Ziggy21 Slade

JT Hamelin wrote: Working on that one. My next one is quite nice (if I may say so myself). It even has a script included. Thanks for the advice though. I'm going on a one product per day for the next 30 days. When I reach 30 products I'll give it a rest for a while. Personally I would avoid these deadlines, they will lead you to make several products quickly, but if those products fall down on quality because you didnt put enough effort into creating them, your time will have been wasted and they are unlikely to lead to repeat custom. Decide what you are going to make, check out the Marketplace for competing products, and make yours better, NOT CHEAPER as others have suggested, the only time a product here needs to be cheap to sell is when it has no other redeeming qualities, few customers here will use price as the deciding factor when they make a purchase, customers like the coolest, most attractive products, not necessarily the cheapest. There are lots of ways to improve your offering without lowering the price. For furniture for instance, I have seen some great and unusual poses for seating (wish I could remember the creator), invest in some, you will be using them over and over, offer a colour/texture change menu or package a range of colours together, you can add MLP love/sex animations at no extra cost to you, 'Beautiful Oak Table' might sell, but 'Beautiful Oak table with 100 love animations' will probably sell better. 30 Products is a good start if you want to have a bit of fun creating and running a store, and maybe make a bit to cover your tier, if on the other hand you are serious about making some real money that you can cash out and pay your RL rent with, then you should forget about taking a rest until you have about 300 products, then you can have a weekend off : )

I guess I would probably consider myself to be one of the torch carrying pitchfork wielders. I read what you write Darrius with interest each time, you present reasoned argument backed up with you own unique knowledge, I may not always agree but I am often not knowledgeable enough to disagree and can at least clearly see and consider another point of view to my own. The problem is that the most vociferous complainers here generally don't bother with any facts, knowledge or reasoned argument, instead we get B movie amateur dramatics, convoluted conspiracy theories, and ad absurdum arguments and this is what I object to. These drama queens seem to feed each other and I feel that if I don't try and stamp the fire out quickly it will soon be out of control. There are many examples here but a good recent one, was a thread regarding the fault with transaction downloads, a few posts in and this fault had become a deliberate act perpetrated by LL to conceal an economic collapse which every merchant knew about and was experiencing. This sort of thing does nothing to enhance any argument, it clouds the real issue, makes us all look like fools and discourages new users.

Sassy Romano wrote: The sample size here is too small from which to draw any sensible statistical analysis. I think thats certainly true. As I sell seasonal items my sales are massively affected by the seasonal changes, this August has been my best ever in the sense that I haven't seen a slump at all, normally I would be expecting to see maybe a 20% drop. Whilst people have mentioned some anomalies which I certainly can't explain e.g. large drops in Marketplace sales of 50%, or drops in Marketplace sales without seeing the same inworld, I do find it astounding that the idea of a summer slump is just brushed aside as some sort of made up myth. We all know our American cousins don't like to get out much, but here in Europe, millions and millions of people go on their annual vacation at this time of year, there are still a few towns in the UK where the whole place shuts down for 2 weeks, factories, shops, the lot. Two thirds of the UK population takes a holiday during July and August (although they don't all go away from home) So I would be interested in hearing an explanation for this idea of no summer slump, millions of people who would normally be sat at the computers, suddenly aren't, this is a known fact, how could this occur and not affect trade here, where do people imagine all the extra users come from to make up for the ones that are lying on beaches all over Europe?

Madeliefste Oh wrote: A more attractive package for creators and merchants could be one that contains things like: - 5 free mesh uploads and 20 free texture uploads per week or - pay only 2,5% commission on your marketplace sales or - 50% discount on one 'featured item advertisement' on the marketplace Great Idea!

