Czari Zenovka

Suki Hirano wrote: Some merchants abuse hunts/sale groups for traffic. For example, I have not been to a single Fifty Linden Friday trip without at least one store not bother putting out an item for FLF, with some stores never putting out an item (no idea wtf the organizers are doing since they don't even verify the stores before putting them on the list). They join the hunt list simply to grab customers but are too greedy to mark any item for sale or give it away for free in a hunt. I've never had this experience with hunts, but I tend to stay with a few well-established hunt groups. I can tell you that if a merchant in any hunt I've participated in, either as merchant or hunter, did not have a hunt item available, that merchant would either comply immediately or be out of the hunt!! Now what I *have* seen a few times is the merchant not placing their hint in the hint item and not providing the hint any other way. As for hunt organizers not verifying the shops included, the organizers of the hunts in which my shop has participated check out my shop prior to acceptance (I see the organizer's name on my visitor list) and recheck the shop the day or two prior to the hunt to make sure my hunt item is out and ready. It's a shame if other hunt organizers are letting stuff like this slip. As for the "Fifty Linden Friday" type groups, I've never followed those; however, I have a very recent experience on this topic. I applied to a fairly new group of this type and stated within my application that my store is small by design, but that I add new products and rotate them regularly/seasonally. I also provided the URL to my MP store so the group owner could see what I sell in totality. My shop was turned down for inclusion in the new group because of its size. So not all stores are automatically accepted.

Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: This is a tip I received long ago from an experienced merchant, but she went even farther: She suggested placing search terms for one's store in every conceiveable prim possible, meaning not just having the search terms on each item (where items are rezzed within the store) but placing the same descriptive name/search terms within each prim of the item. Same with all prims of the store housing itself, decorative items, display items, basically any prim one owns within the store. Not sure if this still works well, or at all, given how search currently works (or doesn't) in world, but I still do it by habit. That was probably me ... The little 3-prim shop buildings that house my textures, or statues, or freebies have a short description of the buildings contents in each prim and in the sign by the door.. Each vendor's description field contains a brief description of the vendor contents in its prims. Any plant or animal I set out for decor is set to sell a copy and has the appropriate description field text. I think the reason it works is that the descriptions are very specific - I'm not listing a lot of unrelated products in every prim, I'm using precision targeting, prim by prim. The decorative elephant text is all about the elephant, not the elephant and the naked ladies and the chickens. Could have been as I recognize your name. Thank you if it was you and thank you for the additional info here. I'm going to check all my prims and make sure the search terms are specific to each item.

Tiffy Vella wrote: Yay..that one! Thanks so much You're welcome!!!

Lyle Pelazzi wrote: I always double purchase items, you could call it careless on my part, but really its as easy as hitting the back button to browse around. I do it a lot, and usually never ask for a refund. I see people double purchase all my items all the time, and i refund it. I dont understand why this isnt fixed. Sure people are careless, but its really ridiculous that it adds +1 to quantity, when that should be added manually..... I sell a particular item that for some reason used to be double (or triple!) purchased a lot in the past. It is a copyable item and I put the permissions in bold letters within the item description after it was multiple-purchased a few times to attemtp to bring people's attention to it. I never had anyone ask for a refund but, like you, I would contact the person and refund the money. After awhile I was losing money because I refunded the total purchase price while commission was taken out on my end so I stated in the description of that item that I could not refund multiple purchases and included a "tutorial" of sorts on how to purchase on the MP. After about a year of no more double purchases, I took it out. I found it interesting that, until I posted the "no refund policy" I had regular multiple purchases of the item, then after posting...none. A number of the people to whom I refunded money seemed embarrassed and said words to the effect of what you stated - "...you could call it careless on my part..." While I am critical of LL and the MP on many points, I do not think it is LL's responsibility to code a system to save a person from herself.

Is it a full moon already?

