Ziggy21 Slade

Josh Susanto wrote: Offering many products at low prices is not necessarily an indicator that they are all crap. Unfortunately for many people it is!. I am NOT saying your stuff or the OP's is ACTUALLY crap, just that a dollarbie/freebie price gives that impression, the message it sends to the consumer is... even the creator doesn't think this is worth paying for. Plus I have never really understood where the enjoyment comes from, anyone can make something and give it away, the challenge and enjoyment for me at least is in making something and SELLING it. Josh Susanto wrote: Regardless of the quality of our products, we could all benefit if we could just agree on some "tough love" for LL until they decide to start fixing persistent problems instead of thinking up even more new features that also will not work correctly. Rule #1: don't buy ANY listing enhancements AT LEAST until LL fixes the shopping cart. I don't think you will ever make this 'tough love' idea work, although I can see you have suffered from some technical failings, it's perhaps true to say that you have suffered more than most, I get the occasional failed delivery, but not many and certainly not enough to make me withdraw my advertising. Remember if you decide not to buy enhancements you lose no revenue, if I decide the same, I could lose hundreds of US dollars a month.

Sassy Romano wrote: Personally, I suspect it would be rather like my attempt to watch the group Fashcon which lasted about a day, during which every few minutes there'd be another group message of more clothes that I wasn't interested in. You really will have to start wearing clothes soon though Sassy, we have all asked you several times!!

Listed above are some good ways to make money, if you hear of any easy ways, please let us all know. :matte-motes-big-grin:

I like this ... A man wakes up in the morning after sleeping on an advertised bed, in advertised pyjamas. He will bathe in an advertised tub, wash with advertised soap, shave with an advertised shaver and have advertised juice, cereal and toasted bagel (toasted in an advertised toaster) for breakfast. He'll then put on advertised clothing and glance at his advertised watch. He will ride to work in advertised car, call in to let his office know he's running late from his advertised cell phone, and sit down in an advertised desk chair when he gets to the office. He'll work at his advertised computer, and write with an advertised pen. Yet this man hesitates to advertise (or market his business), worrying that marketing and advertising won't work. Finally, when his unadvertised business goes under, he will advertise it for sale. I would say. if you only need to sell 2 items to pay for the advert I would definitely give it a try, but for me the Category Landing Page has not been a great spot. I think it depends to some extent what you are selling, generally I just type straight into search, occasionally I will drill down to a category, usually when I am looking for sculpties, no doubt others have their own specific habits. I have had most success with the checkout page and the Homepage. I am currently running 10 homepage enhancements and I will be adding to this as we hit Winterval. Is it worth it?, absolutely without any doubt!, I had a short break from advertising last year when they migrated Marketplace from the old site, when I finally updated my listings and got advertising again my business increased 10 fold. Make sure you make the enhanced listing count, fill in the entire listing including keywords and features, ensure all 8 related products slots are filled and SLURL is included, try and include 8 images (stick one in of other products (clearly labelled) if you don't have enough). Including an animated Gif has totally changed the fortunes of one of my products, and for some things you tube videos work well too, use everything at your disposal to drain every drop of value from the enhancement fee that you can.

I always say there are 2 ways to make money here, one is to make a Killer product that everyone wants, nice if you can manage it, but for most of us thats not going to happen, the other way is to make lots of 'not so killer' products, individually they wont have great sales, but added together they make a business, so I think you need to just keep creating. Think of some things you can do to increase and diversify your range without going too far off the beaten track, have you got anything prepared for Halloween for instance, or a gift for gift for guys to buy for their SO for Christmas, how about slave silks, bridal, or something with an historical angle to meet the needs of RPers. Use the same set of skills to Target different parts of the market, if you can get a little slice of each, you might just end up with a whole pie. Over and over again we see this same story told here - my stuff isn't selling so I dropped the prices, DO NOT DO THIS!, it makes no sense, if someone likes your stuff they will buy it, price really isn't much of a factor when the vast majority of items are only a few cents. If you charge L$50 you are only asking for 20 Cents US, so dropping every price to L$1 is highly unlikely to persuade someone to buy from you. When you shop for clothes, do you buy the thing you really like or the thing you don't like so much but is a few cents cheaper?. There is little point in going to the effort that you have to create a brand, and take nice photos which present a professional image of quality and then flog your stuff as L$1 freebies. Your shop name and photos say... Take a good look girls - carefully made quality products, whilst your prices say ... avoid this cheap rubbish like the plague. Remember people are aspirational they want to tell people they have the best stuff, not the cheapest, how many times has a GF said to you, wow I love your dress, I bet that was really cheap!. Look for the most expensive product you can find thats in the same vein, make a better one and charge more!!. Keep creating and keep trying new things, like in RL, here success is something you have to build slowly, but it is pretty much guaranteed for those who put the hours in and have the staying power.

