Just How Bad is the SL Economy

That's true but some argue that what actually caused this was that most of the UK high streets ran out of space, and the landlords consolidated and got greedier and greedier. This paved the way for the chain stores to open out-of-town where their low prices were more to do with not having to pay high-street rent; they had to open massive supermarkets because their single shop had to replace the high street as the destination for an entire shopping trip. This could potentially start to happen in SL too, because SL's lack of geography paradoxically makes it effectively _smaller_ than RL; SL has only one "high street", namely Search All. And that said, there is a visible Clone Town effect in SL in many malls.



The question is whether the social market will actually accept this and I'm not sure that it will. With the high churn amongst consumers, many of them are going to only be staying in SL for a limited amount of time and will be looking for things which correspond quite closely to RL - because they will not be in SL long enough to adapt to it having an internal culture.

lol

Personally I do not see freebies as a big threat. There will always be an audience living completely on freebies, and whether there are 50.000 or 500.000 of those free items around, it does not matter. Simply a different target I guess.
Many people do pick up a freebie, decide they like the merchant for making it, like the merchant for his/her style, and purchase stuff.

Probably much more dangerous for business are people selling for ridiculous prices. Couches for 5 linden. Plants and trees for 5 linden.

Full permission builder packs are getting cheaper and cheaper, I find it pretty disturbing to see some perfectly good full perm sculpt packs for a few hundred linden. Throw a texture on them, and sell them for 5 linden. Probably they do not even recoup the costs of the pack, but they paid virtually nothing for that to begin with!

My own store is pretty cheap. At least I think it is. But realistic prices, in my opinion. And the value I add is in the scripts and animations anyway. But still I am sure that the people seeing those 5 nd 10 linden stuff, will think I am expensive anyway, without seeing the difference in added value.

I have been told by people (more than one) that someone reused their mod/transfer prim along with someone else's mod/transfer scripts (rewriting the script) to grief others

never had it happen to me first hand

and what part of my saying I have nothing against mod anything?

I prefer to not use mod/transfer all the time, that is my right (I do have some mod/transfer stuff for sale, but that will all be changing to mod/copy)

and it doesn't matter what reason(s) I have for not using mod/transfer, they are my reasons and are just as valid as anyone's reason(s) for whatever they choose to do.

there is if the script will not work with another script option already being used (I use the metacard system and yes I do get sales from it, so do not plan to give it up)

so yes there are reasons some folks can not use a script to offer both options.

other reasons could be gift card vendors
or maybe they do not want to take the time to reset permissions on 1000's of items in the hope of one or two sales

not sure where people got the impression that this chance of this happening, bothers or worries me

I am merely pointing out possible reasons for not setting something mod/transfer

personally I don't worry about that, or expect it to happen

the reason for my permission choice, is because in my own experience through talking to people randomly, people in my store, friends, acquaintances, etc, most folks prefer copy/mod for various reasons

I think you mean it must be MOD

and yes I do plan to make all my stuff mod (most of it is already)

again I think you are misunderstanding me (although I could be wrong)

I have no problem with modify as a permission, I was merely pointing out reasons why some ppl might not set their stuff to mod, or why mod might not be needed

said much better than I could, and thank you for putting into words that which I struggled to try to say

I think various sectors are effected in different ways. I would assume freebies, Full Perms BIAB stolen content effects Skins, mainstream female fashion, shoes & hair more so than furniture or prefabs sector. Your concern is more about quality cheapo items being made and sold.....which probably has less impact on the other mentioned sectors.

Heh, I wrote "must NOT be no-mod" originally, then the double-negative annoyed me, then I got distracted while I was correcting it. Bleah.

OK, here's why I thought you were strongly in favor of trans/no-mod... because you keep referring to copy/mod and you've referred to no-mod as the opposite of this as often as you've referred to no-copy.

So I got the idea that you were strongly opposed to releasing anything transferrable and modifiable.

