Toysoldier Thor

NO MOD for Builders packs of Sculpt Maps is there to allow the 99% of customers to use 99% of the functionality of a sculpty map without allowing them to take the maps legally (i.e. through standard SL Viewer method) off the grid. i.e. you cannot export a texture that has no-mod. My most recent master builder sculpty map packs offer COPY TRANS and NO-MOD on the actual sculpty map textures and then full perms on shadow maps of each sculpty map for my building customers that want to develop custom textures on my sculpty shapes in PS or external graphic programs. As such, my NO-MOD maps now only limit an extremely small number of my customers that want to either use my map's UUID for a script (which I generally prefer they do not do anyway because of the potential risks of my maps getting out if programmed improperly or the script not made no-mod), or because they want to customize my sculpty shape (which I also do not allow my customers to customize any of my sculpty shapes). To potentially accomodate those rare customers that NEED no-mod (i.e. full perm) maps, I ask them to contact me and for an additional fee if I agree with the reason for their need for full perm - I sell them a special version of the pack. AND... contrary to Sassy's slam against merchants that do not offer full perm... In the 1+ year that I have offered NO-MOD sculpty map packs with the option to buy the value-add full perm map packs (for only 100L more), I have only had 2 customers of hundreds that have requested more than a NO-MOD pack. So, some people on this forum can slam the selling of no-mod but I have over a year of experience for my sculpty map business that it has not been an issue at all for me and my business.

Ziggy21 Slade wrote: Could you provide a link to anything you have written ever, where you interpreted an anouncement from LL in a positve way? You only ever see things negatively, and when you can't you claim LL are lying or have falsified the figures. Where is this leading?, what is it that you hope to achieve from this?, would it be good or bad for you if LL were to say 'actually Toy is right' everyone is leaving and SL is doomed?. I get the feeling you would be jumping for joy. Obviously LL paint the rosiest picture possible, just like any company does, its absolutley what we would expect and really isn't evidence of some great conspiracy theory. What is see from these figues, is what I would expect, a small, slow decline. No big drama, no conspriacy that needs to be covered up or falsified, just numbers which are very slightly lower than last years, with one exception - The Marketplace which has shown a pretty rapid increase in sales since its launch, whilst I would agree that this increase has come at the expense of inworld sales, again it is precisely what we would expect to see. Because Rodvik didn't bother to reply to your conspiracy theory tweet, really isn't evidence that there is a conspiracy, however the fact that you interpreted it that way is evidence that you are a conspiracy theorist. sighhhhh..... And this is what I get. Ohh poor LL. Heaven forbid that a corporation posts business / financial results with their obvious positive spinning (as you are correct - many companies do) for all to see and review, and how shocking and rare it is that a company's results are analyzed and criticized if they are not glowing by any interested parties to the company. Ziggy, what I want to understand - truly I want to understand - is why does my posts that critique and critisize LL activities, mistakes, weak quarterly results, spin doctoring interpretations, etc. bother you so personally? Why? My posts in no way were attacking you. My posts were not even addressed to you or directed at you in any way. But yet your posting - like so many others here that feel they need to be LL's white knight defenders - takes on a tone as if I have somehow personally attacked you. I am assessing and posting my opinions on the results of a corporation / business. Its fine if you have have cult-like undying love for all things LL, but why are your posts not focused on debating the topic as opposed to taking a fire and brimstone position on trying to shoot the messenger? PS... this is the same tone and attitude I get from several others in this forum that seem to take it so personal when I am directing criticism on LL and their activities. Put things in perspective - and try posting on the topic - not attacking me. If you do, maybe you wont stimulate a thread discussion that spirals into personal attacks. Just a thought - that maybe some others here should also take. NOW... back to the topic of this thread.

So looking at the latest Q3 results (and having the past Q2 results up as well), some observationss and puzzlements: Daily completed registrations chart: LL says that Aug showed the biggest growth month for SL in nearly 4 years. But if you look at the chart there is a very clear massive spike of 1 day of registrations - about 100% increase of registration in only 1 day of the month. Clearly its some anomaly of data. If LL counted this huge single day of 2x avg daily registration, it would explain the stated reason for Aug being such a huge month. Seems huge only by error. User Hours in SL... continues to decline. As 2010-Q1 stats showed 116 million hours, you can see the continued decline of user activity inworld is not good. Maybe its because a lot a massive amount of SL residents are logging out of SL grid to spend all their time on SLM? lol The average Monthly Economic Participants chart is doubly unusual. One observation when compated to last Quarter is that LL now only charts 5 quarters - last reporting period they reported 6 Quarters. Why? Secondly, all the quarters from last period are different results from this reporting period. i.e the last reported quarters from last report were: Q4=485, Q1=466, Q2=464, now in this report they are: Q4=482, Q1=468, Q2=463. Why? Related to point #3, exactly what does the stat mean and what is in/out of scope for this stat? Avg Exchange rate: the previous quarterly results are different between the Q2 and Q3 reporting periods. why? L$ Supply: Again the reported results from last Q are different from this Q. Even though LL notes that they would change reporting from time to time, once the stat is historical, why is it still changing? And the note says that only Q2 2011 is an estimate (in both reports). why? Regarding Web Merchandise Sales Volume: I already stated my concerns about this stat in a previous posting in this thread. World Size is still shrinking. It would be interesting to know this stat by Number of active sims owned by LL Accounts. I heard from another thread that in the past year LL has reduced the number of sims by 655. Is this fact true?

