Sales plumeting?

Cool thanks. After 8 months of work I will finally be launching my new store in Jan. Every single aspect of my business has been assessed and improved upon with hundreds of hours of time invested in developing a new way of presenting and demo-ing prefabs. It's been a massive project and I am excited that people will finally get to see and experience it soon. So come check out the new store next year!

/shameless plug mode off.

Very difficult in some fields, though

Dropped like a rock subjectively, but my business is so small I'm not really a reliable data point. That is to say, my "good" days rarely run into the double digits in terms of number of purchases and that's so close to zero that it's hard to apply a statistical relevance to a run of zeros and ones and twos.

=) Thanks for the response and advice Porky.

I am going to go out on a limb and say....You get out what you put in.

I am sure there is a more eloquent way to say that. ...and Yes SL has so many pitfalls that one can put in and put in....but generalizations are much more fun.

Porky, it is obvious to me just from this thread, you have invested tons of time in your products and marketing. That must also be obvious to your customers. =)

Well, I am still doing my part to hold up the SL economy. Since I do not create in any way, I feel it is my duty to drop a few thousand L$ every few days.

I'll try to spread it around more.

For me, sales have dropped, but not from a lack of customers. Over the past 3 months, four of the malls I was in, have closed.

Fascinating. For me, sales fluctuate from day to day, but I am having the best month ever so far and I had a record sales day on Sunday. I have been going to Jojo's classes and applying some of her strategies.

Heeehehe my partner purchased 1/2 your store when i took her there last week

Well since the boom of BIAB and Full PERM products many of which are stolen content from respected Content creators, we've developed a freebie SL culture over the last year or so. In the long term this harms the SL economy.

Many new players probably think its just as easy locating QUALITY freebies as opposed to spending real money on something similar or marginally better.

Creators don't help themselves either. Sure freebies and dollarbies will get you a bit of extra traffic for that period of time, but it just feeds into the FREEBIE mindset that new players might develop. The problem is that there are just TOO many freebies circulating around the grid, so even holding an Event for "freebies" at your Mainstore has less of an impact now than say 12 or 18 months ago when it could be viewed as something special!

We are very much mirroring RL economies, trading in short term gains for long term stability. Look at the pickle the World is in now! We are jeopardizing future generations because of man's greed!

I have even heard stories of Content creators leaving for other grids and effectively giving up with SL. That's fine, its all about making choices. What isn't fine is that upon exiting they make their content FULL PERMS and sell it for a quick buck, thus flooding the game with even more quality freebies. That's very short sighted attitude to take as well as harmful to your fellow creators in that sector.

We reap what we sow. At the end of the day, many are driven by greed and mostly short term too!

Sure there are businesses making profits now and increased ones at that, but parameters change and you might not be singing the same tune this time next year! I already seen this in the land market, with previously successful Land Barons selling off sims in a hurry!
(although to be fair LL did change the market conditions with those OS sim tier hikes)

Yep thats true. SL stopped being a game for me a couple of years ago and is now a part time job that requires at least 20 hours of my time per week. To be honest the majority of the more successful content creators I now spend at least this much time per week if not more on their businesses here. But then the returns make it worth while. If I didnt get a decent hourly rate for my time spent working here then I wouldn't bother.

This identifies a problem when talking about sales dropping or increasing. It needs either a lot of small daily sales businesses to report, in order to get a reasonable indication of the overall trend, or a few businesses that normally have a large number of daily sales. For instance, "I had a new record day yesterday" doesn't really mean much if the new record was 15 sales in the day.

For what it's worth:
I've been used to quite a high number of daily sales - approaching the 500 limit for Transactions History, and exceeding it once in a while - and my sales are on a slow decline. The L$ amount I sell each month is a little less than the previous month. Sales were down slightly through the summer but, based on something that Porky posted a while back, I expected them to start going back up in September. Instead, September was the lowest of the year at that time - not a lot lower, but lower. October was a little down on September and November was a little down on October. Judging by December to date, I expect that trend to continue. So, for me, sales are in a steady decline and have been since September.