Josh Susanto wrote: It's probably not that they think they can hide the economic collapse. Everyone can see that there has been an economic collapse. Sigh! I thought we had seen an end to this sort of nonsense. EVERYONE CERTAINLY CANNOT SEE THERE HAS BEEN AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. Do not presume to speak for all of us, if you aren't doing the business you were (although it's difficult to believe you could actually take any less), do not kid yourself that this isn't your fault and it's the same for everyone, it isn't, I have increased my earnings here every year for 4 years and I know of plenty of other merchants who would tell you the same thing. One of my friends has taken nearly 1 Million USD this year alone. We have heard this so many times before, around 18 months ago, there were lots of posts here and conversations inworld about how SL was dead, people are leaving in droves, my friend had to dump his store that he has had since 2006 and other such amateur dramatic poppycock. As we can now see it was untrue then and it's equally untrue now. What I find truly astounding though is even if you are actually deluded enough to believe this rubbish, why on earth would you state it in a public forum?, the real life equivalent of this would be to rent a store in a Shopping Mall and then stand in the Mall Main entrance warning customers not to shop there because everyone can see the place is about to fail. It is the duty of every merchant here to promote sales in our marketplace (small 'm') as a whole, announcing to customers that the place has suffered some dramatic economic collapse is the absolute opposite of this, and considering this collapse is imaginary, announcements of this nature can be considered a deliberate act of sabotage perpetrated against your fellow merchants. I implore all merchants here, do not be part of these doom and gloom predictions, when you hear this nonsense challenge it, you will soon find that phrases like 'economic collapse' and 'people are leaving in doves' become 'well, i had a bit of a quiet week last week' and 'My friend is having month off cos he cant pay his broadband' I think its is more than coincidence that the 2 people here claiming 'economic collapse' both operate a very similar, very weak business strategy. If you genuinely aren't doing the business that you used to, you need to be looking at your own operation and how you can improve it long before you start blaming LL, whining in the forums about what a terrible place SL is, is not going to put L$ in your account.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: You have gumption and drive - good for you. Well said, although this offer does seem more than a bit cheeky, I think we should be careful to piss gently on other people bonfires, especially when they are new and trying to make their way in our world. Most of us are responsible for at least one dodgy business idea, I could tell you all about 'Ziggy's Love Centre' but I won't (hangs head in shame).

The 'Watch it in Action' link beneath the main image plays an animated GIF as Darrius said, there is also a video link which you can point at youtube etc. I definitely recommend using GIFS on any appropriate products, adding a GIF has totally changed the fortunes of several products I sell

... and the inworld employment you are offering is...?

In the olden days, before we had the fabulous new Market place with all its new marketing opportunities, we had the ability to purchase banner advertising. When the site was revamped the advertising mechanisms were revamped too, the old fashioned method of simply buying banner impressions like any other item and emailing a banner to the team (which never failed for me), was replaced with an all new advertising site which promised to sell us comprehensive targeted campaigns across the full range of LL Media Properties (for those of you familiar with the English language, this phrase actually means 'web sites'). This site only made it as far as beta, it was truly, truly dreadful, the whole thing was written in some weird Californian Marketing Speak, there was no way to check availability in advance, homepage banners became hopelessly overbooked and then hopelessly rationed so that at one stage all you could buy was 1000 impressions per week, whereas in the old days you could buy around 100k impressions per day. Bookings could only be paid for with a credit card, and there were a number of other annoyances that I could mention, but I think we all get the idea. We all had a good moan about it, and as a result the site was dumped and now no one can buy a banner at all. I cannot believe that with the prices being charged and the obvious popularity of banner advertising that there isn't enough potential revenue out there to make it worthwhile offering this service to merchants, many of us were repeat customers and we deserved better. LL, your site deserved the complaints we leveled against it, it was a shoddy, pathetic effort, and your reaction should have been to address our complaints and improve the offering, not to remove it all together, this action represents a pretty pitiful approach to customer service, it's like complaining in a restaurant, and having the waiter remove your plate and throw you out of the door, telling you never to return. Also it has to be said that if we as merchants adopted the same approach to dealing with complaints, there would be no Marketplace and probably no SL. The major buying season is fast approaching and we need every possible tool at our disposal to maximise our profits and yours, we don't need anything spectacular, we aren't advertising executives purchasing campaigns for Multinationals, we just need a simple booking system where we can check availability and make reservations and preferably pay with L$ LL, Please re visit this and BRING BACK OUR BANNERS ! Merchants, if you found value in banner advertising, or think you may in the future, or if you just recognise and despise poor service when you hear about it, please post below to show your support for what I am proposing. Thanks Gang.

I am interested in this, but when I message you, it says you don't exist. Please contact me inworld Ziggy21 Slade

Josh Susanto wrote: As far as I know Linden dollars also cannot be garnished as income if they have not yet been converted. This is a major reason I'm happy to be earning them on a US server and (now) living in a country from which I can cash them out without much interference from other US entities. Slightly off topic - but how do you cash out to Colombia?, according to Paypal they dont allow it.

