Toysoldier Thor

Well it is interesting and refreshing to actually here your admission of the dark days of the Merchant forums of 2009 2010 when you and I had it countless times because of what myself and a couple others saw your blind "head cheerleading" days. I fought hard against your stances because it many of your comments were just defying logic to me. I kept saying to myself "Dart does not come across as a stupid man so what is really behind his stances when and logical business assessment minded person could see all the risk factors and weaknesses that were screaming out from LL's operations and yet he sees everything as ALL POSITIVE". The more I witnessed it - the harder entrench I became to expose the the true reasons behind why you took such a clearing illogical position. I will say that I am glad that those days of that "LL CheerLeading Squad" and our battles are over. As much as you really ticked me off those days, I knew you were a smart man - just with biased opinions and being driven for reasons most of us were not allowed to know. A lot of people have suggested that being critical of LL and attacking their weaknesses does nothing good to help LL. I still do not agree with this position. A healthy growing company can listen to criticism and use it to improve. LL hasnt figured that part out because they rarely listen to those that criticize them until they are forced to publicly acknowledge it. Having you as a LL Knowledgable posting critic of LL is a good thing for LL - even if they dont know it. Glad to have you on the side of reason now.

Good example of what I was talking about. Mys story for SL was that although I am not hurting for money RL to keep the lights on and have always had the disposable income I needed to spend on what ever hobby I was interested in, when I joined SL almost 4 years ago (in two weeks) I made a personal commitment that I would not invest / infuse one penny of RL cash into SL. As such, because of my personal commitment, I was poor in SL from the first day. I still remember running with an account balance of $0L for the first two weeks. I remember talking to other less-noobs than I to find out which commercial sims were offering the highest $L / 15minutes for camping my Avatar butt on thier sims. We were talking about $2 to $5L per 15 minutes. So no one has to tell me how important 100L was when I was all excited that I had $50L in my account at that time. I should post my Avatar photo of mr in week 3. I still looked like an absolute Spiked Prim haired noob wearing all the latest hot fashions that the mega Freebie Stores could offer. I had no land. I didnt pay rent for any home. In fact I never paid rent for any place to call my home until over a year later. My first homes in my first 6 weeks of existence in SL was the bottom of sim owner's oceans - where owners didnt protect thier land from visitors Rezzing ! I remember living at the bottom of one ocean for 2 weeks with my freebie cheap chair and bed.... until the sim owner finally caught me. (Luckily she was so sweet and instead of booting me off her land - she adopted me and gave me a place to stay on her public / group use entire island - she became my SL Mom in the months that followed). The first major purchase I made in SL was when I bought my first Avatar skin. It was $3000L and I was nervous as heck to spend that kind of money on a skin, but I did. It is the same skin I wear to this day 3.5 years later. So... the reason I say all this is that even though I had no RL hardship, I was essentially SL Poor and had to fend for myself. I totally appreciated the value of the $L. And it was because I learned to survive and generate my own $L in SL in those early days that it was a major influence for me becoming a Merchant. As such, I too completely appreciate the sale I make from any Avatar that buys my product. It is why I strive to provide the best Pre and After sales service that any Merchant can provide. Because I know the value of the $L that my customers are putting out to buy my products. Funny last thought about looking back at my first few weeks as an SL Noob compared to the noobs I now see walking by me. Some of these Avatars are as hot looking and well dressed and fully laid out with the best fashions in their first 2 days as it took me 6 months to accomplish.

