Just How Bad is the SL Economy

and nobody can say that if they do offer the mod transfer that sales will increase


blah we are going in circles and I am getting dizzy

WOW finally finished updating, I am off to kill some stuff

tata

I'll take an LM too! I'm a sucker for new clothes - especially if the style is like what I'd wear in RL (a lot of women's clothing sold in SL tend toward the slutty/tramp look, IMO).

It is not about me either, it is about people like me and I have no doubts there are many of us who want mod/trans to be at least a choice.

Again I will repeat, nobody is forcing you or anyone else to do something they do not wish to. Why on earth would I want to convince you or Jesse to change? It is laughable that you still think this motivates me.
It is for the purposes of informing those who wish to consider the options that mod/trans is not some evil to be avoided.
It is clear in this thread though that this truth must be hidden and obfuscated as thoroughly as possible.
I certainly have debunked every reason anyone has given for why mod/trans is not a good and valid choice.
In fact my stance is backed up by many vendors who do choose to offer this option. You can hardly disagree with that fact.

will drop you one in world when I am in again (or if you want, you can search me in world, and it is in my picks in my profile)

off to kill stuff in WOW hehe

They cannot say they won't either, isn't business about trying different things to catch more of the market?
Would that not help in a slump like is being reported here?
Even if it is just a possibility?

OK, look thanks for doing your part to keeping it civil this time Rha, this was far better than last time. Enjoy your WoW

I missed this post. Yes I am one person but hardly alone. Nobody can tell whether there are a few or many hundreds of us.

Once again I will reiterate, I am not seeking to get you to change anything and I don't have issue with that at all. I have issue with the misrepresentation of the true consequences of offering mod/trans in this thread. That and only that.

Which makes the discussion itself quite useless, because no one can say they will do better either. We can only learn from what we tried in the past. Markets do change yes. Which does not mean that suddenly things that did not work in the past, work now. Nor the opposite.

So in the end it comes down to: how smart is it for a merchant to put a lot of time in putting up items with multiple choices in permissions, instead of using that same time to create more items, or to effectively market their stuff. My bet is that the latter will be smarter from a commercial point of view. And quite frankly, so far that bet did not work out too bad.

A lot of your points have already been addressed in this thread Marcel.
I dispute your reasoning and your conclusions.
There are already profitable merchants in these markets offering the very thing you claim is not good sense.
Read back and you will see most of your points being debated.
If the discussion is pointless why come to tell us this? Isn't that pointless too? Do you really think declaring it pointless will stop us talking about it? We all know that nobody here is going to change their minds, Rha made the mistake of thinking that was my goal.
My goal is to have a fully verified set of really good reasons why offering mod/trans is a bad option for fashion and other markets where there is a practical reason for wanting it or to dispel for the benefit of newcomers reading this thread that there was ever anything to worry about, hopefully convincing them that extra revenue may be gotten from some extra effort.

I am not misrepresenting anything, so stop saying I am and keep it civil and stop saying I am misrepresenting anything.

the truth states it;s self

as for wow, I have not played in a year and a half, got lost immediately so logged to head to bed, had to peek in one last time LOL

but on this note, I am going to bed, getting sleepy and when sleepy I tend to say things I later wish I had not, so instead of lashing out like I want to do, I will just say

I am not misrepresenting anything, and I am insulted and offended that you are accusing me of being a liar and such (by your own words a bit back, those who misrepresent and tell others are liars)

good night

one last post and then crawling into bed

it seems some people will dispute anything that doesn't match what they themselves think is right, regardless of how it is worded, or the info provided, or even if facts are presented...

on that note....

I am tired, I wish you all a good night, I know I will sleep like a baby

I am sorry but you did misrepresent the severity of the issues and stated reasons against mod/trans that simply turned out to be of nothing much. It gives the impression that it is bad to offer mod/trans and so misrepresents the truth.
I am not getting personal or insulting you but this did happen and the evidence is here in this thread.
You know that these excuses are just fluff and yet you repeat them as good reasons? What other conclusions could there be from that?

Anyway it was not just you, and I never even said it was even you. I just said that the truth has been misrepresented here and I believe it has.

If you think that then you still do not understand my part in this debate at all.

My sole reason (again stated in the hope that this time it is understood) is to cut through the fluff that is presented as reasons why offering mod/trans is bad, especially for the fashion and prefab markets and get to the truth.
So far to recap, the so-called "good reasons" are:

1) People mess stuff up and it is too hard to deal with mod/trans.

It would be easy to offer a replacement to those who have messed up. Either there are not going to be very many who choose mod/trans and so support for it is negligible or there will be loads of them and ignoring their preferences can lose you sizable business.
If it is determined to be a sizable chunk then you charge a nominal fee for replacement - might even make money if done right.

2) It is too hard, takes effort.

Debunked, there are people already doing it and even those who are not say they offer it upon request - how much extra effort can there be on top of that? People already go above and beyond with helping people fit items, making outfits that take weeks without knowing for sure if it will sell, etc.
Everything is too hard if you want it to be and for some this is a pffft reason if it brings in more money for them.

3) It facilitates theft.

It was shown to require about 2 seconds of time to check how the items are being sold to determine if they are legit transferables or copy-botted stuff. Still not a good reason to not do mod/trans should you want to.

I believe that pretty much covers it apart from the most compelling reason of all which is actually the strongest too and the one nobody is arguing against:

"It is my business to set the perms however I want"

As were a lot of your points, so? Does that mean we should stop talking?
As far as I know I did not state that it IS no good sense. What I do state, is that from my experience I learned that for me it makes no good sense. And I gave examples on how people could spend their time more efficiently to make a better profit: more items and better marketing.


