Zhoie Zimermann

Vahn, check out the thread "Sales...dead", then you can get a very good idea why your sales have died, along with all of ours which have also dropped.

Is this really gone or just hiding? If it's gone, I wonder why. It was such a handy merchant feature, i loved it.

Okay ready for the dumbest question of the year? Does anything think this MP situation will ever resolve itself and sales will eventually go back to normal? (crosses fingers)

EndoPlasmic, well i sure had an LOL at your post but in all honestly it was nicely written and most of all...VERY TRUE. I can almost hear the constant "tinker tinkering" going on at LL with regards to the MP search. Darrius, thanks for mentioning that, but i just checked my items and no they are all where i left them.

I am so sorry to hear of all the merchants suffering through this time. It's really sad and I dunno whether it's going to change or not. When our rl pocketbooks are affected it sure hurts. I've started drawing up a business plan in RL and trust me, when I go out of SL, i plan to go out with a bang. Something odd happened to my marketplace sales this week and I wanted to get people's feedback on what it could be. I truely do want to get a grasp on what is happening, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. My sales have been dead up till Monday... Below I am referring to my main selling products on marketplace: Sunday March 20th: Sales finally started to trickle in, several sales seen (next morning noticed my items moved up in page search) Monday March 21st: More sales flowing in (next morning my items moved up again considerably. Main product appearing on page 1 of search) Tuesday March 22nd: GANGBUSTER sales day, Huge amount of my main product sold (next morning main product had fallen to page 18 on search and now...NO sales today at all) So the more I sell of a product... the more I go down in the list? That wasn't the case for Sunday and Monday, why the case for Tuesday? Tuesday best sales day ever, Wednesday morning fallen down the search list out of sight. Before the marketplace changes I used to see slow days and busy days, but never 100% dead no sales, gone down the drain days. I also never saw such huge flucuation literally over night in where my items were on page search. Why is this happening now? Maybe it's me, that I simply don't understand what is going on with the new marketplace searches, but if anyone can shed some light on this for me that would be great. I feel like I am in the dark, totally not in control of my own busines. Over all, my sales have fallen drastically each week for the last month. Even though I have just had a few great days, I won't end up with a much better week when the other days fall off the map. Please help me understand...

Marketplace search needs some serious help. I do a search for "sex bed" I order by "best selling" I get my least popular sex bed that I never sell any of basically coming up as my first product where as my best selling selling sex bed (by a land slide) is nowhere to be found in the best selling list. Something is terribly wrong and LL needs to fix it before myself and other merchants lose our businesses. I also did a search in general for "bed" looking for my full line of PG beds. What came up on page 2, well before any of my products were prim DOGS. I looked in advert and no mention of the word bed. I looked at the source code for keywords, no word bed mentioned, in fact here were the key words... dog, dogs, pet, pets, Artificial Intelligence, Scripted, Papillon. Also BEFORE any of my bed products I came across, trucks, chairs, wearable sweat, medicated needle, twister mat, and a TON of other things. There is seriously something wrong with Marketplace search. If they think this is relevant they are wrong. No wonder my sales are suffering. How can anyone find my furniture when they get so many unrelated items that don't even have the key words in them so how are they showing up?

Thanks everyone for your information. Whatever LL is doing it just doesn't make sense. For example I have two bedroom sets, both have the exact same keywords. One is my most popular product and the other is my least (by far) popular product. The least popular product shows up in a search for "sex bed" on page 15 and the most popular shows up on page 21. I'm um...confused. Keep in mind that before the marketplace changes my most popular was on page 1. So I got dumped back badly.

wonderful, so changing a spelling error could bump me down, wow. I have to start laughing at this else cry. I wish I could say I was laughing all the way to the bank, but since the new changes, that is no longer the case...more LOL's

Is it comfirmed that changing something in your ad can bump you down the line? Example: changing your wording in some way? How about changing from moderate to adult? I did just this last night, however saw no change in the page number in which I appeared on, wouldn't that make one assume it makes no difference? I just don't know anymore LOL btw: thanks for replying

I agreee, it should be default. Wonder why it's not. I set mine to most recent post appearing at top, but I couldn't figure it out either at first glance, I had to look at what people wrote here, thanks for the help all.

Wow i had no idea about marketplace search mirroring in world. It' just keeps getting better and better (sarcasm). On another note, wondering if someone can help me out. In my desperate attempt to raise my sales back up I put in 3 ads in marketplace (1 PG product ad and 2 adult product ads). As many times as I have refreshed and viewed the featured items, I have only come across 1 of my ads 1x (1 of my adult items). No times for the other 2. However, in this time I came across other merchants products numerous times each for the same ad. Can someone that knows tell me how this can be? Is this also affected by the new mirroring of in world searchs? Is just refreshing your page and looking through the new featured items not an accurate account ? Thanks so much!

I realized while searching for my products that I used to show up on page 1, a lot of times right at the top of the page. Now, I'm either nowhere to be found or on pages very far along. This also has to be a reason my sales are suffering. I build up my spot and marketplace changes it's search critera, dumping me back down the line. I can't win. It's 2 steps forward, 3 steps back...constantly.

