Fornicola Butuzova
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Blog Comments posted by Fornicola Butuzova
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As usual I am the last one to this party, lol, but are the rates comparble, I looked at a few exchanges becuse I'm sell capped right now, hit my limit on teh 6th of the month, nice, lol. But teh rates really sucked.
My daily cap on xstreet was more than my monthly rate on LindenX. So I'm sittin here waiting to hear if they will "bless me" with a trading increase. Monday will the 5th day of my request that is supposed to take 0-5 busines days, and the ticket is not even "work in progress" status yet.
What kind of rates do they offer?
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I thought I would let the air clear a bit before I posted on this.
Somtime last century, lol, early or mid 90's, I was a fearless but clueless gave dev, hocking my wares at the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas. This was before E3 ever existed.
I spent almost all my money to fly across the country to go get some work, meet some people and represent the small group of friends that had a game dev company with me.
We had just done a great game on the SNES, but nobody knew who we were. It wasn't like it is today where developers are rock stars, publishers took all the credit, and the last thing they wanted was for anyone to get expensive, lol
The experience was almost a comedy. The perky assitant that was charged with filtering the nobodys would take your card, and say "Wait here just a minute".
She would then poke her head into the tiny little conference rooms that were set behind the kiosks of Sega Genesis and Snes, where more important people than us were talking and making deals.
30 minutes would pass. Then 45. Perky the assistant would then poke her head back in, and come out with a business card from one of the important people, and ask us to send a demo..
Over and over over, day after day, pounding the floor in a giant room filled with pounding techno music, getting nowhere, and losing hope.
The last day of the show, we went back to the EA booth, one more try to tame goliath! Same routine, perky took took our cards, and poked her head in the tiny room.
But this time she was follwed out of the conference room by an actual important person.
He walked up and said "you guys made ***** (not gonna give away too much here, lol), that is a great game". He then asked US, if WE had a minute to chat!
There was only one or two little rooms in the booths in those days, EA had 2, BIG BALLAH's , buit they were full, so he lead us to a lil loungy area just off the convention floor.
We grabbeed a couple sodas, we sat down, and a very chill guy, about our age, with a mellow british accent passed out his card.
It read Rodney Humble, Electronic Arts.
Probably 150 important people, in stuffy little conference rooms, that we had yet to cast a shadow in, took a glance at our buiness cards that week, and told perky to take our number and shoo us away. Only one of them was on his game unough to know that the unknown name on that card was the actual developer of a recent breakout game.
Only one made the decsion that getting up and leaving the little room to have a few minutes face time with a completely unknown, but up and coming devloper was more important then listening to a hung over buyer from BestBuy brag about his blackjack winnings.
In subsequent years, the tiny conference rooms turned into hospitality suites, and we didnt have to beg for face time any more. It is a good thing we didnt just give up that first year.
So give this guy a chance, cuz waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when, when the whole world was too import for for a a group of nobodys who were doing good stuff, he gave us one!
Welcome aboard Rodey Humble!
P.S. If you dont like M's old office, stop by our lil "booth" here in SL, we have nice stuff and whatever ya want is on the house!
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IT'S A LONG ONE... BUT
I hope somebody is reading this. There is a probelm for my specific business, I sell homes, one the the cooler sapects of second life, and one that a huge percentage of users take advantage of. So here is a lil role play of that experience!
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I want to find a sexy outfit for my avatar, I look at the "Catagories", and see "Appearal"
ok, thats clothes, and I'm off to the races.
So now that I look all sexy, I want to set myself up with a cool pad to meet and greet my friends, show off a lil bit!.
I go to the search catagories, hmm where are the homes? I see building components, but I dont know how, or even want to build anything, I want to buy a beach house!
Building Components
- Bridges and Walkways1721
- Building Aids12275
- Doors2459
- Fences and Railings1317
- Other Building Components3193
- Sculpted prims2172
- Signs1408
- Stairs and Elevators870
- Structures43217
- Textures34622
- Windows
Hmm, what the heck is all this? I dont want windows, or elevators, I dont want to build anything, I want a home, a cool one like I see in all the pictures! What the heck is a structure? part of a home, an airplane hanger? Well lets click that.
- Structures
Ohhhh ok, there they are, I think, residentail structures, probably?
Yep, here are the homes! Awesome, I cant wait to get a kickA&& beach house!
Click!
SERIOSLY? No beach houses? WTF, 3 asian, 10 fanatsy, 8 historical? and no beach houses, I'll just type beach house in search!
type type type CLICK!
Holy crap 181 PAGES of beach houses!
and END SCENE!
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Imagine shopping for example a new convertable sports car if the tree looked like this:
Transportation components
Tires
Batteries
GPS Units
Fuel
Missle Guidance Systems
Insurance
Propellers
Achors
Brake pads
Oil/lubricatns
Polishes/Waxes
Spark Plugs
Vehicles------------
Air
Sea
Space
Land ------- Comercial
Military
Industrial
Mass transit
Recreational
Personal---------ETC!
You get the point!
Bringing this to the point of the advertising system now.
Amo and I are both full time merchants, which is to say we earn our RL livng by building and selling here is SL. We think very seriously about selling in SL and we are always interested in effective ways to reach more people, and the new marketplace has made selling easier for the average user, and it has been a net positive for us.
So kudos for that. New users are loaded up with lindens, and if they are not, they have little difficulty in getting them, and spending them. In the old days we would spend a huge amount of time walking customers thu that procees. Im glad that is over!