Just 5% of sales, less if you sell a lot.

I often sit and go through the enhanced items on homepage, and I very rarely buy clothes, I agree clothing lends itself better to the impulse buyer, but its certainly not the only thing that can be effectively promoted through this means. Generally I run about 10 or so homepage enhancements, they all pay for themselves several times over and none of them are clothing related. Obviously it varies on the product, but I am in a number of categories, and I find that mostly people don't drill down, so category landing pages haven't been great for me, home page works best whatever the product, and the checkout receipt page has also given good results for the money. Price is also a factor, I rarely enhance anything that costs less than L$500, because you have to make a lot of sales to get your money back.

Sigh!, this post had such potential until I read... YT Upsilon wrote: ...(preferably clean)... :smileyvery-happy: looks like a good full list though Dude, Good Luck with it.

Sassy Romano started a thread on this very subject here . She didn't have a great deal of response though, shame cos it's a great idea.

Medhue Simoni wrote: I question these assumptions. So do I... In the olden days when everything was ranked on recent sales, and the most popualr items were shown in order on the homepage, there was always a complete mix of products, noteable long term chart toppers, were the Mysti tool, NMC Media Centre (a TV), Avatar Painter ( I think it was called), and Bits and Bobs - Lovescene. I managed a few days in the number 1 spot myself on a few occasions with seasonal props packs and shoulder pets. Of course there was always fashion too but each item was very short lived, although I guess thats what makes it fashion. If items were ranked in that way today I reckon the top spots would be filled with various pet foods and accessories, more than any other type of item. If you look back at the economic stats for July 2009 you can clearly see a huge peak when the chicken craze reached its height and an Extra $100k US plus poured into the economy, no dress, or pair of stilettos ever did that and the breedables market has grown and developed since then. There is no denying that fashion, is a massive part of the economy, but it certainly isn't 90% and its also true to say its almost certainly the category with the most creators and listings, so when it comes to getting customers to view your products I would suggest its possibly the toughest game to be in.

There, now you have some cash, get back to work!:smileywink:

Nix Manx wrote: I know what you mean, I've been knocking around SL on and off for a couple of years, hadn't really given serious thought to starting an SL business until about 8 months ago when they annouced they would be adding meshes to the grid, I expected it to be here alot sooner than it actually was but that aside its coming next month and so I have returned with the intention of setting up a mesh business, but when you start considering some of the costs it gets to the point where you really have to be committed to even stand a chance. To rent a tiny sim with 15k prims you have to pay LL $3540USD per year which imo is insane and that doesnt include set up costs then you consider the thousands of sims out there, other providers are able to charge between $480 - $1080USD in the SL clones out there and they dont even have a smidge of the resources LL has, to say land in SL is at a premium is an understatment, and its not even real. Then there are listing fees as you have mentioned, and then on top of that, sales fees if you sell via the marketplace, to top it off you also have upload fees, which is what im getting to right now. Uploading meshes is not going to be cheap (the minimum is L$150 even if its a mesh cube and it scales to insane costs as it gets more complex), as content creators we feed the creation of second life, without people like us making content LL wouldnt even have a business, they wouldnt stay leaps and bounds above the competition and they wouldnt be making any money at all, its shocking to see how LL can think up new ways of draining every penny out of you, if they could stop sucking people dry for even 1 year, i bet the population of SL would increase alot. One day an SL clone will come out and will be a huge success, its just waiting to happen. One of the things I find amongst residents who are not involved in business here is a total inability to see the bigger picture, and if you don't mind me saying, Nix, this is where you are. I do agree with you that the cost of a full sim does seem too much, I would certainly like it to be cheaper, but I think in reality it could never be a lot cheaper, the infrastructure required to generate a world like this, is incredibly expensive, and it really isn't fair to draw comparisons with other SL type grids. From a business point of view spending $480 - £1080 in another grid is much worse value for money than LL are offering, even the biggest of the other grids can only provide you with a concurrency of 2-300 users at peak times, compare that with 70,000 or so here and maybe SL doesn't seem quite as expensive, in fact lets do the maths 70000 / 300 = 233 - SL has 233 times as many customers as the biggest alternative 3540 / 233 = 15.1 - So really those other grids should only be charging you $15 per year for a sim in order to offer you a similar % profit rate to SL, and this is % profit NOT turnover. You talk of 'Insane' fees to upload a mesh, is that really the right word to use? If it costs you $10US to upload a complex model, you are likely going to be able to sell that an unlimited number of times for AT LEAST $10 a go, compared with selling resources on other sites (I mean web sites rather than grids) the amount you are asked to pay is tiny, Turbosquid for instance will take at least 40% of every sale, and this sort of figure is common across similar sites like Istock, Revostock, Dreamstime, Envato etc. It seems expensive because at the moment you can't imagine how you are going to get a return, if you are skilled at Mesh and it sounds like you are, you are in a position to make an absolute killing during the next year or so, I personally know self taught sculpty makers who are currently cashing out several thousand dollars a month, if you have the skills, there is no reason at all why you can't exceed this, but as with any business you will have to spend substantial amounts to cover your costs, many RL retailers would be jumping for joy if they were able to clear a Net profit of even 20%.

