Ziggy21 Slade

Three perfectly ordinary words, but put them together and they form a phrase bound to strike pure terror into the heart of even the most experienced merchant. New Inworld Search !!!!!Shudders!!!!!

Jessika Core wrote: I don't even see an choice in the option list of Flagging an item for misuse of keywords. (Of course when it was still Xstreet after LL bought them, they never responded to that anyways.) Actually thats not true, I have had 3 items delisted for misuse of keywords, and mine were minor errors rather than wholesale cheating, so I would say flag those items, eventually they will start to disappear.

Peewee Musytari wrote: Selling unboxed items may be better for the customer, so that they don`t have to unpack a box, but it is a horrendous idea for the Merchant, who will then have folders full of items in their "Outgoing" Folder adding all those items to their inventory count. Maybe it's just me, but I have these folders already, is it really normal practice to create an item, package it and then only retain this boxed version in inventory, deleting all the unpackaged stuff?, what if you have to go back to it to update or show it to one of your friends?, you have to open your box to inventory each time, seems like a long way around to me.

Couldbe Yue wrote: I'm going to take issue with this. I sell goods that usually contain around 5 -15 separate items and have an inventory size of around 35k. I try to keep the growth rate down but new scripts, notecards, animations, sculpts and textures needed for builds manage to increase it and that's before things like buying stuff so couldbe doesn't always look shabby when she's out and about (ok, that's rare but she does still vanity shop sometimes). Even if I'm harsh with my next inventory clean I don't expect to be able to get rid of more than 5k worth of stuff (draft copies of scripts and builds mainly). Now you could tell me to box stuff up, put it in an alt etc but all that does is slow down an already slow workflow that's primarily due to the technical limitations of the platform and pushes it into the realm of unusable. I met an account once who had only been around a few months yet had something close to 70k worth of items. All she did was hunts and didn't even bother to unpack the stuff. She wondered why she had inventory issues lol. In that case I can see a case for getting snippy but if you look at some of the larger texture or sculpt makers I'd be surprised if they had less than 50k in their inventory, and very few redundant items. Well I will take issue your issue, : ) I have 430 items listed under this avatar including some texture packs which include 2 versions of the texture, sample prims and sounds, I have a further 150 or so products for that business which are on sale but not listed, I have a store which sells flags for every country in the world and some, these are sold in packs of 9, so theres over 2500 in total, made with over 1000 textures although I only listed 20, I have 2 alts which sell breedable pets, one of which has over 3000 textures in use, but are in this avatars inventory, I have the dusty remnants of a stack of failed projects from 4 years of solid creating, I love sculptys and I must own at least 1 pack from almost every creator, I started counting them once and gave up at 100 packs I never use temporary uploads and I am not incredibly tidy so I often have several versions of the same thing where I have made minor alterations and I still only have 30k items in inventory, I know if i put my mind to it this could be less than 15k. OK I am not the biggest merchant in SL but I probably have more products up than the vast majority of merchants, and I know there are many people with many more items in inventory than this ( I have a non merchant friend with 120k) but I do not believe this a result of necessity. To use your example of a sculpty maker lets say he provides the sculpt map, a very generous 3 textures, a bump map and a sample object, thats 6 items, if we allow him 20k for personal clothes and stuff he still has to have 5000 sculptys in packs listed to reach your 50k items, and this still makes the assumption that he has items listed now which don't currently exist in inventory, which seems highly unlikely to me. I may well be wrong about this and perhaps Darrius or one of the clever dudes can correct or confirm , but I don't think inventory loading will be an issue for Direct Delivery after all it delivers if you aren't even online, all the action takes place on the asset server I imagine.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: Just one of my Boxed sculpty landscape packs - with all the sculpy maps, shadow maps, license notecards, info notecards, demo photos, scripts, and demo prims can have almost a 100 objects. When Boxed this makes up 1 prim object filled with content. So lets say I only sell 10 packs... that fills my inventory with an additional 1000 objects. But Brooke is promoting that its much better for Merchants to new unbox all our boxed items and fill up our already huge account inventory. Why? Because supposedly to some LL insider that help LL create their requirements for DD - Customers are so hugely inconvenienced not rezzing what they bought on the Merchants store. I didnt know this was such a hugely critical problem in the years I have been buying and selling. No mention as to how LL forcing all Merchants to further fill up our account inventory with 1000's more items (or even 10's of thousands if Merchants unbox their contents) will impact stability of the Merchant's account. What if a Merchant already has 60,000 or more items in their inventory and needs to stuff another 20,000 SLM items into their inventory? Is this really an issue?, you can just leave the item boxed if you really want to inconvenience your customers, but if you did want to make it easy for them you could have one main folder with a sub folder for Sculpt maps, another for shadow maps and so on, much easier than them having to open several boxes, and then drag the resulting folders into one folder or have one big box with a huge jumble of items inside. This new system obviously makes things easier especially for products of this nature, well, it will do if it works : ) Where are these 20000 extra items going to come from? this would suggest there are merchants who have products in their magic Boxes which don't exist in their inventory, whilst thats not impossible, I would suggest it's as unusual as it is foolhardy, granted they may have some tidying up to do, but if they have 60,000 items a tidy up was long over due anyway.