JeanneAnne wrote: Voodoo Schnyder wrote: So today after mixing up a few very basic keywords to search for specific themed clothes and found a store who had around 40,000 traffic! That's insane, I thought, then went inside and saw lucky chairs, a bunch of people standing around waiting for their letter to pop up... Now I was wondering if anyone out there ever used them in their business or not? Do you recommend them? Dislike them for some reason? I needed a little exposure of my products and thought maybe the lucky chairs would draw in some traffic for me. I don't spend a cent on SL. There are stores I visit in order to get stuff from Midnite Mania. I don't bother with lucky chairs unless I just happen to see my letter come up. There's no way that I'm going to hang around waiting for it to come up, like so many people do. SL is too much fun to waste time doing that. There are some chairs that a ? comes up which represents any letter. These may be worth hanging around a few minutes for. I appreciate the stuff I get from MM but if you think its going to get me into your store so that I will spend real money there, forgeta bout it. I often order freebie stuff from the browser Marketplace, too. If I fail to receive it it's no big deal, since I didn't pay anything for it. Vendors or content creators who think that doing away with freebies, MM & lucky chairs will force people like me to spend real money on SL, are wrong. It will just force us to be content with a newbie look or to leave SL altogether. Jeanne And this is not an insult to Jeanne at all.... but this type of user of the traffic generating tools like MM and lucky chairs is EXACTLY what makes up 99% of those people you will attract. They are not SHOPPERS. They are not interested in any way to pay anything for your store content. and they will not be promoting your store after they leave. Heck, I doubt if they will even remember your store the next day. Their inventory is sooooooo full of freebies from countless stores, your high valued gift you gave them is just thrown into their inventory that resembles a garbage heap of goodies. In fact I have talked to many of these MM Freebie Hunters and they even admit that several of the items they get as gifts they have not even opened. To them it is often the thrill of just getting something for free. Its like a game of easter egg hunting. So for the merchants that see MM and lucky chairs as a valuable tool to generate significant sales or even noticable sales - throw that thought away. Focus your advertising and promotion $ and time and effort on your proven past customers. Give them the discounts, the freebies, the advanced sales. Build your customer list up and use it to provide them the value they wanted from being on that list. They have the money and they have proven to spend it. The Jeanne's of the SL world are not customers - they are Freebie Hunters / Gamers. I will be completely honest in that from day 1 of me joining SL in 2008, I also made the personal commitment to never spend one penny of my RL $ on SecondLife. The only difference is that I am also not a big customers / shopper in SL in general and other than a few times over the past few years I have only used an MM board a handful of times. But, I now generate my own $L cashflow that when I want to buy something - I will. (I just hate shopping

Tiffy Vella wrote: I have a happy little business. Just sometimes will I send something to my group, but it's only when I want to, and it's always good. I don't do freebies. I do weekly sales, but would rather that my best customers know before anyone else. I will never have a chair in my store. Traffic in my store sometimes drops below 200, but 80% of the people who visit make a purchase. I like it that way. I like my customers a lot. My point is.... traffic is not important. 40,000 is insane. I bet the people standing there waiting for their letter are NEVER going to be customers. I appreciate that you might have good stuff, and need exposure, but never forget what you create, and who will be your actual customers. Strive for quality. EXACTLY RIGHT Tiffy.... Traffic Generating tools only attract those that want freebies from you. These visitors are GAMERS not CUSTOMERS. Stay away from these tools. Sim Traffic does not mean as much to popularity and search as it did 2 years ago. Tiffy's concepts are the right concepts.... focus on growing your past / loyal customer base. Reward them with sales and promotions! They will be the ones that buy again.

I for one am not a fan of Traffic Generating "Lost Laader" promotional tools like lucky chairs or Midnight Mania. I have written a long blog post on the reasons why as these promotion tool have become on of SL's main reasons for the inworld product price valuation plumeting since their arrival in SL back in late 2008. Initially when MM showed up - I was an early adopter of the tool and in those days MM was a HUGEEEE kickstart to my inworld store. My store sales went from almost no traffic / no sales (we were struggling in early 2009) to 10 times improvement in traffic and sale of our Value Priced products in the store. The reason was that in the early days of MM, the MM Hunt groups were few and well organized and the members of these customer MM hunt groups were not conidtioned to believe they were entitled to get the high quality products from the Merchant for free. They also were reminded by the group leaders themselves that visitors should come and look around the store and consider buying things from the store. Most members agreed and a good percent arrived, tagged the MM Board and actually looked around the store and bought. As the MM fad exploded, more and more merchants were competing with each other to get their MM Boards noticed so they started doing the WRONG fatal thing with MM boards (and the other traffic generating tools like Lucky Chairs)... they started offering their higher valued items into these advertising tools. The MM Hunt groups also naturally transitioned from being VALUE SHOPPERS to being FREEBIE HUNTER GAME Groups. Those that started showing up at MM and Lucky Chair promotions at merchant stores had and now have ZERO intention of buying anything from the merchant's store. They simply are hunting for free quality products. You might get 1 in 100 or 200 that will actually look around your store after they tag, but for the most part these visitors are not the visitors that most Merchants would want in their stores. They dont buy anything - they just take your freebie and run off to the next board on the group's list. Its a game to them. Sadly, the traffic generating boards have evolved the inworld product valuation to a continued slide. We all talk about how Freebies have been a major factor for destroying the SL Economy... well these traffic generating tools were the "CRACK" transport that caused Freebies to become the major factor to SL's eroded economy. Prior to MM boards / lucky chairs, Freebies were primarily housed by a few freebie stores. Of course the huge growing popularity of Marketplace has joined these inworld traffic generation tools in their continued growth of freebies and further escalated the SL economy erosion. So ... unless you plan to only put your cheap outdated content in these lucky chairs to give away, then all you are doing is giving away your value content for free and with almost no gained new sales of your other store content. AND if you put your cheap content in these lucky chairs, most of these Freebie Hunters will not stay around to use the chair. SL Freebie Hunters have become so entitled that they actually are now picky about what they get for free. They dont want cheap freebies - they expect valued freebies. I wouldnt use these tools as a way to attract real paying Customers - they do not bring these kind of visitors to your store.