Insaniac, my sales were way down last week and... totally devestating this week. I am afraid to look at my sales now. Before I used to be excited to look at my sales. I would come to my email and see sale after sale after sale flowing in from marketplace...not anymore. Also because Maretplace drives a lot of people to my in world store...those sales are down as well. This is by far the worst ever. I don't even know what to say anymore...

Pearl, it depends on what you sell. If it's an item that is supposed to be in moderate or adult you can't really put it into general (well I suppose there must be ways I see others doing it) though I would not recommend it. I'd like to say advertising but I have not done enough of it since the new marketplace came out to be able to say it really works. I am also open to any suggestions myself as to what we can do marketplace wise, to bring in some more sales while we wait on LL to possibly change this situation. Since a great deal of my sales come from non signed in browsers (which I have lost now) I need to figure out myself how I can do some boosting. However, I have to say that I'm slowly losing the desire to scramble to figure out what I am going to do after each LL change. It gets tiring. Making money in SL is great but if it becomes too stressful I have to access why I am bothering. Sorry I couldn't be more help Pearl

Pearl, you noticed a change after the marketplace being down because they changed the default search for non signed in members. I was sadened to look at my sales drop this week compared to the week prior and this was with Sunday, Monday and half of Tuesday as normal days (before the marketplace change). I can't imagine what it will be this week with a full 7 days of it. We can all talk about different things that contribute to low sales and I am sure they all play a part HOWEVER...is it coincidence that my sales drop EXACTLY and PRECISELY the moment marketplace made the change on Tuesday? I still have my fingers crossed (and toes) that LL is working on on something to change this. Why would they want to make less money???

Clever, thank you for the information. I'll take a look, these are things I am unaware of (alt tracking). Horrible and yes I can see how it can concern people and make them kinda halt in their tracks.

I understand what some people are saying about not selling any M or A products and still their sales have been down. This is just my opinion but I still firmly believe a great deal of this is due to changes in marketplace maturity settings. Everything is related whether you sell mature products or not. It's a snow ball affect. People who sell mature products (and there are a lot of us) see a drop in sales, we as consumers curb our spending, I myself stop spending when my sales are low. I make furniture, when my sales are down I stop spending too. I stop buying clothes and other items I would normally shop freely for, clothing designer sees drop in sales, they curb spending, etc, etc. Anytime a large group of merchants is affected it affects the economy as a whole.

Somone mentioned scanner and alt detections being partially responsible for drop in sales. Sorry but I've never heard of these, can someone let me what they are and how they might be affecting things? Thanks so much

Iva, you said it right when you said empty wallets. Seriously, who believes the teens have the money to spend? Seeing how my main product is furniture, I'm really SOL, they won't really be buying it...because they probably can't afford the prims to rent a place to put it in the first place.

In response to Couldbe's post...I feel your pain my dear..my sales have fallen to that of what I used to make 3 years ago when I first started my business. Also, with regards to PG products. I want to just say this...mature products are where the money is...how do I know?... I sell furniture and i sell it in 3 different levels. PG, mature, bdsm. All my furniture sets look the same except you can choose to buy them with any of my three menus. My PG furniture is in "general" category, guess what...(LOL cause if i don't i'll cry) IT DOESN'T SELL. It's my mature products that sell, well....since these marketplace changes....not anymore.

Maison, same with me, i have a whole slew of products waiting to be processed and I can't even bring myself to do them. I have no desire to build/post anything.

Braydon, thank you for replying. It is refreshing to hear other people make these suggestions, your suggestion is a good one and one that I have also made (forcing log in). I just hope LL realizes really fast how important impulse sales are, the browsers not looking for anything in particular but finding things they like and opening their wallets make up such a huge amount of sales. I am so sadened to see my successful SL business going down the drain, it breaks my heart. i built my business and invested a lot of rl dollars into it based on how things "were" and to have it die like this over teens...who were never allowed here before, is very frustrating. On another note, i know that Brooke is trying her best to make things happen and turn things around. I really have to give her credit for what she is doing.

I will keep this short. Customers not signing into marketplace before browsing will not "happen upon" and decide to buy mature products as before, this accounts for a HUGE amount of sales, anywhere from 1/2 - 2/3 of my sales. Since March 8th marketplace change, my sales have died. period. This has not just affected my marketplace sales, but also my in world sales as a lot of people are directed to my inworld store from marketplace. My fingers are crossed that something happens to change this situation fast. A month from now I will not be able to substain my business on the current sales.

There were no naughty words, all my ads say the same thing. It was only removed 1x, so I assume it was a mistake.

Wow, didn't know about the enhancement going up. I used to buy enhancements every week before the new marketplace came. I only bought one after the new marketplace because I discovered that once you hit that last right arrow there are not anymore featured items until you either refresh the page by touching refresh or you click on a new item which brings up a new page. In the old marketplace you could scroll through the featured items right till the end if you wanted, without refreshing the page. Some people might not even know there are more items unless they do this! I had paid a lot of money for my ad and it took FOREVER for me to find my enhancement ad after about a million new page refreshes. In the mean time of searching for my ad, I saw many ads come up 3, 4 times, while mine had not come up at all yet. I never bought another one after that. Off topic but a couple weeks ago someone flagged one of my 100 % PG items, which took it off the listed items, and put it into unlisted. Unbelieveable. It was flagged for not being mature/adult, whatever. There were no naughty words, and it was only removed 1x so I assume it was a mistake