I would say in 'Birthday' since everyone searching that category is a potential cake buyer, which isn't the case with Food and Drink. Also if you are looking for birthday stuff and you look through the available categories you are more likely to be atrtracted by the parent category 'Celebrations' which of course is higher up the alphabetical list

My inworld sales are much lower than they used to be, although my marketplace sales are much higher. At this stage I am not sure you would have lots to gain financially as skins and clothes don't really benefit from inworld display, on the other hand an inworld store adds gravity to your operation, helps to build and market your brand, and will help you to find direction. I think it really depends how serious you are, you say you don't have regular items coming out, I think this is something you will really need to address especially at the start while you have a fairly limited range. Building a store, fitting it out, and building your range is a fair amount of labour, for many merchants, myself included we love doing all this stuff, if you do too get a store, if your Second Life is full of other stuff and tinkering with skins etc is just something you enjoy occasionally then my advice would be to leave it till you give the BF the boot and have nothing better to do.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: If you are a merchant with a customer base that you know uses SLM as a tool to search for a product or options for a product they need (and not as a form of entertainment), then Listing Enhancements are a completely waste of time. Its not a lost leader, it wont improve your SLM or Inworld sales enough to ever recoup its costs. And pumping money into listing enhancements is a waste of money. I learned over the past 2 years that my customers do not care about listing enhancements. You know how I hate to disagree with you Toy, but this is nonsense, I don't sell any clothes at all and my biggest selling items are animated texture packs which are used exclusively by creators. I often just browse the enhanced items especially on the homepage, I find it very hard to believe I am the only creator that does this. I would also point out that the purpose of advertising is not just to attract new sales from existing customers, it is also to attract completely new customers, so knowing your 'customers don't care about listing enhancements' isn't very much use at all, I am sure if I surveyed my customers, none of them would 'care' about any aspect of my advertising strategy but that doesn't mean their buying decisions aren't influenced by it. Toysoldier Thor wrote: If you want to improve traffic and sales to your SLM listings.... focus on your listing content and get your listing to the top of the search results. THAT is far better use of your time than using expensive SLM enhancements as a crutch. Isn't this a bit of a contradiction? Paying to have your listing at the top of a page has no value whatsoever but working to get your listing just below the top of the page is apparently a good use of time. As for your challenge, I offered a similar deal to Josh last week, and so far he hasn't taken me up on it, I am quite prepared to accept that enhancements haven't worked for you, your claim was that they don't work for anyone and now that they only work for people who sell clothes and that is the point I am debating.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: For the most part - I think those that use Listing Enhancement have just convinced themselves that they only have SLM sales at the levels they do because they keep paying for enhancements. I am sure other Merchants will tell you they are so important to them and it is a must have cost to SLM... Not for me.... I have saved $10s of thousands of $L by not wasting it on useless SLM Listing Enhancements. Enhancements work fine for many people selling all sorts of products in all sorts of categories, making the assumption that we are for the most part too stupid to realise whether they are profitable or not is the most astounding arrogance. But what is even more astounding is that 2 people who make their money in retail are constantly extolling the virtues of NOT advertising and bragging about how many pennies they have saved. You and Josh should point out to others, when you give out this fabulous business advice that the two of you put together don't make enough to share a takeaway pizza at the end of the month, while myself and many other apparently deluded people take home hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars. You have tried enhancements on 4 products, and knowing you, I imagine they were the cheapest ones possible run for the shortest time possible, and because this wasn't a successful venture for you, you have extrapolated the argument that it is therefore unsuccessful for everyone else and every other product. I am telling you here and now, quite categorically, enhancements absolutely work for me and given the number of repeated enhancements, hundreds of other merchants too, so saying its a useless waste of money just isn't good enough, you should be looking at why you are so much less successful than other merchants who are doing the same thing, not assuming all those other more successful people are somehow deluding themselves. If anyone is deluded it's you guys, measuring the success of your businesses by how much you didn't spend rather than how much you actually took.

