Classifieds Forum Is Closing

Well I reported it and there have been a couple of point releases since then so I'm not sure if it has been resolved. Try attaching something there if you get a chance. If you still have a problem I can do something to accomodate you even if you can't attach directly.

$250L for a 2 week ad. Ummm...seem a little steep to anyone?

I think I stepped in something and have to get it off my shoe; It's starting to realy stink like "THERE" around here. And we all know what a flop that was. WTF Again

I'm against this because it's just what There did and failed at.

That and they are taking away the free advertizing as well

Seems like a bargain to me.

how can a basic member trying to get a business started advertise at all at that kind of fee?

Oh, it will alter the way people do business, certainly. Nice for LL to seed the drama pool - yet again - prior to having described the new system. Here are my cynical predictions on how this will play out:

1. the new classified system will not initially work as expected (cf. LindeX)
   
2. As others have noted above, other free listing services (events, etc.) will be spammed to fill the void (yard sales every minute of every day!)
   
3. The forum moderators will contend with a flood of Classifieds in General and Off-Topic, suspensions will ensue.
   
4. Merchants will not use the new service for reasons of cost noted above.
   
5. LL will not obtain the desired money sink this was intended for.
   
6. Merchant's forum signatures will become even larger than they are now.
   
7. The third-party mercantile and fan sites will absorb the lost advertising venue as noted above.
   
8. The rules or game mechanics will be changed to make it difficult or impossible for the third-party sites to be advertising venues.
   
9. LL will alienate merchants further, depress aggregate demand for goods and services as players will not be aware of them, thus reducing "GDP".
   
10. Thusly, the money supply will remain too high from stipends, the anticipated sinks will not operate as expected and, the L$/US$ rate will decline again.
    

There are times when I wonder if they are actively trying to shoot themselves in the foot.

The classifieds forums would be a great loss I think. I am sure many that never post anything on the forums do browse through the classifieds to see what is new.
I have learned of many new (or new to me designers) through the classifieds. Just 3 days ago I wanted a completely different hairstyle so after fruitlessly looking through find, and not finding anything much, I came to the forums. I now have 5 brand new hairstyles from designers I had never heard of, and still would not have if not for the classifieds forums.

L$250 is nothing. A single conversion at that rate would pay for the entire two weeks for most businesses.

one of the biggest downfalls of this new feature is that you cannot post more than one picture in an ad. To show us the same products as some of these designers currently do it would cost them thousands a week.

"Merchant's forum signatures will become even larger than they are now." aighh!!!
I am not sure that is physically possible in some cases.

It may be nothing to you, but that's half my stipend. And a basic member would have to save for 5 weeks to post the ad, nevermind their texture uploads. If this is meant to increase buying of $L, I don't think it will. I think there will just be less new members trying to sell their creations...or as posted above, illegally posting their ads in general.

What's a conversion?

I agree with Musicteacher, $250 is out of reach for those on free accounts, and 1/4th the stippend of those on basic accounts. Now how the hell is any newbie suppose to get started in SL if all the cards are stacked against them? Again keep making the new folks feel unwelcomed and they will not stay long enough to do anything interesting.

Take take take that's all I have heard in the last year, its like working for a big corporation with cut backs and down sizing. Someone anyone tell me what the hell is fun about being a mindless drone with your nose to the grindstone AND paying for the privilage.

This type of crap realy bugs the hell out of me. I keep getting charged the same amount for less and less. Screw it.

You're not looking at this from the right point of view. L$250 is half a stipend on a premium account, sure. But that's not really important from a revenue point of view.

A conversion is what happens when you place an ad, someone sees it and based on seing it, performs a specific action, ie buys your product or fills out a form asking for more information. Ever hear a radio ad that says something like "Tell 'em Bud sent ya?" That advertiser is attempting to track their conversions for that ad by having the customer tell them they heard about the advertiser from Bud.

Thus, if you place an ad for two weeks at L$250 and you get one conversion that is worth L$300, you've just paid for that ad and made a L$50. Everything that comes next is gravy. Making back L$250 on two weeks worth of advertising is not at all unreasonable or difficult to do. This is why it's not all that important from a revenue point of view -- you're going to be making the money back if your business is worth anything at all, so it's not as much of a sting. This is how all marketing works. An outlay of $100,000 isn't a bad thing if the ROI (return on investment) is $1.5 million.

Marketing isn't cheap, but it's the cost of doing business.

As for the issue of it not being nice that Linden Lab is taking away a free advertising tool, well: no such thing as a free lunch, in the end. Every good business plan (even if it's on a napkin) takes multiple marketing angles into account for the very reason that viability and ROI for a given advertising platform may change unexpectedly or seasonally. Myself, I'm lazy. I rely on find places, word of mouth, multiple locations and paid referral to keep the gravy flowing.