The places that I have seen writing sold is in one of two basic ways: 1. The story, writing, etc. is written or copied onto notecards. The notecards are then placed in some type of a prim. The type prim used for this that I see most often is a bookcase. Edit the prim/bookcase and tick "For Sale" then enter the price. There are 3 selections below that - you would want to tick the sell contents selection. (Trying to think through this without being online...lol.) This will sell whatever is inside the prim, ie. the notecards. On the bottom left of this first edit window there is a drop down that determines what happens when someone clicks the prim - select "Pay." Once this is set up, a person can click the bookcase/prim and a panel will come up with the price of the notecards and the option to buy or cancel. 2. The other method is to create a book for your writing and sell the book itself. You can either create the book itself, or use THinCBooks or Intellibooks - both sold in SL. I'm not as familiar with the Intellibooks but with the THinCBooks you either have to buy each book individually to sell (it has transfer permissions) or purchase a "Printing Press" which allows you to make as many copies as you like. If you're just starting out selling on the Marketplace, then you will want to use Direct Delivery and don't worry about all the Magic Box/migration talk for now. *Smiles* Feel free to IM me in world. My instructions here may have been as clear as mud. Good luck to you. (I love writing myself.) ETA: You might want to check out some of the writing groups in SL. There are groups for creative writers, poetry groups, book reading groups, etc. Within one or more of those groups is very likely someone who has sold writing in SL. Where I have seen this most is within the Caledon sims. They have a library, reading groups, etc. That is where I saw "books" for sale just last week when I was looking at store layouts of small shops to get ideas for mine.

Solaria Goldshark wrote: Rival Destiny wrote: ...told your rl co-workers when leaving for lunch that you are "...going to rl, back in a bit". Could have been worse...could have told your co-workers you were going to poof for a bit. Once I was talking to someone on the phone and they had to put it down for a minute. When they came back online I said, "Welcome back." The person seemed initially stunned, then said, "Oh, thank you." ETA: Posted this before reading Hermione's related post. Yeah, we've all been in SL waaayyyy too much....lol.

Solaria Goldshark wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: As the woman with the clicking-heels-on-pavement passed me, I was jolted back into the realization that RL heels *do* make that sound....errrr...in RL. :matte-motes-bashful: Love that. You know, If I'm ever talking to someone in RL and a face light appears, I'm fairly certain I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. LOL. If they stick us in an institution, maybe we can be roommates.

Emma Krokus wrote: Thanks Alena - I've tried that, runs worse than my old old SLViewer1. And btw - that is one scary badge picture!! Agree on both counts. That badge picture is going to give me nightmares. *Shudders* /remembers the name "alena Dotcheva" and makes note to quickly zip past any posts made in future. Hi Emma Imprudence was always recommended to me a couple years ago, but it always froze on my PC. My current PC is old so I keep the settings low, draw distance no more than 64m, it can't use any mesh viewers, etc. Phoenix 1.5.2.1185 works the best for my PC.

16 wrote: is a sailboat called a Tako. it has a prim text display label thingy on it. name speed and stuff like that. maybe OP worked out how to turn it off Oh, whew!!! I thought maybe LL had gone from real last names to "Resident" to now assigning us all numbers and I hadn't heard about it yet. :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

Yes. No. One time (RL) I was getting out of my car in a parking lot and, as I was walking toward the store, I heard high heels behind me making that annoying clicking sound that was popular a few years back in SL, which I thought was really stupid on sand and grass. I thought to myself, "Gah! Another one of those "clicky-shoe types." I wish women would turn that sound off in their shoes." As the woman with the clicking-heels-on-pavement passed me, I was jolted back into the realization that RL heels *do* make that sound....errrr...in RL. :matte-motes-bashful:

Alicia Sautereau wrote: Be smart, cheat :-) Edit items that are cheap and hardly sell (or create items for just that purpose) and edit them weekly so that your other items *might* become more visible again I know, can be a bast... at times LOL! (Actually not a bad idea.)

Perrie Juran wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: What this brings to my attention is the inefficiency of LL's bug fixing process. In SL, we have a direct comparison between 3rd Party viewers and LL's viewer. In a 3rd Party viewer, implementation of a feature or a bug fix can be almost instant. In April 2010 there was a bug report filed concerning a "loop hole" which could be used to spam a user and there was no way to identify or mute the sender. In December 2011 WeNeverWorkedOnIt Linden closed it as relating to a "deprecated" viewer. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-21434 In April of 2012 this loop hole reared it's ugly head again when many Second Life Residents were subjected to a series of phishing attacks. This loop hole was exploited to send some of these phishing attacks. There is a long thread discussing this here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/What-The-Scam-Is-Going-On/td-p/1477327/highlight/true A new JIRA was filed and acknowledged. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-28743 On April 11, Whirley posted that the loop hole had been fixed in Firestorm, along with the fix. I haven't tested with the current Official Viewer, but there is no indication that it was ever fixed in it. But you are right, the TPV's responded much faster than LL did. Thus the reason I will never use the official SL viewer. Of course I haven't been going back to late 2007 or so when I was introduced to the Nicholaz viewer and used it until Phoenix.

