Mickey Vandeverre

sky - healthy mix falling - healthy mix sky is falling - healthy mix and half of page wide open for new product tin foil hat - freebie - only one on the page - grab it. market wide open - that device is rather intriguing - it says "make all your lies appear true" - quite intriguing, yes. You could bust one out there, Josh, at 5L - rule the market. tin foil - healthy mix - some cuties on that page I'm going to start charging for this service.

good grief, Rene. Why don't you find out circumstances before you label a sim closing as a failure, or at least imply that. People's lives change. Or just leave well enough alone, he gave a nice gesture and said he would still have marketplace store open. Geez You need to hook up with that Hamlet guy and get yourself a job reporting for the Death Sim Watch or whatever the heck that guy calls it.. You would be good at that.

I just typed in: red dress white socks black boots whiskey cat dog grass Healthy mix of prices on each first page. I cannot find an example of what you are talking about.

I just typed in "hairy chest" - there are no freebies on that page. I have yet to see someone drop a page here that includes all freebies. I'm not sure what you mean new residents pushed toward marketplace. I don't recall seeing that at all when I was a cloud at the starting point. I remember seeing a huge whopping map to explore. If there was some kind of push toward marketplace at that starting point - I missed it - but depends on what you join for.

Yo Rene - someone just put up a Racing Course on that lot I turned in. Cool! This is going to be great.

Gavin Hird wrote: The massive focus on the marketplace with new residents ruins the retention, because it gives new residents less incentive to explore in-world. To some extent it makes it look just like another shopping site, only that it sells pointless virtual products in a phony currency. You all are complaining about massive amounts of listings on the marketplace. Do you understand that each one of those holds a placement in the google search? Each one? Each topic? Each keyword?

Gavin Hird wrote: No, they don't do fine with a hit and miss plan. SecondLife is not a web site. Stop treating it like that! What you're trying to say here, I think, is that marketplace is ruining the log ins. I'll have to disagree and say that marketplace as a web presence is saving second life.

Gavin Hird wrote: Do you get any click throughs all the way to a purchase on these? Your guess is as good as mine... ;-) That would be hard to track - I'm talking about people that are not a second life user. I can tell from looking at blog, that many are not second life users by the keywords they type in. I would not be able to track that, as they would have to go to hit the "join" button after visiting the marketplace page, and I would not have access to those numbers Numbers Game. If you're sittin' top page of google for a general term, within large retailers.....you've got numbers.

Gavin Hird wrote: Ranking top on google means squat when 98% of your new signups leave within the first hour never to return. Over 5.2 million of them do every year. I don't think that has to do with Freebies at all. I think that has to do with arriving as a Cloud, and not being able to figure out if you're going to get a body or not - did fair share of exploration on that - you can click on my Noob link below. Every time I logged in, there were a bunch of Clouds standing around at the welcome places, with not a clue as to how to rix themselves. I don't need to do any more research on that - got better things to do. And I get fair share of hits to my blog on that with keyword phrases "help, I'm a cloud" "cloud in second life" - holy cow Sounds to me like they can do fine with the hit and miss plan. Numbers game. Would imagine that most web sites play the same game.

I've got some marketplace items sitting top billing on a google image search among real world product. Part of that is hits from my twitter - but part is from LL. Combination works great. They sit there base on very general terms that do not include the phrase "second life" - very general terms.