Oh, and as long as we're talking about advertising, there's an old saying that goes, "You're wasting half of your advertising budget. You just don't know which half." Or something like that.

(That's no longer true if you're using something like Google, where you can easily track your conversions and thus your ROI. I suppose SLBoutique might be analogous to that.)

by making posts like this:
BUY MY LAND

well at least we got half a year of relatively infomercial free forums

Enabran, forgive me if I don't know what you sell in SL, but you're the only person saying the price is reasonable (and you seem to be doing so over and over again in multiple threads).

So nice for you that you're making so much money on your sales that it seems such a paltry sum to you. Many, many new people starting out in business will be putting their clothing, furniture, prefabs etc. on sale for unit prices of anywhere from L$10 to L$50 apiece. I would hate to see the bar for them raised to such an impractical level. Their products will not be intricately scripted or textured items that the wealthy will be raving over - but they will be the beginning items for the newcomer who is looking for a first wardrobe or home.

Also, I may be living at a lower standard of income than the vast majority of SL players, but L$250, when converted via Lindex, will buy me lunch. That's not inconsequential to me.

Good decision.

I agree that the resulting random posting of advertisments and new products through the general, building, textures forum and especially the gallery is probably going to be a lot less work to clean up. Especially now that there is no place to actually move those posts.

And a L$250,- fee is a very smart move. It's time more is done to protect the established designers and developers from all those terrible noob designers trying to get a piece of the pie.

Also the fact that there is no longer any possibility of feedback on products. As who needs those customers praising other designers quality products. They should be guided by who can yell the loudest or pay the most advertising, not by the quality of the products.

And I agree with some of the posters. SL is not about having fun. It's about setting targets, ROI, setting multiple advertisement strategies to reach your audience and creating the most buck for your bang.

Good move, with the fast dropping Linden/US$ rates, we really need those sinks atm!


---

Sarcasm aside...

I only used those forums to actually tell people about some of the new stuff i've made... and to see what kind of new stuff was created, sometimes to buy. But also to get a general feel of the great products that are being made. I often enjoy some of the responses more than I enjoy the actual selling of the stuff.

I've never seen anything useful in any of the paid services provided by LL; events, classifieds, whatever...

Linden Labs....i've seen smarter moves...

I agree, Damios. It feels like they are putting blinders on us or something. Making us less able to see, is what I mean. And to communicate.

coco

Yes, all 3% of us

Heh. This is why I usually avoid discussion of business matters in the forums. The resentment of solid planning and resulting success is palpable.

In any case, let's look at this from a budgetary point of view.

First, let's do away with the notion that you run a classified ad for every single item your store. That's silly. Group your hot items into a one or three ads and run rotating spotlight ads weekly for new products that you want to intro. Let's say that's two classifieds each fortnight advertising four new products, and two ads each fortnight advertising four existing products. Eight products total, four ads, L$1000 for two weeks of ad spend.

Two Week Budget:

Classified Ads: L$1000
Parcel Directory Listing for Two Locations: L$120

And, uh, I can't think of anything else you'd be spending marketing dollars on in SL.

Anyway, two week advertising spend is L$1,120.

Let's say your revenue for those two weeks is L$10,000.

Your gross profit there is L$8880.

Thus, you've spent L$1,200 to make L$8,800. Which is a pretty nice ROI.

See? Even quadrupled, that's not a bad investment. If you're not going to be getting an ROI from spending L$1000, dial it down to L$250 and see how that works.

If we are expected to be inworld with the find dialog displayed long enough to sort through the classifieds, slowing going down one at a time in the list to see the pictures or lack of pictures appear, then we need to have an egg of invincibility and privacy appear when we start looking.

There are plenty of creeps and jerks in game who would do stuff like take upskirt pictures of you while you can't see because of the dialog box or who would shoot some push weapon at a person standing still not bothering anyone.

The find dialog box is a lot slower to use than a web page. Sigh.

Plus I have to get rid of my tool bar and chat in order to get to the bottom of a page to click "more". The whole thing renders me blind while looking through Find for things, and it isn't as quick as looking through the forums.

Enabran, I don't make 5k a week.

coco

This is a completely idiotic idea.
SL was supposed to be getting a builtin browser. There was no need to implement a special version of classifieds inside the client.
On top of that, you have to keep in mind that at least some of us have a LIFE which means we cannot access SL throughout MOST of our day, but we CAN access the website and keep on top of things.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.