As are a lot of your points, so? Does that mean we should stop talking?
The reason I said the discussion is useless, was because of your statement that "no one can say that they would not do even better". Of course no one can say that. Statements like that can end any discussion. Discussions based on "what might be", and "no one knows", are useless from my point of view. I rather stay with facts.


And my goal is to show those same people that this extra revenue may be gotten way easier by putting that extra effort into marketing their products and/or creating more products. And facts are backing me up in saying that: I tried both ways. And so far I did not see many people standing up saying: I added that option, and my revenues made up for that effort. What I do see, are my competitors for example, and the way they successfully sell their stuff.
The facts I have are my own experiences, and what I see happening at my competitors. Those are the facts from which I make my business decisions. Not from "what might be" or "no one knows".

With mod rights people can indeed mess up, and giving them copy permissions, they are much more comfortable trying to modify the item (clothes, prefabs). I chose for an offer for replacements if needed, but I am in a line of business where not much modding seems to happen.


Not too hard, but takes effort, and quite a bit. And hat effort could also be put in things way better for your business.


It does not facilitate theft indeed, but selling no-transfer makes it very easy to spot theft. Stealing designs is far too easy, so I do understand merchants deciding to make it as easy to spot theft. Especially in the skin market, where countless hours go into creating a skin.


That one is quite true. Yet everyone can learn and decide to put their permissions different, based on what they read on the forums. I have seen that happen a lot on the Xstreet forums, where merchants help each other out. Based on what works for them, they advice other merchants.

I see many vendors successfully offering mod/trans too. You cannot extrapolate just from your experiences to a whole marketplace and yet I see this all the time being done as if it makes sense. The only thing that you can really say is "for the market I am in I have learned that this approach makes sense".
You cannot even say that discarded strategies will never be effective in the future. Perhaps they fail due to lack of inertia at that time.
Besides you sell furniture, it might be different for furniture than other things. I think the the applicability of mod/trans depends from market to market as I have said before in this thread. It depends on the uses things are put to and the price of those things too.
I and at least some other think that clothes and prefabs are two areas where offering mod/trans as an option makes sense. Obviously some vendors agree with us, some don't.

What I don't want is for FUD about mod/trans to put anyone off offering that as an option if they feel it makes sense for them.

The only argument I can see has nothing to do with mod... it's that selling two versions of a product is too much work. And that's a perfectly legitimate response.

The arguments against selling stuff mod if you're selling it trans because someone might mess it up, or against selling it trans because it facilitates theft... I don't see these are a big deal. But selling it both ways, yes, that's extra work, and probably not for great benefit.

Silent Sparrow, who have always sold mod/trans, have recently started selling both ways... but only for new products, and Hya has a whole sim to play around with so the extra prims are probably not going to hurt.

With scrollable vendors, there does not need to be more prim usage necessarily.

No, indeed, with scripted vendors it doesn't require more prims. But it does require more inventory control, and many stores (clothing stores in particular) seem to prefer one-box-per-product one-click-to-buy, and customers expect that.

I have a simple scripted vendor that I wrote which looks to all intents like an ordinary vendor, you change the item by clicking on the picture. If you had just the two options for the one product in each, the only difference would be using pay instead of buy. As many are using Gift cards now, that is not going to be very unusual.

This is very true, in fact I had gone out and bought one of those scripts that allows choice and then never used it because so many people said they refuse to buy clothes from a vendor. Which kind of goes to the fact that diversity is everything in SL...and so, needing to make a choice in the interest of consistency, the script rots in my inventory.

And yet the growing number of places using gift card must be using scripted vendors, so is that tide turning? A case of what was true once is no longer true perhaps?

Gift cards do not sell multiple products from one vendor. If you don't use the gift cards, they are not hugely different from buy boxes... and some places actually use extra prims for their gift cards because they want to keep using "buy contents". So, no, I don't think so.

And you're ignoring the inventory control issue. It's just a hassle.

I am not saying multiple products from one vendor, same product, two perm options, chosen with a single click. I actually use these vendors myself and apart from that extra click, the right click Pay is no different from many places that use gift cards systems. I know this to be true from a customer perspective.

I don't see why inventory control has to be much different, putting two boxes instead of one box in a Pay vendor. Let me repeat they do not have multiple products, just two options of the same product to choose from.

All I am saying is it can be done easily from one prim or like you say or you can use multiple prims, which ever way some people are not finding it too much of a hassle at all. Those who can be bothered are the ones that deserve my money.

Anyway we are definitely into the backwaters of this conversation so perhaps moving on would be good at this point.

That is two products as far as the customer is concerned. And the merchant has to make sure that they have the right prims in the box with the right permissions on the product nested two levels deep.

I have, myself, bought the wrong version of a product because I did not realize that the "multi pack" box was copy/no-trans. And while this is not rocket science, and I am supposed to be a rocket scientist in SL anyway, it's an easy enough mistake to make even without the added complexity of the same vendor selling two versions.

On a full blown multi-prim cycle-through-the-products vendor, no, but when it looks like there's only one product in there? I can't see merchants considering that worth their effort.

So then put several products in a scrollable vendor. lol you cannot have it both ways either multiple products in a vendor is bad or not.
My vendors do tell you the perms and to click to change both in hover text and in hover tip if you choose that option so it is even less likely to be mistaken.
Heck you can even have your favorite options as the default so that a person who cannot see that it can cycle the perm will get your preferred perms.

Maybe other merchants would not like my vendors, though I have given enough of them away and some of my friends shops use them, but I am using it to serve as an example that it can be done without more prims, with the commonly used Pay option and the even more commonly used multi-item vendor principle.
Of course that will not make everyone happy but I still disagree with the "much more work" argument being a big deal.