Actually, almost. Paypal are releasing a new debit card later this year that works directly from your Paypal account without having to be topped up, so in theory you could cash out L$s to Paypal instantly through Virwox and then spend straight away from the debit card. So pretty close to spending L$s directly

I was having a moan about the state of banner advertising earlier in another thread, my hope was that they would do something about it, not get rid of it completely. I am stunned, why would they get rid of it?, it was supposedly in such high demand that they had to ration what you could buy. What will they put in all those ad spaces on every page?. Its such a shame it used to be great, expensive but effective, weird!,I just don't understand

If I were you Wade, quite frankly I wouldn't bother! The new system is pitiful, there is no way to see what is and isn't available, all you can do is keep completing orders and adding your card details in the vain hope that there will be some space. When you do actually manage to find space, they have rationed what you are allowed to book and buy to such an extent that the whole exercise becomes pointless. The homepage for instance is restricted to 1000 impressions per week, which is not enough impressions to make an impression, even if the buying public love your product, you would be lucky if this number of impressions generated you 2 hits per day. They are now only able to offer 25000 impressions per day for homepage in total, thats between all of us, Xstreet used to deliver 90000 impressions per day and you could buy them all!, so somehow they have apparently managed to lose 70% of hompepage visitors, if this is to be believed. Then there have been mistakes with over booking, so they sold space that they couldn't actually deliver, when I complained they gave me the option to move my ad to a different time and then they failed to deliver that. The already miniscule banner weight of 40k has been halved to 20k, so you can pretty much forget about having anything moving in your ad. It still works in principal, banners do generate hits, it's just the booking process is so convoluted and the impressions so heavily rationed, that it just can't be an effective use of anyones time to bother with. It's a great shame, banners used to be really effective for me, I spent 100s of 1000s a year on them, unless they make some radical changes I wont be bothering again.

Ai Velde wrote: Virwox because it's instant. Ditto Plus I just could not bring myself to reward LL with extra conversion commissions, when they 'improved' their service to us by increasing the cash out time from instant to 5 days, its so astoundingly pitiful, it's almost unbelievable.

Medhue Simoni wrote: This has been a problem for a very long time. Recently, I went on a big shopping spree to find some different clothes to fit a few different character AOs that I was working on, and I was astonished by the lack of choices. Even after all this time, it seems that many clothing merchants just refuse to make male clothing. I'd think it is kind of alot easier than female clothing too. Ok, I understand the tendency to make things for the section of the market that spends the most, but you are throwing away a good percentage of the consumer base if you are not making male clothing. Recently, I made a male and female set of AOs that fit a specific character. The male version was actually released first, but the female version has sold almost twice as many as the male version in the 6+ months since it's first release. Maybe females like the character more, but the male version makes up 30-35% of the total sales for those characters. I don't know about you, but I like having that extra 30-35%. What you are saying is of course correct, but I think for many creators here, certainly myself, what we do is always a bit of a trade off, and by that I mean, there are 101 things I know I should make, that I am sure would sell or might fit well with other products, then there are some listings I should improve, that little custom job I promised a friend, some things in the store I need to re arrange and so on, there just isn't time to do it all and so we end up cherry picking from a list of possible jobs, and the ones which are perhaps a little less commercially viable get put on the back burner. As you say you like having that extra 35% in sales of the male AO, but it could be also be argued that you are losing potential sales from a Second female AO that you could have made had you not spent time making the Male AO. Now obviously I realise that things aren't quite as simple as that, there are other factors at play and you know your business infinitely better than I do, plus being an animator you can probably afford a butler to make stuff for you : ) , but I can totally see why some creators end up on this female only route, when differences in sales of male and female products can be so enormous and creation time for many is so limited. I would like to propose Bloke Month as a Marketplace promotion, a month long celebration and promotion of all things male and fairy costumes