To me, the question of copy/no-copy is completely unrelated to the issue of mod/no-mod. I've seen products with all four of the alternatives.

porky i agree with your comments.

as for the big box stores like walmart etc shutting out small stores....there is MUCH evidence to prove otherwise in many markets. i know of one small town where the downtown was completely emtpy...walmart and a mall came in and everyone panick'd. however, no one went out of biz because of those new folks...what happened was the mall AND walmart attracted so many people to the area who drove through the downtown, that the entire area was revitalized. every single store was filled with no vacancies as savvy folks realized they could attract those who could not find what they needed at the mall or walmart, or who needed more personal attention or service. the local biz's praised both the mall and walmart for years after for actually improving their sales and incoming traffic.

its all about whether you see it as a problem or an opportunity in most cases.

Nobody is saying that you don't have to right to do anything. My posts are about your points but to the marketplace in general. My point is that there are customers out there who will not shop or will avoid shopping at places that do not offer mod/trans.
In fact my point originally was not even that, my point originally was that the reasons to not offer mod/trans are everything about beneficial to the vendor and should instead be about being beneficial to the customer.

Yes these are all reasons to not offer choices but again it is about what is convenient to the vendor and not about serving what the customer wants necessarily.

Sure it will take effort and money to change gift card vendors but I bet if some new thing that "made money" were to be introduced which required vendors to be changed, then they would be pronto. Well this should generate extra money, in the form of additional customer sales. Also if it were purely about effort then I doubt many things would get made to be sold. After all the risks are high that it is a waste of time, that a vendor will never make back the money to adequately compensate their time or talent. So it cannot be purely about effort.

Whilst I understand the value of each individuals experiences, I do not believe that Ralektra's experience with gift card vendors is necessarily typical, nor can it be proven to be so.
Sometimes it is necessary to take a chance and speculate to accumulate.

Personally I would rather shop at a vendor who could be bothered to go that little bit further than one who cannot.

You already stated that in your case a simple IM and you would give a mod/trans version to a customer. Either that is just talk and you really will not do this or you will have to produce a mod/trans version anyway. So your argument about it being more work is moot.

Summary of all this is, of course you have the right to do what you personally want to do Rha. This is not about you personally, it is about busting arguments against the perceived problems with mod/trans. This will benefit those who are undecided about what they want to offer and show those that are willing to go a bit further for their customers that there is a way they differentiate in an already crowded market place.
Bottom line: Nobody should be afraid of offering mod/trans.

I don’t agree. I sell prefabs, I would never dream of selling one that didn’t have copy perms. 1 mistake from a customer who cannot build and the prefab is ruined. Selling prefabs with mod/trans perms would lead to endless IM's from customers wanting either a replacment or a personal repair service. You sell hundreds of prefabs per week and you would need to employ at least 2 people full time just to do support.

I am not saying there is not a place for mod/trans items in SL. But your all encompassing recommendation that "nobody should be afraid of offering mod/trans" is bad business advice.

OK let me qualify - my comments were being made in context of the fashion market and it's segments. I was not speaking to other markets such as buildings.
Still that said I would like to option of having mod/copy or mod/trans on buildings. I don't think the costs of replacement would be so high for the most part. You could even charge a nominal replacement fee.
Again choice is a good thing.

Replacement is a very easy request.

You know, i thought about the same argument you are using when we were considering what perms for the furniture. But in the end, if my only reason for choosing NO MOD is to protect people from their own mistakes, then it is not a good reason. I can fix any mistake someone makes with the furniture as long as they have some jumbled mess of delinked and relinked prims I will replace it without a question.

You sell "hundreds" of prefabs per week????

This is the spirit of the places I wish to shop

If only this info could be put into search too so that I could avoid the places with perms policies I don't like!