I figure Mickey... that more than one of us can be so far off base on logic.... so I am joining you. You do whateve suits your fancy "next week". see now its me sitting back here an laughing as you will be busy next week doing whatever you plan to prove to the rest of us merchants that we need to be afraid. NiNi... I am going into SL and do some singing as my business keep making money without me... EEEK! OMG! I am making a profit in SL. I should have a freebie sale on all my stuff - to help the poor in SL who cant afford a decent rock. Nite all this thread has become a comedy fest.

LOL... now thats the Mickey we know and love. Pull of the gun from the gun rack in the back window and start shooting at all that moves... thinking about what your shooting at is for sissys! Yeeeee HAaaaa!!!

Ohh and one final thought on all those POOR AVATARS in SL that freebie creators are helping. They are poor for all the reasons that were mentioned... how bad the real life economy is and they cant afford to buy that $1000L nice ballroom dress for the ball, or afford a nice skin to look good, or the better sculpted parts for their home.... If these Avatars / people behind the avatars are so poor not to pay the high gouged prices by all those eveil Merchants of SL, how are they paying for their ISP to be on SL? Or the computer that gets them on SL? Or heck even the power to run the computer that gets them on SL? IF life is so hard in their RL world - which I am sure it is - then forget about shedding a tear because you cannot get a decent avatar skin for free. You should be wondering why you are on SL in the first place. As someone here seems to call SL.... Why are they even playing a game as opposed to saving it to keep their RL going? So as much as some of you are throwing this "ohhh dont shed a tear for the SL businesses that are losing profits or even going under because of the impacts of the SL freebie economy"... you should also stop using the lame excuse that "I create freebies to help the poor troddened Avatars that cant afford to buy things in SL".

