Sales plumeting?

again you did not answer my question... or if you did I do not see the answer

are you saying reduce prims, then sell the land to lower prices?

because I highly doubt folks raise prices so they can have extra land to support unnecessary prim usage... (but that is just my opinion, I have nothing except my own ideas and way of doing things to go by, and I would never charge more just to support unnecessary prim usage)

A few points....whenever i do a push on free items, i have higher sales. So in my experience over many months, freebies only increase my sales and have no negative effect at all. I know this is true for many other biz's in sl as well. So the thought that freebies will destroy the sl economy is far fetched acc to my experience.

As far as reducing prims to reduce costs...i am actually acquiring land over time to have have more prims so i can offer more items. The more items i have in my store, the more chance someone will buy seomthing. reducing prims to increase profit does not work the same in sl as in rl...we have such low overhead in sl. And, I am already paying a certain tier level. Until I have added more land to get the that tier's higher limit, i can continue to add prims by acquiring the land with no additional monthly cost. I only have the initial outlay for the land as a one time expense. So applying RL financial concepts to SL does not always work. A larger store in RL means additional energy costs, taxes etc. Those overhead expenses to not increase proportionally unless you get to the next tier level in SL. I would caution folks who try to apply RL marketing and biz concepts to SL to really think them through...often it is comparing apples to oranges.

And as for the RL economy affecting SL spending....I believe the opposite is true for one time item purchases. if somone comes into my store and buys 1000L of furniture and decor items, that cost is fixed. If someone buys land, they incur tier costs etc every month. I believe that people in SL may be reducing their recurring monthly land costs while hold steady to their spending or even increasing it. In tough times, people look for low cost entertainment and SL is low cost. If someone reduces to a non paying member of SL, they reduce their cost by 70+ dollars a year. If they reduce their land holdings, they reduce additional monthly RL costs. That money is then free to use for in world smaller items or for RL expenses. What i see - sorry to repeat myself - is that my sales have increased a great deal over the last few months. And im not talking about 3 sales a day....i have strong sales, many sales, many people who come into my store and spend quite a bit over and over. I do not see anything impacting that other than my own marketing efforts or when the grid is messing up transactions. I truly believe that predicting the demise of teh SL economy due to any factors - the rl economy, freebies, the OS thing, etc etc etc - is saying the sky is falling.

I know there are people who disagree with me, but im speaking from my own experience in SL as a biz owner, as a consumer and from hearing what others tell me in the classes i teach etc.

Oh, and i get people thanking me for freebies all the time...they are so kind and give me lots of good feedback, but im in my store alot talking to them as well.

One shop I have stopped returning to as the owner has had nothing new out in over 4 month.

In the world of business, it's called "down sizing" to reduce costs. Or to put it another way, getting rid of things that are eating at your profit margin. Needless things.

Do you understand me yet? :/

In the world of business, it's called "down sizing" to reduce costs. Or to put it another way, getting rid of things that are eating at your profit margin. Needless things.

Do you understand me yet? :/

Removing prims does nothing for either sales or profit margin, so you are mistaken about that. If you meant something else, perhaps you should explain it because your statements concerning prims haven't made any sense so far.

A few points....whenever i do a push on free items, i have higher sales. So in my experience over many months, freebies only increase my sales and have no negative effect at all...

rha most people equate the overhead costs in rl to the biz model in sl. unfortunately sl isnt the same. or fortunately lol. we dont have alot of overhead. once we make one item, there are no more material costs or cost of replacement inventory....that one item can sell forever with no additional fees. same for land. once we buy it, as long as it is within our tier level, there is no additional cost going forward.

I could be wrong, but i think the op is getting the rl concept of cutting costs by reducing store footprint = rent, taxes, electricity, additonal staff, etc - and the sl idea of reducing prims a bit mixed up. Reducing prims has such a marginal effect that it isnt worth the effort. In fact, increasing prims has such a GREAT impact on increased sales that it is more beneficial to do that and increase your initial cost within your current tier that it is definitely worth it.

i also think that the op being snitty to folks who have been here a long time and in biz a long time in sl is poor form.

this is what I have been saying LOL

I am still trying to figure out what they mean by reducing prims to reduce cost.... (shrug)

I can't figure it out either. The only thing that makes sense is what you said, selling off land to reduce tier. Trying to wrap my head around the idea of "downsizing" prims to not charge more makes no sense.

I had to tier down due to my RL economic situation, but that doesn't mean I charge more or less for my products.

1) Set up a buyer incentive plan. For instance, buy 3 items, get 1 free of your choice. Or buy five items, get two free. (Just an example)

2) Have 50% off sales during slow business times.

3) Take all unnecessary prims out of your store which may be causing you to raise prices. Customers don't want to pay higher prices just because there are elegant high prim tables in your store.

4) Simplify your store or land altogether by getting rid of excess prims to lower your overall cost and then pass those savings onto the customer.