Nathan Hopkins wrote: If I were you though I would get into making clothing for men on SL. I totally agree, Nathan - Adams' passion and interest for this sector would definitely set him aside from much of the competition, so c'mon Adams turn all this frustration into something useful, set about making what you can't find and want the most, I bet you will enjoy the experience

Sigh! Have you ever heard the phrase 'Rebel without a cause' I think maybe you should check it out. No one is dictating anything, apart from you, with your demands that all men take a greater interest in fashion. Society is not telling you what to spend money on, the excerpt that I pasted is a report on how expendable income is used within a certain age group, this is a report on how people CHOOSE to spend their money, it is not a new law that is being introduced and there is no requirement for you to comply with it, It simply backs up the point I have been trying to make with some numerical evidence. Its very arrogant to draw the conclusion that because a certain group in society, very generally speaking, share similar interests or lack of interest, they are sheep who can't think for themselves, you could apply this flawed logic to almost any group you can think of... are the worlds Scuba Divers sheep because they all share an interest in Scuba Diving, how about Dog owners, old ladies who like Knitting, members of the Volkswagon owners club, or dare I say it, people who want to be fashionable!!!!??. More women apply for Nursing positions than men, does this make them sheep? Why aren't you demanding that more women become construction workers for instance, or to keep things more on track, start campaigning for women to buy fewer pairs of shoes and eat less chocolate. Before you get angry and reply again - take note, I am not saying all women should become nurses or that they may not be construction workers, we are all free to do and be interested or not in whatever we like, and when given this freedom natural patterns occur and retail markets respond to these patterns. If we were to survey the women's shoe shops in your city I am willing to bet we would find more shoe styles suitable for wearing in a hospital than we would styles suitable for construction work. In your weird world you would be demanding that all women's shoe shops carry construction site boots in all sizes! In my opinion men and women are equal in society (or should be) with equal freedoms to do or not do whatever they want, but this definitely does not mean that men and women are the same, the differences between genders are not for shouting and getting angry about but for celebrating, because it's these differences that attract men and women to each other and ultimately ensure the survival of our species. As the French put it - Vive la difference!!

I think you missed my point somewhat, I am not suggesting that men have to wear a suit to work and I certainly did NOT suggest that a man should always return home to a dinner cooked by his wife. I was actually thinking in terms of going out to dinner and my point was that a man may very well choose the same clothes or the same style of clothes for both working and socialising, while a woman is unlikely to do the same. These are of course sweeping generalisations but that does not mean they are incorrect even if they don't relate to you personally or your view of how things should be This is the way things are and always have been ( yes I will get to you in a minute Persephone : ) ) and no amount of foot stomping from you is going to change that. As for colourful clothing, I agree, in history and in different cultures male and female clothing is often equally flamboyant, but I still maintain they are using fashion in different ways, look at our Tudor nobleman, his clothing is dripping in gold, most of the dyes used would have only been available to the very wealthy, everything about his clothing is designed to project his rank and status, whilst this is also true of his female companion, it is notably less so, her clothing is more about presenting her. Also it has to be said that although this could be described as Tudor Fashion, it certainly isn't a good example of what most people in Tudor Times wore. A study conducted last May on international spending habits of people under 30 found that women and men spend their extra money in very different ways: 40% of women spend a majority of their money on clothing compared to just 12% of men. Ladies are willing to go for broke if they have something nice on while they are doing it. Let’s lay the cliché that women are emotional spenders to rest. The numbers show that, despite women spending more on clothing and “personal care,” men spend more in many other categories, including alcoholic drinks, cars, eating out and-ahem-audio and visual equipment. (So says the Bureau of Labor Statistics most recent Consumer Expenditure Survey.) It's just how things are !