Sassy Romano wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote: Anyway... nuff said. Hey! You can't stop yet... I haven't finished my popcorn Popcorn is fattening. I have moved on to packs of rice cakes.

PS I tweeted Rodvik a posting of my financial assessment of LL Q2 results blog and asked him to answer (or get one of his officers that wrote the Q2 report) the tough questions I brought up in my blog on LL's financials report. Guess what I heard from Rodvik.... Nothing. But he was more than willing to tweet respond to others on some of the most trivial of topics equivilent to pointing out a cool thing in SL or personal chit chat to those he sees as "friendlies" in Twitter. LOL... not surprising.

What you all are seeing, saying, and puzzled on regarding LL's quarterly financials is exactly what everyone else noticed and spoke about from the Q2 results. Those Q2 results were actually spoken about at the SLCC although it was spun at the seminars as positively as the reports are spun. Your right in that its very puzzling where some of these numbers come from without more background to the numbers. That is one of the highlights of my blogging of the LL Q2 analysis. The numbers either had little relevance for any useable interpretation (and then spun positively) or they were clearly not good stats but spun to be "not really that bad or even good". Couldbe... regarding the clear rise of the SLM sales for the quarter from last year or even quarter.... I discuss even that fact and question if it really is a true positive. The question has to be asked and stats provided to prove otherwise if SLM Sales stats are growing fast but only at the cost of inworld sales declining as fast. If that is the case - and I am very positive it is the case - then the Net gain in SLM sales is likely being zeroed out and even negatively impacted by equal lost inworld sales which would then cause what we all are seeing as a fact - abandoned parcels of land and therefore abandoned sims from stores and malls that are now money losers and cannot be supported any longer. As such, significant SLM sales increases are the cause to the corresponding erosion of inworld economy. So is it really a positive figure? If SLM sales & spending is significantly increasing but the report shows that overall SL spending is among avatars is stable, then that has to indicate that SLM sales are stealing sales from inworld sales. The Q3 reports do not discuss this issue or possible side-effect of an increased SLM sales.

I was already painted as EVIL in the forum. I was just pointing how how the whitecoats are as personal an snarky in their posts when their logic in their posts are debated and their logic / facts questioned. I too was enjoying the initial topic about how to protect ourselves when LL eventually (and likely in the peak of our holidays season) deploys DD and once again disrupts the MP service for days or weeks. We got a bit dragged down because of those that challenged if a "buy inworld" rebate promo was a wise idea... one that I had already very successfuly ran and completed and had successful results. But that was ok. I also liked that we got into what really drives business in SL ... ie the discussion of profits, revenue, personal investment / passion of just RP a creator/merchant, or to be philanthropic. As you... I love talking about business stragegy. Anyway... nuff said.

Can you provde the link for the Q3 results? I have not seen it yet. I suspect if they changed the content and structure of the data in the latest report it was because the LL Sr. Management that developed the last report (I believe it is Brooke's boss that writes and publishes these reports and LL's interpretation of the numbers) realized that many of us drove a truck through his interpretation of his numbers. See my example of how LL's interpretation of the last reported financials were so vague and bogus, i.e. they were trying to paint the reported raw figures as being a sign of good things and turn-around when in fact the numbers said nothing of the kind.... http://toytalks.weebly.com/1/post/2011/08/ll-q2-11-results-bad-hidden-news-with-sugar-on-top.html Others saw exactly what I saw in the last numbers. I suspect LL didnt want to provide these raw figures again because they realized we are no dummies and can see right through the Spin Doctoring of the numbers. Thanks in advance for providing the link to the lastest financials.

So Dart.... in the other thread you pointed out how its ME that makes personal attacks in these threads. Of which I pointed out the "lack of class" is evenly shared by even those that supposedly appear beyond reproach. So you want an example? Look at this thread. I am having a discussion with Mickey. Someone chirps in to Mickey's defence with her logic on how profit means nothing vs. revenue. No problem there. I respond to her in detail why her logic is flawed. And what is her response to my response explaining the flaws to her logic... Well let me post it for you now... Reply to Toysoldier Thor - view message yesterday LOL Gotta love it when those who use an isolated figure to support one strand of rhetoric are morally outraged when another equally relevant accounting element is introduced to the discussion, and then it's suddenly a matter of "semantics" (and you might want to check with Mr Dictionary on that).  It doesnt bother my about her non-relevent to the topic, no valid content to the post, personal attack. Personal attacks dont bother me. Responses like this from her and others like her just tells me that I put her in her place in logic and she had no valid response other then to say "ohhh yeahhh welll you are a poo head so there!". Somewhat of a childish response on an adult discussion thread. Anyway Dart, when you are going to critisize base on observations, maybe keep your mind and eyes open that a paintbrush strokes both ways.

