about 8 different themed malls - many of them pretty high traffic. General theme, Gor theme, builder theme, kiosks, stores, ad banners... I just recently closed the doors on my most recent satelite store in what was supposed to be a promising builders mall connected to a heavy traffic main store run by the mall owner (after running there for 3 months). at the end of the 3 months I was only a little ahead after paying rent - but the trending was that there were no more sales happening. The reasons I belive that satelite stores do not generally work (at least from all my experience) are: Many Mall owners promise you that they are active in generating the mall traffic with all these events (afterall that is the only value you are getting from renting a store from a mall - TRAFFIC). But most mall owners break their promise or they have no effective means / talents on getting and growing traffic to their mall. So, your pretty little store sits in this pretty designed mall and it may see 3 or 5 ppl walk by your door. Having a lot of satelite shops has been a good sales strategy for some segments in the market for a while, but that time is past. Before I learned to make sculpties I had a ladies fashion brand in SL. At the top time of this brand I had 25 profitable mall stores in world. That sounds great, and that was great, but there is are some facts behind you must not oversee: I have rented at at least 100 malls, to find out which were profitable and which were not. I depended very much on the activities of the mall owner to generate ´real´ traffic. I have worked with many mall owners and some were really talented in doing there job. Some also asked very high prices, like for example 12 L$ per prim. But it was worth the money, tehy made you sell 4 or 5 times the amount of rent you paid because of the traffic they generated. During the second half of 2009 the rl crisis was first felt in SL, more and more of my well selling satelite shops in malls became unprofitable. There were also situations where my shop was still profitable, but the mall owner gave up, because he could no longer make the place as a whole profitable. In stead of searching new shops, I started to close satelite shops, because they started to cost more then they brought it. For a while I have also measured the traffic that satelite shops brought to my main store. But even that combined with the sales in the satelites was not worth to keep the satelites open. But in the beginning of 2010 I still had about half of the satelite shops I uses to have, all profitable. The mall owners were excellent business people who knew how to run a mall in a profitable way. They were slapt in the face by LL twice. The first time was when the in world money became one with the xstreet money. In the first weeks after this happened sales stagnated a the half of the mall spots I still had. Mall owners were despaired putting out extra advertisement, organised extra events, tried new search strategies and so on the bring back the traffic. I gave them credit for the time being, not one of them managed to bring the mall traffic back to the old level. The new marketplace was the killer for the mall owners who have had resist all storms so far. I had to give up the rest of my satelite shops and concentrated on my main shop and my new business. I is hard break up the relationship with people you have worked with for years and who have proven to have talent for what they do. I cannot blame any of them for not taking enough care of their place. But in the end you also cannot go on to pay them money for a service they cannot deliver anymore. Though its not the fault of these mall owners, you still have to break up the business relationship you had with them. I think I have enough experience to say: Don't waste your time there, malls are dead.

Have you already tried the beta version of the new viewer that comes with a basic and a advanced mode? The idea of a simplified viewer for new residents is not bad at itself, given the fact that we loose more then 90% of the new customers after their first log-in. (I searched for the statistics about how long residents stay in SL, I have seen quite a while ago, but I could not find them anymore). A less high learning curve might end up in less people giving up after one try. More people in world means more potential sales for us merchants. Now this new basic viewer had no money option. There is no possibility to buy L$, or the possibility to buy goods for 0 L$. There might be some exceptions, but most avatars are not going to buy virtual goods on day one anyway. The fact that people can have a dip into the world without there is any apply to pull the wallet might make it more attractive to stay around for a while, and once they stay the need to personalise their avatars will grow, so the need for the advanced viewer with the possibility to buy will grow. So my thought (or maybe even more 'my hope') is that a basic viewer without the moneyoption might lead to more buys in the end then the current (only advanced) viewer. But what bothers me with this new viewer is that the avatar experience is way too limited. You can choose from 24 avatars, and that is it. No way to change your hair, to wear a skirt in stead of pants or to change shoes. A basic viewer resident has NO INVENTORY at all. I my opinion is have no inventory at the very beginning of your second life more harmfull to the SL commerce then having no money. Dealing with your inventory and dealing with the way you look are two very basic needs in SL. When you take those away, SL will be not so much more than walking through a 3d picture book. That is an experience that is way to limited. People must be able to explorer the possibilities of their avatar. In the end the avatar is the instrument to express yourself in this world. And we merchants have so much wonderfull props available to help people to express themselves. But the possiblity to express (part of) your personality or fantasies throught your avatar must be available for day 1 of your SL experience. The possibilities to buy 0L$ items must be available as well in this viewer. Testing out looks through freebies is often the beginning of spending money on virtual goods. And what are your thoughts on this subject?

Brooke, What I am curious about is: are the plans for script limits and inventory limits still on the agenda at the lab? In the past there have been plans to implementate those, with the argument that the available recourses will be spread more equally amongst residents when you put limits to what each resident can use. What will be the route to go, when it comes to inventory? First create a boxless situation for merchants, and once that is accepted come up with the inventory limits?

Jaylin Wytchwood wrote: Regarding the sculpy being rendered as blob, check your LOD / Level of Detail: 1. Show the “Advanced” menu with Ctrl-Alt-D 2. Select “debug settings” near the bottom. 3. In the blank space, copy and paste the word: RenderVolumeLODFactor 4. Set this to 4 This will solve the problem for you, in your viewer. But others who don't have their LOD factor set to 4 will see the sculpt still in the way the OP descripted.

