Deja Letov

This is exactly what I started dohng tonight. I did decide to take all the new releases I did in the last two weeks and go ahead and move those to the alt since they are new and didn't have time to really build much history yet. And anything new will definitely be going under the new alt. Then maybe in a month or so ill move the rest over. Thanks guys!

I keep my online status hidden mainly because its the only way I can get a good block of time in of solid work (building). Yes I even block my friends during my "work time". And I unblock when I'm ready to be social again.this is especially helpful when I'm working on a huge project and need to dedicate my time, mainly because my time in SL is so limited.

No not searching for my store name, just general search terms.for example...searching for gothic furniture is bringing up my top sellers in my other store which have nothing to do with gothic furniture. But because gothic furniture is in my store name it causes weird search results. I once released several new products time the same time, then ran a promo to my customer base that required them to buy from the marketplace to get the discount. Well of course all those sales made my listings jump to the top which is great for one of my stores....but unfortunately they knocked out my best sellers from my other store when searching for the other keywords. I guess with the TOS not allowing duplicate listings I won't have a choice but to take the hit ad let them build themselves back up. Maybe I could just move a few products each week instead of all at once. This could let me build them up without taking them all down to zilch so quickly.

It's bugged me for a long time that we can't have multiple stores. I personally have four stores in world, 2 of which don't generate much income so I'm not worried about those. But two of my stores make up a good portion of my income and I'd like to be able to track sales separately for each. I also run into the problem with marketplace search results showing products that don't match the search simply because its in my store name. It's a big mess to say the least. id like to use one of my alts to set up a second marketplace store for my second store. I'm in the process of contacting sculptors and animators I've bought from to see if I can transfer the items full perm to my alt. but I'm kinda stuck on how exactly the best way to separate it would be. obviously I need to recreate the listings on the new alt store. But sales will probably stink at first because I will lose potentially years of sales plus ratings, etc that will probably land me on the last page for awhile. This will be hard making my tier or awhile losing all those sales. Is there any issue with TOS to leave my old listings up for a time until the new listings are doing a bit better? I know this could cause some confusion but I'm not sure how else to deal with the separation of stores. Has anyone else done something like this? I'd appreciate any advice on how best to proceed and still maintain my revenue.

Rya Nitely wrote: Yes, I figured out my sales are down in December because I don't have christmas items. I've started bringing out winter landscaping items, so that should help. I make landscaping products, old boats and plain, old rustic furniture.... tinselly, shiny things are not my specialty, and I have no inspiration to go there. If other merchants specialise in that type of thing then I'm happy to let them do it and get those sales. I take advantage of the peace and quiet of December to create new items and get things back in order. I always have so many jobs that never get done....less customers means less interruptions. As long as I have the usual bumper sales through Jan and Feb I'm not worried. Most people would be spending their money on RL christmas now, and in SL it would be mainly chrismas things too. Hey now, not all us make tinselly, shiny things for Christmas. I prefer the darker, bloodier and murderous side to Christmas. Lol

Ya the marketplace reporting options are pretty useless. Most of use a third party software for reporting or even excel to make our own...of course that only helps with sales and not clicks or views.

If you have your own sim you can set it in your region settings. If you are on a parcel like mainland or a shared sim you can use wind light settings by adding a simple set of text in your about land description. Just put this in your description with whatever setting you want /*Windlight Sky: "[name of the preset]"*/ full instructions at http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/parcelwl

tilly Kiranov wrote: In world sales are pretty steady (about 10% of total sales) it's MP thats taking the hit... will just have to wait it out... congrats on the baby! I think a previous poster may have hit the nail on the head...seasonal items are what is selling right now. If you don't have much of those items created and for sale, it could be the reason for the lower sales on the marketplace. But with your marketplace making up 90% of your sales you would definitely notice the hit more thn someone like me would.

Are you finding that its down for in world sales and marketplace or just one of those. I've noticed so far my in world sales are kind of just blah but my marketplace sales are doing fantastic. Ive been off having a baby for most of December though, so hardly any marketing except the hunts I am in which I'm sure is the explanation for my low sales.

I don't know if you did it immediately after, but when I update my products, I have found you have to wait about 5 minutes for it to appear in the list to be able to associate it with a current product. It shows up immediately in my merchant listings to create a new product, but for editing, you have to wait. Also read the guide posted above, it explains everything clearly.

Reporting is a joke and completely useless as it is right.Now. You're be better off to export it yourself and make some excel reports yourself.

I don't think this is a DD issue, it's a general marketplace issue.

And don't you love how they pretty much make your comment that explains it almost invisible? Comments above useless if nobody notices that they are there.

I don't even care if they leave the review system, they don't get read often anyway. I just don't think they should be part of relevance or top selling items. Take it out completely from search results and all would be well.

Nope been this way for years, has nothing to do with holding onto cash. It's just their policy, I doubt it will change. There are third party stems out systems you can use, with slightly higher fees. I use virwox.com quite a bit.