Gavin Hird wrote: Yes you could, but the difference is that new residents are sent directly to the marketplace from the viewer menu, and therefore may not even have to set foot in-world to shop. Combine that with the massive amounts of free to nearly free items that preceeding any commercial products for the most common search items, and you have a scenario for diminishing returns. Do you realize who else is sent directly to the marketplace? Tons of people. One thing that LL does have a grip on, is how to get top page billing on google search. They got that covered. People who some portion of ....will be intrigued. The marketplace brings new joins. For a fact, Jack. Brought some to me. web-based marketplace with top ranking pages in google search.....drawing them in. Would love to see numbers on that one. Just not sure if LL can figure it out. I can, from my own pages.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Profiles and the SLUM features taking more away from in-world communication. Nifty for some people yes, less costly for LL, yes. Group chat and groups are more costly and chat still doesn't work properly. Also true that while we were weened on long hours in-world, the next generation, or current generation of social networking and mobile folks don't have the attention span. Get them to interact more and spend more without going in-world. People will buy goods without ever actually using them. Shopping itself is a pastime with its own rewards. Not sure if you have a problem with that or not, but there's a lot more to do on the web, then when I joined SL quite a few years ago. Addictive stuff. Addictive works. Being a merchant is addictive - hamster on a wheel - dang shame they did not capitalize on that. Farmville on a silver platter for ceo when he arrived. Dropped ball on that. Most were ready to go then, ready to use new tools. There's a lot more to do on the web....and I'm glad that they are providing the marketplace in with that. Very fortunate that is working out (minus the shopping cart glitch at the moment)

Gavin Hird wrote: Because they no longer have to log in while they hunt for free products, and make the purchase. People have X or XX amount of time to give attention to the inworld screen. That's making a rather large assumption that shopping time out of world is decreasing pleasure time inworld. I don't really see that. I see it increasing pleasure time. People are able to go to more events, explore more. But that's assumption too. Looks to me from their profiles, that they are doing tons of different stuff, certainly get that from the conversations.

Gavin Hird wrote: From a commercial standpoint, a L$10 item is not worth it. It does not even cover the cost of storing it on the server disk-farm and transmit the product record to the website for display to you. From the (commercial) creator's standpoint – how many would you have to sell to even get to a minimum wage hourly rate for the time you spent creating it? I'm not giving any more marketing advice. In fact, erased some that I dropped. In any other venue, when I drop marketing advice, people are appreciative. Here, they call you drunk and ignorant. Waste of time. If they don't want to be helped or encouraged, fine. Explaining that would require more marketing advice. And you all can rail on me all you want for that. But when you encourage an atmosphere of "battle" as opposed to "cooperation"....that's what you get.

Gavin Hird wrote: No criminal at all. LL should set a minimum price it was allowed to list something at in the marketplace for it to be returned by regular search for products. Demo items should be linked to a real product, and would only show when viewed from the product (so they had to look at the priced product to get to it.) Free items should be lumped into a big sack with the search result randomized for each search so that nobody could take advantage of spamming or gaming the free listings. When I did that search I do not recall freebies - it did not matter - it was the design of shirt that mattered. Price did not matter - just had to be the right shirt. Probably would not have paid 300L for a T-shirt - just depends on how quick I needed it and whether it was right T-shirt. Freebies did not enter into equation. Unless you consider 10L a freebie - and if so - that's the other creators' problem for not having a T-shirt that was not "sweet" enough. If you had lumped that into a separate search, then I would not have a suitable T-shirt and I would not have been introduced to a merchant that I did not know. I know a new shop because of the T-shirt - it was labeled correctly and it stood out, as the others' were too racy. People think that every category is full with every product. It is not.

Josh Susanto wrote: I think the assumptions are that both higher concurrency and higher land value are always desireable, regardless of how they are to be acheived. If you want to see these guys' heads explode, ask them whether they would prefer to sacrifice concurrency for land value or land value for concurrency. I think they are already exploding, Josh. I think that I would choose land value. Used to have a ton of fun selling land. But it SL was marketed a bit different back then. It was promoted (not sure if intentionally or by accident) as a place to buy virtual land and start a lucrative business, and that's what people were logging in to do.