Wow Mickey.... earlier in this thread you asked / wondered why so many Merchants are grumpy which is ironic because in another thread OPed by Chelsea, you were the Queen of the "Angered" grumpies no matter what logic or direction or ideas came up in the thread. Now you are the GRUMPY here and based on narrow minded logic on macro economics of how pricing works in an economy - based on some of your resposes to Rene. I am sure everyone in this world is just as aware of the terrible economic situation that is continues to grip many large sectors of the world - including many parts of the US. As Rene mentioned, as bad as it is in the USA and the hardships for many Americans personally, I dont think you have much of a clue how bad it is in many parts of Europe where the economy is so bad that entire countries are riding a razor's edge from being bankrupted - not just people - COUNTRIES! So you can stop the harping to everyone that know more than you that the world economies is hurting. We know. That besing said, your logic suggests that the easy solution is for all businesses to simply drop the prices of all their products - even if its to the bone - as long as it helps the needy? So tying your farmer giving Tomatos away free because it helps and it dont hurt wallmart... as Rene said, if a large group of farmers could all decide to give away their tomatos for free, do you think that will help the agriculture community and all those other tomato growers that feel it is important to at least get their costs out of growing them and bringing them to the market? If all business drop their prices to below their costs or be real generous and give stuff away for free, I am sure all Wallmart shoppers would be very happy for a couple weeks. That is until they lose their own job at the plant that made the products that now went bankrupt because Mickey wanted them to give away their products. Your "drop the prices" might be a great help for a couple weeks when the un-employed worker now has even less chance at a job since these business cannot afford to grow - they are too busy going bankrupt. Business exist to make a profit. PERIOD! Any business - even ones in virtual worlds or selling things online. If they have any other reason - they are not a business. And yes - this is true for even most of the FREEBIE creator / sellers in SL. They are only giving their content away because it basically costs them EXTREMELY little or nothing to create (please dont tell me that 10L upload charges are a cost anyone would care about $0.04). If these same Freebie creators had legit hard RL costs for producing the content they give away - i.e. if it magically cost $2.00US for every Sculpty Stairway that was sold, I can assure you that the days of the SL FREEBIES would be GONE! The problem in SL is that the virtual world has relatively little RL costs to produce (unless you are a merchant with a serious investment inworld and/or advertising). A freebie creator makes an item like a sculpty staircase for maybe $50L and throws it up on MArketplace that charges no fixed price to list and has no additional cost per unit sold. As frustrating as it is to try to run a business in SL and do what most businesses do - earn a profit - the reality is that the SL economy has a fundamental flaw in that the Cost of Manufacturing and distribution is extremely low for businesses and near zero for freebie makers. Since the COST of a product dictates the minimum price of a product and in SL the cost is near zero - sadly this opens the door for the economy to eventually gravitate to a FREEBIE ECONOMY. Go back to medieval times... the Barter system. Mickey can make and give away her tomatos and hopefully the other creator (Merchant will be a role not needed in SL in the future) will give her a prefab home or a sculpted rock in return. This is the world Mickey and others in this thread wanna see. This is the type of economy Mickey you want to see in the US as well? Seems like a simply life at least. Start growing your tomatos Mickey.

Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: ... Making things and selling them on the SL marketplace is NOT part of the educational and corporate uses for an real-time, interactive 3-D space. Neither is breeding pixel pets, boinking pixel **bleep**, or playing dressup in pixel clothing. Part of my nephew's med school training is on SL (private sim). They use voice chat and practice taking patient interviews with actors who are working for the school. There is also an ER sim where their lab results and other things happen in real-time, so if they don't get it, the patient dies. You are turning this around... I will ask you again... HOW IS SL DEFINED AS A GAME? Nothing you have stated in the last posting defines SL as a game. All you have proven to everyone is my point even further. SL is a multi-use Virtual world - i.e. its a virtual world platform of which several activities can be performed on it. So if you think that Creators / Merchants in SL are just playing a game when they spend hours, days, weeks, years of their time and effort to develop skills and develop PRODUCTS with the intent to SELL them for what 100% can be turned into RL US $. As such, if you define this as a game then I guess anyone in the RL world must only be playing a game... RIGHT? Or do you think because the product that are created and sold you cant physically touch with your fingers - its not real? You do have a very shallow perspective of what makes up an economy. You use the examples of people breeding pets in SL or making out in SL... or let me even expand on what I think you wanted to use as an example... people in SL gambling, or going to virtual clubs and listening to music, or role playing as a vampire...or or or. OK so if you think that SL is a "GAME" because SL is a virtual world that hosts these non-serious entertaining activities - including playing games within SL, then based on your definition, RL must be broad-stroked as a GAME since it contains all these activities as well. Again, you have not made one close to valid point to explain why you and several others considers SL to be a game. You havent because you cant. SL is a virtual world that hosts countless activities in many facets of RL... Education, Commercial, Enterainment, Support, Employment. Maybe you want to treat SL as a game because all you do in SL is likely play games. Thats fine. But dont define SL as a game because of your limited use and understanding of what SL is. If you broaden your view and perspective you might see why several other resident in SL like Merchants trying to make a RL income from it get ticked off when residents like you sabotage the SL economy just because you can and its fun and it doesnt hurt you in any way. There... I passed the guilt trip onto your shoulders... because it belongs there.

Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: ...This is a GAME. Don't get mad at people who treat it like one. And what I shake my head at is people that call the SL Virtual World simulations a GAME. Please explain clearly what makes you think SL is a game? Are there points to be won to participate in SL? Are there time limits to a session of SL? Is there a clear level of accomplishment to attain in SL? NO.... Funny... you and others call SL a game. I would think a lot of serious businesses that have put a ton of corporate investment in SL would not agree that they invested development in a GAME. That they hold RL business meetings and training in a GAME. I think there would be dozens of Universities that would disagree with you that they invested in a GAME which they use for serious education and skills development. I would think the US Government would disagree with you that their investment in US War Veteran Affairs having sims to assist injured war vets to recovery would not consider this a GAME... How many more examples do you want from me to prove how shallow your comments and beliefs are on SL being a GAME. Your opinions are as shallow and narrow minded as your misunderstanding on how the Alicia's of the world are seriously impacting SL's economy... simply for the fun of it. Not because she wants to be helpful. Just because she can screw someone. And you think that all fine. Its people like you and Alicia and others of similar mindsets that are doing the most to make this SL "GAME" not be around for much longer. Enjoy your GAME as long as it lasts.

Mickey, I will just respond on the parts I think is of value to respond... NCI would be a great condidate to manage these Creator/Merchant courses. To ease your apparent fears that someone will be evaluated to determine if they are or are not a "super" Merchant and placed into some elite merchant status.... the student merchants are ONLY taking the NCI courses for.... LEARNING! They would be attending to learn how to be a merchant. As such, the only potential certification given out is that the student COMPLETED THE COURSE. Thats it. Nothing more. No tests to see if they get over 90%. As for your question on who would do the training. Anne already told you. Volunteers. NCI teachers are volunteers. For this series of courses, the Volunteers would likely come from US... the SL community of expert Merchants. Maybe even you Mickey. You could teach one of these courses. You can teach the new merchants something. And when they finish your specific course, you will award them with a "I completed another Merchant course". Honestly Mickey, have you never heard of the NCI? But it really doesnt even have to be NCI. The course could be established by LL themselves to promote the growth of new merchants into SL. It only helps them. Not a complex nor devious intended concept. Its certified training for new inexperienced Merchants or those that want to learn more aspects of the Merchant role.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: "Their needs to be an SL CREATOR/MERCHANT Institute program from someone like NCI and fully supported by LL to educate a resident that wants to be a SL value contributing creator merchant." if part of that process involves analyzing whether or not a person has pride or if it involves analyzing whether or not a person adds "value".....and making a determination on that for review by others....supported by LL? No way. Wrong. And sad. Surprised in your comment to a person in another thread, concerning that topic. "Their" should be "There" - - I think that might be cause for dismissal from said group. Mickey, Your posting thoughts totally lost me as to relevance to what I was saying. So since your posting takes issue with what I posted (even though I am not sure how it ties together), I am to understand that you think that the idea of a Creator/Merchant Education program and possibly the "Certified NCI Trained Merchant" designation is an utterly horrible idea? Even if you dont use the program or ever take one class of training from this proposed series of Merchant Training (since you obviously already are an up and running merchant of SL), why do you seem to be so bitter that this education course be developed and setup in SL for the next generation Creator / Merchants or even current merchants that wish to better their skills on becoming a better more effective merchant? Its no skin off your back. It doesnt impact your business in any way. Its not a Merchant Association with a potentially subjective minimum standards / criteria designation that you would be hurt by if you didnt have it. The only risk would be - IF YOU EVEN ARE WORRIED ABOUT THIS - that these properly educated / trained SL Creator/Merchants might capture more sales of which some at the cost of your business because of their new found skills. But even this is a risk you can address by taking the course yourself or educating yourself via other more traditional means. Your postings seem to be blinded in this thread by some unknown personal reason at anything positive coming from this thread discussion. Not 100% sure why although I could guess. But you are converting every new thought on this thread into a threat / attack on some principle of yours. /ME hands Mickey the Blue Pill.... and a shot of whiskey as a chaser.