Has anyone inquired into from a merchant perspective but as a consumer directly to LL? We know they never put us merchants first but I wonder if they would flinch at a ton of consumer complaints now that we can find anything with the search. Probably not that hey would care but I'm jut wondering if anyone has and what their response has been.

In an effort to try and sort out what's going on with search, I've also been looking into the strange results too. I still cant say with any certainty myself as to what is happening but I don't think it's quite as simple as just listing freebies first, because I am finding a lot of results that appear at the top of the list have nothing to do with the word that was searched for...but some other items in the merchants listings do. Also you get freebies and well priced items being returned in results so it can't be only a freebie or dollar amount criteria. I did notice that if you select a category the listings seem a bit closer to what it should be as far as relevancy. to me it doesn't appear that they just gave a blanket boost to freebies and low priced items but instead that they have changed the search returns to be even less restrictive than before when it comes to relevancy. I would even go so far as to say that maybe they are including other products by the merchant in their search results. Whatever they have changed, it definitely is not helping relevancy. In fact when doing some shopping of my own this weekend I found it extremely hard to find what I was looking for And it wasnt due to freebies, it was due to products not even remotely related to what i was looking for showing up in my results. If it stays this way we may find the "reason" many of us use the marketplace (easier to find what we are looking for) has just been taken away. I'm someone who uses the marketplace to search but then I go in world to actually buy it...as of right now there doesn't seem to be an advantage to doing that anymore. I haven't noticed a decrease in sales on the marketplace as of yet, but I'm sure it may just be a matter of time. It's cases like these however that make me very glad I put so much of my efforts into my inworld store and use the marketplace as a secondary form of advertising and sales. The marketplace is just too unstable to rely on it for stability in a business.

Damn Sassy! I am uber impressed! Id love to sell something for a million linden even once per day. awesome job...you go girl!

Belldandy Schmajuk wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: How do you know? Where is your proof that LL "suddenly changed the algorithm"? How do you know the free items aren't selling better? Okey honey, I am not interested in a mindless discussion, I think I answered this question earlier in the thread. Let me be a bit agressive towards you, and forgive me for that, I´m not that kind of person: I think you do not understand the issue because you are not a merchant period. or at least.. a "relevant" merchant, no disrespect intended. What I mean is, you have not been affected at all by the problem and you only know about it because you read my original post, and hence, this day looks like any other shopping day for you. Rewriting this idea: from the perspective of a consumer or from the perspective of a store with little to near zero sales (near zero relevance as well), marketplace really looks like any other normal day, and I should agree with you: freebies outsell many many shops, these shops do not have enought sales to outpace the most relevant freebies, but like anything in the world, this is not enterely true... freebies really have a hard time trying to outsell most relevant shops. How do I know LL changed something from one day to another? its simply, when you notice a sudden sales drop, you start looking for problems, delistings, issues with the magic box (in the past), problems with the mainstore (SIM isues etc.)... etc. in this particular scenario, a change in the algorithm LL uses to sort results seemed to be the problem after careful examination on how MP looked that day. example: oh my gosh! my item dissapeared from the first page relevance/best selling! and.. what the heck? what are these freebies doing around? never saw them before! and so many!! <--- merchant severely confused. This kind of perspective is the result of years of experience dealing with MP trying to survive and making a living from SL. And this constant check and care for your business gives you a deep and daily insight on how MP really looks normally on its best days (most of the time) and how MP looks like when LL decides to go nuts. pd: read the whole thread, I think I mentioned somewhere that LL tacitly acknowledged the changes in MP in the reply I got from my ticket. (if you are still needing a proof written in stone). No of offence "honey" but this entire discussion would remain pretty mindless if all we did was simply believe something just because you said so. You are also a very condescending person and highly rude to others who are just looking or some facts that can backup what you claim is happening. Most of us merchants are smart enough to not believe someone blindly without proof other than because they said so. And because there are apparently "relevant" merchants as well as merchants who haven't been affected, again, means its not an issue across the board. And I'm not even saying what you think is happening, isn't happening. I think what people are trying to get across is that you are coming onto a forum, that honestly you aren't even an active poster on which means people here may not even know who you are so again not a person we would just blindly trust and youre stating "facts" that aren't really facts, they are your best guesses and determinations. What you might try instead of being condescending to those who disagree is simply to say these are what I think is happening instead of saying you know for a fact because unless you can see sales data...you have no way to backup that claim. again I'm not disagreeing this isn't happening, just giving some thoughts on why people are having issue or at least questioning why it's happening.