Gavin Hird wrote: You just said people would do this when getting home from work after having shopped on the marketplace. So which is it? ;-) But you (perhaps unknowingly) hit the nail on the head: People used to do things like that, they used to sit camping or have some other presense in SecondLife while they worked, or slept or something. That is how many of them earned their Lindens to afford your sofa. The effect was also that the grid was not a ghost town, so when a noob entered the scene, they saw others they could ask "how can I make money". Now people don't need to do that. They just sign up, hit the marketplace in the viewer, and go spending for free! With direct delivery, they don't even need to rezz anything – coming to a viewer near you any day now – another incentive less for owning land. This free spending spree gets old very fast, so they leave bored. Hey, did you know that at the rate LL takes daily signups, the SL population takes on over 5.8 million new accounts every year, while at the same time, time spent in-world goes down. Concurrency goes down. Go figure! Which is it? It's a lot of different things for a lot of different people. Just clarifying that we all use it differently. I use it differently at different times of the week. Not always a "merchant." I'm not sure why they would purchase things if they are not going to rezz it. But granted, have quite a few of those things in my inventory, will get to them eventually. I bought a really cute valentine T-shirt the other day for 10L - does that make me a criminal? for not spending 75L? It was the only one I could find that was not too risque to wear in a promo photo! I'm selling some 9 or 10L items today - because that is the price that worked for that item. Criminal? Is that Free? I bet most would consider so. It's the price that worked for that item. Not really sure what the concurrency thing is about in this conversation.

Rene Erlanger wrote: Mickey Vandeverre wrote: then you are living in another year. 2010 perhaps. People use the marketplace for convenience to save time and to shop from their home or office in physical world. They do it all day long. If you cannot grasp that, from a change in numbers, then you are not using marketplace. Good luck trying to convince customers to give up that convenience. You can call me ignorant all day long, but when you keep posting that you don't have a clue what the numbers are on the marketplace.....one has to wonder. Linden Lab has a history of changing strategies....I haven't give up on In-world commerce yet, even though it's looking bleaker than say this time last year.. You make out Marketplace is some sort of new phenomena....i'd like to remind you we could buy items offline and have them delivered (or at least place in "Favourite" folder to buy later) as far back as 2006 with SL Exchange. The only difference between the the two, is that LL owns MP and promote it in their official Viewers which naturally they never did for SLEX. Ironically SLEX was a far better all round shopping site than Marketplace...when you add in "Land Sales", "Auctions", "Currency Exchange with immediate transfer to Paypal" and a vibrant "Forum Community" listed by categories much like it is now. What numbers are these Mickey?....the ones that Linden Lab published for Q3 or Q4 Financial Reviews....or are you privy to some secret Financials only accessible to the "knowledgable one"? I'm talking about my own numbers and from reading some other numbers that merchants have dropped into the forums now and then. Generally, it's in the form of a percentage. Generally around 75% or above, sales from marketplace. Of course, that will vary depending upon product and how you are controlling your marketing. I don't pay much attention to the financial reviews. Have to go by my own stuff.

Gavin Hird wrote: Seriously, for how long are anyone gonna sit quietly enjoying their new sofa alone (while listening to the fan of their crap-top going full tilt.) ... no wonder agent login times are declining. I'm not really sure what that means. Just expressing that people log in and use their time in different ways. I used to log in and sit on a sofa for hours, while at work. We all use it differently.

Gavin Hird wrote: Right, why don't you just list your entire inventory for free to make it even more convenient for your "customers"? – That way they don't even have to bother spending any money at all. What you do when you move all commerce off-grid is that the incentive to log in is (significantly) reduced. Chances are they don't even bother to log on to pick up the goods they purchased at work, and return to shop some more free stuff off the website. As someone said, "this makes people feel so rich hey don't even care if they trash the Christmas presents unopened." It largely ruins concurrency and the time people spend in-world when they finally log on. – Which makes the grid look even more empty ,and again gives the 16000 new daily signups good reason to declare the grid is BORING, and never set foot there any more. I can't list my product for free, because this is a part-time job for me. And they seem to be ok with my prices as they are. I explained that these are furnishings, which go into homes and clubs, and that is part of the 3D experience, and also part of owning land for prims. When they log in, they are good to go, to maximize that experience, whether it be sitting on their sofa alone for quiet time or inviting friends over for a party, or for having fun with a club. Not sure how that ruins concurrency. They are going to spend X amount of time. Probably enjoy it more, if they have the goods they need for that when they arrive inworld for the day.

Josh Susanto wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese%3F I LOVE that book!

