Just How Bad is the SL Economy

Many of you know that I use to have a furniture store which I closed during my SL hiatus. I've been working on a lot of new pieces and am anxious now to reopen my place. However, I keep hearing how terrible sales are in SL. This surprises me since I would expect more people doing things at home rather than going out.

Previously I always made enough to pay tier plus a little extra to play with. Is this something that is likely to happen with the current climate, or can I expect to have to cover tier on my own each month.

I'll open the store either way, I'm just curious as to what I can expect.

My experience has been that sales are good if I do my part in advertising adequately.

not sure if my experience is the norm...

sales have all but died, and I just tiered down by selling off a large portion of my land

I always vowed if the store can not support it's self, I tier down until it can, and if it ends up being so it can not support any tier, I close

so...


I have spoken to a lot of people both merchants and consumers and pretty much all agree that it is more the flood of freebies from all the hunts that have caused a slump in sales...

mostly the consumers say this... they tell me that why should they buy it when there is plenty out there for free... and I do agree with them which is why I stopped giving out freebies, or doing any kind of hunts


I recently priced everything in my store to 100L each... no matter what it was. This is something new I am trying, as I have run out of ideas.
I just sent out the notice today and already got sales. I have determined 2 things from it, people like fair prices, and consistency (and being everything is 100L each, there is no checking to see how much something is LOL)

If you decide to reopen, hope for sales like you had, but do not expect them (unless you had/have a very loyal following who will return

PS also... I am in the fashion industry, so it very well could be extremely different in the furnishings side of things... *shrug*

things are very good here...constant growth with enough to support purchase of 8000+ sm of land, pay tier and keep me in plenty of new shoes...as well as enough to take out significant USD every month.

Unfortunately that could be an issue as I notice most of the freebies tend to be clothes, skins, and such. The only item I will give as a "dollarbie" are very small things like balloons.

I went into my stores never expecting to pay tier with the profit...much less have extra. Opening up my small mainland store is what seems to have turned the tide...and brings a lot of business to my main store now. So after 14 months of being a store owner...I can say that for the last 6 months I make enough for all expenses, tiers(the main store is on a full sim) and a little extra each month. But it took a good 8 months to work up to that point.

Also business was off for the month of December when I expected to have my best month...but that is when textures were rezzing at their worst and after the Open Space sim announcement by LL. Business is now back to normal and slowly getting better.

Hi Bradley,

I'm glad you are considering going back into buisness. I still have the beach chairs I bought from you.

For me, things have been good, and I've continued to see growth as I've added inventory. I kind of expect the usual summer dip as things warm up in the northern hemisphere, but for now business is healthy.


If it was me, and I was just opening/re-opening a business I would take the time to list pretty much every item on xStreet. It's not clear yet what LL is going to do there, but if they decide to link it even more directly to inworld shopping you will be ready to go with everything listed, rather than having to make the switch after they make an announcement.

Best of luck and I'm happy you are back!

I also had a really terrible December, probably due to the reasons mentioned above but January was actually quite good for me with my sales increasing about 350% over December. I added quite a few new products in January which I think helped too.

Remember The Waltons?

My sales slowly decreased bit by bit from September to December, but January was back up to normal, and February looks like being the same. And I'm in the furniture business, as you know.

I am sure that the clothing, skin and such market is the most flooded market in SL (especially women's clothes)

and I have been in a funk and not made anything new since the first of the year...

so that being said, I do not blame my lack of sales all on SL, but I do feel a good portion of it is due to such a flooded market

now that I have tiered down, the sting is not so bad, plus it makes the overhead costs that much less


maybe now I can get back to making new stuff... however I am not going to force myself to

I have decided no more stressing, no more forcing myself to make stuff when I do nto feel like it and if sales go too low I just close till I feel like reopening...

easy enough now


(so the moral is... as many folks have said... do it because you want to do it, not for the money)

I started out doing it because I liked to and wanted to, then I saw money could be made and got those L signs in my eyes, saw I could afford more land by making more stuff and selling more, etc and all was good until I started to burn out and less stuff was made, less sales were made and it was no longer because I wanted to, it was because I felt I had to....

so I stopped that and am back to the point of I will do it WHEN I want to... not because I have to

That's pretty much the way I look at it. It's a game to me. Kind of like Monopoly. If I make money then great! If I'm really losing money then goodbye. If I make tier and a little US$ spending money then that is wonderful.

Success is important to me, but more for the fun of it rather than the cash earned.

Business was down in November, awesome in December due to sales of Christmas-related items, and then quite good in January once the grid became relatively stable. February has been excellent because of Valentine-related items, but non-Valentine items are continuing to sell well, too.

Like the iTunes Store.

I know I like the consistent prices there, and I'm a little ticked off about the labels pushing Apple to variable pricing.

Rha have you ever considered affiliate vendors? That takes some of the hassle out of needing land and sales.

I am getting more scripting work than ever and my sales of my contest system have been consistently good throughout this bad patch everyone is talking about.

I swear, month by month, Linden Labs keep making it harder and harder to find the Economic Statistics. The URL to the page used to be on the bottom of the front page of Second Life, but is no longer. The URL I used to have for the SL Economic History summary now leads to a page that has only raw data files you can download, and these files are only good for one day at a time.

Then at the bottom says:

"Note: Private Region data has been temporarily unpublished while we correct our reporting mechanisms to account for the recent addition of Openspaces and Homesteads. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Any thinking person has to suspect the truth. They are hiding the facts because they reflect poorly on SL and so they do not want to publish the data.

never used itunes, never even been to their site or whatever it is they use... I will take your word on it hehe

I know I like going to a store (be it SL or RL) and have the prices pretty much all the same, that is why I love dollar stores in RL (that and they are cheap LOL)




I have considered this, but I would have to set up a vendor system, which is too much work for me at the moment, considering I do not even have the energy to create new stuff

plus (and this is the biggie) if I decide to pull out, I do not have to worry about any affiliates out there. just me and my own land/store etc.

sure I will be badly for the regular customers, but I am sure they won't have a hard time finding elsewhere to shop.

the reason I mentioned doing it because you want to Bradley, is because your OP sounded kinda like, you won't do it unless the market is high enough to make money.

personally, if anyone asks me (and a lot do) about starting a store/business in SL
my first advice is to decide how much each month they are willing to spend to support the store, thus if sales are really bad, they are still prepared

My sales were down for a long while but actually went up last month. Someone bought something and liked it and told others.

Based on the reports here maybe the "slump" is actually increased gaming of marketing channels causing consolidation?

Sales are great.. amazing even...seems to get better and better each month..

I noticed a bump after LL took over xstreet. Sales seem to be about the same as they have been in the past.

We can sell stuff now?

I'm gonna have to start paying more attention.

My sales are up, and I manage to pay for my tier, membership and my RL boyfriend's membership through $Ls every month. Since I sell a lot of winter and arctic related stuff, I did great during Christmas, but I'm still doing OK at the moment.

Sales are pretty good here.

Recently did some promotion on the toys, as well as an large scale revision of the plants, as well as some promotion. This likely had a hand in it.

December might have been my record month for poor sales. Sales just dropped like a rock. January was not much better.

Seems to be up a bit lately, though not consistently enough to consider it an indicator of anything.

I've been spending very little time in SL this last year or more, mostly because I'm pretty well disgusted with the stability and the asinine priorities of LL, so that may have a little bit of an effect on my sales.

Maybe I just need to get off my ass and make something new, that usually raises sales quite a bit.

.