Well, you do have a point regarding the mathematics. I havent done a lot of experimenting, because if the experiment goes how I think it will I will lose a few hundred dollars. However when we migrated from Xstreet I was very slow updating my listings and setting up the enhancements again, I was thinking a bit like you guys at that time, knowing there were likely to be teething problems, I thought I would let things settle down and get everything updated before I spent any money. When I finally got enhancements running again the difference in revenue can only be described as profound, now although this test is in no way scientific, it was enough to convince me. From time to time I drop certain enhancements and run others and I always see a difference in sales. Obviously what I spend on advertising is a fraction of total sales. I can't imagine enhancements work for every product or for every merchant, but there are 1.7 million listings produced by some of the most creative people on planet Earth and making yours stand out from the crowd is a big challenge. All an enhancement is required to do, is to put your product at the top of the relevant page, assuming this happened, it would suggest that people saw your product and then elected not to buy it, when this happens to me I dont convince myself that it was the advertising that failed. You tried it and for whatever reason it didn't work so you cut your losses and stopped it, that makes perfect sense to me. Josh's argument is somehwhat different in that he believes the odd technical difficulty is a reason never to advertise, after all you could lose 40 cents and for entrepreneurs of Josh's calibre thats not a risk worth taking.

Josh Susanto wrote: Divide your listing enhancement costs by about 30 and multiply by the number of days your sales have been down (keep counting, eh). That is the absolute minimum amount of money you should have earned in that time in order to warrant the cost of the listing enhancements for those days. Ok, L$2899 / 30 = 97 or about 40 cents per enhancement per day. Ya know I reckon I will be ok, thats about 6 minutes takings.

Since this has come up, I just want to state for the purposes of public record that I do not and have never made hair, so if you find any that shows me as the creator (which I have seen out there), please report it, as they used my full perms prims to do the botting.

Why on earth would you waste your time theorising about this, common sense should tell you that cramming 700 items into one box is bound to be a bad idea, not to mention the huge amount of time it must take to load and update when you make changes. I have had a second box rezzed since the day I started, it makes such obvious sense when we know that regions go down from time to time, sometimes they run badly, sometimes items (such as magic boxes) are returned in error, and sometimes merchants mess up and delete the wrong stuff, however rare these events are, it's surely worth the cost of rezzing 1 single prim to insure against them. I have followed the advice of LL and other merchants and I have few delivery problems, you choose to stubbornly ignore this advice and you have delivery problems, knowing that, isn't it better to take a few minutes to at least try what is suggested, if for no other reason than to be able to prove me and others wrong, rather than donning your tin foil hat and inventing this ludicrous conspiracy theory. If you were actually serious about doing business here you would be trying everything you could to get things working, so far your only action in this regard seems to be to constantly whine about it in the forums, and then dream up weird mathmatical reasons why you shouldn't try anything thats suggested to you, this is unlikely to have much effect on how efficiently your inventory is delivered. I am not suggesting you split your inventory over 7 boxes, I admit that then things might become inconvenient, but a couple of hundred in each box should run fine and can be achieved in less time that it will take you to reply to this post. Josh Susanto wrote: If I'm going to start doing things this way, I might ask why I don't just create a separate alt account for every possible sim where I might rez a box, put a separate set of diffirently-named items into each of their boxes, and rez them in each of those sims. Reductio ad absurdumm don't you think?

Do you think that the phrases box farming and compuslory labour might just be overstating things a little bit, for those who are confused by this, Josh is actually referring to Rezzing a second copy of your Magic Box, there is no absolutely no farming, and a very minimal amount of labour involved. I am afraid I am going to do what you asked me not to and fall back on the idea that your problems begin and probably end with the number of items in your Magic Box, if one box isn't working correctly rezzing another that isn't working correctly is unlikely to improve things. However I do have to agree that this is an unproven theory so... I am quite happy to test this with you. All you need to do is make 3 copies of your box and dump 2 thirds of the items from each, so you end up with your inventory split across 3 boxes (or more if you like) with a different 230 items or so in each box, give me a shout inworld and you can rez copies of the boxes at 1, 2 or 3 of my locations and lets see what happens.