Rene Erlanger wrote: Mickey Vandeverre wrote: Rene Erlanger wrote: Mickey Vandeverre wrote: You don't "have a dog in this race" because you don't even use marketplace. You have no clue what is going on, and are living in 2006, and disgruntled because whatever you were doing in 2006 is not working for you now. You really are one ignorant person! Haven't I listed on Marketplace ? So that must have been during 2011? I remember having to re-do all the Descriptions Fields as they were ruined through the migration process. I have news for you.....I always continued making sales on Marketplace! :matte-motes-wink-tongue: Being away from SL for 7/ 8 mths...i didn't have much chance in optimising keywords on my MP Store or add items to it.. When I arrived back to SL, there were more important tasks In-world to worry about. I view Marketplace as a supplement (an add-on) to my in-world businesses, it always been that way!. Yes, I do have a "dog in the race"....I want commerce to return to the Grid. I signed up to a 3D Virtual World platform not to a 2D glorified Shopping site. Why should i be disgruntled Mickey? .....I still possess all my land & commercial holdings in SL? Have you? :matte-motes-tongue: So you've learnt how to use Twitter, Faceboook, blogs and how to effect your obscure keywords on Google main search...and that makes you hip? I'm sorry, but I just have to chuckle a bit. I gave up some parcels, because after tracking landings, observed that a very large portion were not coming to the store to purchase, they were simply clicking away and buying. There is no reason to pay for excessive prim space when most do not go see! unless of course, your ego requires it. That's not failure - that's smart biz move. And it worked great. For the most part, they are not even inworld when they are purchasing. You don't track anything like that, so you don't have a clue what the buying behavior is. I'm sorry, but I cannot be one of the oldbies that is tied to endless amounts of costly prim usage, just to promote a 3D experience for Linden Lab and the other oldbies. And that has nothing to do with Freebies. eta: that should say "tracking NON-landings" as opposed to tracking "landings" You obviously not creating enough new content....as Furniture creators can never have too little prims or land for that matter (to display their products) Tracking visitor landings by parcels, even sales by parcel are easy enough to perform.....if you set it up correctly to begin. with and promote each area effectively. You obviously missed what I explained very clearly.

Josh Susanto wrote: If anyone sees any value in doing so, please feel free to either reformat my messages or figure out how to debug this interface. I see value in your statements, Josh...always a pleasure to read. It helps to address just one bizarre statement at a time.

hi Tari - I waited a week before saying anything, wasn't sure what was going on, but appears it's across the board and not land related - but shopping cart function related. I did not know what to do, and did not know what everything on the transaction list meant, so tried to figure that out this week, and dropped it here. I hope they get it fixed, because was on vacation last week and have to go back to work on Monday! Currently, just hanging out and trying to catch each sale as they come in. People are anxious to get their stuff. Even waiting an hour for that refund, then trying again, is not that great of a plan, but not sure what else to do, unless you're ok giving your stuff away all day long, and I can't do that for days on end. Trying to work it all out with the shopper, so that they do not have to submit a support ticket - that's a pain. Hated going through that, myself.

Gavin Hird wrote: Mickey Vandeverre wrote: For the most part, they are not even inworld when they are purchasing. You don't track anything like that, so you don't have a clue what the buying behavior is. And this is, somehow an advantage for a 3D virtual world or a merchant? Hey, here is a business idea for you: "Let's just create a website full of free 3D content that only gets delivered to /dev/null when people buy them. The thrill of the hunt alone will bring people in in droves." It is, what it is. I would love to still have portions of 3 sims to play around with all day, but the buying behaviors changed. I can't force it back, neither can you or Rene. And if you could, you are taking away convenience for some shoppers. My particular market is choosing convenience, and I'm going to cater to them. (granted, there is an issue with loading the shopping cart at the moment, but working around that) If they can shop while they are not logged in....you are increasing the likelihood of additional sales - you are not decreasing. The product they are purchasing from me, goes inside a house generally or a bar or a club. If they can purchase that from their office during the day....then they are free to go about their adventures inworld, when they log in at night. They are still using the 3D experience, just maximizing their time. Sorry, but in this economy, without LL adjusting tier fees, I'm not personally able to provide the luxury - ambiance space that I was once able to provide.