Many of us have been caught out by adverts renewing both inworld and on the marketplace, I know how annoying it can be, I sell seasonal items so often there is zero value in advertising them after a particular date, it breaks my heart when I forget and end up stuffing some of my profits down the drain. Having said that, I think its worth applying a little perspective here, you say the L$1800 has effectively stopped you in your tracks because now you have no upload fees. L$1800 is less than $7 US, so a little more than the cost of a Big Mac Meal, a L$10 upload fee is less than 4 cents. If you are serious about making money here then you really need to inject a little capital into your business, if a $6-7 loss is going to force you to down tools, moving this business forward is going to be a struggle. Of course it is possible to build a business without bringing any money in at all, there are regular posters here who have done it, I think this is very admirable but also very difficult and often seems to involve Pole Dancing!. Personally I spent about $300 US over the first 6 months or so until I started making some back, in the 4 years since then I have only ever taken money out and without naming the actual amounts involved I can tell you I have made that initial investment back 100s of times over. Marcus Hancroft wrote: All the money we exchange into lindens goes into the LL accounts and we get virtual currency in exchange that can ONLY be spent inside Second Life. So they are making the money. I'M certainly not. And even if my stores were doing fantastically good, I would not take the money out of SL like some people do. One of us at least is a little confused here, L$ can of course be exchanged for your local currency through a number of outlets, I am not sure why you have already decided that you will never be taking money out of SL, this may be the root of your problem as it effectively means that anything you invest in your business you are guaranteed to lose, since you can never truly profit from it. You seem quite cross with LL for making a profit, don't be, that profit sustains our world and provides a wonderful opportunity for many of us to make money in a really enjoyable way. It's also worth remembering that LL make this profit because some years ago people were prepared to risk their hard earned cash on an untried and risky business venture and now that risk is paying off, they deserve to get paid. You are currently in that investment phase, sacrifice some RL luxury in the next few days, bring the money you save in here and use it to restart the production line, if you continue you to work as hard at this as it sounds like you have been doing, you WILL see success and in a few months time you will be able to take back everything you put in and a whole lot more besides. Remember - It's not supposed to easy!

Niko Kozower wrote: Honestly its only 200L.. why go through all this trouble? I gotta agree with NIko, try and keep this in perspective OP - L$200 is about 80 cents, so I am not sure you can call this a 'big mistake'.

There are so many stupid things I have done, but here is one that leaps to mind. I sell seasonal gift givers, I have a 4th of July one that gives sparklers and hats, I always set one up in the store so people can see what it gives. Because I am selling the giver, the gifts have to be Copy, Trans so the new owner can give them away too. It never occurred to me to change the perms on the gifts in the givers in the store, so people were just coming and collecting the freebies and sticking them in their own object with a give script - doh!. What alerted me to this **bleep** up!?, a random person contacted me and told me a Linden (who shall remain nameless) was standing in a welcome area giving out my stuff!.

The problem is that its possible to exploit an Affiliate vendor and get free stuff, Casper is offering an option to users that ensures this can't happen. Reports are that this is happening more and more, so it seems like word is getting around. I have not opted to use this service yet, but I have a big product release soon, and I think I will do then.

