Just How Bad is the SL Economy

Hi Pink, welcome to SL...I like your name

Ok a few points...yes phil i am a texture fiend. lol

i do not agree about the freebies killing biz..it certainly isnt killing mine. it has actually helped mine tremendously. i give out new free items to my group members by having them come into my store weekly to pick up the free items. they are new releases, not old icky crap that i made. my customers feel that they get treated very well and some tell me they come into my store daily to check and see what is new or what i have marked down for my ongoing secret sale.

to me the key is not some kind of magic or some kind of horrible manipulation...it is finding a need and filling it and then making sure people know you have it for sale. the vast majority of my items are one prim...nothing fancy. but i have learned over time what people want so i make sure they can get it at my store. in fact many items i have for sale started with a customer request for an item. people also know i will mod something on the spot for them and not charge them any extra. i do that for the good will aspects and all i ask in return is that they tell their friends about my store. and that works.

this whole thing is really not rocket science...it is very simple. sometimes i think folks overthink it. but know that simple does not mean EASY. it is work...plain and simple.

i make all my items transfer...many folks will come in and buy one for themselves and several for friends. i also make some items mod, like curtains etc, that need to be resized. i have only recently added some items at a much higher price that are copy. My pricing has always been relatively low so that someone who needs 2 curtains will pay significantly less than someone who needs 20. i have added some copy versions at the request of customers who need like 30 curtains...i calculate the price for 30 and then cut it back...so they still get a great deal, but they still pay more than someone who only needs one of an item. it used to make me crazy when i shopped and say "copy" items at crazy prices when i only needed one and i didnt want to pay that much. so i have set up my pricing in a way that meets that need.

According to economic statistics, at L$500/day you are in the top 17% of businesses in SL. The L$5000/day businesses you are comparing against are in the top 3%.

Just like RL don't judge yourself against the few celebrities, it only makes you miserable

and as many other designers have said, it is their product and they will put the perms on it that best suits them.

me personally, I am not paranoid and I would sell mod/transfer items, however most folks who get mod, want copy so they can make a back up just in case they mess up when modding...

no matter what we do, we can not please everyone... so the only thing a seller can do is set the permissions that makes them feel the most comfortable

also (and I have seen this happen first hand) items that are used to grief, can be mod/transfer prims, with mod/transfer scripts in them, so the creators name is not the actual person who made the item as a griefing tool.

it depends on the item if it should be mod/transfer or not, and of course the creator as to what they want it to be

so very true and it does make one miserable

Well I question these statistic's then. I don't know about the others but my shops are not famous and most of my items sell between 100L-200L. I also have many return customers and sometimes is it just one customer that can spend up 3000L during one trip. I myself have spent up to 1000L just for a nice complete outfit or even for a good piece of furniture. I have several times dropped a few K at a texture store in one trip. So I have a very hard time believing that your statment above is true. Whomever is collecting that data is not doing it accurately.

I just started last month so I have no idea but I do have little bits of funiture to sell. I guess marketing is the key

It doesn't need to, though. Bill Gates or Donald Trump make more in a year than you and I combined will probably ever spend, but we don't walk around upset about it all the time I hope

She's talking about the Positive Monthly Linden Flow statistics, which are computed by Linden Lab, who certainly do know how much money you're making and spending. PMLF is Lindens flowing into your account over the month, MINUS things like land listing fees, classifieds, and group debits. (It does not take into account land use fees, since those come out of USD, not L$.)

Yumi's calculations are very close to mine:
- 500 L$ a day * 30 days in a month = L$15,000
- L$15,000 / 260 (current exchange rate when cashing out lindens, nevermind the 3.5% cash-out tax) = $57.69 USD
- Number of people who brought in $50 USD or more in January 2009: 10,800
- Total number of people with positive Linden flow in Jan.: 65,809
- 10,800 is roughly 16% of 65,809.
- Total number of people logged into SL in the last 30 days: 994,976
- 10,800 is 1% of 994,976. Only one percent of the entire active population of SL made more than $50 USD.

So yeah, $500 a week is pretty good, relatively speaking, if you don't have many expenses.

You can see the raw data for yourself here:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/static-secondlife-com/reports/marketplace_stats/2009-02-12/in_world_business_profits.xml

You do if you're a Windows Network Administrator... when you add up the hours you've wasted repeatedly fixing problems in Windows that Microsoft refuses to fix.

