Dartagan Shepherd

Belated thanks! It's a law of nature that conversions never go right without lots of assist. Thanks to you Lindens and contributors on the team, the KB is really shaping up as a tool, much more comfortable and volumes easier to find information to use as help pointers. Between the KB and Answers help seems to be disseminating quite smoothly now on the new platform. Keep up the good work!

It's a full time job interjecting perspective at times. Might want to tone this down a bit. For nearly every thread that says there are delivery problems, others report very few, so you actually don't know the failure rate. At one point I believe at the worst of it, a Linden reported a 5% delivery failure. Since then, that has decreased. We have claims of delivery failures nearly every day with Hippo networked vendors and this is not a bad system. A few times a week we have reports of people not getting their items with items in a very low lag region with plain old boxes set for sale. I have had errors on eBay, Amazon and other shopping sites. While there are delivery failures, some of them are not actual failures but due to delays, so give those time before you claim "failure", rather than delay. But bottom line is that there is no such thing as a perfect delivery system. Not glossing delivery errors over, or saying that they don't need work, but without knowing that number, it's possible that you're overstating the problem. Edited to also point to Suella's explanation which is also more fact based and quite good: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Merchants/10-Item-Limit-on-Shopping-Cart/m-p/797165#M2158

The poor KB style guide, another bit of nitpicking ;) In the KB document: About the Second Life Knowledge Base in the section: Criteria for inclusion in the Knowledge Base ... The link to the style guide still points to the wiki, not the newer style guide document. The other link on the bottom of the page is correct though.

Agree that builds in SL often clean up the worn and tattered reality that lends some RL places their charm. I've often admired many coastal towns in the northeast U.S. and thought that they'd look great re-created in SL in all their weathered glory. Don't get me wrong, I understand the desire to "clean up" builds in SL, where we don't have to deal with decay and signs of age, but I also agree that sometimes breaks the mood if you're really familiar with a RL location and the SL version is "sterile". Because some other people mentioned the strength of non realistic builds and physics and gravity, I've always thought the Gaea series by John Varley would make for awesome roleplay, which is only impossible in SL because Gaea was the "inside" of a living moon, which would require being able walk on the inside surface of a hollow mega-prim sphere. Or more accurately the inside surface of a torus, with spokes to the center, so there are multiple gravitational effects going on.

They're useful for cases of people helping people. They'd become completely useless for subjective topics. The topics themselves may be good, helpful and well thought out, but when you get to topics like "I think LL should put a breedable chicken in every pot", people who agree will give Kudos and people who don't have nothing to balance that. Kudos just because you agree with someone who made a good point is less than optimal, as opposed to Kudos for concrete help and answers. For non-help topics, I think it's enough to say "thank you for that great post, I agree". They should not be used to game popularity or to build a reputation based on bandwagon viewpoints. If a great post is really great in the majority view on subjective topics, or as advice, it may bubble up as a sticky or find it's way in the KB, etc.

Very encouraged about this roadmap, if you will as well. Very practical and addresses the priorities that reflect merchant concerns. Just to babble a bit, agree with you Pam about seeing more data, and at the risk of misinterpretation, rather than the dash deals, especially when it comes to extra commission, personally I'd rather see a more value added, and regularly available plan. I can't remember if it was eBay or a 3rd party that provided this service: For a monthly fee you would get some really powerful stats, such as best selling items, search terms, most searched objects, etc. Obviously this could give you quite a bit of competitive advantage and had solid value. Just as obviously I think it would be impossible to share that data globally (otherwise everyone would be rushing to sell the top selling items for instance, which would defeat the purpose!). So rather than a 50% commission on sale items, I think it would make more sense to add a coherent package with possibly a monthly fee which would justify a higher commission (say 10% on all items). This would be the place to experiment for merchants for first-look programs and sends a better message and a package with high value. That monthly fee would then provide you with some very powerful statistics, come with a base advertising package, the ability to put things on sale, and other tools that would really make something like this sought after by merchants willing to pay the extra, and increase LL's earnings. Call it a Premium Merchant account, or Platinum Merchant ...or tack Premium Merchant on as a higher priced account than a Premium Account, Premium Merchant includes a Premium Account. Agree with you that detailed stats would be invaluable, and as part of a solid merchant offering with real value, a stable and "always on" increased revenue stream for LL, this would be one way to do it. For a great kitchen sink package, would it be worth $20/month and 10% commission to get at those stats? Food for thought.