Honestly, I really dont take any time at all to investigate what all my fellow posting Merchants create and sell. There are a few that I know what they make because they sell similar products to me and are somewhat my compeitiors (i.e. my fellow sculpty makers). We often end up in similar forum topics of interest for obvious reasons. But even among this small group of merchant forum posters I just generally know they sell sculpty mapped products - most dont sell the sub-category of what I make - landscaped terrains. I know what a few others sell because they open talk about their products in the forum posts - like Pamela and their bottom signature is pretty clear what they sell. And more power to her or anyone else that does this. She does it subtly and like me she does it primarily to prove what she is trying to say by proving a Real and personal example. But see, unlike you that even in your post to me just now that seemed to show a sign of anger and contempt that I would include my business and selling products as example of what I am trying to say in my post, I dont see anything wrong with that AND moreso this is yet another subtle yet powerful form of marketing. Guess why? Most of my fellow merchants are a large part of my customer base. I build input materials for a lot of the finished products that are sold in MP by many of you merchants. So ... hmmm... to make my point in the merchant forum posting and to legitimately use my own product as an example WITHOUT providing a link or promoting it (which means I am not in any way violating forum posting TOS), this goes toward a couple of the key ingredients to making a PROFIT... increase revenue by effective/advertising to my target markets... and find innovative ways to reduce cost of operation (i.e. lower costs of marketing). As for the rest of the merchants that post in SL, in the past two+ years of posting, I have only visited a handful of your businesses. Is there a rule that says I am supposed to investigate and understand your business in order to be a participant in this forum? I missed that line in the TOS. PS... I have owned / own 4 Real Life businesses (including a patent holder of a product that I brought to market from scratch in my basement and now distribute nationally). None have lost me any money. Also, I hold down a career in servicing countless other businesses - including most of my time as a Business/IT Consultant & Systems Architect vendor for companies like IBM where my job was / is to understand countless customer business models, business and IT operations and problems, and to come up with solutions to fix their problems. I have and still do work as solution architect on solutions in the scale of $millions on very large deployments. (this is the reason when I look at LL's business model and operations - I shake my head at how immature an operation they are) From your postings on your understanding of business operations in SL I would assume it safe to say you dont have that same background, but you dont have to answer as I really dont need to know. You already stated you were even scared to tell us what your SL business profit margin actually is. So... more power to your business and feel free to dismiss my rebate promotion idea that I used for my business. I did not post it to convince you to use it as well. Each business is unique and has different needs.

If you are serious about the concept of shutting down MP in hopes to bring life back into the SL Inworld grid (which is a noble objective as its clear that MP has been destroying the inworld mall / store economy - and of course as a result hurting LL directly in a speeding up of abandoned sims) then you have to look at this concept in a much larger macro-economic perspective. Sadly, one of the most fundamental flaws of the inworld merchant / shopping enviornment which Xstree / MP have always been the true leader on is effective SL products search. Forget about the benefits / function of MP being able to sell a customer and deliver to a customer a product that is bought on MP. To me, the #1 most powerful feature of MP is its product index/search service for customers. In fact, many customers in SL use MP only for the purpose of finding a product they want to buy and then going inworld to buy the product. This tells you a lot on what is the most important function of MP. If buying the product was #1 then why would ANYONE search in MP and then leave the "buy now" button right in front of them to go to the store to buy? So... sure we could consider shutting down MP completely (it couldnt be just one merchant - it would have to be to shut down the service all together). Residents would surely be forced to buy inworld until one of the 3rd party online stores pop up again to fill the MP void. But without an effective inworld product search index, all our sales would plummet - even for those that make most of their sales inworld and not on MP. That is why I didnt take you serious Sassy. Since you and most merchants know that MP search is the only critical function of MP and tearing it out mean most merchants would disappear inside the grid of SL.

Marcus Hancroft wrote: Sassy Romano wrote: I have a great idea to guarantee 100% shop inworld... don't list on Marketplace! (i'm so smart at times) The only problem with this, Miss Sassy, is that inworld shopping is almost dead. People have gotten away from going to malls and inworld stores to get the things they want. Now, they just go to the Marketplace, look at a couple of photos and buy from there. I have a strong suspicion that in the near future, inworld shopping will be cut down to texture and sculpt stores and just a few prolific clothing stores. All of my sales come from my Marketplace store. I have very little traffic in my inworld store. If it weren't for the hunts I'm currently a part of, I wouldn't have any traffic at all. And yet, I still have a quarter sim with a big store and a lot of displays. This is why I was considering trying Toy's rebate program. Heck, I even made a rebate coupon in Gimp that looks nice to post on my Marketplace store. In truth though...I'm having second thoughts about it. I'm not sure it would do any danged good. Marcus I fully assume Sassy is just being.... SASSY and sarcastic. One never really knows if she believes this is a sound offer of advice or joking. I will just take it as a joke and if I were you I wouldnt waste too much time posting against her suggestion.