Chelsea Malibu wrote: Yeah Right Toy! I love this idea. And your mention of the 4 p's I assume you mean the Power, Profit, Prestige, Pleasure sales method? How to use MP, how SEO, staffing, taxes..There is so much that could be done here. And the mention of Merchant support is good to. An advanced mentor program for merchants could also work much like the Small Business Association Mentor programs work in RL. You have someone in your area of business that you can call on if you have questions. It could also be very motivating since as we know, starting off as a content creator/merchant can be somewhat isolating. I was lucky in that I had Stroker to mentor and motivate me. I would not be here today if not for him. All us Merchants durnig the evolution of Customer -> Creator -> Merchant can easily recall when they were both the Student and the Mentor. In the early stages many of us are purely the student and without an NCI to formally teach us how to be a Creator/Merchant in SL, most of us learned by word of mouth and SL friends that were further along the evolution and joining forums and by networking. In the later stages we all realize we have matured when we are asked more and more by the following generation of Creator/Merchants for advice. I can look back and remember several fellow creator / merchants (past and present) that were invaluable in fundamentally moving my evolution forward. There were many. And now I consider it an honor whenever I am asked by them for advice. I can also recall countless times I have helped many merchants get started on the very basics of building to sell, and placing their first item on MP, and how to rent a store, and how to deal with an angry customer, and how to set pricing, and opinions on moving content to other worlds than SL, etc.etc.etc. Some of these merchants are now even bigger than me - - one clothing designer as an example. But... what I can tell you is that other than obscure WIKIs and forums from LL, the one mentor I really can say was of very little value to the current success of my SL business.... LINDEN LAB. New creators and Merchant wanna-bees should not have to hunt out SL friends and follow informal channels to get themselves started as a merchant. Their needs to be an SL CREATOR/MERCHANT Institute program from someone like NCI and fully supported by LL to educate a resident that wants to be a SL value contributing creator merchant.

Happy Toshi wrote: Well All I gotta say is the really good freebies is from really good stores that actually have income other then you. Instead of pointing a finger I would maybe try to build better things... Sorry I had to say it... Its not a matter of "Building better things" Happy.... The VALUE CREATORS are the ones that have to stay ahead of the curve and keep building the NEW THINGS... until the copy-cat creators take their ideas and use their talents to make the same things for free. Example.... and sorry but since Alicia put up her hand as the ZERO VALUE CREATOR..... when is Alicia planning to release a whole suite of MESH products? Mesh is the new technology that the Value Merchants will be building and putting out to the market. When Mesh technology become a more simply and easy to use technology... that is when the Alicia's will start entering this new market and flooding it with the free versions of the same products. Then... the VALUE CREATORS will have to move onto the nex NEW content ... not BETTER.

I knew there was a reason I secretly loved you Sassy! As Dr Evil once said : "We are not all the different - you and me" <place pinky in side of my mouth>

Alicia Sautereau wrote: No offense, but all i can say is "lol" I bought a walkway that wasn`t cheap, but very cool. 1 week later, i learned blender, sculpties, fractionals the ins&outs with possibilities and improved it. You know what? when my house is finished, again (thanks asset server), that i will put on the market place for l$0 , i will be putting some time again to make some sculpty stuff and give it out for free aswell. While we are on the whiny tour, some will remember i had a tier system for estates 3 years ago for wich people now pay alot of money, i`m in the early stages of recoding it from scratch and make it free for every one to host it them selfs... And then i`m going to add some additional modules, like a rental box, overal accounting overview, vendors and security system tied to the user`s land in the tier/rental module... Who evers remembers me from the old days, *waves*, i`m back with a vengence against overpriced stuff :matte-motes-evil: /end rant, see you in a couple of months again And this is the reason why the SL Economy has always been a fragile and flawed model that it was only a matter of time before it would begin to fail. Ganelon in a later post explained the details of my point as well. In a Virtual world where the only significant RL cost is the actual creator's grey matter in their skull... (i.e. the inginuity, drive to learn, smarts & creativity to create content in SL) then its only a matter of time when a certain percentage of these amazing creators dont value their own creative talents nor time to create and give away creations that had significant value. Alicia is the Poster Child of the issue. To Alicia, she does not have any appreciated value for her time, talents, and efforts. As such, the cost of what she creates - in her mind - is FREE. It has no value. As such, she feels compelled for what ever her reasons (i.e. to be philanthropic, to help and support other residents with no money, to promote her own ego, or what ever other reasons personal to her) to give away content that actually does have value. As soon as Alicia does this and a few others do this and combined with the fact that she places on an ecommerce Media (Marketplace) with an effective search tool that favors promoting the cheap / free items over the more expensive items, its only natural that this content with value will lose its value. Im not saying that this is a global ALL CONTENT issue since unless Alicia has the creative talent (i.e. technical and artistic) to match / outmatch a creator that is charging fair value for their talents, Customers will still be willing to pay for the creations from these Fair Value Creators. My products are a good example. I make sculpted landscape materials. People like Alicia do have the technical talents to make sculpties. But until a large enough number of Alicia's also have the artistic creative talents to make sculpty landscapes packs that blend nicely (since I hand sculpt each of my landscape terrains), I will continue to generate the healthy weekly revenue I currently make on my landscape packs. But... sadly a lot of content has a large # of these creators who do not appreciate a $ value to their talents. The clothing market and prefab home builds and structured sculpties are examples of markets that have been badly hurt by these no-valued-talents creators. Alicia... I am not saying what you are doing is wrong. If you feel your skills and talents have no $ value and you want to take the time and effort to give away your creations that have value. You have full rights to. Just dont be surprised when the SL economy conitnues to erode which directly impact's LL's RL profitability (as well as the countless merchants) to the point that it risks the virtual world's existance. You are just an example of a flaw in the virtual world that was bound to appear sooner or later.