My sales have been tremendous this year, up again on previous years and my animated textures which I sell as a builders resource have been selling particularly well, I see this as a sign that plenty of new residents are joining us, so I am looking forward to a stonking Winterfest. For some reason, yesterdays sales were particularly bad, so bad at one stage, I was here checking the place was still working, in my experience Summer can be a bit like that, curious unexplained quiet periods. I think the overall picture looks pretty positive, 1 - 2 years ago all you read in these forums was negativity, people telling us that merchants were leaving in droves, this fabulous store had closed, that ancient sim was shutting down, they were tough times and I think they had the effect of sorting the wheat from the chaff, what remains to a large degree are businesses with a genuine economic reason to exist, led by merchants with the tenacity to plough through adversity and still show a profit. A little slump can be a good thing, this is the time to re assess your strategy, to make sure you are using the marketplace and other systems to their fullest potential in the promotion of your products, and to think about the approaching season and how you are going extract profit from it.

My advice would be - Stick at it!. I think the marketplace is a bit of a numbers game, you need to build up a good range of products to really see the sales roll in, I see you have a few things listed, but like a lot of new merchants (including myself a few years ago) you have a bit of this and a bit of that, with no real direction, try and decide on one direction, for a little while at least, and make a range of products. Remember once a product is made its very easy and cheap to make modifications, so your robe for instance could easily be in a series of colours or perhaps you could make it menu driven so the user can choose a colour, this will probably only be 2 or 3 hours work and could give you an extra 6 products or a much more universally desirable single product. You have done a great job with your branding, however this particular product is getting lost in the black background so you may want to tweak that, or better still get a picture of it on an avatar. While we are talking listings, your descriptions are very short, I realise its a challenge using a second language, but you perhaps want to elaborate a little, sell them a dream, not a sculpted prim. Similarly you have a storytelling snowman, not too surprising he isn't selling too well right now, but Halloween sales start in about 7 weeks, whack those scripts in a Pumpkin/severed head/skeleton or whatever and you got a Halloween product, how about a storytelling Parrot for the zillions of beachy types in SL, Storytelling Easter Bunny - you get the idea, right?. I notice you have a sculpty gun sight and scripts for making guns, IMHO this is almost a great product, create some sculpted parts for different types of guns, create some nice textures to go with, throw in sounds, your already made scripts and some instructions and you have a Gun makers kit. Check out the competition for this type of product and make yours BETTER, NOT CHEAPER, although price is always a factor, even if you are say L$100 cheaper, in reality thats only €0.25 and probably isn't going to be enough to influence a buying decision, whereas if you have spent an hour searching out and uploading a few free sound FX and the other guy hasn't, you are probably gonna get the sale. Look at what you have and what its trying to compete with, and make your products win that competition on their merits and not on price, people tend to buy the product which best meets their needs rather than the product which doesn't quite meet their needs but is a bit cheaper than one that does. Good Luck! : )

What is a TDP Chip?

I have never done this sleeping thing, but strangely (in my mind at least), whenever this subject comes up it seems most avatars do sleep or at least have gone through a sleeping phase at some point, so no pictures from me. But slightly off this topic, I recently bought a pair of leather biker trousers and my friend who hated them and was trying to put this across to me said - "but Ziggy, are these really your dream trousers?" I had to stop and think for a while, because here I am in SL, I can have any trousers I want, I can actually have the trousers of my dreams and yet I chose a pair of crappy old leathers, which leads me to the question... Jo is that really your dream bedroom?

Fornicola Butuzova wrote: A service sompany has no fixed material cost. Try that model with a pizza company. Beacuse the 50% off requirement, and the 50% discount create a situation where youare selling at about 30% BELOW you cost to make a pizza. So sure you get 200 new people odering pizza, but you are losing money each time you sell one, it cost you money to participate if you have material costs. You lose money. So while you are selling pizzas at a loss to hundreds, Groupon is making 25% of the cost of a pie. The only cost they have is a website. It is exploiting small business owners that are very anxious but also very ignorant to the "Social Marketing" craze. Obviously there are fixed costs associated with any business, service or not, in the case of Scuba there are pool fees, Air fills, Equipment depreciation etc. I am not sure where you are going with your example, you talk of a 50% off requirement AND a 50% discount, either these are the same thing or people are giving stuff away free?, in any case there is no such thing, most Groupon discounts are for less than 50%. Most Pizza businesses will be making more than 50% Gross Profit on their sales, 60 - 70% is a far more likely figure for that type of business. There may be a few businesses that use Groupon offers as a loss leader, most from what I have seen will be making at least a small profit. Are you sure that Groupon's only cost is a web site?, I am pretty sure they employ Sales reps, Admin Staff, Accountancy Staff, have a telephone bill, office rentals, and their own marketing costs to name but a few. I think its quite arrogant to believe that all small business owners using Groupon are ignorant, easily exploited people who cant do basic profit and loss calculations, while you apparently, are the only one who really understands it. Fornicola Butuzova wrote: If they are "Upselling" a service then they are not really participating in a groupon, it is just advertising. Almost every offer has an up sell, thats how it works, you offer something at a great discount, people buy it and then you try and tempt them with something else, and err yes, it is just advertising, what did you think it was ?. Fornicola Butuzova wrote: They have no idea how business works, and how what they sell hurts small businesses that have fixed material costs and no idea what they are getting into. They pump the struggling small business with the promise of hundreds of new customers, the unsophisatcated and isolated merchant with the excitement of global "Social Networking" and brush off the un avoidable loss as "Costs associated with marketing". It is deceptive, and it is done to make a ton of cash, as goupon gets paid whether the promotion works or fails. I think most business owners have far more knowledge of their businesses and modern marketing techniques than you give them credit for, your entire argument seems to revolve around the idea that small business owners are just too stupid to realise what is happening to them. Very often I see the same companies featured again and again in Groupon, how do you explain this, suicidal tendencies? While I have been running businesses I have been offered advertising deals on everything from the local paper to the Pins at my local bowling alley, not one of these offered any kind of guarantee as to how much business I might get from advertising with them, nor did they offer any money back if the advert didn't do too well, thats just how advertising works

