[Will DIRECT INVENTORY DELIVERY be mandatory?]

@Darren: Piecing it together from various conversations by Lindens, direct delivery seems to work like this:

You put your item in a folder of your own under a special folder (say #Marketplace) in your inventory (assuming folder name becomes the name of your product listing)

Any items in that folder are delivered as a folder to the buyer (you don't need to be logged in, this is direct database transfer from one users folder to another), no scripts or in-world mechanics needed.

There was some mention in a blog post of a configuration notecard that you could put into that folder to give it specific instructions I believe.

By doing it this way, some other things become possible that we'll hopefully see like an actual receipt of delivery of items. Verified delivery would be a huge bonus!

Or being able to use textures in your product inventory folder as product images, etc.

Updating your items would be as easy as updating the product folder, such as renaming, swapping out a landmark or notecards or objects, etc.

Could be a bit off about some of the finer details, will see how that shakes out as we go.

Would save enormous amounts of time packing products as well.

[Will DIRECT INVENTORY DELIVERY be mandatory?]

It seems that it will be optional at first while it's being developed, which means that those with hesitations can wait it out until it's more mature, as stated by Brooke at the last user group meeting:

[17:52] Brooke Linden (brooke.linden): initial public roll out will allow merchants to either list in item with AIS delivery or Magic Box delivery

As decent as a scripted delivery system "can" be, it has inherent problems. We use networked vendors and most of the devs seem to share some common failure rates.

The idea here is to bypass the inworld calls where possible I believe, which means eliminating some points of failure. Pretty sure this will prove to not only be more reliable, in being able to access data directly and bypass in-world scripts, but should also be "much" faster.

Other than that, not going to fret about tomorrows problems today. Looks like a public rollout that makes sense so far, being optional at first and giving people some time to try it out.

[Marketplace March 3, 2011 Release Notes]

Great job! Thank you.

[Suggestion: Marketplace In-World]

This is a great idea, I think integrating the Marketplace with the viewer is a goal, or at least there's a very partial implementation (Viewer 2 shows the SHOP button at the bottom of the inventory pane, which pops up a web window to the Marketplace).

But right, it would be fun and a great convenience to search and open up Marketplace object "profile" window, and to be able to send a link to those to people which would pull up a nice little product profile from the Marketplace.

After the direct inventory delivery system is working, I'm imagining that it wouldn't be too hard to also look for a landmark in that products folder in your inventory and also show a See This Item In World link, so that people still have the chance to go to the persons shop. Best of both and a more integrated shopping experience with in and out world.

Kudos if I could

[Inworld Marketing and Advertising Best Practices]

 

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Darrius Gothly wrote:

 

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

This is pretty much the stance we take. The path of an entrepreneur being one of personal motivation and responsibility, the decision to work with SL as a platform is already a done deal. ...

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Once again Mr. Shepherd, you demonstrate the greatest weakness in your line of reasoning, that being a complete and self-imposed blindness toward the damage your "business partner" (SL) is doing to your efforts.

We operate our businesses on this Platform. We accept that foundation from which to attempt our commercial success. But we object to changes that have no explicable reason, no discernible benefit ... and only damage as the measurable result.

I demand you stop insulting the business people that operate in SL by calling them slackers, whiners and idiots. They are none of those. They ARE responsible, creative, intelligent and dedicated people struggling mightily to make the best of their efforts. Your position that they are just not trying hard enough is diingenuous and fallacious as they DO try hard. It is the counter-productive and senseless changes imposed on them for no apparent reason and no discernible gain that they call out against.

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I responded to a person that contributed to the topic at hand, which to me is what we can do, given the topic for Inworld Marketing and Advertising Best Practices.

I already know what limitations are there, that doesn't mean I choose to derail a post to use as a rant, it means I'm interested in talking about what people are doing and can do for marketing practices, not what can't be done.

There are places better suited to specific issues about search, Marketplace bugs and ideas to improve advertising rather than every post being a catch-all for gripes, such as Jira reports for bugs, a separate thread for those specific issues, or putting these issues on the agenda for the next user group meeting.