One set of statistics that can provide insight is from the number of residents with positive monthly L$ flow. Not only did the overall number fall in October and November, but it fell in almost every category in both months.

http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

It baffles me that every level of positive flow fell at the same time.

Say I pull 500 usd positive monthly, wouldn't I fall to the next level? And respectivly everyone falls a level, leaving a pile at the bottom.

With drops in every level and no "piles", does that mean all those profitabe people left or stopped selling all together?

I disagree about freebies Tony. In my experience, it brings people into my store who very often look around and end up spending quite a bit with me. Many of these become long term customers and visit my store on a regular basis and spend time and time again.

My take on freebies is it is free advertising, gets my items out into the world where other folks can see them, brings people into my store and costs me nothing to use as a marketing tool. I do secret sales, offer select new release freebies to my group members only and do things that really get people excited. I have recently joined several freebie groups to promote my offerings and when I do, those days are often record sales days.

With furniture and decor it is a bit different than clothing. I do look for designer freebies for clothing and then take them home, try them on and delete whatever isnt up to standards or i dont like. If someone sees an item in my store that is on sale for zero lindens, they take it having seen the actual product - no fitting required and no guessing what it might look like in world.

I also disagree that this trend of upward sales will end. I think as long as a creator stays in tune with their customers, the newest marketing trends in SL - meaning what is working right then, and works to constantly meet a need, they will continue to grow. I go into many stores of the longer term creators and i see the same items that have been there for the last year. If they are not constantly growing and changing, their customers will have no need to visit their store on a regular basis.

Just my two cents...

It does to the person who had the record sales day.



I think looking at just a few businesses is a poor way to judge sales trends. What if the store's sales are declining due to poor management, stale merchandise, or increased competition?

Smaller businesses are just as important to the overall economy as larger ones, maybe even more important. I bet that for every store making 500 sales a day there are 50 that make 20 sales a day and 100 that make 5 sales a day.

Best way would be to sample all sorts of businesses, big and small. Collecting info about the product categories, as Porky suggested, would provide some interesting info as well.

LOL, I am full of miss-information

Seriously though I hadn't anticipated the Global economic crisis so I guess that could be accounting for a loss of business. Im sure many others would agree though that historically Q4 has been the best period for sales in years gone by.

I can obviously only speak for myself but my sales havn't declined, I am still selling more builds month on month. All those people that buy houses need to furnish them. So if they are not buying from you then ask yourself why not? where are they going? I think the punters are still there but are being more selective on where they spend their L$.

Also, in your specific case I think you have a battle on your hands. My stuff is pretty complex and not easy for the average user to build. Your stuff is more simple as its meant to be (and is) low prim. So people may be willing to spend out on a prefab that they wouldnt be able to build themselves, but they may well have a go at creating a table or chair themselves as its easier and it will save them a few L$ in these belt tightening times. If I was you I would be working out a contingency plan. You have the skills now so maybe try and move into building more complex and desirable items as a side line. Sorry, you didnt ask for advice so feel free to ignore me

Yes, I agree. I was pointing out that, with small business, things like twice the average number of sales in a day, or half the average number, doesn't really tell us much because it could just be that 1 or 2 more, or fewer, people found the place and decided to buy that day, and that trends from several higher sales businesses would likely provide better information regarding an overall trend.

But you can't take this in a vacuum. What are you doing to market your stuff? People that market aggressively and keep cranking new material would see a good uptick in sales, especially if they have something that is unique.

My first Q4 was last year when the store was just building up, so I have no useful figures to compare with. It's still vastly higher than these months last year but that doesn't tell me anything. I expect January to cross over and will be lower than last January.