@Darrius: Sorry, I can't spend my time fretting about what's going to go wrong tomorrow. We wouldn't have an SL or any other technology of note if we did that. It's a delivery system, not a nuclear reactor. It seems to be a natural progression from 3rd party to an integrated LL property. If you're worried about losing ANS type functionality then maybe bring that up in the User Group meeting or a Jira or something, or perhaps you'll get an answer about that here. I don't have those answers.

Phil Deakins wrote: If the bad design actually bothered me, I might well create a jira for it, but I've never used the marketplace for buying or selling, and I never will, so it doesn't bother me at all. Besides, the staff's efforts would be far better spent in fixing the non-deliveries that I read about so much than in even looking at a jira. I think it's pretty intuitive as-is, and not unlike many other shopping carts that tally up the grand total at the level you're currently viewing. Pretty easy to see what's going when you add up those numbers, if in doubt. Might want to preface this last bit in your posts that you're uninterested, unaffected, don't use it, just waiting for your inworld store to die before you bail and going by what you hear from others. Spare some people a few brain cells and time? Assuming you don't really care about the delivery issues personally either, but the fix for that is also underway in the form of AIS delivery (to be renamed in the future), which addresses the root problem, in that scripted inworld objects aren't the best delivery mechanism in the world, compared to direct asset writes. That happens to be very good thinking, design-wise, eliminating the bits that aren't necessary when it's not a 3rd party system. This is something that's been getting worked on for a while now, and due to be rolled out as an option at first for people that want to try it out and compare it to the existing delivery system. The people that do test this system will be able to share their firsthand knowledge of that system when there are actual facts and experiences to report on.

It's defaulted to General on a fresh installation for as long as I can remember. Possibly since the first versions.

I didn't have this problem with 2.5.1 After upgrading, still no problems with 2.6.0

Maxine Kohime wrote A real progress, yeah? In loading slower? Perhaps not, although it's seeming faster lately. Besides some benefits that Cerise mentioned, another one would be that if profiles are decoupled from the viewer, it doesn't require a viewer update any longer to work on profiles, which is less hassle for everyone. It would seem that this part of the work would need to be done first, and then go back and address speed and any other issues.

It's interesting for sure, some sort of external inventory. Not sure you'd get any more savings on reliable delivery or inventory integrity though. Adds more complexity and more points of failure, I think. For sheer spitballing, I like the idea of an account wide inventory, but of course we'd need alts tied into an account system first.

We just had this issue come up about that ourselves. I believe that it's set as the default for the everyone role, so there are a lot of groups owners that have it on without realizing it. Best you can do is to contact them and let them know in case it's not intentional. Don't think personally it's a good idea to charge your customers in a group though, it just sends the wrong message, but it's the group owners choice of course. Not sure why the person you spoke to wouldn't just change it rather than point you to another group, but again, their choice.

Madeliefste Oh wrote: I'm not sure a delivery alt will be usefull to me. But we will surely need an alt for our business when this AIS comes alive. One of my biggest concerns with this new system is inventory loss. I have experienced this before, 6000 items in my inventory were lost for about three weeks. I have heared experiences from others who had lost (a part of) their inventory, that never came back. Since my products were in boxes in my shop and in magic boxes on (by that time) xstreet, my business had no negative influences because of my inventory loss. But once this new sellling system will become the only system, inventory loss will mean a loss of income. That's a good point, what happens in those cases of disappearing inventory. That hasn't happened to me personally in quite a while, but sure, been bitten by that one before. Not sure if I'd create an alt specifically for that reason. A backup folder means less chance of both folders disappearing for a time, and of course I could continue to keep things in boxes with either system as backups. An alt makes as much sense as a box though for organization and backups.