Josh Susanto wrote: 9) Given how much conviction you show on listing enhancements, I am considering experimenting with one after I have 1000 items in my box. This is a fair thing to do, and I would not be setting a good scientific example if I did not at some point create ample opportunity to have my established theorology subjected to falsification. What product would you suggest that I promote, and how would you suggest that I promote it? Please let me be clear; I will take full responsibility for the cost of your failed suggestion. Man, I am so glad you asked me that!, I would do this - take about 20 of your items and put them in a pack, make sure they relate to each other, so for instance sandstone castle walls with several medieval sculptures, call it the medieval builders pack and include the maps, textures and finished prims and sell full perms for between 500 and 1000, probably nearer 1000, enhance it on the homepage for a month , and if you don't make more than the $2899 enhancement fee, I will gladly pay it for you. For this experiment to work though it would help if you had a little more faith in your own ability to actually sell something rather than practically give it away, this can't be another '5 minute product', you are aiming to sell for 1000 so think of it as 100 x 5 minute products, or about 8 hours production time, it will require a bit of effort to produce something worthwhile but I am sure you will reap the rewards and as you have pointed out, you can sell in perpetuity. Sometime ago I started a thread about living and working in another country, my plan was/is to do what Dart said and make use of the low cost of living elsewhere so I could live a comfortable life just on SL earnings, I figure if I can work up to an average/ above average wage wage here in the UK, I can live like a King(ish) in Belize (this was top of my list before someone said the internet is bad there) or where ever, so I have to say Kudos to you for doing what I haven't dared to yet.

I guess it mostly depends upon your existing skills, but I think a good place to start is to take some classes, there are lots of free classes inworld covering building, scripting, texturing etc, just check events>education in search. They can be a bit tough at first if you haven't done any/much building here yet, but you will soon get into it and start enjoying yourself. This will give you a good insight into the huge variety of things you can make, and teach you some valuable techniques. I still sell a product that was a quick customization of an item I made in a class 4 years ago. Often people will advise you to find a niche, although this isn't bad advice, for now I would not try and do this, make anything and everything you fancy and see what lights your fire, then make a handful of things in that vein and get them on sale. You reap only what you sew, so take your time and make a good job of what you are creating, look at the products you will be competing with, and aim to make yours better. Consider how you will market these products, remember it's much easier to build a brand around a range of similar items than a mish mash of unrelated ones. Don't expect instant results, it takes a while to build things up.

I think the most worrying thing about this attack is the exceptionally poor response from LL. My understanding is that the thieves used alt accounts with similar names to the Meeroos sales account, and after receiving hundreds of complaints, LL just disabled every account that was a variation on that name, including the genuine one and then took 30 hours or so to restore it.  In an ideal world every issue of this nature deserves a quick response, although we don't have an ideal world, you would think that LL would at least react quickly and accurately when dealing with such a high earning business, this is a product that has pumped thousands and thousands of dollars into our economy and is partly owned by one of SLs oldest and most well connected residents, I think they deserved much better service than they received, even if ultimately it was them that messed up (although it may well not have been).

Your entire argument rests on the idea that most items are mysteriously delisted and most items don't get delivered, this just isn't the case, the perceived risks I am taking exist ONLY in your head. Do you honestly think that putting 7 times the amount of items in your magic box than is recommended isn't contributing to the problems you are having?, anyone would else would have fixed this easily by spreading the items across several boxes but once again your small time tactics are stifling your ability to make money. The main goal of your strategy is not to make money, it's to prevent LL from making money. You may not give a 'rats ass' about your fellow merchants or the overall health of the marketplace but I do and you should. No one here wasted any of your life for you Do you honestly believe that RL companies don't account for their electrical power or equipment depreciation? What you are doing has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with trying to play out some petty vendetta against LL. Despite your claims about the Columbian economy, according to Wikipedia the minimum wage there is $3600 US per year, or $1.80 US per hour, its takes you over a month to earn this amount. If you would like to actually earn the $3600 per year, you are going to have to make and list 126,000 items, even with your extremely optimistic 5 minutes per item and lets say another 5 minutes to photograph and list, that will take 21000 hours, I know you like to do other stuff, so lets say you manage 20 hours per week creating, it's going to take you over 20 years to reach a Columbian minimum wage, assuming the minimum wage there doesn't change in the next 20 years - this is why you should care about the overall health and longevity of the marketplace. Although a minimum wage may not be your goal this does clearly illustrate the total futility of what you are suggesting others (especially those who aren't living in a 3rd world economy, which is practically all of us!) should try. 