Adams Scarmon wrote: Thanks for your comments. You are right that IRL it is pretty much the same. The men's department is at very dark, small section of stores, whilst the woman department is at the front, taking up 80% of the store space. Personally, i blame the men themselves. They dont ''care'' much about the items they wear, neither are they very interested in fashion at all. Which is a very wrong development. You do not have to be ''gay'' to like fashion or show interest it. Maintaining your body and dressing accordingly IS ALRIGHT, it is encouraged even. I think that is the main reason though, there is not much demand for good quality menswear, because the gentleman have a general lack of interest, or because the Society thinks men and fashion do not go together, unless the word ''Gay'' is inbetween. That is just totally totally wrong. But we have to live with it, and SLOWLY improve the situation i suppose. What a thoroughly strange thread this is, does it really surprise you that when searching for 'Fairy' you don't find many clothes for men? Really?. How many men do you imagine think.... 'hmmm whats the image I want to present here - I know - Fairy! I don't think its really true to say that men aren't interested in fashion but it is certainly true that in general they are less interested than women, this isn't 'wrong' and it definitely isn't a 'development', it's just the way things are and always have been. Men and women use clothes differently, for men clothing is very often used to denote status or rank, a man may well put on a suit in the morning, wear it all day in the office, and then go and eat dinner in it, many women would have gone through 2 or 3 changes of clothing during the same time. Here in SL things are no different, most of the guys I know probably change their clothes about once a month, while most of the women I know change everyday. So I don't think you have spotted a huge gap in the market, the market has just responded to demand and realised there wasn't much, learn to live with by all means, forget about waiting for the situation to improve though, its been this way for about the last 5000 years!

Just want to confirm, L$30 million - around 130k US dollars - right? Not saying there is anything wrong with that just want to be sure, not many things here sell for 130k US.

Dusk Firehawk wrote: I see the predicament for both parties. Undoubtedly you should have received bettercustomer service, however, I ASSUME if I'm getting a raw or zip file that there may be hazards associated with downloading it. If I'm uncomfortable, I write the seller. I think most sellers would be happy to send you an E-mailed Raw or Zip (I know as a seller I would). also the refund issue is hazy because (1) you still have full perms in your possession or the ability to download them, and refunding doesn't help that problem. I think when you buy psds you should know that an offsite download is possible. Sellers should do their best with this, but you can't hold them responsible for third party site problems, malware, etc. You should heva been dealt with more professionally but in the future, write your seller first and ask for an e-mailed version if this is a concern for you, or just don't buy PSDs. The remainder of your ideas just seem angry. While I would be angry too if what happened to you happened to me, it seems like you are putting an awful lot off on the seller. As I said before, I assume that when connecting to a third party site for downloads there are risks, most people would. As to the comment about not buying templates (from a respondent, not original poster), that's just silly, I think that person doesn't understand the difference between the UV templates and real clothing templates (as in workable items). I buy lots of clothing templates, and have never had issues. I've only bought PSD's once, but I loved them and will def buy more in the future, if nothing else, because they are fabulous to learn from. Sorry you had a bad experience. I am afraid I don't see the predicament for both parties, I don't see why there needs to be a predicament at all. There are plenty of reputable and free sites that can be used for this purpose and there is absolutely no need to go infecting your customers computers with Spyware, nor is there any reason to ASSUME there are likely to be hazzards when downloading a zip file, this is an everyday internet activity and to suggest that the usual default state of affairs is that your computer is likely to be infected when engaged in such activity is complete and utter nonsense. If you sell a product here that requires the use of a third party website, of course you are responsible for what goes on there, if it's part of what your customer is required to do to make the purchase, then its part of the deal you have made. This is a real product that is being sold not some obvious 'get free porn here' scam and I would suggest most people would NOT assume there would be risks associated with it, I download from Istock, RevoStock, Alamy, Dreamstime, Envato, Shutterstock and others, there are never problems of this type, I would never expect there to be, and if there ever was it would be the last time I dealt with that supplier. As I see it, it's the same as sprinkling salt in your shop doorway when is snows, you may not be responsible for the fact that its snowed, but it would be irresponsible and bad for business not to do everything you can to minimise the risk of injury to your customers.