I really cant believe we are getting into these semantics but if we want to play this "what if" game than fine... I think it doesnt take a corrupt wall street financier to tell you that a % of a much larger number will give you much larger actual numbers. But sure, based on this line of "obvious" Grade 5 math thinking... 0.01% of a $100,000,000L = $10,000L 93% of $200L = $186L WOW Amazing how that math works. Not sure how that matters for this topic but that is cool huh. In the meantime if we want to look at the scale of operations. I were running a business RL or SL and only generating a 0.01% Profit margin, that would be deemed an unhealthy business operation since regardless of your size of business operation - .01% profits tell most analysts you are a hair from losing money. It tell ppl like me that what you are selling - no matter how much of it you are selling is barely profitable OR your business operation is not efficient and could go into a money loser in a heartbeat. It also tells me that you all you are making is $10,000L from $100million in sales, there is not much profit to spread around a business of this size. There is a lot more to any business than a couple factors but PROFIT is pretty much on top. If I have to spell it out for those that cannot tell that this thread is talking about a small scope of a much larger topic, then I will spell it out for these people. I didnt think I had to go into more details of business operations. So to conclude for my business in SL (since others are too afraid to admit theirs but are more that willing to stab at mine), I make 93% margins on about an average of $80K - 100K L a month. I accomplish this revenue and profit margins with about 10 hours of business effort a month on products that are still selling well over a year after I created them. It allows me to spend most of my SL time doing other things I love like creating art, building / running my art gallery, singing karaoke, and hanging with my SL friends. I posted this all to you on my $2800 Alienware laptop that was paid for from my SL Sculpty Business and as I prepare to take more art photography with my $2000 camera equipment that was paid for by my SL business and on my SL parcel of land that holds my store, art gallery and home that is totally paid for by my SL business. Amazing what MY 93% profit margins are doing for me. and ... OMG!! I guess as Mickey predicted... me telling you all this means my SL business is doomed now!! :0 Not sure how... /ME waits for doom to arrive.

Ann Otoole wrote: How do you advertise your rebate promo? Actually Ann its very easy. among all the products I sell, my biggest bread-winners are my 6 landscape terrains sculpty map builders packs. In order to give potential customers a taste of the quality of my sculpty map designs, long time ago I created an Xstreet / MP Free DEMO Pack of sample sculpted prims from each of my 6 packs. The Demo pack also has demo photos, product info, and LMs to my store. Well it seems when you use the word FREE in your Demo Pack, it attracts a ton of bees to my honey. On MP, since I released my Demo Pack, this free pack has been my #1 seller. In fact it outsells my most popular paid product by 3 times. Using my ever-popular Free Demo Pack listing on MP, I promoed my Rebate offer. The listing title prominently advertised my rebate offer on any of my Sculpty Map packs. Any customer that bought the free MP sold Demo Pack would have received in this pack a rebate coupon (a notecard). If they subsequently went inworld and bought one or more of my packs, they contacted my by IM or notecard telling me they have the coupon and they bought the following packs from my inworld store. I checked my history to confirm and then I IMed them back and paid them their rebate. Over the ~9 months of the rebate promo, I paid out several rebates. But strangely I noticed that I sold my MP Demo packs to customers that ended up buying my packs inworld and didnt even ask for the rebate. This happened VERY often and was a bit surprising to me. Anyway, my free MP DEMO Pack has always been a powerful sales tool for my landscape terrain sculpty packs. Using it as my tool to promote my rebate promo was one valuable tool.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: ... You say you don't know my business. Click on the freakin' link and take a look. It's furniture and accessories. To make it look pretty - we have to set that stuff out, and add some pretty props here and there. Do you set your stuff out? Did you set out some cute halloween pumpkins and bales of hay and goblins in front of your store entrance this week? Do you do that stuff? That stuff that requires prims? Dang - the halloween cupcake tray and punch bowl serving set is going to take up about 60 prims - gonna have to remove the fish and chips van for a month. It's not even my own design - so can't sell it and make PROFIT. Ambiance! How much do you spend on ambiance? heck no, I'm not going to toss out numbers. Dang sure-fire way to lose your business. Sounds like you want to have a contest. Well I guess there is where your SL business and mine differs. Considering the fact that my sales history has already proven that even with a prolonged effort to culture and redirect my customers to hopefully buy at my inworld - 70% of my customers still prefer to buy on MP, it already proves to me that live demos, and inworld spinning logos, and even seasonal halloween pretty bails of hay (which I would never do for my inworld store) have no value to my customers. i.e. 70% of my customers - even knowing that I have an inworld store with demo samples to see would rather just buy my product from the few photos I provide them on MP. As such, I have already long time ago decided that wasting prims in my inworld store to seasonally pretty it up has no value for my customers. And that I know for a fact. MY customer base is primarily the serious SL Builder of stuff that uses my products as inputs to what they are making to show to others or sell as a more complex build. My customers know exactly what they want and can see it simply from the descriptions and photos I provide on MP. 30% of the remaining customers do actually want to see samples of my landscape sculpty maps before buying or simply prefer to shop inworld. But they would buy inworld at my store if I have pretty bails of hay at my front door or not. This sounds like a different target customer than yours. Your customers need to see the "pretty". They want to be wowed by the finished preduct or the theme or the department store display settings. If they dont see it then it sounds like they would rather take their $L elsewhere. So I guess I am the more lucky merchant / creator in that I am working with a customer that knows what they want and is not swayed by the "pretty". They want to see facts, samples, good photos of the shapes, and they ocassionally ask me questions on which of my packs best suits they current build projects. This means my inworld store can be less prim loaded than yours. This means my inword store fixed costs can be lower. This means my over profit margins for my SL business would be greater. Lucky Me. As for tossing your numbers. Thats fine. No prob. I have a feeling about what your profit margins are simple based on your high inworld store overhead costs thaty ou say are a must to run your business successfully. I dont want a contest - I was just trying to prove a point when you said I seem to be "behind the times". But if your profit margins in SL are better than 93% then maybe your right. I suspect I am not behind the times.