I am however pretty much certain that I will be canceling all my premium listing enhancements as the new system yields us almost no return. While sales are up, exposure and click thrus are now a fraction of what they were in Xsteet, and not even a healthy fraction
The net gain has been a result of many new users, and those new users coming to the store ready to buy, and not as the result of the enhancments we pay for, as the new configuation severely dimishinshes the amout of exposeure they recieve.
So when I think about advertising, and paying for advertising, I think, about the way they have organized and presented the catagories. Will people see it, when I need them to see it, will they click, will it generate visits to the store, will it beat our word of mouth which costs us nothing more than hard work.
As it is now, for our product, which is homes, I think not. If you look at the number of listings for "residental structures", it dwarfs all other catagories in the "Building Components", almost combined, yet it is burried 3 tiers deep, and given a name that no marketing guru in the world would suggest. You would never sell Cola by placing it in a catagory called "pre sweetened carbonated beverages" you also have to navigate thru elevators, scripts, textures and temp rezzers to get to it.
I recently spoke to a manager of a large estate, 600 regions, who told me 95% of all that land is residential. People buy land to express their style in a home. Leasing this land is the core business of LL, yet the products that drive this business, home sales, is one of the most confusing catagories to navigate.
If there was a Homes catagory that was obvious to the shopper, on the main page, and at the top of the tree, and believe me thay want that, and the subcatgories matched even relativley closly to what people actually buy, Beach Homes, Castles, Modern Homes, County Homes, Gothic Homes, Asian Homes, etc, and if the page loaded with more than 3 premiu listings at the top, Advertising would make much more sense to me.
But now the things I already pay for have such a low impact in terms of click thru and actual conversions to visits and sales, I cant rationalize it.
Maybe the point is to make the marketplace more generalized, and thus increase the need for advertising, but when the stratagies they offer now are not effective, what would motivate me to spend more on new strategies when they do not seem to understand how to steer the eyes to the appropraite products.
The home building business is a core business in SL, it is the driving force behind land sales and rentals. If the way they organize the marketplace cant effectively steer eyes to such a significant catagory, and acant collect those eyes as they begin shopping, what would make me think they will steer the eyes I want to reach to my adverisement, when I need them to see it?
Would running an be ad more powerful to me than a shopper simply typing "beach home" in search, like has to do now.
If there was a HOMES button on the main shopping tree
If that landed them on the HOMES page
If when they got there they saw a big advertisemnt.
That would be worth paying for. But when they type "beach home" in search, as most do becuse there is no HOMES button, or anyother way to actually effectively find a home on SL marketplace, and collect those motivated buyers eyes, guess what, they have already found my products, with pictures, and details and pricing, and reviews and a way to get right to the store to see them.
It is as thought they lay a complicated and misdirected path to one of the most comonly purchased, and important productsto teh SL economy, and then want to sell me an advertisemewnt to reach people who have already jumped thru those hoops and found me.
A fully finished home is a core, retail, consumer product in SL, It is not the same as a door script, a sculpty map or a texture. Those actually ARE building COMPONENTS!
If you had a place that collected eyes interested in the types of products I sell, when they are motived to buy them, I happily would pay to get in front of those eyes and make an impression.
I don't want the eye's of casual browsers. Retention is proven to be very weak, and broadcast adverts so comon that our brains instictively filter them out. They are simply not targeted ot timely enuff to pay off. I want the eyes of people who are looking for a home, when they are looking for it. Those people at that moment, when the ad will have the greastet effect.
As it is now, everyone just types "Beach house", or "Castle", or "Asain House" in search, and that brings them directly to the home builders product listings. There is no way to get in front of those eyes, beacuse they have already had to do the work of finding you.
You are placing the "Eat at Joe's Next Exit" sign in the parking lot of "Joe's Diner", instead of 1 mile before the highway off ramp!
Or placing it in Times Square, where nobody will remeber "Joe's" 10 seconds later.
To have any effect, Joe needs to have his billboard seen by hungry motorists, when they are approching his diner, not in the last big city, and not in in his parking lot!
Build me an off ramp and 1 will happily put a billboard there!
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XStreetSL L$ Exchange Closing Dec. 15
in Commerce
A group blog by Secondlife in General
Posted
HALLELUJAH!!!
Signed up this afternoon, 2:PM, sold just 2k lindens. play it safe. Cash was in my VirWox account instantly. I even did a limit order, which can take weeks on LindenX
No problems.
Did a cash withdrawl, via paypal, got a message that it can take up to 2 business days for the first time, no biggie, same as Xstreet the first time.
11PM, very same day, Money in my paypal account!!!
Did another, just to see how fast they are now that in verified, still just 5k lindens this time. Money was in my Paypal account in SECONDS, literally before I could flip my browser window to paypal.
The rate is a tiny bit lower than LindenX, but they charge just 50l$ and 1.5%, and I think that gets better with higher volume than 5k L$.v
Ther is no limit on L$ sales, or cash with drawls! Only on cash deposits!
I think when you balance the lower rate against the lower commision, it rwally is too close to meter, and it will get better when I start to move volume.
ILL TAKE IT!!!!
It is a shame I have to buy us dollars from a german exchange but whatever, as I tell Amo all the time, "The first rule in pimpin' is... GET THE MONEY", lol
Still cautious so ill gradually bump up the volume, but so far so good, really really good!
It is just funny, today I sold a French mansion, to an Italian guy, traded my lindens on a Greman exchange, from a bedroom in Wisconsin, lol
Im so very global, can I get tax credits for trade exports on virtual goods, lol
Big smiles today, we will see on monday if I get that trading increase from LL, but it seems so far that it doesnt matter anymore.
Try it, be careful, hut it seems ok so far!
Thanks to whoever dug this up!!!