Belldandy Schmajuk wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: the OP stated that JCNY only had a freebie on the front page (I'm assuming the 10L item is what she calls a freebie) and all of their other best selling items were getting pushed down the list due to the other freebies.. as i stated many times, perhaps the freebies are selling better than the higher priced items since a lot of people have less money to spend in SL. Yes to the first statement, and no to the rest... I stated quite clearly in my last post that the freebies did not get their new position "due to hard work and steady sales", not at all. This was the result of a sudden change in the algorithm done by the commerce team in a single day (or whoever pulls the cables). If you have searched for rings in the past, you should know, these stores (JCNY, Earthstones, etc.) had several high priced items in the first positions (1-6) now, nothing appears, just a freebie now and then. I guess I'm just wondering how do you know this. Did LL share with you all of their sales data so that you can make the statement that it can't possibly due to those freebies having just sold more than their higher priced competition? I guess I'm just not understanding how you are privy to knowledge of the sales volume of all of your competition and to those freebies being sold. If this was the case wouldn't it also be the case for all search terms that could possibly have freebies within them? Although it does make me want to go throw some freebies up there to see if it helps myself out. it is possible this could truly be happening but without knowing the actual sales numbers of all of those items sold, we have no way of knowing for sure, except to assume freebies are selling really well right now.

This thread is actually prompting me to make a HUD to find products in my store. My place is fairly large and this would totally help! on a side note...because I have forced landing, one thing I do have is a directory in my shop. This way if its a bed they are looking for they can tp direct to the bedrooms section. Or right to living rooms, kitchen and even my cemetery.its not perfect but it does take away a lot of the wandering around aimlessly looking for something. But still liking the HUD idea.

Someone should make a product search hud or something we can give out at our store entrances. That would be awesome!

Lucretia Brandenburg wrote: Thank you for a merchant's perspective. I had originally thought it was number 2 on your list, compel people to shop inworld to increase impulse buying but then thought wait, that seems sort of silly, since the reason I'm shopping on the marketplace is because I don't want to shop inworld, and if someone would rather shop one place than another, strongly nudging a person to do what s/he doesn't want to do seems a bit counterproductive, since more often than not it can be the deciding factor for me in not purchasing from one person and continuing to look for what I want elsewhere on the market. I know for me, there are two shopping mindsets, one is this is what I want, I don't want to fool around and look for something else. The other is a more general browsing mentality that isn't so specific, usually when shopping for a gift or to say, decorate a place for a party. Either way, I want to be able to find what I'm looking for with the greatest ease or efficiency. I know some people shop because they're bored or because it's a social activity. My shopping for SL items is very close to how I shop for RL items, I have a shopping list, I determine where I can most likely get what I need, and I go there, sticking to my list. Unless it's grocery shopping while hungry, then I might pick up a snack at the register on the way out the door, which is never an issue with SL shopping :matte-motes-wink-tongue: aaahh but you're also making a huge assumption that people shop the same way you do.The reality is not everyone shops like you do. A lot of people like to browse, like to support the in world life, etc. And merchants know this and want to capitalize on it. It's really not counterproductive at all if you think about it, especially sinc we don't know if more people shop the way you do or shop with variety and choices in mind. I don't know that most people shop on the marketplace because they don't want to go in world...from what I keep hearing it is more because the in world search is craptastic and doesn't work, forcing them to have to use the marketplace to find things. When I shop as a consumer, I hate shopping on the Marketplace. I am a sort of gotta see it in person type of person. That's why I use it for the search but I try to go in world as much as I can. Now there are some types of items that I don't need to do this with but a lot of things I want to see it. Your shopping mentality sounds like my husband LOL he's very much a get in and get it done kind of guy. but me...I love to browse, love to check out what else someone has, look and see what's on sale in their store. Plus...since I am a merchant I like to buy in world in hopes of saving them the 5% commission fee.

That seems a lot of trouble for someone to go through. Do you think someone would go through that list to find one product out of 400 vendors. And more imporantly would people understand how to do that. not everyone is familiar with searching a web pge. Even if they would who though, it still won't bypass the forced landing spotats at is needed to handle changed landmarks. That would be handy...if people would use it.

Lucretia Brandenburg wrote: There are some merchants on the market that only offer demos of skin, hair, etc. and someone has to go to their inworld shop to purchase the full version. I figure that's so that someone doesn't purchase a pricey item on the market and then write a bad review or cause a headache to merchants when it isn't just the thing they wanted. To me, there are only a couple of merchants for whom that is worth the annoying inworld shopping experience. As a merchant, I find this reasoning highly unlikely. Now I don't do skins but to me the first thing that popped into my head when I read this is...no...they do it for two other very important reasons. 1. By not allowing the full purchase on the marketplace they are not paying the 5% commission to linden labs. Over the course of time this really can add up. I know for me personally I've paid somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000linden in commission fees for this year from marketplace sales. I am actually quite thankful that only makes up about half my sales for the year. I would imagine skin makers who probably have a much higher sales volume than I do, would pay out a much larger amount if they didn't do their method of getting you to come to the store instead. 2. From a marketing and sales standpoint, it's quite genius. You have them come into the store and they will see the other products and buy more. Real life stores do this all the time and its very successful. 3. I just thought of a third reason. Failed marketplace deliveries. If they buy in store they have a much higher chance of ensuring their product actually gets delivered. i doubt very much anyone forces people to buy in world out of fear of a review...especially since reviews are rarely even left, let alone actually read.