I'm not sure a delivery alt will be usefull to me. But we will surely need an alt for our business when this AIS comes alive. One of my biggest concerns with this new system is inventory loss. I have experienced this before, 6000 items in my inventory were lost for about three weeks. I have heared experiences from others who had lost (a part of) their inventory, that never came back. Since my products were in boxes in my shop and in magic boxes on (by that time) xstreet, my business had no negative influences because of my inventory loss. But once this new sellling system will become the only system, inventory loss will mean a loss of income. So I will definitely need a 'back-up alt'. It will get a copy of all my merchandise. In case of inventory loss my alt will be able to hand over the merchandise to my main avatar again, that will save me a lot of frustration and new uploads costs.

You can change that in 'My Settings', Rya. One of the tabs in 'Preferences'.

Tara Chester wrote: I'm not the most analytical cookie, so as far as i can tell, only two things make search number high: number of keywords we put for our product, and number of searches in the marketplace. Its obvious that more people are searching for "sculpted something" then, in my case, "armchair". I'm not sure this is the case. My items might be searched by very different 'terms' then 'sculpted something'. And they might be ignored for that reason as well. For example because we sell Photoshop files with the sculpties one of our keywords is "Photoshop". People looking for clothing templates who don't want tga templates but Photoshop templates might want to search for those by using "Photoshop" as a keyword. That search counts as a search for almost all our items. But since the person who searches is not looking for sculpts but for clothing templates, a hit on "Photoshop" does not mean anything for our business, it won't lead to views or sales. But I cannot get rid of that keyword either, cause people using the combination of the keywords 'sculpt' and 'Photoshop' need to be able to find us. Besides of that we are a business to business seller, that implicates that my target group (builders and creators) is much smaller then the targetgroup of a seller who sells readymades to the general public. The prices of ready made products are also a lot cheaper then our full perms items. But this general public is still able to find our products when using the right keywords. So when a 'normal customer' is searching for a bottle of champagne, we get a hit in our the search record for our bottle of champagne. But this customer is not looking for an item he can build with his own name and retexture to his own wishes. There are a lot of nice champagnebottles available on the marketplace for a much lower prices, but with limited right. The general public doesn't need full perms items, and will consider our champagn bottle as too expensive. And indeed for his specific needs is our product too expensive. In other words: we are found a lot by people who are not our targetgroup. They won't view or buy the item. So from all our hits on a keyword like champagne maybe 10% or less reaches our targetgroup. I think that is more the reasons that we have so many searches compared to sales.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: Seems there is similarities in Sculpties and sculpted prims as both Made's and my numbers are very similar on the ratios of search hits and views to a sale. I noticed before our businesses have things incommun. Like where the products are sold. You have written before on the forum that your sales are for 80% or more made on the marketplace and 20% or less in world. I have the same figures when it comes to where people buy our stuff.

greek Wingtips wrote: 2: many are leaving SL, due the many problems that have rencently happened since the viewer came about, crashing frequently ,blurred av,s bad lagging, complicated searches, and so for to name a few. I have never spoken to someone who has been leaving SL for this reason. People complain a lot about it, but don't leave for this uncomfort. People leave SL for reasons like: having RL less time available, broken SL relationship, rl partner discovered secret SL relationship, people have worked themselves in problems with playing a role, best friend is leaving SL and the lifetime* of SL has past, people get bored. There is (a much smaller) group of people, mainly active in the commerciel field of SL who leave for reasons like sales have dropped dramaticly, alternative worlds with much more attractive tierprices, the lack of customer support of LL and the way LL is developping. * That lifetime of SL is an interesting phenomenon. For some people its only a few days or a few weeks, but that is not what I mean actually. I'm talking about die hards who have spend much time in SL. I see this happening to quite a few people some after about two years. They have seen so many beautifull sims allready, listened to so many concerts, found the best skins, clothes, shoes and so, had the most beautifull home in sl, made a lot of friends, dealed with a lot of drama, started and ended some relationships, had so much good laughs and danced away so many nights... and then suddenly the urge to log in is lacking. People start thinking 'what am I doing here?' The excitement of discovering new dimensions in SL is gone. They get bored and feel they have no goal. The lifetime of SL has passed.

Apart from what you mentioned the most important factor we take in consideration while pricing is the time it took us to make the item. An item that only took four hours to make has a lower price then an item that took 20 hours. (In general my time spend on an item is more like 20 hours then like 4 hours.) I also listen to customers what they have to say about our pricing. I have heard a few times that people think our items are expensive. And a few times I heard: cheap for the quality you deliver. But the most heard comment on this subject is: affordable, fair priced, good priced, the quality you make is really worth the money. These comments reflect what we have in mind for our brand: high quality for a fair price. So actually we don't look anymore at how competitors in the same branche price their items. But when releasing new products we measure our time and compare it to the time it took to make the products we already have, and price it accordingly.

1 959 13 1 6 sculpted prims 2 376 5,5 1 1 sculpted prims 3 527 8 1 3 sculpted prims 4 464 9 1 3 sculpted prims 5 1023 12 1 8 sculpted prims

One of mine

If you want to know the reason for removal, you should send in a ticket and it will be explained.

Zhoie Zimermann wrote: Off topic but a couple weeks ago someone flagged one of my 100 % PG items, which took it off the listed items, and put it into unlisted. Unbelieveable. It was flagged for not being mature/adult, whatever. It's amazing how anyone can flag an item, right or wrong, and it will be removed. Letting residents police other resident's products is totally wrong. When someone flags an item, it is not removed. It is sitting on the marketplace to be seen by LL's flag moderators. Only after the flag moderator has judged your item is not allowed in the PG part of the marketplace it is put to unlisted.

You could use Filter Forge for this... like: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/8857-v6.html