OK so you are playing with semantics. So if you are a merchant in SL to be philanthropic since your #1 objective is to do whatever satisfies the customer beyond any other priority - inlcuding profits - then we are comparing apples to oranges. Most business RL and SL I know are in business to make a PROFIT. You are playing games in wording on how you portray it. To make a profit, you need to accomplish two primary critical goals of which #1 better be higher than #2: 1) You need to generate Sales / Revenue 2) You need to manage and reduce costs to as effective as possible So how do you generate revenue? > Offer an awesome product that is in demand in the market (i have seemed to lock that for my landscape packs) > Offer the best Pre & Post sales service to your customers (here is where I excel in my business) > Find effective innovative means to market, advertise your product - get your product known in the market So how do you reduce costs? > Know your business costs! Know how costs impact sales and operations. Understand it ! > Find ways to reduce no/low value costs to the business (i.e. costs that if removed would not impact business) > Think outside the box and dont do business practices just because others do. Run your business to fit your business So since keeping my customers happy in order to have them as repeat customers is a critical aspect of generating revenue, I do see that my Customer is very important to me. BUT, unlike you where you say your #1 priority is Customer before Profit. If I ran my business based on your priority, then why dont I give my products away? A customer of yours would be the most happy if you gave your products away for free. Afterall, profits is not a priority to you. I shake my head when I hear ppl fling buzzword business phrases like "the customer is the 1st priority" when its profit that is the first priority for a business. If not - then you are not a business. Tell your shareholders that "our #1 priority is to do whatever it takes to keep our customers happy - so dont worry about the losses we will make.". I dont know your business Mickey. If you truly do believe you need an entire sim to run your inworld business, that is a HUGEEE fixed internal cost. If you dont want to leverage it to its fullest by trying to get your customers to shop in it and generate even more costs on MP commissions, then thats your call. From what your are saying about your business, you can call me behind the times, but my profit margins on my total sales in SL every month is about 93%. Just to help you on this... that means that for every $100L in sales I make each month, and after ALL much MP and inworld costs are added up, $93L goes in my pocket and are cashed out into my RL! Ohh and I accomplish this now and have accomplished this for over 2 years straight with amazingly happy customers selling primarily 6 major products and about a dozen supporting products and a few old legacy products. Ohhh and I do this with the ability to run both an MP and an inworld store where I can use my rented parcel of land to also host my 6 story art gallery and my SL home. So yeah I must be really behind the times but I guess I dont mind being behind the times if this is the situation I am in. I dont know what your margins are. Are you willing to tell me what your monthly proift Margins are while your #1 priority is to keep your customer happy? I would love to know your monthly Margins.