Claireschen Hesten wrote: the thing i was thinking with the splitting is it saves you having to log the alt inworld every time you want to transfer it's earnings to you otherwise you don't need to split the income Although this is obviously more convenient, I would advise against it. Its wise to log both accounts in regularly just in case you have a product flagged or delisted for maturity etc.

Perhaps not quite what you are looking for, but in the right direction certainly is KimLenswomanPhotographer Writer, who has a Gallery in world, she has fabulous photos of loads of famous performers from the 60s onwards, including Pink Floyd and Bob Marley, I think I am correct in saying she has a few photos taken at the Campus Protests in the 60s. Her place is definitely worth a look anyway, I challenge anyone to not find something they will enjoy there. Don't check out her web site here http://www.lenswoman.com/index.php go and see the gallery in world.!

Totally irresponsible posting like this really winds me up. First you post a link to a dodgy viewer in a Public Forum providing it with free advertising. Then you make this statement... ConcernedCitizen wrote: @Darrius For a long time scripts have been able to be stolen and opened through long exhausting hours of determination through hexing the item (script). I myself do not know how to hex and nor have I tried, but people have been doing it for years now. I'm sure people who were really good at what they do could build a client to steal scripts. You quote this rubbish as if its fact, you are entitled to an opinion of course, but it needs to be presented as opinion. As others have pointed out, if this were actually true, nothing would work... ATM machines, magic boxes, payment scripts, vendors, hunts, voting panels, the list goes on and on, according to your claim, all of these things could be 'rigged'. Why not precede this statement with ' I was under the impression...' or provide the source of the information... 'My noob friend told me...' this way readers have some means of gauging the validity of the information, instead of making these bold statements of fact, which you have absolutely no evidence to support. To be fair to you, at this stage, you do claim that stealing a script takes 'long exhausting hours of determination'. Then you say this... ConcernedCitizen wrote: You obviously have no knowledge of even the simplest of forms of stealing scripts. It's not nonsense, and they can easily steal any script they desire. Brushing aside warnings like these is what makes you ignorant. The long exhausting hours of determination have now gone it seems, now, not only is it apparently easy to easy steal any script one desires, but there are a range of methods for doing it ranging from the simplest upwards. Some other fool will now read this and when a similar debate arises, will be re quoting your fantasy as if its fact, another reader maybe is now having second thoughts about doing business here, and a third is downloading this TPV, while rubbing his hands at the thought of all the stuff he is going to steal, all because of this irresponsible garbage of a thread. These are community forums, we are all here to help each other, no one minds about people who don't know stuff we are all happy to help, but people who pretend they know stuff, well thats another story.

Virtual Breedable Pets are not a new thing, although there have been many new ones in the last year. The first was the now infamous Sion Chicken, which became a craze in SL, peaking around June 2009, before this there were lots of pets they just didn't have breeding capability MoiselleErin Teardrop wrote: So is this like some new money pit or have I just not seen it before?I feel stupid enough caring about my avatar which, like all of them, is a computer graphic when it comes down to to. I don't get it, why would people want to buy some prim whatever that required constant feeding of L$ to be able to use it? Whilst its true that you avatar is a computer graphic it's also true that your real life self is a collection of Oxygen, Carbon and Hydrogen atoms , but of course we rarely think of it that way, we know that there is far more to a person than that. Your avatar is a 3D expression of yourself, its a little taster of the 'you' that you want to present. and this is why you care about it so please don't feel stupid, caring about how you represent yourself in Public is a very Human thing to do. There are lots of reasons why people will spend money on an item that constantly needs feeding, remember there are many people who for one reason or another can't keep a pet in RL, and having an animal that requires your attention and care is appealing to them, more appealing perhaps than a non breedable pet. I think many people enjoy the breeding games, striving to gain a certain trait for their pet, shopping and trading and studying the genetics to reach the right result. But of course there is another reason why people keep these pets and that is that they can provide a financial return, you can breed offspring and sell them and sometimes for some quite astounding prices, I have heard of certain pets being sold recently for prices around 100k, no thats not a typo - 100k around $400 US. A very very rough price I would suggest, might be around L$100 per pet, per week , so you could keep 10 for the price of a Big Mac, unsurprisingly many people can manage this. MoiselleErin Teardrop wrote: I am more used to - buy something ONCE and have it until I give it away or trash it when I get tired of it. Bad enough I let landlords stick it to me with renting virtual land. MAybe I am a sucker too. I would suggest that in SL a more tolerant approach is needed, there are people here from many countries, cultures, ages and backgrounds, naturally they find there entertainment in many different ways, if those ways are different to your own, it doesn't make them suckers, and you are not one either. SL is a form of entertainment, spending money here is no different to paying for any other form of entertainment, ultimately you are paying for an experience and not for a material possession. You might spend money going to watch your local football team for instance, you pay your money and in return the only non virtual thing you are given is a small badly printed piece of perforated paper (a ticket), it has no more value in reality than a slice of virtual land, you part with your cash in both instances because you are being provided with an enjoyable experience.