Although I do agree that the Marketplace has recently been a big factor to the overall erosion of SL's economy and product valuation model, I do disagree with your belief that Hunts and Midnight Mania and magic seats were / are not a factor. In fact, I strongly believe and many fellow merchant agree that Midnight Mania was the Mothership inworld store advertising scheme that started the erosion of SL's economy. Moreso the massive abuse and addiction of concepts like MM by Merchants that either didnt know or didnt care about the long term impacts of giving away more and more high quality / expensive items in order to keep MM hunters interested. This issue was brought up way back in 2009 - well be Marketplace was the huge overwhelming success it is now (as MP continues to destroy the inworld store economy). I wrote a blog on this topic. You can read about this... http://toytalks.weebly.com/1/post/2011/03/ll-releases-their-own-slm-kraken-with-dash-deal.html Just my opinion.

Ann Otoole wrote: I think these "BBB" efforts would be much more effective were the proponents of such a doomed to fail organization to go to NCI and create some classes on best practices and ethics for merchants in Secondlife. Catch the new merchants before they develop bad habits. OK Anne, now that is a direction for any formal / organized Merchant community that I would 100% support / endorse. A certified SL Merchant Course where any SL resident can enroll and complete that would provide answers to all the questions like: How created products are sold on SL (the basics) Product creation & packaging Product creation - legal, IP, copyrights, licensing, etc. (what should a new merchant know about this) The 4 P's for an SL world (what is the same and different between SL and RL) Distribution (what and how on distributing product: inworld, MP, other worlds, web, etc.) MP store/listing setup & management Inworld Store setup best practices Customer Service Best Practices Advertising & Marketing avenues - how do I get my company and products known Financial for an SL Merchant - tracking sales, costs, reporting, how to convert $L to $US, taxes, etc. Merchant Support - where can a merchant get support? communities? industry groups? What to follow? I could go on and on but there is an entire NCI series of classes that could be taught and maybe the Merchant that goes through it all could get a "Certified Trained SL Merchant" disignation when completed. Its shows to anyone that cares - maybe the occassional customer even - that if nothing else this Merchant took the time and effort to understand all aspects of being an SL Merchant. IT doesnt certify that the Merchant is some elite class of Merchant or meets some minimum level of quality or that he/she is even reputable. But if he/she took the time to go through all the courses - one could assume he/she was commited enough to want to be a responsible Merchant.

Nefertiti Nefarious wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: BUT... I have not heard a peep from any of the excited merchants of DD that went in there to test DD. Why? such a hot topic and yet not one merchant in the open beta has anything good or bad to say?? Fishy It's called a "non-disclosure agreement" ... most software testing requires the testers to agree to keep all the test details private. Its also called an OPEN BETA which has no Non-disclosure agreement signed by any of the testers. Merchants have already been in the beta grid and played with the DD system without signing anything last month. Are you saying were asked by LL to sign a NDA to enter and use the OPEN beta last month? 