The fact of the matter is that you can believe my strategy on rebate promo to "herd" sales inworld, or you can not believe what I have said, or you can make your own assumptions if it might or might not work. That is fully your choice. I did it most of 2011 and it proved very successful for me. I had customers that were even more happy than before. I redirected about 20% of my sales inworld that seems to be holding for now. I know I made additional sales by convincing the MP customer to buy inworld... when they saw my other products, were forced to talk to me, and saw my live product demos. If you dont believe me or hate the strategy.... thats fine. Doesnt bother me.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: I don't care if they do it in RL or not. I think here....that it will piss people off by offering two different prices. People pay attention to that stuff. Even if they did not pay attention....I am not comfortable with it. And again.... you are herding them to what is convenient for you. And not on what is convenient for them. If your figure is 90% (I think that mine might be 75%)... That's a very loud message on what is convenient for your customer. I should probably compute that figure better for myself, rather than eyeball it... but in my explanation to Ann... I wish that I could accomodate that 25% or 10% to a glorious inworld shopping experience with cutesy props and atmosphere. But I'm not rich enough to do that. I also wish that 50% or more would continue to shop inworld, so that I could justify the above, or that they would adjust tier fees to the economy.... But they aren't going to do that. And it ain't gonna happen. Seems that you are bucking a trend that may not reverse itself....and may turn into 95% or 100%. OK Mickey.... "YOU THINK" they would be pissed off? See there is a difference between you "thinking" or "speculating" and me that has "experienced" and "know" that they wont and DIDNT get pissed. You are debating your assumption to my 9 month actual execution of the promo. No one got pissed. In fact, the vast majority of my customers that are in MP and noticed the rebate offer were double happy because not only did they find the product they wanted - they were excited to get an actual cash refund from me when they contacted me. And... if there was any customer inworld that knew of the offer because a friend that bought the product via the rebate - I fully honored the rebate to this customer too. The customer that simply went to my inworld store and bought as they always planned to buy and were not aware of the MP rebate - how could they be mad about a deal they didnt know about in the first place. So... let me remove your "THINK" and "ASSUMPTION".... they did not get pissed. I gained more sales... FACT! What both you and even Ann are missing is that you are not a merchant in SL to see how many sales you can make. If that is your measure of success - you wont be in business long. You are in business to maximize PROFITS! Its all about PROFITS.... not # of sale transactions. As such, you need to assess your fixed costs (which is generally what your inworld store generates and which is fixed regardless of the number of sales) and the variable per-sale costs which MP hits you with. Ann, I thought I made myself very clear in two of my examples. I PAY RENT. A merchant that pays rent does not pay a teir. To repeat myself... I pay a monthly rent of $1200L. Thats it. I dont pay a teir on top of my rent. You are being duped if your inworld store is charing you both rent and a teir. lol I am a bit surprised how this is such a complex topic of simple basics of business operations. My fixed costs on my store are... FIXED. that means that the number of sales do not impact it. What that does also mean that since inworld costs are FIXED then the greater the number of sales inworld... the lower the per/sale fixed costs are. Therefore, if my fixed costs are $1200L/month then if I can generate a culture of convincing more MP customers to only use MP as a search engine... then a "herding" of about 25% of my monthly MP sales to inworld ... PAYS MY RENT... PAYS MY FIXED COSTS. And Ann... I already said in another post, if you are a merchant that only make about 10 or 20 sales a month... then dont have an inworld store since the fixed costs of an inworld store will be greater than the 5% commision you pay LL in MP. I generate about 80-100K L per month. Redirecting a percent of these sales to inworld is a huge advantage for me.

Magnet Homewood wrote: There is no need to think, I know for a fact that one merchant sent out a notecard with the offer of a 50% refund for a 5-star rating and good review. If one has done it, then surely more have too, and I am not going to rule out that on a bad-mood day, I might even do the same (but let's hope for now I don;t stoop so low). And yet a customer like Amethyst has stated she is would have made a purchase decision to buy the product from this merchant because to paraphrase her, "it trended to be the better product than the competing product since it has tons more 5-Star ratings" .... ratings that the Merchant BOUGHT! Do you see why the MP Ratings system is gamed and deceives customers?

Ohh Mickey, I should add one more thing about my BUY INWORLD promo..... the Rebate Campaign almost cost me nothing compared to other MP advertising marketing costs... My rebate value was around the cost of the 5% commission I would have had to pay LL anyway if the customer bought my product on MP. Instead of paying LL the 5% commission, I payed it to the customer as a rebate if they bought the same product inworld. Made sense to me

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: ... I was talking about two different prices on products. I'm not comfortable having two different prices - - to me, that's not right. Basically, that's what you're doing with a rebate toward only one sampling of people. And this price difference on the same product depending on the target customer doesnt happen in RL?? You havent gone to a store where they have a "WEB PRICE" for their product that says this price is only good if you buy from our online store? I sure have! You havent had a scenario where you get a special pricing on a product or service if you are a potential customer of a competing service and offered a deal to switch over? A price/deal that the current customers dont get? Happens to me all the time on my internet cable service. I could go on and on regarding RL examples. That being said, if an inworld customer of mine bring ups the offer that I have only on MP, I still honor the rebate to them. (I did - not do since I ended this promotional campaign in august). The promo campaign worked for me as now 70% of my sales are from MP. A year ago and for a long time prior to a year ago, 90% of my sales came from Xstreet/MP. I have been able to shift 20% of my MP sales to inworld. MORE PROFIT NOW IN MY HANDS and not LL. If I make about $100K L a month and if this trend holds, I now am making $1000L more profit a month. This almost pays my entire month's rent.

