More on Camping...Is Any Okay?

Bots that are "working" cleaning floors, etc. can add a nice visual touch to a area---but I am opposed to them counting in traffic number.

I people want to use camping pads etc, as a advertising tool, that too does not bother me, but having them count in Traffic is wrong.

LOL. You might just have given me something to work on

I'm one of those that wil leave if I see campers being used to gardner traffic. After a time in SL, it's fairly easy to see the difference between those using it for traffic, and those using them to try to hel new Residents (and yes, it's sad that camp-bots are killing that off).

However, because of my views on traffic (ie, that they're a bunch of bullsh**), I don't feel my leaving such places hurts the small buisnesses. I tend to go to the bottom of the search list and work my way up when searching for things. This way, I help the small person just starting out, and I find some really kewl stuff this way, as new Residents often times bring a fresh breeze of ideas with them.

I do Classifieds the same way. Want me to avoid your store? Pay 500,000L$ for a classified ad. I'll never grace your plot due to the abuse of money to drive the little person down. I'll start at the 50L$ ads at the bottom again.

Another great way to keep me away is to run a parcel description like a wep-spam snippet (example: "Shoes,hair,clothes,money,sex,land,club,free". A little ceativity in the description goes a long way toward advertising.

My advice to the small buisnesses just starting out? Don't follow the big buisnesses. Play their game, by their rules and you're going to lose. Buisness is two-fold. One is the making of a product people want, for a price people are willing to pay. Two is marketing. Including advertising as well as how your store looks and "feels" to those shopping. If you're selling something, you have talent in SL (otherwise you have nothing to sell), so use that talent and make your store/vendor something more than just a box/prim.

As for the original question: No. No Camping is okay. Why? Because if it's not being gamed by those running them to game traffic, then it's being gamed by camp-bots. Either way, the whole purpose of them to help those new to SL is gone. Big buisnesses will game the traffic far beyond what those starting out can hope to match, and camp-bots will keep the L$ out of the hands of those that truely could use it to get started in SL.

~Jessy

It's tacky....and looks desperate.

Superb idea! And the game could give out prizes too - a skill based game of course !

Interestingly, the number of votes against Traffic Bots has jumped dramatically
since the jira link was posted yesturday. It has doubled in the last 10 or 12 hours from 17 to 34.


Here is the link again:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1052

I do the same thing. You can find really interesting, unique things this way.
You can buy a kitchen table in RL from Walmart, or you can go to a small store where the owner makes his own using the best quality wood, etc. Bonus, your table won't look like everyone else's. In RL, the big difference will be the price, but in SL, there really isn't _that_ much of a difference.

Make it unique, and they will come. Advertise in another way if you can...

The numbers are a lie because they are not shoppers, but people you have paid to be there. They are not high because your items are good, which is what the numbers are supposed to be about. You are saying "look, I have lots of people shopping here, therefore my products are better than someone with lower traffic numbers". That is a complete lie if any of those numbers are generatied by camping. You are paying people to make you LOOK popular, but you aren't really that popular, so you are lying to me.


I despise the fact that virtually all the businesses with high traffic numbers are almost exclusively run by lying, dishonest people. So I will tend to look at shops with lower traffic, to combat that. So, for customers like me, you are defeating your purpose when you use a lot of campers.


I won't, see the above. If, by chance, I happen to be in a store that uses campers, and I see either the campers or lots of green dots with no shoppers, I leave immediately.

I will never reward dishonesty with money. I will never understand why people consider it good business to be dishonest with their customers. To me, if any business needs to use dishonesty to get me to their store, they are not people I want to do business with.

When I'm done with work I'm going to test the limits of the physics engine by combining a camping script, physical vehicle script, and avatar launcher.

Is this an OK use of camping?

rofl

only if you launch camp chair OWNERS

Are Camp-Bots ok to use as ammo?

hmmmm... Camp Bot Rail Gun.... There may be a market for this...

You are mistaken, Serenarra. The Places search says nothing about the quality of what's in the places, and it says nothing about the places' popularity. Go and look. Do a search in the Places tab, and find where it says that these places have good quality stuff, and find where it says that these places are popular. There's nothing there. The Places search results are ranked by traffic numbers, and not by popularity or quality of things. Just thought I'd mention that

You know Phil.

Go read the archives.

You really talk like you *KNOW* stuff,

but you weren't around to see them develop.