5) Offer more demos. (I often pass on items without demos.)

6) State your refund policy clearly. (I always pass on items were a "no refund, no exception" policy is stated.) If a designer states "refund if __________ x, y, z, then I would like that designer a lot more!

7) Use live models to show how the items actually look on and/or fit as photos don't really represent the 3D outcome, and I'm finding some photos to be doctored via photoshop in that the real item is so vastly different from the actual product one receives.

I do comparison shop on SL and also make wish lists. I recently bought some items I had wanted for over two months because these were my Christmas presents from my rl family. In my comparison shopping, I find a vast difference in price of shoes. One designer charges on average 800 lindens for a pair of haute coutoure shoes while another charges 380 for gorgeous haute coutoure shoes. The 800 lindens ones weren't worth it, and some styles were almost the same as the other designer and both are considered haute coutoure designers on SL.

I could probably think of more if I was awake, but there are a lot of books on staying competitive in an ever changing competitive world marketplace.

Removing prims does nothing for either sales or profit margin, so you are mistaken about that. If you meant something else, perhaps you should explain it because your statements concerning prims haven't made any sense so far.

Prims are what we basically pay for on SL. If your sales are slow, have a partner on your land and reduce unnecessary fluff on your land. If you got a partner in your store, you'd need to reduce prims to make room for them, right?

Prims are what we basically pay for on SL. If your sales are slow, have a partner on your land and reduce unnecessary fluff on your land. If you got a partner in your store, you'd need to reduce prims to make room for them, right?

Prims are what we basically pay for on SL. If your sales are slow, have a partner on your land and reduce unnecessary fluff on your land. If you got a partner in your store, you'd need to reduce prims to make room for them, right?

I'm sorry, but you are not making any sense - at least none that I can discern. Perhaps it's because you are intentionally avoiding being specific.

So, what started with a simple "remove prims to sell more", has now morphed into 'remove prims to make room for someone else to run their business on the same land, and thereby reduce the cost of the land by sharing it'. Is that what you mean? To be honest, I think you're just trying to put forward anything that retrospectively might save your "remove prims" statement. There was a way to save it, but a 'partner' wasn't it. This is the way:-

If sales are low, and if you are low on spare prims, remove the unnecessary prims and use them for new products. The more you offer, the more you will sell (provided that what you offer is desirable enough for some people to buy, and provided that you can get people into the store to see the products).

Removing prims to make room for someone else's business is a step on the way out. It won't help your profits at all, unless the other person sells a lot and you share each other's sales equally, in which case, the other person will soon up and leave and you are back where you started from - on the way out. If you each keep your own sales, then a 'partner' won't benefit you, except to save a little on tier, which is hardly any benefit at all. Increased sales are needed - not the saving of a few dollars each month.

If more sales are needed, get more prims, either by removing the "fluff" or by acquiring more land, and make more products. If sales are down, attack it - don't recoil from it, because that's a step on the way out. There's an RL equivalent. When times are hard overall, the companies that come out of it the best are those that don't do the 'natural' thing by cutting right down on advertising. The ones that keep their names out there are the ones that succeed in the end. Cutting down on RL advertising is the equivalent of cutting back on prims in this case. Of course, it would be silly to increase the prims if nobody actually wants what you can make, but if you make desirable products, then attack - don't defend by cutting back.

/me wonders if Phil is a land barron?

I still disagree in that some of the store sims are simply wasting money with excessive land with prims of stuff they are not even selling just to make an atmosphere. Use your prims for only what you need and scale down on atmosphere or this need more land mentality unless you are a power seller or want to rent out some of the prims on your land to make some extra income.

No I'm not a land baron. I'm merely a successful SL businessman.

So now we are only talking about businesses that are run on whole sims. That's a new one. It hardly seems worthwhile continuing the discussion since you keep making such radical changes. Now we have gone from this original:-

"Simplify your store or land altogether by getting rid of excess prims to lower your overall cost and then pass those savings onto the customer."

to:-

'Remove unnecessary prims and get a partner, but only if you have a whole sim.'

With the new addition (the whole sim bit) it does now make some sense. E.g. reducing the tier to half means more of the money generated from sales is pocketed. That makes sense. It took you a long time to get there, but you finally made it, even though I don't think that you meant it like that in your original statement. So...

For whole sims, it does make sense to recover some of the tier if sales are low, or remove unnecessary prims to make way for increased product. For parcel businesses, remove unnecessary prims, or even add to the prim pool, to increase the range of products; i.e. attack.

Yes, these are suggestions with variables. I was never talking about renters in a mall. I WAS talking about sims. I've personally never seen a stall with items for sale where all the items were not for sale (minus any freebies, of course). All suggestions have variables. You try a little of this, a little of that to improve your business. That kind of thing. But the only fluff prims are on sims. Again, I've never seen fluff prims (meaning items not for sale) in rental stalls?

/me was never talking about rented stalls