If I got US$40 from Microsoft for each hour I've burned patching and fixing the broken default settings of users' and customers' Wintendos, I could retire.

Wildefire..I am amazed at those numbers. There must be something I'm missing in this overall picture. I know many shop owners that make over a 1000L a day so I just don't understand how those numbers are coming out.

Could it be that many of us do not take our profits out of SL? The only money I bring out is through Lindenx to put US$ in my account for tier payments. I rent my mainland shop so I pay that tier in-world with lindens. Any other money I use to spend in SL. Can these statistics be based on only those that take lindens out of SL?

No, it's completely based on how much money you bring in, minus a handful of Linden Lab charges. This includes people who aren't business owners; if you were not a business owner and I gave you a L$15,000 gift it would count negatively for me and positively for you, and you would be one of the people who made more than $50 that month (assuming you didn't spend it!)

You may well know a lot of successful content creators, but I'm sure you don't know 10,800 of them (the number who made more than $50 USD). That's a lot of people! It's just a very small number relative to the rest of the game population.

EDIT: And someone making L$1000/day is making $115 USD/month. 7,154 people made that much in January. That's still a lot of people.

LOL...I know maybe 8 or 9 of them. Okay..so now I have a whole new way of looking at this...sometimes I seem to get stuck in my own little SL world and do not see the bigger pictures. That is one of the reasons I love to read the forums...you can always learn something new!

I've IMed you in SL.

Does buying content count against PMLF? I didn't think it did, but it's certainly possible.

Certainly, the results are skewed at the low end by people who may have made a few L$ camping in the month, and as a result count in the 1-50 bracket.

Plus, of course, income statistics are always skewed. Someone on welfare in the USA is still well in the top 50% of the world by wealth.

You do have a great shop. I stopped by and bought some things. May not buy a lot because I usually wear RP medieval and elvish clothes. But I will go back.

Maybe I have been wrong. Maybe all the stuff about customer service that I put in my long message doesn't matter. Maybe lots of people like to shop in a store that makes them suffer rather than a well-designed one like yours. After all, there are a huge number of disgusting Gorean sims, so maybe Second Lifers like to be treated like dirt.

Sylvan Shilling

Yes. Zee linden, the open and honest minister of propaganda and all things short sighted and ill-conceived has removed the econ stats. Cause we are a bunch of idiots and simply removing the stats will prevent us morons from figuring out that SL continues to tank.

Don't worry, he's due for another blog soon where he will mention user(bot) hours are up! I sure hope those bots are giving LL lots of money.

Yes, the PMLF index was intended to reflect both the buying habits and the selling habits of residents. I just remembered that it doesn't take land sales into account, either. This is purely the final balance of Lindens spent and received for a given month.

Thank you, and I saw you on my transaction log, you are one of 3 shoppers today... one bought the boot fixer, and the other a couple demos of hair for 1L each...

so yeah, you know what my sales are like LOL

I could not help but chuckle at your comments about maybe being wrong, because I have often wondered that myself...

I take pride in my work and strive to match up seams and such

when I see someone wearing something that doesn't line up (and I do not mean for instance a flower pattern matching on the side, heck it doesn't even do that in RL) I mean things like the neck line front to back match up, hems match up front to back, that kind of stuff (or wrinkles that would naturally match up front to back (along the side) etc

well when I see stuff like that not aligned, it irks me, and I get ballsy and ask them where they got it (thinking maybe it was an old freebie or something) and how much they paid... as though I am interesting in obtaining it

I am sometimes shocked to hear it is from a well known place (well known to me anyway) and that they paid definitely more than 100L....

sometimes I wonder if people really do like crap and being treated like crap

PMLF isn't about money made, it's about L$ made, it doesn't count tier charges as they're not in L$.

Yes, I mentioned that elsewhere in this thread.

If you keep this up Phil youre going to run out of room for your other guests. And ya you maybe abrasive sometimes but youre not silly with it so thats good =)

Indeed you did, twice in fact, including the post where I partially quoted you! Many apologies.

There's no chance of that happening

Rha, why isn't your store in your sig? It takes time (yeah, I'm lazy) to find you in search, but it would have been MUCH easier, and I'd be more inclined, to simply click a link. Just askin'.....