Not exactly how to respond to the OP, it's a rather scatter-shot set of questions that we can't answer on timeframes on when/how certain things are fixed or verify many of those statements. One thing that tends to come up though is the perception of the Marketplace as a threat to in-world shops (although not entirely convinced the Marketplace being less cost for a merchant as opposed to land is a "bad" thing for the merchant, making in-world stores more of an option and less a requirement and cost). That would be to also provide in-world vendors along the lines of the old OnRez vendors, using the new AIS delivery system when implemented. LL still gets a commission on these in-world vendors, which make it much more realistic to point a Marketplace listing to an inworld store where that vendor is located (assuming that area is where you'd also be able to view those items and demos) and to actively promote in-world stores using said vendors.

It is never in good taste to mount an LL inquisition in red text. Much too obvious and so 1500s. Might I suggest something in a nice teal. @Brooke Thanks for the AIS clarification, waiting to test this when it becomes available against our current networked delivery in-world to evaluate. Hoping that goes as well as anticipated.

Really minor. The examples section for formatting on bold is well ... not bold ;) In the section on Formatting - General Rules - Bold in http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Knowledge-Base-Style-Guide/ta-p/717705 Perhaps meant to be that way for the sake of neatness?

@Marcus -- Don't sweat it, it's like any other risk, but like everywhere else, only you control the amount you risk. A good general rule is to not over-extend your efforts. Start with a small store, and at least some of your Marketplace traffic may drive people to your store to look at your products, aside from any marketing efforts of your own. Don't expand until you're comfortable doing so, either with resources you're willing to spend or do that slowly from only profits that you put back into your store and your expansion. It's only as much risk or chance as you decide to make of it and no one can ultimately tell you whether to test the waters with a toe, or to dive right in. In any case, have fun doing it and don't extend your risk beyond your fun, and ability to enjoy what you do!

No, that's not a requirement to have vendor scripts in your objects set for sale. Perhaps ask this person for more information and/or have them quote the part of the TOS that concerns them.

Mailings seem to be spread out over a few days. If it was a global mailing, it may still be in the queue for you. Didn't get one either, yet.

Awesome advice, thanks! Got to say that those kind of comments from someone that enjoys your products makes the work worthwhile. Time costing, bah! @Pam Wow, congrats on the assistant.

Ok, really veering off topic, in trying to talk about being on topic, heheh. Disclaimer again: Not saying many people haven't already contributed a wealth of information, much of it has been a gold mine of wisdom, and would love to see more of that ... merchants are the movers and shakers here and so on a personal level I'm far more interested in hearing their successes and how they achieved that. Wasn't belittling anyone, I respect the innovation and creativity here a great deal. There are some things I wish the world would look at, like some of the best customer service models that are implemented by merchants here in SL. I'm afraid that you've done the twisting of words here. If you really want clarification about the time-is-money thing, yes that's true that you should place value on your time. However, a merchant with a private and personal business doesn't need to factor their time if they don't want to, that's the great thing about a personal business here in the US. Joe and Jane can work for themselves, Joe can value his time at $1,000 per minute and work 5 minutes a month and go broke, Jane can say "forget this, I put no price tag on my time, I need to work enough to pay my bills and buy a car next month". No one can say either of them are wrong. There is no "business math" involved on that level for most merchants in SL. Unless of course they decide on a more complex business structure and need to report payroll to the government, then there's your "business math" and a correlation between time and money that everyone must "do the math" on. HOWEVER, if you make those decisions for that company, you can set that rate at any value you decide to. So Joe and Jane can value their time as paid employees in their company completely differently should they desire. So yes, there's a cost when people must be "paid". There are things that fit as liabilities. But no one but the government dictates the "business math" that forces people to value their time in any particular way and to do accounting accordingly, or who has the power to audit and make decisions on "how" or "how much" valuation you put on your time or anyone elses. As far as sharing a suggestions, sure I'll start gently with something known by many and immune to SL issues. Word of mouth. Make it as strong a factor as you can manage. In SL, people talk about things they like. Some people become fans of creators that they like. Not sure how much more clear, or less dodgy I can be.