Mickey Vandeverre wrote: Toy, if 90% of your sales are coming from a venue that has almost zero overhead....why would you toy with that and direct those folks back to a venue that has major overhead? no, that doesn't make sense. I was talking about two different prices on products. I'm not comfortable having two different prices - - to me, that's not right. Basically, that's what you're doing with a rebate toward only one sampling of people. Why?? This is Business 101 on why. But let me explain why. Why would you think MP has almost zero overhead? Unless you are not paying any commissions, I pay 5% commissions on ALL my sales. This 5% is the same if I sell 1 item or 100 items a month. My inworld store cost overhead is fixed. I have to pay the same costs regardless if I sell 0, 1 or 100 items in my store. But, outside of the inworld store costs that are incurred regardless of where my product is sold, there are no product specific cost of sale. So lets use this knowledge on a couple examples: Scenario #1 : I sell 1 item @ 1000L > On MP: Total Revenue: 1000L / Cost of Sale: 50L / Profit to me: 950L > Inworld: Total Revenue: 1000L / Cost of Sale: 0L / Profit to me: 1000L Scenario #2: I sell 100 items @ 1000L > On MP: Total Revenue: 100,000L / Cost of Sale: 5,000L / Profit to me: 95,000L > Inworld: Total Revenue: 100,000L / Cost of Sale: 0L / Profit to me: 100,000L So now, if I could wave a magic wand on scenario #2 and redirect all my MP sales to inworld sales, I now have 5,000L more in my pocket that I could use to pay my fixed inworld store costs. Since my monthly rent for my store inworld is 1200L, I have just generated enough added profit to pay for 4 months of inworld rent. Not to mention the added benefit of my customers that visit my store inworld have entered a capture market of lots and only my products. When they look around they see all my landscape products and advertising and demos. This cant happen in MP. This means - very likely - more sales that I would not have got in MP. PS... if you are a merchant that is new and only makes 5 or 10 sales a month then you are right in that it would be more wise to just sell in MP since the overhead costs are lower in MP than inworld. BUT, my scenario is much closer to Scenario #2 and so its much more worth my while if I could get as much MP sales moved to inworld as possible. So.... exactly why do you think it makes no sense again?

Amethyst Jetaime wrote: I understand wanting to do away with a bad rating for non-delivery and agree that they should be removed. But, sorry I disagree about getting rid of ratings altogether or even make them optional for the merchant. As a consumer I find them useful. I take individual ratings with a grain of salt, but trends are usually a good indication of quality. When I see a product rated highly by a number of people I feel more confident buying it and may buy something from a merchant that is new to me that I wouldn't have purchased from otherwise. Conversely when a number of people give a product a poor rating, I don't buy it because I always end up disappointed in the product myself. There have also been times when I bought an item and had a problem with it. I try to contact the creator directly when this happens, but a number of times I get no reply or the brush off. When this happens I find that a poor rating gets the creators attention and generally the problem gets resolved, and if it doesn't I have warned others. Those merchants that "don't give a toss" about ratings are merchants that don't care what their customers think and one I wouldn't want to buy from. Maybe if more creators actually took the time to read their own ratings and paid attention to what consumers are saying they'd be more successful. Amethyst How much trust you as a customer puts into the MP ratings is why so many Merchants are worried about Ratings in general and that they either need to be removed completely or majorly overhauled so that it stop deceiving customers. The MP rating system is gamed by many merchants - why - because it can and the rewards to game it is worth while to trick customers like you into making buying decisions based on it. I have used my two own products as examples why the rating system needs to be removed until a more fair unbiased system is put in place: Example #1) My Rocky Terrains sculpy pack. Its my oldest of all my 6 landscape packs (its been a product on Xstreet/MP since 2009. I have sold several hundreds of this pack (creeping up to 1000 sales). Through its product life I have lost count on how many customers have IMed me to tell me how awesome the pack is. and since 70-90% of all my sales come from MP - most of these customers are from MP. So..... knowning that, one would think I would have hundreds of ratings - all in the 4 and 5 star rating. I have done a Ratings sort with competitors of somewhat similar products on the search. Most are around my count of ratings but a couple merchants have around 100+ ratings on their product. Well guess how many ratings I have received on my product? 29. It has been 29 ratings since Xstreet switched to MP. My last comment on the product was oct 11th 2010. ONE YEAR AGO. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/SCULPT-Rocky-Shorelines-Rocky-Terrains-25-Sculpty-Maps-Seamless-Textures-rock-river-shores-hills-landscapes/738338 So how does one - like me - that does not game his ratings seem to have only 29 ratings that is absolutely dead in any new ratings while another merchant's product rating keeps rising to over 100? You think this merchant is either getting customers to return and rate for a perk or getting friends to buy and rate (i.e. buying ratings), or using alts? More importantly, would you have bought his product over mine because he had 106 ratings and I only had 29 of which the last review was a year ago? EXAMPLE #2: This one ticks me off the most. Look at the distribution of ratings of my most popular product. A product that I am proud of and that pretty much all much customers absolutely love. A prodeuct that in over 2 years of being on the market - I have NEVER NEVER got one complaint or even suggestion on how it could be improved. 22 5-Star ratings 4 4-Star ratings 0 3-Star ratings 0 2-Star ratings 3 1-Star ratings !! ?? So how could 3 of 29 customers rate my product a 1-Star? Ohh and let me add another fact, these 3 ratings showed up all on the same week ! Ohh and during that week I had NO delivery failures. In fact its pretty rare for me to get delivery failures. Sound fishy to you that someone that had a grudge on me or a competitor might have gamed MY product? Well I sure thought that and I filed a LL ticket on the gaming of my product. Guess what LL's response was on the situation? Since the persons that filed the ratings of 1 (which of course I cant see) are not actual competitors of mine, the ratings are valid. WOW... LL couldnt possibly think that the customers were Alts or Friends with a common objective? So that is why the rating system needs to be removed or overhauled. I have always said that any ratings under 3-Stars must require an additional workflow by the customer making that rating. They must be asked first of they have brought up the concern of the product to the Merchant. They must also be willing to make their name available to the Merchant of the product so that he/she can contact the customer to resolve what clearly is an issue or possible problem with the product or service as far as this customer is concerned. Thats about it.

