Just How Bad is the SL Economy

I have not reduced my spending at all - but the majority of my money goes for clothing rather than furniture or even hair or shoes.

What Lil said.
True, the grid is crowded with shops and it's very much a buyer's market. This sort of climate fosters competition and innovation and that's not a bad thing (for us buyers, anyway).

It's the high quality (or interesting) creators that tend to get repeat business, word of mouth advertising and my Lindens.

the thing that comes to mind, when I see people saying sales are great etc

just what constitutes great sales?

what might be astounding to one, might be minuscule to another...

for me, 500L in sales a day is very low sales

( I use the 500L as a marker, as that was what I needed before to break even on land fees per month, 500L per day in sales) and lately not even getting that

sales are low by my standards (but might be considered high by others)

I think it's a very small market who actually use money in SL. A lot of ppl log in and just camp for money and use freebies/dollarbies.
I read that there's only 100 000 avatars who spend money in SL. A big part of them are shopowners I bet. So if their sale go down, they maybe stop spending money in other ppl's shops?

I spend the same in SL, maybe more, since I moved and have had fun decorating. Found a new to me store through the "Kissed" hunt. It gave a freebie bed. So far I bought a table, a plant, a carpet, a lamp and a picture there. The thing is, I come back there again and again.

Freebies can't be blamed for all. They make avatars look better, and then they want to have more and look even better. The hard part I guess, is to get a part of those who will come back and buy some.
Because they who never spend money in SL, would just go to Freebie Island or Freebie Dungeon instead of /your/ shop. And 90% or more, just grab the freebie and never come back, that's true. But some shops go well, so they have hit the right group of shoppers. It is tougher than in RL....

This is the sense I get in many stores. I am one of those who do buy things. Oh, I love to get freebies but I buy stuff every day (lol), possibly because I am fairly much a newbie in SL.

Here are some thoughts about SL stores. They are all based on actual SL shopping experiences. I have about 10 years experience in RL retail and the same time developing user-friendly web sites, so I know what I'm talking about. Most SL stores suck, from the standpoint of someone trying to buy something.

1. Don't make me work to buy something from you, unless selling is secondary to playing shop owner. If you want to sell things, help me buy them.

2. When I teleport to your shop, make it easy for me to know I'm in the right place. Too often, I get the sense of "Where the heck am I?"

3. Don't make me fly around to find your shop or sign.

4. If your slurl takes me to a market square, help me find your shop. Teleporter or directional sign.

5. Have a sign at eye level telling the name of your shop and what you sell.

6. Unless you have a tiny shop, give me clear instructions about how to find things. Have large section signs.

7. Don't have a dog or scary creature. I like animals but I had bad experiences with dogs as a child. If you have a dog, I am gone. Would you have a scary dog in a RL store?!

8. Tell me how to buy a product. I looked at a lot of hair and could not figure out how to buy it. (Except for the demo's.) I finally had to IM a store owner. Maybe you think I'm dumb. Can you write off dumb customers?

9. Tell me everything I need to know to decide whether to buy your product.

10. Try to have products at eye level. If you have them higher, make the signs readable from the ground.

11. Do not have huge open spaces. I am not here to exercise my mouse finger.

12. Have people who don't know anything about your shop teleport to it and try to find things. Do not help them. Do not say anything. Just watch.

13. The customer is always right, even when they are not. Do not insult us.

14. Decide whether you want to play "store keeper" or actually make sales. If you just want to play, go for it.

Contact me in-world if you want me to give you feedback about your store. If I have time, I will. (If you can handle the truth.)

Sylvan Shilling
Shopper

Rha, I bought two pairs of your shorts for 1L. You could have easily charged up to 50L and I would have bought them, as I was looking for cheap shorts. You lost at least 49L, since I normally don't buy clothes in more than one color, but the 1L price made that easy. (I've also worn them in a style thread on SLU). I think you seriously need to rethink your pricing scheme and work on the marketing, because you make nice things.

Hiya Bradley,
Good we get your shop back, you did create nice stuff back then!

As for business being good or bad, let's say the recession did not hit me yet. And like a few others in this thread, I am in the furniture business as well. There is a vacant 2048 double prim patch next to my store by the way If you are interested in that, IM me and I might be able to get you a better price. Though you might rather end up somewhere at a beach.

My sales are still increasing a bit every month, but I do put a lot of effort in it. At the moment I am working on my Xstreet presence, and yesterday I rented my first satellite shop in months again on a very busy sim. Will fill that one with my merchandise today,to check out how that helps. Both things of course do cost some lindens, but spending some cash in order to grow your business is quite normal I think.

Once you start out again, it will take some time, but I am sure that you can make it work again. Simply because you like doing it, and you want to be successful. Maybe it became harder, but it sure is possible to make some cash from SL

These are my major issues too. And lag. Try to keep your place free from the 10-15 min rez'ing. I saw a corset piercing in a blog and I had to have it. I tp to the shop and wait.... and wait.... posters and vendors are grey... waiting. I click on some random posters to see if they show up quicker. That's usually a good trick. It didn't help here and it was 3 levels in the shop so I couldn't find it by blindly clicking. After 15 min, the shop still wasn't rez'ed and then I didn't feel the urge to buy that damned thing anymore. Not even Tekeli-li's shop rez so slow!

