SL Sales down, or is it just me?

Over the last three months I have watched my sales comfortably support 5120m of land plus a couple of satellite shop rentals and then crash to less than $500L/wk. A couple of my fellow content creators have been experiencing similar things, but we are mostly part of one niche/local. So, my question is, is this a greater trend, or is it just me?

with all the freebie hunts going on infinitely, my sales have dropped drastically too. it's very discouraging.

Could be many reasons for your downturn Jacquelin, have you checked where your key search terms are ranking lately?

Actually I haven't checked that Cerian, I'll do that this evening and see where I'm at. Thank you! I've done a couple freebie hunts myself, and it does bring in folks, but not in the same niche as my main design line which is historical costume.

my sales are still great wth the only thing impacting it seems is when transactions are down. sometimes i see that my sales are lower one day and am not even aware that transactions were messed up, but sales shoot right back up the next day or two normally.

In RL sales of almost everybody are down. I expect that they (RL and yours) will go back up when the economy recovers.

Let's just hope that it is the general economy and not special problems affecting SL.

Mary

This is a really good question and I'd like to know the answer too.

Got a ton of content creators involved with my estate, and without their success, my success would be in question also.

Hi, Jacquelin!

This is discussed often on this thread:

/327/ac/274749/1.html

(It's a long one...a page or two from the back will give you an idea of the thread...it's content creators sharing info basically.)

What I see as a common thread is clothes designers are generally the area where sales have been going down. Part (maybe a large part) is due to the hunts; another may be the market is more saturated than others - although your's is definitely a niche market.

My sales have remained steady but I sell home goods mainly and my prices are really, really low. Sales are especially good during holidays when I create some holiday-specific items.

i agree czari...i also think the market saturation for clothing is much higher in sl than other items.

Well, I can assure you all that I am still doing my best to help support the SL economy -- my weekly spending does not seem to be decreasing at all. Granted, the focus of some of my dollars is temporarily shifted, but quite a bit is still being spent on random clothing purchases.

I recently (about a month or so ago) changed all my prices to 100L per item.
I have found since doing that, that my sales have increased (albiet not much) and strangely even xstreetsl sales have gone up a small amount

not sure if the price change did it, or just pure luck, since I have not put out anything new since the start of the year

once I get my motivation back, I hope new products will bring in more sales, but until then, I have decided I am no longer going to stress on it

I promised myself that my store would have to support it's self, and when it doesn't I downsize
a couple months ago, I had to sell about half the land I owned to drop my tier from 40(plus alt on the 15 tier) to a single premium at 25 tier

so now I barely make the 25US a month from sales in the store, but as long as it does cover the tier, it stays.

I like having the store, it is as much part of me as anything else in SL.

Well, after checking my search listings I noticed that my ad had expired. lol. So that might be part of it, but the shop still pops up in searches for items related to what I carry. Rhaorth, I have recently considered doing something similar to what you did, dropping everything to $200L or less. But I haven't been brave enough yet.

I just figured what the heck
It is not like the cost for me to make it was much (in some cases, yes I purchases sculpt maps)

but it is better to sell 5 items at 100L each than 1 item at 500L each

(same amount in pocket, but 5 times the customers who may come back, advertise by mouth, and of course advertise by wearing the items)

I deal mainly with women's fashion
(I will soon be branching into some men's fashion though, finally gonna cave in on that one LOL)

My sales stood still for spring break. Things should pick up again hopefully. (They slightly have for me)

Sales have been low low low; however, I am a scripter and the amount of custom jobs has been up up up. It's very strange O.o

Well I did notice pretty low sales in the last week, compared to other weeks, though it seems to be crawling up again for the last 2 days. Still nothing to complain about

My latest actions do show something very interesting though.
Because I was starting up a new company, I spent all my in-world time in building the stuff for it, setting up a quarter sim as the store, so it took me a few weeks in total to get where I am now. All that time I did not put any effort in my main business (only did the customer service, no new releases). And while the sales of my new store were pretty good from the start, I did see the sales of my main store drop.
My search ranking did not change, the store still sells the same stuff, but it shows very well that a store needs permanent action to stay interesting for the people. At least, that is what I am thinking.

Agreed Marcel, I usually try to put out a new item once a week, though it has ended up being more along the lines of once every two weeks (I'm expecting a baby in rl and already work 7 days a week lol >.< I used to run GIMP tutorials (not for sales as much as for the fun of it) and that kept awareness up of my shop, but those have fallen off this last year, but that wouldn't account for the massive hit the shop has taken in the last three months. *shrugs*

Sales has never been easy in sl. Cmon, we are talking about thousands of sims and milions of free stuff around and few people online. If I'd have 3 first and 3 second lifes I couldn't make it to open all boxes i have in my inventory.. sometimes i wish to trash all of them but than.. there are lots of quality things between freebies.
Not to mention how much free woman clothes are available. Lots of them high quality clothes.. and finally, if you charge your "clothes" as selling real one, how can you expect to sell?

This economy needs order. In first line.. delete all inworld freebies. Then add "number of copies" limit so creator can decide how many copies can be sold after him... but that would probably be an tech problem.. I would agree that only original creator can sell anything then the market would do the rest.

I totally agree. Doing nothing and waiting people come to see the same stuff, weeks after weeks, is totally dreaming. You have to remind your business at least weekly to your customer with new release or event at shop. Without that, people will forget your shop and trash your LM soon. I've tested that more than one time and each time it was the same conclusion.

I'm an avid shopper in sl. I spend about 50 usd, on clothing mostly, every 2-3 weeks (this is my entertainment budget). I tend to go back to stores where I've purchased things I like and wear, I dont do the freebie hunts anymore. I spend alot of my sl time browsing clothing shops, love sl fashion. If designers dont update their content, I lose interest in their store fast... who wants to browse the same stuff over and over.

I love dressing my av, keep up the good work all you clothing designers!