Josh Susanto wrote: ...none of my business headaches have to do with actually losing money by creating anything; moreover, the business headaches all only serve as further examples of why I shouldn't waste any extra time, money, or energy playing the SLM marketing game by the rules implicit in the system, itself (such as needing to log on to pay for listing enhancements and then logging on later to assure that the enhanced listings are for products that are still available; I'd rather be editing images and sculpting them out, or building an huge animated arthropod - wouldn't you?) I don't lose money by creating something and I am not sure how one would. Obviously we have had different experiences here from a technical point of view, or could it possibly be that you are making a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill?, precisely how many times has one of your main products for instance, been delisted for no apparent reason?. I have hundreds of sales each week and I average about 2 failed deliveries per month, during the last 3 years or so I have purchased over 300 listing enhancements, on not one occasion have I had to check that the enhancement is running or that the product is still listed, so to use this as a reason not to market your products seems bonkers to me. Would I rather be building a huge animated Arthropod - yes of course, but then as I have explained I am already!. Josh Susanto wrote: I can build what I feel like building, when I feel like building it, put it up for sale, and let it continue paying me while I sleep well after it has paid its loading costs. Losing money is basically impossible the way I do things, so it's bound to accumulate somewhat, even when the system is messed up (and, actually, it does). I also build what I feel like, when I feel like it, making money doing what I do enhances the enjoyment, it certainly doesn't reduce it. You claim that losing money is impossible with your strategy, I would disagree, you actually lose money on every sale since you are practically giving away something you could charge for, an accountant would call this 'Opportunity Cost' , taking a brief glance at your products I would estimate your opportunity costs to be at least 5 times your takings. My takings are at least 10 times my marketing costs so while its not impossible for me to lose money, some totally radical and unusual event would have to occur for that to happen Josh Susanto wrote: SOME of my products, I do consider to be crap. I just won't tell you which ones because they'll so popular and people report being so pleased to have bought them. But that's capitalism; the customer must be right if they value the product at or above the sale price... no? The customer is of course right and I have no doubt they enjoy your products and congratulate you on them, but this rather illustrates my earlier point, at least part of the reason they are so pleased is because they were expecting less, given your pricing policy. Josh Susanto wrote: If the average customer could see half the stuff that I ultimately do no load as permanent data, she'd probably say "but surely that's work 1L?". I'd be tempted to say "give me the 20L to load it now and it's yours", but I just couldn't. Even a sculpted rock monkey has to have some kind of standard. I load maybe about half of what I produce, even though I know the other half could be pulling in a profit on top of loading costs within maybe about 2 months (each piece). Really, from a simple mathematical standpoint, I'm probably being too self-critical. If its taking you 2 months to recover a L$20 upload fee, I think you need all the self criticism you can muster. Josh Susanto wrote: One compromise I'm not willing to make in order to increase profits is to become a sculptie wh0re. Another is that I'm not willing to become a marketing slave. I am not really sure what either of these things are, sometimes I buy sculpties, sometimes I make them, buying things like sculpties is good, it means you are supporting another merchant, supporting the marketplace as a whole and encouraging further creation. Selling sculpties is also a good thing it encourages the less skilled to create. Sometimes I spend some time marketing my business but since I get paid for that, I don't think it's me thats the slave. Remember this is a thread where the OP is asking for ways to improve sales, giving up on the idea of profit and giving everything away is not a solution to this problem. Josh Susanto wrote: But a lot of people are making stuff that could be marketed my way with a lot less focus on paying to get paid and a lot more focus on making more stuff they like to make. To tell those people, at least, that getting a box rezzed and filling it with anything one can sell with a straight face is not a good first step, is to do them a disservice. I also make things I like to make, thats pretty much essential if you want it to sell, please don't try and present the idea that because you don't have the confidence to charge money for what you make, your stuff is good and wholesome, while people who like to make a profit are basically deceitful. If you sell something for L$1, you don't have to create to any standard at all, no one will be expecting anything good, and they won't bother to complain if what they get is otherwise, making something that others will value is another story entirely. Josh Susanto wrote: Not that I think anyone actually said that; I just think people should all be wary of any implication that there's any clear reason not to try things my own way, especially if some other way has already not worked. My way is not the most glamorous or impressive, but it does actually work. I didn't imply anything, I said quite categorically 'DO NOT DO THIS!. The reasons not to are very clear... 1. 'Stop trying to sell it and give it away' is not a marketing strategy 2. Following this strategy drives down prices and denies others the opportunity to make money 3. Price is unlikely to be the deciding factor when it comes to making clothing purchases. 4. All the published evidence (albeit anecdotal) suggests there is very little conversion of freebie/dollarbie sales to actual sales. 5. This is totally unsustainable, eventually your losses will get the better of you, since you aren't even making enough to cover the depreciation on your mouse, let alone your computer, internet and electricity, although perhaps these are costs you don't personally have to cover?.