Store Affliliates - Yes or No?

[KateHershey]

I posted this in the General Area and somebody suggested I posted it in the Merchants Forum since there may be more people with this experience.

Can any of you give me insight/opinions on buying/having a Store Affiliate/franchise?

I have asked questions here before and I have found you give great advice.

I like to explore different things in SL, and this idea came to me. Are they worth it?  Can I make a little money (I'm not looking to get rich!)?  I've been searching the help area and also the Internet and cannot find much information.  The info on these help areas is quite old. I also would like to know how to buy one set it up.  How much should I pay for one?  I see some on the Marketplace for free, and then I see some for 2K up to 20K!  How much is a reasonable commission?

I do have a couple of clothing stores that looked interesting, but I wanted to check here first.

If you know of a website you can let me know that too please.

Thank you so much.

[Sassy Romano]

The two main models for affiliates that you've seen are either free vendors with lower commission or fee based affiliates which pay a higher commission. Take your pick basically. Ones that pay lower commission that are free are a no risk option. As to how successful you can be well that depends on where you can find to sell at but Marketplace is doing a grand job of taking away inworld sales from everyone.

[Tamara Artis]

I tried it ages ago. First was an affiliate pack that had male clothing, I setup a shop and named it "Male clothing shop" and it was selling nicely, after I was done with it few people contacted me to ask where its gone. After that I did a test with the female clothing but it didn't sell as good as male, probably because there are tons of female clothing stores.

Also I have to add that I didn't do any marketing for them, besides naming the parcel and putting relevant keywords in the description. It was the time when I was learning about parcel optimisation so it was important not to advertise it. 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If I want to buy something or shop at XYZ store, I go to their main store, not an affiliate.  You would be better off locating your shop in an area where people make impulse buys.  Of course rent will be higher there and with the way things are going with in world sales you may still lose money. 

I'd proceed with caution.  Get the free kind first, see how you do.

 

[nikita Jefferson]

Hi Kate,, i have my own clothes shop and also a skin and avatar shop, i have also had mamy affiliate packages through time.

The only thing i find with affilitaes is they tend to be over exposed on sl because so many other are looking to make money selling another designers clothes.

I have tried what i thought were sure bets, very well know designers, i tried SLC, they are everywhere , i eventualy gave then up and tried another, and gave that up and so on,i have probably tried about 15 or so affiliates,

Right now i have 2 well known hair designers, but one is so over exposed in sl i rarely sell any, i have a top designer of clothes who i will stay with, she has very lovely clothes and they do sell, so i am happy with that,

Also the Marketplace has taken so many shoppers out of SL so the shopping base in SL has been badky deluted

Hope that helps a bit.

Any questions and if you would like to see my shops in world to get an idea, IM me in world  nikita Jeffersom

Sorry i forgot your question re payouts to affiliates, my own which is skins and avys is 50%,  A&A hair is 50%, my other one is 40% and the other 50%. i would never go below 40%, 50% is ideal, most items sell cheaply and you get half so you have to sell volume to make money

I bought AN LC Afilliate for 2499L  which i consider reasonale with 50% commision , so i would say arounf 3000L is reasonable, i would not go over that

When you buy it, it comes complete you just put them on the wall, othere you have to log into a website and the items are there and you copy the item number and transfer that number to a vendor inworld and it becomes live 

I find caspervend and BSM vendors both good

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

Friend had no end of troubles with hers. Sim restarts and who knows what else could send them offline. She almost put a chunk of money into an affiliate for a store we were both fans of, but went with the free lower commission one to try it out. Creator left SL a few months later. :-( I was gutted and she was shocked that she'd come so close to losing all of that money. There were problems with other creators abandoning their affiliates too, but the vendors continued to take money and send the creators their cut. No delivery of course and if they didn't respond to IMs, she'd still have to refund the full price. She couldn't join hunts or use MM boards to bring people in. Vendors went offline alot. Too many other places selling the same items. (And that would include yourself if you find you need to set up more than one location to have a chance at recouping the fee.) Vendors offline.... Just wasn't worth the small amount of money she got. She had more fun working as a greeter/store model. Have you tried that?