Rene Erlanger wrote: Darrius Gothly wrote: So I'll put a challenge to you Mr. Shepherd ... trot out the names of those "Zero Investment Successes" and lets see how much of that Zero is really quite a bit larger than you make it out to be. It get's tiresome reading the ramblings of a Corporate shill! :smileytongue: He thinks of investment as being only in monetary terms, when in fact it's the time spent (man-hours)....an opportunity cost. I don't really think that needed a disclaimer that I was talking about up front monetary cost. Or that a hobby turned business isn't a cost as all hobbies are cost, otherwise the government says you're a business over a certain threshold. Or that until you're an actual business whether you consider time an investment or not is pretty arbitrary, unless it's actually on your books and factored into your accounting. Otherwise it's generally nothing more than personal preference to use as a factor in costing. The whole time-as-cost-thing isn't engraved in stone, it's an entrepreneur-ism. Takes more work to nitpick out details that can't all be covered in a forum post than a simple understanding of what someone meant, or might have meant. I think that particular time sink might be considered a time related cost as well. About those advertising and marketing practices you find useful and worth sharing, anything?

Get all that, that you've said and how to say this without coming across like the bad guy? But here goes ... Doing business in SL is not something to depend on unless you're willing to understand and take bigger risks if you're a larger merchant, running your own business never is, as there's always risk. That we understand that risk, in this case that SL is still a new platform and a new company. While it may have been able to mature faster, virtual worlds are still a very hard sell out there (which is why continuing to reach out to social networking is important, at no time did SL ever try to make SL into Facebook or force SL users to get Facebook accounts, that bit is far overblown). The company itself is an experiment in management style and forward thinking. That there will be successes and failures is a given. That the technology is still evolving is a given, no one else is leading this charge more than LL, all other efforts are very minor in terms of traction and users, when you bottom line it, pipe dreams aside. If it helps you to think that LL can barely handle the technology, that's your right and everyone elses to be cynical in that regard, although not having a frame of reference (no one has done it bigger and better, or even close). So seasoned merchants know that conditions are changeable and decide to take that risk into RL income, right? Well, if you're a seasoned merchant you know things can change at any time that may affect sales, as this world evolves, and that's going to continue to happen. So at what point, does a merchant who claims one SL flaw after another not understand that changing factors (and sometimes mistakes and experimentation) are not business as usual? I mean, how far do you need to look to understand this? As a merchant I know the risks, my place could drop out of search tomorrow, I may have to tweak all my items, I may not be able to do any packing today because SL is acting weird again, I may not be able to have an important meeting in my group because of chat lag? And yet, I can start a business in SL with zero investment and be successful. I know people who've done it and continue to do it? They understand the risks and continue anyway. And of course there are people that made a go of business and failed, there will always be more of those than successes. And yet again, a recent article tells me that one of our own merchants, a shoemaker here written up in Forbes that's made $750,000 US over a couple of years tells me that it's due to his marketing. And I've heard him speak about marketing best practices in fact. Tons of useful advice he has on marketing, how to handle support, etc. So that's what I think of when I think of a best practices marketing discussion, someone that's got some great advice in spite of what state SL is currently in. Not to say that bugs, issues and feature requests shouldn't have lively debate, but to pollute a sticky in a forum with those issues rather than have a great resource available to new merchants who might find that wisdom (sometimes old and oft repeated, but still great wisdom) useful and might help grow their SL business? Really? I say it carefully because I'm huge on idea flow and constructive debate and such, and certainly not directed at anyone in particular, but on a personal level I think if these issues dominate your success or failure to the point that we can't have a discussion on good marketing practices in at least one decent sticky thread then you're over-extending yourself in business risk or expecting too much of the platform, or maybe don't understand that SL (even in business) is a form of entertainment, and if it's not primarily fun enough for you to be able to have a great discussion on doing business in SL, you may be doing it wrong, despite whatever SL may also be doing wrong.

Check out: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Guide_to_Jobs_in_Second_Life To find jobs in world check the in-world classifieds. To see employment ads on the forums, go here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Inworld-Employment/bd-p/InworldEmployment