JeanneAnne wrote: Howard1985 Doghouse wrote: i think we need more groups then 42 because it get filled so easy for those who work at djs jobs and keep getting a dj job and plus do other jobs and use stores for vendors and all and each group u join have 2 or 3 groups and time it all said and done the groups are filled i believe it should be increase more we been having this problem for a while now i think it could be increase over 100 you must really enjoy being spammed !! This ^^ As a merchant joining designer groups to send out notices when the max number of groups was 25, I created a dedicated "advertising alt" that is the same name as my store and used that av to join the groups for my business. Worked wonderfully. Since the limit was raised I've joined more designer and hunt groups on my main. Once in awhile I need to leave a group, at least temporarily, for one that is required. I make sure I leave a group that is not an invitation-only one so I can rejoin later if I wish. That being said, there are times I don't want constant "pinging" from group chat. I turn off the "accept group notices" and "group chat" on various groups when I start getting spam overload. It's just as easy to turn them back on when I do need to be "connected."

Ok, I'll bite. Why do you think your IP address could be cut off?

Vegro Solari wrote: Czari, I noticed the same thing as you, only I think it isn't connected to using boxes. It happens whenever you update any of your listings to change descriptions or keywords or prices. Somehow, the act of changing anything causes the item's position on the marketplace to reset, or something. This can make your unpopular item more visible but equally it can also make your popular item invisible. A total gamble! I'm very discouraged to update anything on the marketplace unless absolutely needed because of this strange behaviour. I agree it's not MB related...just is the system I'm still using. You're right, it is totally strange. On the upside, I get a little flurry of sales afterwards, but as you said, the good sellers sometimes poof for awhile.

Arielle Simondsen wrote: ahhhh its doing it again! logging in and out that worked before not working again. am I going to have to jump through hoops everytime I need to add something??? argh!!!!!!!!! why cant they leave well enough alone. sigh. My thoughts exactly.

Deja Letov wrote: Take a guess. It will probably be as close as anyone elses answer to that. You got that right...mine is all over the map. Something that happens with my MP store consistently is - anytime I do anything to the Magic Box (yes, I'm still using that) - I get a new flurry of sales, often on items that are not my best seller; in fact it is usually on items that rarely sell. This happened again this week. I listed four new items over the weekend. A couple of days later I changed the prices on another item. After each of these, I immediately got sales, but not on those items; items, again, that rarely sell. My puzzlement is: What causes this?

Kampu Oyen wrote: I'm still betting that the boxes will be shut off on 1 October, even though the "problem" hasn't been "solved". Your likely instructions will be to simply open a store in-world if you want to offer no-copy items. At this point pretty much nothing that happens will surprise me. Fortunately I've been doing more work with my in world store so I will have that avenue if I'm still not set up with the equipment for DD prior to cut off.

Talla Slade wrote: @Czari <snip> I am sure role players will benefit from this way or working and if anything should happen to SL then at least people wont have their eggs all in one basket and the Open Metaverse is a growing market for merchants anyway. I should love to meet you perhaps in OSgrid one day. IM me any time. I have the same name there and in SL. It does sound like a lot of role players are the "first wave" so to speak, of the new/er grids. In the case of the group to which I referred, they left SL entirely and are very happy on OSGrid. Thank you, Talla - I would love to meet you as well. I'm going to do some reading first to see if I can figure out how to set up a sim but I'll likely end up going...HEEEEELLPPP! I do have an account on OSGrid but haven't done anything thus far except make it to my friends' rp area. I have the same name there as on SL as well.

Ruth Merryman wrote: For months now my outbox and been 'initializing'. I have filled out a ticket and the problem has not been fixed. Im wondering if anyone else found a solution to this problem? I thought I might use the Magic Box for now, but I see they are going to do away with those on Oct 1st.... so now what?! The Magic Boxes will only be gone *if* an issue with no copy items is corrected. Thus far I have not heard any update on this. We/Merchant Community were also informed that we would be given a 4-week notice prior to turning off the MBs. Personally, I think it is a good possibility the Oct. 1 date will be moved back.

Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: I have not heard of the October date being revised...yet. But the last communication from CTL indicated MB would not be shut off until the issue with no copy items changing permissions in DD was fixed and afaik, it is not. So all my mod/xfer items can turn into full perm? I'm so not happy abpouit that, and really glad I procrastinated. I'm not exactly sure of the exact nature of this issue. The most recent communication from CTL on July 31, 2012 in this thread states: Limited Quantity Support (): This is currently being worked on. Magic Box migration will not be required until this is supported. (Note that Merchants can sell items that have next owner rights set to “No Copy”.) Maybe I haven't had enough caffeine yet, so I find the wording a bit confusing. Where this issue first arose was from the breedable market which, if I understand correctly, sells their items No Copy. It doesn't "sound" like mod/trans items would turn into full perms, although I honestly don't know at this point. The two comments: Merchant does not have rights to copy the items for sale and Note that Merchants can sell items that have next owner rights set to “No Copy” sound almost contradictory to me. Hopefully someone can come along who understands this issue better and explain it more clearly. My main "take away" from this part of the latest update was until this particular issue is corrected, DD will not be required.

Talla Slade wrote: I think role players in particular could benefit especially for I, myself while still renting 2 RPG sims in SL, have built up some regions on OSgrid and now I have a Hypergrid connected standalone world too and it costs me a fraction of what SL costs. I concur on the bolded section. Prior to coming to SL in 2007, I was an active part of a rp community on IRC for 15 years. That particular group/channel is the oldest of its kind from its beginning on IRC that is still in existence under the same group name and with the same core members. Having been together so long, these members have a very strong bond and are extremely dedicated to maintaining the group as well as welcoming new people who have an interest in joining. We came as a group to SL and continued our rp here. I discovered other interests in SL and discontinued the rp as an active member but remained in touch with the core group. The group rented land from a well-known land baron who specializes in land for this niche and added to it as they grew. They set up a successful in world market within their sim in which many members of the larger niche rp community had satellite locations. They grew in membership, although this particular group is not one who actively recruits new members; they prefer quality and adherence to principles established long ago. How this relates to your post is that about 6-9 months ago they moved to OSGrid and now have 13 grids that make up their "City." They are ecstatic to be able to have this much space. They keep in contact with us "oldbies" from IRC via regular email updates. Many core members of this group came to SL in 2007 and for various reasons didn't like it and for some, their PCs could not handle SL even back in 2007 and are now re-united with the group on OSGrid. This group could care less about how populated that grid is or isn't as they have always been rather insular while still welcoming others. From the updates I receive, more people who either knew about them on IRC, SL, or are just finding them on OSGrid are joining and. Yes this is just one small community of the larger rp community in their niche, but they had an excellent reputation in SL and were well-known within the larger community SL rp community. I have no particular interest in rejoining the rp, but I have created an account on OSGrid to visit them and, once I figure out how all this works, I plan on creating a sim (my friends on OSGrid keep saying it's free, so not sure if that means creating an Opensim .. sim...is free? At any rate, I would love to create a private sim where I can continue honing my building skills, importing what I can per LL's export policy with plans to eventually connect it to OSGrid and/or whatever opensim grids I can. I will read your recommended blog posts to see how to proceed. Thank you for the information, Talla.

Darrius Gothly wrote: Time will tell Deja .. as you say. But for my money, I'm putting a pretty hefty wager on "SL won't be here by end of September 2013." (At least not the SL we've all always known.) Of course, according to the Mayan calendar, none of us will be here after Dec. 21, 2012, which would really suck because my birthday is Dec. 24. lol Sorry Darrius, that just popped into my mind reading your last sentence. Disclaimer - I place no belief in the Mayan calendar prophecy

Tiffy Vella wrote: Czari Zenovka wrote: This is a tip I received long ago from an experienced merchant, but she went even farther: She suggested placing search terms for one's store in every conceiveable prim possible, meaning not just having the search terms on each item (where items are rezzed within the store) but placing the same descriptive name/search terms within each prim of the item. Same with all prims of the store housing itself, decorative items, display items, basically any prim one owns within the store. OoO...see I have a lot to learn. And I really miss that old sales thread. So much has changed that I wish it were still going. You mean this one? I agree...that thread was invaluable and helped launch many successful businesses.