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Go, Commerce Team. We either make it in 2012 or we die and all those nutcases with the signs about the end of the world were right, right? Finally an excuse to loosely quote from the film 2012! Might want to consider cross linking more into the Marketplace release notes on the wiki? And tell them to get you guys some more help, you've got an important department. If the board gives you flak tell them Dart said I'll crowd-fund them $15 coffee and flower dollars to come rake my lawn to make up for it! LOL..... yes.... I will donate $10k L to fund MP functions and services - as long as WE GET TO CHOOSE the work that gets dedicated priority to be delivered. Ohh. and we would want regular updates on this paid resource's progress and they have to actually listen to our requirements. This would not be a resource that works on LL interenal pet projects that LL Management thinks is important. This would be to get MP functions finally delivered that Merchants actually want and have asked for forever.

thank you.

WOW... thanks a lot for all the info. More to read although my mind is barely grasping the concept of UV... and with all the options and that Blender now seems like the better option and since Blender is equivilent to brain surgury ---- I am personally getting frustrated that after reading all this and taking another shot of getting through a workable pipeline, I will just throw my hands up once again. So, you mentioned that there is no magic button to setting the UV. Therefor I have to some how have to hand place all the UV patches onto the mesh model in order for what i painted on the high rez mesh to get somewhat clean on the texture map/UV going into SL? And triangles are BAD? Quads are GOOD? So I have to also convert my triangles to quads for SL to have a good looking texture map? And its sounding like more and more ppl do not like Zbrush as a good tool when working with models destined for SL? Maybe I should just consider abandoning Zbrush and look for a new tool. With the exception of the rocket scientists in this forum that can get their minds around Blender and its horrid UI, is there a more simple and easier to understand tool than Blender? I dread opening up Blender everytime I have to. 2.48 was bad but at least when it opens up - it was pretty simple and clean with its windows layout. 2.5 2.6 is a completely confusing jumble of windows (most of them seeming to be related to creating an animation scene) and I have no clue how to even close them. So what tool is the easiest tool for SL mesh / texture map making? I so wish a tool like sculptris and its simplicity had the smarts to do the proper retopo, UV, and exporting of its models and maps.

CommerceTeam Linden wrote: Thank you all for your interest in Direct Delivery! We are in the final round of testing before we open the Direct Delivery Beta to all Merchants for testing next week. As some of you saw, a draft Knowledge Base article was prematurely posted in this forum and has been removed to avoid confusion. We will be publishing a series of updated articles about Direct Delivery Beta when Direct Delivery launches next week. The Commerce Team Thanks Commerce Team for being forced to tell us your plans. What worries me now is that once again the team's message adds more confusion than clarity. So LL says... "We are in the final round of testing before we open the Direct Delivery Beta to all Merchants for testing next week." which says that the Open Beta did not go active in December. But as Made has already made clear, she was in the open beta and actually used the new DD a few times. So why is Brooke's team saying that the BETA is open for testing next week??? LL then say... "We will be publishing a series of updated articles about Direct Delivery Beta when Direct Delivery launches next week." So is the Open Beta of DD on Adidi opening up (when it supposedly already was) or is Brooke saying that next week DD rolls out on the Production Grid / MP and they are just calling it "BETA" to scare us less? Exactly WHAT IS ROLLING OUT NEXT WEEK? This better be the complete open release and pubication and education of DD on the test Adidi grid and not the main production grid.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: It may be against policy to put out a document on features that don't fully work yet that contain spelling errors. .... A followup thought on it being againt policy to put out a document that was not ready for public viewing... basically the person that violated policy was not Irene - it was Jeremy Linden. He violated policy. Forum members are not ranked to higher and more priveledged access to information with their concent. As such, since LL did not get the member's agreement that he /she would honor the new rights / access granted him/her by unsolicited means promoting this person, this member cannot be held accountable to keep secret the information restricted to that rank. Jeremy violated TOS and LL is worngly promoting forum members by not asking their permission to be promoted. Irene did nothing wrong.