I am Ziggy21 Slade - The Brand, everything I touch turns to sold, when I wake up in the morning I can taste success in my spit, Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the Moon I’m not a one-trick pony, I’m not a 10-trick pony, I’m a whole field of ponies – and they’re literally all running towards this job. actually please can I be Nick Hewer, I have a really ugly scowl and am mostly miserable?

As Darrius pointed out this is largely academic, but just curious to know what basis you have for making this statement... Fornicola Butuzova wrote: Groupon is a scam in RL and it damages small businesses. I am not sure why you feel it's a scam, there is nothing dishonest about it, all the prices etc are published in advance. Groupon finally attracted me to start Scuba diving, they offered about 30% off the usual price, although I was soon talked into the up sell (an essential element of any Groupon Offer), and spent a bit more, the company I dive with are overwhelmed with bookings from their Groupon exposure, it's pretty much made their business rather than damaging it. Also I do wonder why a RL company would choose and pay money to 'damage their business'.

Tandero wrote: Okay I am in desperate need of a job but I seriously don't know how to do a damn thing! A friend helped me open a little shop but in all honesty I did a very crappy job and the items are so random I guess it just doesnt catch people eye! Its been open for a week and I've made no sells...one week left and I'll be left with nothing. I've thought of just being like some kind of pro beggar or mooch because it seems like the only option I have left. I can't even get a job as a dancer because my schedule isn't set in stone and I haven't found a single freelance club since I've joined SL... I also have NO idea how to make clothes, I'm creative and an artist but I'm not so good with technology. Real estate well you gotta have money to get money and in all honesty it seems kind of risky. I don't know how to build. I don't know how to be a dj, like streaming music and whatnot. Linden hunting takes HOURS just to get a couple bucks. Hosting, I dont even know because no one can teach me how to do it and ugh.... I just don't know I'm thinking of just whoring around a little. If anyone has any advice please share, I really need some. Firstly I think you need to think a little bit about marketing yourself, hundreds of residents read these forums, and you just advertised a huge list of stuff you CAN'T do, this is not a great way to get a job. Think about what you CAN do, and as important, what you LIKE doing, if you are enjoying the work you are much more likely to be successful at it, and if you're not successful, well, who cares, at least you had fun - right?. So concentrating on what you CAN do, you are an artist, and in a much shorter time than most, you have managed to make some items and open a store, this is a great achievement which you should not underestimate. Now you say you did a very crappy job, if you are able to recognise this crappiness, then you should be able to make some improvements to change it, if you need help with your building skills, go to some free classes and improve them, ask questions, learn and develop. Only a handful of people have come to Second Life and got rich and none of them got rich quick!, to me it seems like you are in a dreadful hurry, it takes time to learn to build here, it takes time to learn how to market what you make, but the thing that takes the most time is learning what works and what doesn't, I am lucky enough to be in a position where I have a good number of items selling well, but I didn't just TP in one day and make best sellers, I also made hundreds of things that barely/never sell at all!. There is still plenty of money to be made here, but getting your hands on it takes time. dedication and determination, so relax, in a weeks time if you need to pay the rent, sacrifice your next Takeaway Pizza and invest a little real life money and give yourself time to build this business up

Cylinder starts with plywood texture... So I select texture of the other surfaces and .... what? Apply a transparent texture, search 'totally' in your inventory and you should fine one