I rent space on the mainland for my small store and there is not much I can do about the lag there as a whole. One thing I do there is make almost everything visible from the door where people TP in. So if they have the patience to stand there and rez... then they can see almost everything in the store from right where they stand. I have more stuff outside and the ones that like my creations and have the time...will make the effort to go out there and look.

Either way...the store more than pays for itself and I would not give up this store for anything...even though I have a main store on it's own sim where lag is not usually a problem (depending on how SL is functioning at the time). The best part is...over half my customers are returning ones and most end up going to my main store also

I have more seasonal type of items so it keeps my interest and I have fun in creating new and different stuff as each new season approches. Things slow down in the summer months but that works out good for me too...as I am totally immersed in Relay for Life at that time and devote most of my SL time to that. I think that is what helps me not get to burned out as I notice a lot of others do. And after Relay...it is fun to go back to creating for the store all refreshed with lots of new ideas.

Just wanted to chime in....business for us has been steady and consistent. We are covering tier and saving a little for summer vacation. With that said, things are slower than they were in December, but it was a very GOOD holiday season!!

Rha - For me successful is selling more than 5000L per day...many days in the 8000+ range. It is also taking out 600USD per month from SL after every expense you can think of...clothes, buying land, tier, premium membership, search listing fees etc. My sales have gone up consistently and id say i have been able to take out an additional 100usd about every two months. I also keep a fair amount of usd in SL to pay for tier etc.

While that is not the only way i measure my success, i just wanted to asnwer your question. I know there are many who make much more than i do and many who make less...but to me those numbers show success.

Jojo, it was interesting to read your numbers. We, too, have to see at least 5000L per day to make tier and expenses. Anything beyond that is what we take out at the end of each month and donate to the vacation fund.

The people who use ONLY freebies have no taste. Some of the stuff is good, it's true, but most of it is of very inferior quality. The REALLY good clothes and skins and hair cost money, sometimes quite a lot of it (relatively speaking)...and IMO it's worth it. The difference between a "just OK" item and an outstanding item is noticeable...better textures, better shading. Inclusion of prim and sculptie parts. Scripting (depending on the item, of course). Availability on multiple clothing layers. Flexiprims with correct movement. Bit by bit, it all adds up.

This is an interesting thread. I have wondered about making things to sell but there is already so much in SL I am stumped to know where to begin.

I've pretty much discounted clothes and although I have thought about furniture, my building skills are not the best. Scripting is a complete mystery and even after attending a class, I am still clueless.

The one thing I can make is plants. I create the textures from photographs using PSP, removing the background etc. It takes a long time but its satisfying to do. Then I think about it and realise that the percentage of residents who either own or rent property is small and so I don't see the point of doing it, plus the fact that there are several people who are established as plant sellers.

The end result is that I do nothing which isn't very satisfactory.

Rha, I visited your store the other day looking for your kid avatars. But I couldn't find them. Makes me sad. niff:

@ Pink- do what you do because you love it- if a market develops it will come.

I know a lot of content creators (mostly clothing and furniture designers) and many of them have been scaling back their operations, closing mall locations all over the grid, due to lack of sales.

The people who are doing well either have name recognition or know how to optimize for high classifieds/places search/search all/xstreet placement. Unfortunately, this involves some distasteful practices at times.

Just out of curiousity, which practices do you find particularly distasteful? I am just curious and not trying to pick a fight, I swear.

It is so bad that LL has hidden the page of Economic Statistics that once was public.

Aaw... go on... pick a fight. I enjoy wrestling with beautiful ladies

So bad that newly minted L$ now have a picture of a toilet on one side.

Sorry...couldn't resist.

-Atashi

Pink. If you enjoy making plants, and if you can make them well, then you ought to try selling them if you want to sell them. A perceived barrier to starting out is whether or not to risk spending weekly/monthly money on a sales area, either buying land and paying tier, or by renting a shop in a mall. So, if it helps you to get started, and if your plants are good , I can offer you some free space in my furniture store - no commission for me or anything like that. Let me know if it interests you.

I used to have those priced at 50L but none sold, so I switched them to the 1l bargain prices along with other stuff not moving

and those 1L items are now only available on xstreet and not in the store (as they were competing with my other products)

I see the 1L products as advertising products and not quite a freebie

plus the 1L items on xstreet helps off set the fees for other items sold on xstreet.


and thank you for the kind words, I did redo my prices so everything in the store is 100L each, and sales have gone up a tiny bit, seems people like consistency hehe)

I totally suck at marketing and will openly admit it

I suspect if I knew how to market myself and my products I would do much better (or at least a little better hehe)

whew... for a moment I thought it might be my store (as I sell corset piercings) but my store is not 3 levels

so... wheeeeew!

as for load time of textures, mine will probably be slow somewhat as I was not very knowledgeable and used 1024 textures (I know I know, *gasp*)

I am in the process of redoing the permissions on all things in the store to copy/mod and redo the ads to match, and plan to try the idea I saw in the textures forum area

4 ads to a 1024 size

then use off sets

so for 4 sales boxes only one texture has to load... instead of 4 (even if the 4 were 512 size, I think the time to load 4 would be longer than the time to load 1) plus it would reduce upload costs 10 L instead of 40L for four ads

(yeah little behind the time but better late than never)

I would be shocked if I had those kind of sales PER DAY!!

damn!!!