I don't do any promotion, except search, - I'm not even on the street or onrez. Although I frequently add new things by request, they are mostly just variations of what I already do, and new stuff gets swallowed up in the sheer size of the store, so it isn't immediately obvious that anything is new. Even a completely new range of things wouldn't be immediately obvious unless I moved everything around to place the new stuff by the landing point.

It doesn't matter though. I'm like you in that SL stopped being a game/fun/whatever some time ago. Sales will take many months to reach the 'not worth bothering' level at the rate it's going down - another year or more, and for quite a while I've been keeping an eye open for a way to stop SL altogether without just switching off the income.

I agree with you last part. The requirement of add new items, i don't however agree with the rest of your statement as i was talking about the SL economy as a whole and the mindset of new players arriving here being bombarded with freebies, and not just freebies but quality ones at that.
I can't count how many times a Fashion creator has pointed the finger at BIAB, Full Perms and Ripped content being responsible for the decline in their sales. These are creators who continually churn out more items or improved items as well as holding events, sponsoring events etc

Theft is different to me than purposeful freebies. I also think that many of the creators who get all bent out of shape about someone stealing one item or saying someone else made a red dress just like theirs should just move on and make more and better stuff. Once an item is released, it will be copied, improved upon etc....even in legitimate ways and that is just a fact of doing business. If every designer in the real world who made a white button down shirt blamed a decline in their biz on others making a white button down shirt...we would see that as quite silly. But in SL, with few exceptions, the cries of unfairness are often just whining. The truly great creators are never embroiled in these tussles publicly and just keep cranking out great stuff.

And I think Phil just hit the nail on the head....he is not in the mode of rearranging his store, promoting new items, etc. He is pleased with his current state so he does not make an effort to do active marketing. Therefore, his sales are lower, but this is ok with him. Instead of whining about it, he just states fact and moves on.

I love Phil's stuff, but I pretty much know what he has and a trip to his store every couple of months is plenty for me. However, I just spoke to a customer in my store who says she stops in every single day to see what new stuff I have put out and usually buys something. I am constantly adding, removing and rearranging and my customers love the surprise of discovering something new. It is a different method and it works for me along with the freebies.

As for the huge number of freebies out there. I do not in any way feel they are hurting business. I look for freebies daily. But I would buy an item daily. I am spending more money by going into clothing stores to grab a freebie and then going back for more or grabbing something I see when i am there. if i was not hunting free designer clothing i would never set foot in most of these stores and i would not be going shopping. When i was new i could go to any number of places and get hundreds of items in huge boxes of free stuff. But i still went around shoppign to see what was new and different being offered for sale. Having and obtaining freebies did not keep me from shopping and buying. If anything it made me go to some stores that i had seen a freebie from...in order to get a different color or something similar.

i agree with jojo, I do not think the freebies hurt business. However I do think the business in a box (ie ripped stuff) is a bit of a problem...

When folks ask me where to get free stuff, I do not tell them to go to freebie warehouse, or freebie island, etc

I tell them to go window shopping, check out the stores out there, many many designers put out free items, and it is a great way to get nice free stuff, and at the same time, find some places you will want to return to when you have some lindens

plus it gets people exploring, and hopefully garners some business for places.

(I also do not give folks the "newbie" folders, of free stuff... )
I explain how to find free stuff and let them decide what they like (how am I to know if the folder I pass them is what they want... I don't...)

yep- i agree with you Rhaorth.
Designers freebies are different ballgame to the BIAB, Full perms most of which have been ripped somewhere along the line.

There is a need for a certain amount of free content. And there will always be people who refuse to spend any money. So long as accounts are free, you will always find some number of these people.

That just your shopping habits and mindset, which might be quite different from many others...in fact i know that by the sheer number of new players that have approached me over time asking where can i get free skins,free shapes, free clothes, free this and free that. You have a business, you generate income, you are profitable, you have disposable SL money to buy designer dresses at a whim. Its comparing apples with oranges.