I've never been involved in a marketing discussion anywhere that focused only on what you can't do, so your concept is a bit strange to me.

You may also want to stop "demanding" what I contribute or how I contribute my personal opinion to these forums, that's not your place.

Even stranger is the bit of word twisting in your last paragraph. You may want to consider the fact that there are many people who are successfully marketing in SL, and so you might want to let those people speak rather than turn this thread into some righteous cause, as those are the ones people (including myself) would love to hear some input from.

Which is kind of the point of this thread I'm imagining, sharing marketing successes and best practices in our existing efforts as merchants.

[Inworld Marketing and Advertising Best Practices]

 

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Jura Shepherd wrote:

The point for me is that, despite whatever LL is doing, people are still coming into stores to buy things.

My experiences are not like Rene's at all. For some, the cumulative reach from a distributed approach to marketing isn't hundreds, it's easily thousands and even that isn't considered a great feat. Now, that would be cumulative in that it's on

and

off world efforts and I would agree that in-world reach is much less. Even so, the caveat there is that the conversion rate for in-world efforts are much much higher than off-world. If reaching hundreds is simply not worth the effort for some, that's fine, but I can assure you that there are diligent brands that will be happy to take those hundreds from you.

Again, I'm not saying now, or in my previous post, that the native tools aren't a problem. It absolutely is and I don't like it. All I'm saying is that crippled system tools aren't an argument for doing nothing.

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This is pretty much the stance we take. The path of an entrepreneur being one of personal motivation and responsibility, the decision to work with SL as a platform is already a done deal. If I felt the platform was unable to sustain virtual business we wouldn't be here in the first place and so we place the burden of making our business work on our own shoulders rather than a platform we've already evaluated and committed to years ago despite any flaws (which I've got to say over the years have greatly improved, selling is easier today with a flawed search than it was back when you couldn't teleport for hours or a day or two and we tend not to measure improvement in hamster-time).

But back to the topic at hand, which is not perceived flaws of SL, but the personal burden of success within a platform each of us makes the choice to do business in as adult entrepreneurs, yes absolutely agree on taking what works for you in the platform and then doing your own marketing above and beyond if you're an aggressive or full time entrepreneur.

One practice we use is to not only advertise to a focused/target market, but also well outside of it. Here's a for instance: I've heard people say that ad boards in world don't work that well. In our experience they tend to work best when chosen carefully and outside of the market for that product.

I tend to think that to compete in a market where everyone has the same tools it takes more than the tools provided by LL, no matter how good or bad they are (although I do think they're quite good when used effectively) in order to rise above. Compared to RL as a "platform" and issues like zoning, taxes, insurance, payroll ... SL as an entrepreneur platform is a joy, but like any other venture, it takes determination and using practices above and beyond the "standard" tools provided.

Great to see someone else recognize that personal responsibility and accountability is more key than the flaws of a place you've made the personal choice to use as a business platform. In that sense it mimics RL success/failure.

If nothing else, I would say constant experimentation is the key. What worked yesterday may not work today, what didn't work yesterday might work today. Stay fresh and open with marketing ideas, never become stale.

[How do I stop sale notification from Marketplace?]

Not sure, try clicking on your Magic Boxes and turning notifications off on those as well?

Posted at the same time as Ella above. Looks like that's your answer.

[SEO, Inworld Item descriptions?]

No dispute there, and I'm not making light of those issues. Search is something I only follow as I can, only so many hours in the day and I've got to prioritize elsewhere. I appreciate the work put into search discussions, though ... I try to keep them read-only.

[SEO, Inworld Item descriptions?]

Have to agree, if the mission is ultimately accomplished the best long term strategy is to title and describe everything as if you were actually doing it for a human and not a search engine.

[How do I automatically add people to a group?]

So far as I know, there's no way to do it, other than a human doing it manually, or a bot or specialized client application. Sorry.