Spica Inventor

Wow what a great idea. Lets hear it for L.L. having a great idea. Hip hip hooray! ;-D hehe

"It has been exhaustively stated various times in these forums that the Marketplace is currently messed up, not the delivery system". I think most peeps have figured out by now that BOTH the Marketplace in general AND the delivery system is messed up. Of course then there is the official line that some will fall for. ;-) "mine have been the best in that time frame since this whole MP issue began 3 months ago". Your stuff is cheap like mine right? If so I think we might be able to correlate a pattern here. ;-)

I still wish there was a 1L$ - 1000L$ search category. :-( Or better yet just type in your own price range. :-D

It's been a feature on there from day one?

Ok I found it. When did that come about anyway? How long have I been a tard? hehe

Exactly! Don't tell me I have missed that already existing option all this time. hehe

"All my items are still in boxes on two separate sims". Ahhhhh in there lies your problem. (The latest conspiracy theory is that L.L. is sabotaging the performance of the magic boxes in an effort to move us away from them voluntarily and over to D.D. (the lesser of two evils wink wink) in a much more timely manner). hehe ;-)

I would like to see a search by price where you can use price groups as a search category. For example, like after keyword type in a price range of whatever say 1L$ to 100L$ or 300L$ to 600L$ or everything under 1000L$ etc.etc....like ebay has. Have them arranged by relevance as well to keep the best sellers in that price range toward the top pages. (This way we can avoid having the L.L. price pumped 'over priced' stuff from being shoved in our faces on the search by relevance search category if we so choose). Yes, I know 'price pumping' is going on now with a vengeance as my most expensive product (1000L$) zoomed up to the top of the search pages and got to sit there for days just by selling one of them after not selling any for the last 12 months or so, and I only sold three of it previously. I know there is no price pumping going on at all for all my other products which are all under 500L$ as they move around based on number of sales far more then anything else. So who's with me on this? Let the rich peeps shop for their cake so they can brag about how they spent 4000L$ on an avatar and us peasants can shop for the cake we can afford in a timely manner without having to walk through Saks first? hehe ;-)

I agree it probably is the world economy taking a dive again and everyone's scared about consuming again. My sales have improved significantly in world and on the Marketplace for the last month or so it would seem. I figure peeps are probably 'downsizing' in response and buying more of the 'cheap' stuff like the things I sell. hehe ;-)

I havent heard of that scheme before. (Usually the customer gets the product they purchased, the merchant doesn't even know it was purchased, and L.L. takes a 100% cut. ;-)

Have you noticed any competition with terrain products being brought to the market recently? Perhaps mesh ones?

Things do seem to be working better with The Marketplace. Based more on feeling then any real empirical data on my part however. ;-)

"I, too, have had no miss deliveries, never NOT gotten paid...." And you know this how Agent Loon? ;-)

"The delivery process is working just fine, the only real issue...." Linden Lab agent alert! hehe ;-)

"I was going to ask the same question, Pam. I would love to see those statistics. @Spica: And, exactly how did you come by this 75% price inflation figure for all of the SL market? I would be curious to see the data this comes from. As for what is good for the market, I'll agree that competitive pricing is very good for a market, lowballing is not. Also, where did anyone bring up a monopoly or setting all products as high priced ones? It was simply stated that *if* a merchant wants to sell a premium, original and handcrafted product, they should not fall into the trap of selling ultra low just to get in with the hopes of raising their prices to their real value in the future. That just does not work". Haven't you been noticing all the half price sales that end up not being temporary and then the same things being cut in half again later on price wise just to stay in the same spot on the marketplace relevance search sales position ? 10% or 20% sales have proven to be pretty useless it would seem. And mass collusionary practices is a kind of monopoly based on tradition. The userbase of S.L. is relatively miniscule due to these artificially set high prices. I would like to see alot more folks hanging out in S.L. At least 10 times as many as now. ;-)

Well, it is true that there is a psychology involved with purchasing things or a psychosis more likely hehe, Most customers who are relatively rich wouldn't buy something 'cheap' no matter what it was. This frame of mind still seems commonplace even in a pixel world with very little expenses, but using 1L$ as an example is quite the exaggeration isn't it? Like a 99.9% discount or there abouts? Obviously that would not be a good move. hehe. ;-)

I am curious where you got this data. Could you provide a link? Don't have a reference for you and don't really need one. I noticed that in general high priced stuff is losing ground to medium and low price stuff on the marketplace search results implying that the ridiculously high priced stuff is not selling as well as it used to, and that would also have to be reflected in world as the two market sources are inextricably linked. There are other indicators that I have previously listed on this tread. Of course you may find a few exceptions (for various other reasons), but that will by no means be the norm i'm sure.