I think paying for any review is still a problem, the reviewer has got to dream up something to say in order to get his 5%, now he make really like your product and give you a rave review, he may go out of his way to find fault just so he has something to write about, but most likely he will do the minimum necessary in order to get his 5% so you will end up with hundreds of reviews that say, 'nice product' - useless to other potential buyers, useless and costly for the merchant. If you read a decent review now, you know it was because someone liked the thing enough to come back here and write about it and that has value. the deliveries would be kind of a step backwards really, on the old Xstreet there used to be a big warning message about buying when you were offline/busy, but as far as I am aware this works fine now offline/busy or not. I know a lot of people are still complaining about failed deliveries, but I hardly get any, not even 1%

Medhue Simoni wrote: As for not relying on income from the internet, I beg to differ. Why would any1 think that making money any other way is more stable? If you work for some1, they can fire you, or the business can go under without you getting any notice at all. Most people do not work for 1 company their whole lives now. Most people don't work somewhere for more than 5 years. Even if you run a real life brick and mortar business, the city can decide to redo the road right outside your business and you won't know until the trucks show up. There is risk in anything you go into, except maybe less when you work for the government, or something funded by it. Look at what is going on right now tho. States are having to cut budgets and now public workers are getting cuts in pay and laid off. In the end, what matters is what you do, and running your own business gives you the most control. If you can make a living selling things in SL, you can make money selling other things in other worlds, not to mention other 3d sites. More and more are forming every year. User created content is not a fad, and I see more areas going in this direction. I agree tho, you don't want to put all your eggs in 1 basket, and still think you are stable. Great Post, I agree totally, once again you sound like me - lol. Often people see running your own business as risky, but I think like you, when you are in charge of your own destiny the risks are actually smaller

Catwise Yoshikawa wrote: Ishtara Rothschild wrote: Finally, be prepared for a lower drinking water and food quality (even in Spain, you'll want to use bottled water even for tea and coffee), lower hygiene standards, a generally lower standard of living, higher crime rates, and a sub-par health system. I don't know if the sunny climate can make up for that. Not sure what you mean here, cause Madrid water is better or equal than other European cities like Paris and London ;-) but if you want to live in some cities close to the beach, then yes, there you will need to drink bottled water For the crime in Spain we don't see even guns around here, so guess is lower than in US hygiene standars is like in Europe and the US (if you don't want to go to to live in a very small and old village lost on the mountains or whatever, of course ) and helth system is public and even English people come to Spain to use it, so can't be worst ;-) But guess you have to think also in the way people socialize, guess you have to find a country where people character is similar to yours. Guess you can't go to a country very open and talkative when you don't want to be touched or don't want people talk with you in the street I think the drinking water thing is a bit of a misconception, I always get sick from Spanish Water and it's the same in Greece, however I have been reliably informed that this is not down to poor quality or dirty water, it's just all water contains bacteria that can make you sick, the water in your home country contains bugs just the same, but over the years you have built up an immunity to them. I think thats correct, perhaps some well travelled medical type elaborate

Ackley Bing wrote: I moved to another country before I started SL, and then I was like: Wow I can match this country's minimum-wage with just one SL product! Alt=:smileywink: Soooooooooo - which country? I might be on the way!

Josephina Bonetto wrote: If I get made redundant, I will sell my flat back to the housing association and be off to sunnier climes than the UK in a heartbeat. I am just waiting to see what happens with my job. I know just how you feel Josephina, I have had a 4 month lay off then a drop in salary and am now working a 4 day week which or course brought a further pay cut. Guess you are thinking like me, if you gotta be poor may as well do it somewhere nice