Traffic was supposed to be about popularity. Not manipulation.

--------------------

If campbots help your sales? Cool.

You Admit you use campbots? Cool.

But stop acting like its not doing anything wrong.

Because it definitely is not ascribing to the Spirit the traffic numbers were put there for.

Some think it's OK.
Some think it's not.
Great way to advertise - your products, or lack of originality.
You'll gain some customers, and lose others.
Do you want to make loads of cash, whatever the cost, or just make tier?
What makes a business 'successful' is different for everyone - RL or SL.
Some think 'success' = most profits.
Some think 'success' = most joy in creating/having interactions with customers.

Go with your gut/heart. In the end, there's less chance you will regret your decision.

This is all true.

And the argument that the gamings already beyond help and its needed to compete isn't a bad one.


---------------------
It just doesn't change the original intent of the Traffic metric.

And no amount of excuses from Trafficbot/camp chair advocates will make it so.

Whatever the orginal intent was, I'm only talking about what it is now, Colette. I don't know if the Places search said anything originally, but it says nothing about quality or popularity now. Go and look. Nobody is being deceived.

You're kidding right? Even in RL inferior products have been more successful due to either better marketing or better advertising. There are plenty of decent products that come and go that people don't see because the creator doesn't manage to get people to their store.



Lol business has been dishonest with its customers since the year dot, that's why. However camping isn't dishonesty, it's marketing. I'm sorry, but as traffic is considered so important and as the majority of people, and it's a vast majority, will ignore campers and go and buy products then camping and gaming will stay. Whilst traffic is considered so important, in both search and by users, camping will stay. That's the problem, people on the forums say they leave, but the fact is that camping sells products and until the situation of traffic being so important is addressed, camping won't be going anywhere.

The other way of course to get your product visible is to pay a hell of a lot of money for a classified ad, is that dishonest?

Unfortunately a little creativity doesn't work. If you write a nice three line description you won't attract as many people, the search returns values compared to the words in that description box.

I have stores selling the same products and the one with the plain English description attracts nowhere near as many customers.

FWIW, I run a successful small business (it regularly turns a profit *after* paying tier and other costs) and I've never used campers, nor wished to. I think it helps a lot that the stuff I make is fairly unusual, and that means I'm in the top one or two search results if fairly specific search terms are used (such as "quad cat" or "dolphin avatar". Honestly, I think that's a better way to get good results searchwise than camping - find an under-serviced niche and produce items specifically targetted for it. It works for me, at any rate.

Agreed, if you're in a smaller market you'll get good visibility. I'm not at all sure about the new search and the effect of classifieds but I do know that classifieds for land rentals are working fine because people search for a land rental.

Living in Hollywood I can tell you that there are some amazing actors waiting tables while there are some pretty horrible ones on the big screen. Why? Because the ones on the screen new how to market themselves.

Ben Affleck. QED.

Some actors actually do it for fun (community theatre), and other greats stay in the background (character actors) preferring anonymity to stardom. Of course, they make a lot less money, usually.

First - it's the web search engines that produce the snippets, not the pages that they are taken from.

The problem with your view, is that it only works if a place is selling just a few items. I agree that a some good words would be better for the user, but to do it that way, the business has to abandon any Places rankings for many of its products, which means that users who are looking for the abandoned items, won't find the place because it doesn't get listed. Everyone loses out that way.

A place is only ranked/listed in the Places search results if its name or description contain the exact words in the exact order, and adjacent to each, that the user typed into the search box. The number of characters allowed in the name and description is limited, so a business has to make the most of a very limited amount of text. A business that sells many different items is forced to choose which phrases people are likely to type into the searchbox when looking for what the business sells, and tailor the place's name and description to try and cover as many as possible.

Ignoring a place because it doesn't have nice sentences in its description is not understanding the limitations that the SL Places search puts on business owners. It's unrealistic to ignore such places.

I've got a business partner that likes camping, but I won't allow it on my land (so far anyway). She bought a plot in another sim, and set up some shop rentals with 5 or 6 camper spots on the roof. The shops rented out almost immediately. The similar shops that she has on my land with no campers are still mostly available even though they've been there for a while. The shop renters at the other place seem happy with the results they are getting, and the only reason she doesn't expand that area is that land in that sim is too expensive now to gain any additional prims.

Your mileage may vary, but the only reason camping gets used so much is that it apparently gets results.