Well like I said there is a tradition of the established prices based on supporting in world tier fees. Product prices remain elevated do to that tradition more than any other reason it would seem. L.L. could manipulate prices legally in many ways i'm sure. I'm not implying that they are doing anything illegal. :-)

"You should have an in world store. I have noticed people are transitioning towards shopping in world (I'm guessing they're just using SLMP to view pictures and read a description before teleporting in world)". Not going to work agent Flea as much as they tell you to repeat it ad nauseum. Fewer and fewer want to waste time and money shopping in world. There's no stopping the demise of in world shopping. ;-)

I suspected you of being an L.L. Agent as well. A higher quality Agent perhaps. hehe ;-)

"However, the cost of labor is not wholly arbitrary for professionals in the content creation business". Of course it's arbitrary. How much do you think you are worth per hour of work? How much does the next guy think he's worth per hour of work? And on and on and on to the other peeps....How long do you think it should take before you start making a profit after recouping your time invested based on what you arbitrarily think you where worth per hour of work? And the next guy? and the next peep? and so on and so forth.... "If the merchant simply buys templates and flood fills them with a purchased texture, he basically put in no labor and can sale his item at a price far below the market value of the item". Anyone can sell their items far below their 'market values', but what's to determine market value? I'll tell you this right now, the market value of an item has nothing necessarily to do with the amount of time someone spent making it. "On the other hand, a merchant that actually makes a quality, handcrafted and original product must recoup the amount of labor that he put into creating a product". Quality is a relative term. "Handcrafting' and 'originality' should not be limited as a correlative to ones Photoshop or other art software savviness that you seem to be implying. "Just like RL, there are high priced stores and bargain basement stores that do well". Actually the 'high priced stores' are not doing anywhere near as well as they used to for the last couple of years and all the growth is in the bargain basement stores (collectively and individually) or where expensive things where allowed to drop considerably in price. SL economics doesn't resemble RL much at all to me. Expenses can be almost non existent. "The success of the store depends on the owner understanding his market and offering a product that meets the standards (or lack of standards) of his clientele" I think price produces it's own market. Discourages or enhances by itself far more than anything else can and especially in S.L. where things are bought that would never be bought in R.L. by these same peeps. "And sorry, slashing a price to 50% less than its actual value is undercutting not competitive pricing. And as I said, undercutting hurts the entire market. That's true in RL and SL alike". Not if the market is over inflated price wise to begin with which it is and probably closer to 75% price over inflated in reality. And 'undercutting' is basically allowing for competition which is in most cases very good for general market growth in RL and I don't see why it should be different in SL. Advocation for these artificially high prices in SL would be like advocating across the board collusionary monopolistic practices on a massive scale in an economy which most would recognize would be 'bad' for market growth activity.

This is a blanket response to all those who think that competitive pricing is the wrong way to go. The reality is 'the market' has already determined that things are way overpriced as evidenced by the huge amounts of abandoned, vacant and unvisited lands directly caused by tier prices that are much too high relative to the demand. The old price range that went to support such high tier prices is no longer applicable because there is an alternative market called The Marketplace that is not subservient to tier prices. The wave of the future for Second life is price deflation and definitely not price inflation. All of you who are unwilling to profit from an increased user base and volume of sales will be left in the dust eventually. L.L is doing their best to keep prices inflated, but it is doomed to failure and can only delay the inevitable. If L.L. really considers growth and profitability a desired thing they will be forced to change their tune on this matter when some real competition kicks in in a few years or so. Walmart, due to real world overhead can only undercut the competition marginally, but in S.L., the only overhead is perhaps someone's (arbitrary) value of their own time spent on developing things, so to undercut that by say 50% (or more) is not only logical and practical, but will prove to be necessary over the longer term and the sooner you competitively modify your pricing points, the better it will be for you when the dust slowly settles. In the real world being stubborn about item prices and natural price deflation over time in a real marketplace would have landed most of you in bankruptcy court by now. ;-)

For maximizing sales, don't fall into the temptation of overpricing and being stubborn (and prideful) about it. Underpricing can hurt you too because peeps still have the psychology that price=quality in S.L. just like in the R.W., but that wont hurt sales anywhere near as much as overpricing. Your best bet seems to be whatever the prevailing price on similar products are, cut it in half and sell it at that price instead. Remember, you are competing with merchants that have been around since the early days and are well established with heavy marketing ability, but being able to sell their (sometimes mediocre) stuff at astronomical prices still, so to cut into their unjustifiably huge turf you need to undercut their prices, otherwise the vast majority of new Merchants will have to wait many years to 'become discovered'. And of course the more things you make and sell, the more visible you will be and your sales will increase exponentially because of that it seems. Also find and sell items that are in demand yet are not being supplied to fully fill the demand. Right now just about anything that's 'petite' or 'tiny' is a good bet. ;-)

"Simply getting new users isn't going to grow the SL economy and user base". Is this the reason why L.L. doesn't want to allow prices to deflate naturally? Thinking that the new users who would otherwise come about because of price deflation wont make up for the diminished price per item sale factor, agent Yatsenko? ;-D

"At this point a competing Second Life commerce site would be suicide and a waste of time" Could you explain that for us in greater depth, agent Yatsenko? ;-)