Exactly what Mickey says. LL Commerce Team has already on two occassions impacted MP operations and disrupted sales because of DD preparation changes - the other major MP disrupting change that LL is still trying to recover from was Sept 13th. Based on that, one would be pretty stupid to believe that the next round of LL Commerce DD related changes wont somehow screw up MP operations - regardless if the Merchant stays or moves over to DD. Finally, knowing how LL Commerce is on a specific DD deployment date regardless of how ready DD is for production, how long do you actually think LL Commerce is going to allow the Magicbox service to stay in operation? LL Commerce has made promises already that they have not kept regarding DD. They promised on a few occassions that they would be open and transparent about the details of DD - we still have seen nothing. They promised (Brooke's presentation at SLCC on video) that because DD involves actual financial transaction that they will be extra careful and fully test DD prior to it ever going into production - and we saw what happened on Sept 13th. As such, why would anyone believe that LL Commerce would leave Magicbox use for several months? Good chance that LL Commerce will likely force magicbox decommissioning very shortly after DD folders are made available. And seeing that these recent sim upgrades involved even more DD changes (when they have still not cleaned up their Sep 13th bugs), its seems clear that LL Commerce plans to deploy DD right in the middle of the busiest sales period of SL Merchant's sales year. So... staying on Magicboxes provides ZERO protection from LL Commerce's upcoming deployment flubs and the disruption of MP. Mickey, as for my strategy on encouraging my customers to shop more inworld by using rebates... I am not sure why you think that is confusing or not a good strategy. 90% of my total sales were coming from MP. That is dangerous for ANY busines - sl or rl - and even more dangerous when my 90% of sales are relient on LL's MP that has only seen service levels continue to drop and bugs continue to increase. My rebate strategy confused no customer. For those MP customers that saw and wanted to leverage my inworld buying rebate - they used it. For those that did not want to leverage my rebate - they simply continued to shop on MP. The good news is that I have now divert 20% of my customer sales to inworld sales! That protects me more against the anticipated LL DD upgrade disruptions on MP.

it was for exactly the reasons you are trying to make contingency plans for what we all are pretty sure LL Commerce Team will do to us during the peak of the shopping season (since they do not care that if they deploy DD right in the middle of this season) that I have for the past year tried to reduce my dependency on MP. Read the other thread on how to offer discounts on MP and my idea of offering MP rebates to my customers if they buy my products inworld instead of MP. I ran a REBATE promo on MP that was awarded to any of my customers that bought my MP free demo box and ended up buying my landscape packs inworld. This marketing strategy reduce my customer's buying habbit of 90% sales on mp to only 70%. 20% more of my customers now window shop on MP and buy at my inworld store. Over the past 16 months I have established myself as a known SL inworld artist and beome pretty well known in that SL community. I use the traffic generated from there to get sales directed to my inworld store. I have also over the past 12 months established my sales on competing Grids to SL where I have now about 15% of all my sales coming from non LL SL grids. But... at the end - what I cant do to much about is that the most effective product search tool for selling in SL comes from the MP. If LL screws up MP during the busiest shopping season - as many of us fully expect they will..... my sales will still be dramatically impacted. Only so much you can do when LL has the monopoly on SL market presence.