I think we are working in different leagues then. It's hard enough supporting people with mod/copy perms with the volume I sell. I support the setup process but beyond that I cannot support customers DIY mistakes. I just advise they rez another copy. The fixing of mistakes falls into the "custom build" hourly rate which the average user isnt willing to pay.And yeah I own 2 of the oldest prefab brands in SL using 2 avs and part own a 3rd business with another av so....we sell allot of prefabs.

However if you had offered this right from the beginning and factored the extra support into your costs then there is no reason as your business grew you could not also grow support capacity to deal with this. Obviously you have the choice to do this or not but to say it is not feasible for a large business does not really speak for other businesses who may choose differently in your market.

I believe that factoring in those costs would push my prices outside of a competitive margin. Two primary reasons for my success is pricing and time managment. I create designs better than most of the prefab builders in SL and general charge less. I have also spent allot of time and money understanding the desires of my customers and the flaws in my business so that I can streamline the whole "purchasing and setup process" to limit the amount of customer service involved. This gives me more time to build resulting in higher profits.

I expect a good return for the hours I put into SL. If I have to spend 30 mins fixing someones house then I need to apply a RL cost to that time as it's time I could be building prefabs or custom sims. So I guess I could charge a minimum of USD$20 per hour. USD$10 for the half hour. So say L$2500 for half hour work? No one buying a prefab would pay it I dont think.

That is all fine and makes sense for you however my point is that a different prefab business can also offer the options we outline and still be profitable and successful.
Also you can only really speculate that offering the option of mod/copy and mod/trans would negatively impact your business unless you have actually tried it. Even then markets change, what people want often can change etc.

I don’t need to try it, I know people who do it already and they have not been as successful. That’s fine, they are not solely in it for the money and success, they like to socialize and meet people and they aren’t obsessive about creating new content.

I bought 50% of an existing prefab business 2 years ago and the owner sold the builds with mod/trans perms. I changed this immediately, lowered prices and the businesses revenue increased by 120% in the first month. I have advised 2 other prefab creators, competitors in fact and ultimately friends, to change their perms and lower prices over the last 3 years and their profits increased. One of them is now making more money and selling more content than me (the bugger). I know the prefab market in SL and my advice relates only to that. Sure there may be money to be earned selling mod/trans prefabs. Just not as much as selling mod/copy prefabs. Simple as that.

not against it. Just making points as to why some folks might be against it (and what others have told me that are against it)

not arguing against any of that but what you consider not worth going after in terms of business may make sense for other prefab builders.
I don't doubt you know customers or your segment of the market well, however you cannot know when people have decided not to buy from you and chosen something else. Often people don't ask or say when this happens, they just go someplace else.
Also even in your own testimony can you 100% say the others that you knew were not successful solely due to offering to many perm options?

yes I did say I would do that, and I will, as many folks can attest
your comment about more work is off base... as it is less work to switch perms on some clothing pieces (say 4 or 5 pieces) and drop those in a box and drop on the customer, as it is to switch permissions on 1000 (or more) pieces, put them in boxes, and either add a script and remove one that already works well for you, or create separate ads, which would require new ad pics (either way to reflect either a choice or 2 ads one for each perms set) then put the ads up (or in the existing vendor)

I do not use a networked vendor system, I used to use the jevn but decided that was not what I wanted

no one should be afraid to offer any permission, even full perms if that is what they want to do, however they should know the risks involved, and even if those risks are minuscule they are still there, and still possible situations.

I would rather know what could happen and make an educated choice, than not know and then have it bite me in the ass.

edited to add, just read porky's comments about mod/transfer and there is 1 very good argument to not offer mod/transfer to the masses. (of course if someone wanted mod/transfer I would think they would be willing to oblige and educate the customer on the risks involved (ie, you break it there is no backup))

and to make myself clear, I am speaking on the whole of SL, not one particular market. (even though I tend to be in one specific market)

one has to look at SL as a whole

and I, as I mentioned, like to be educated. Therefor I try to let folks know what "can" happen, that doesn't necessarily mean it "will" happen.

Gabriele, you seem to want it all, both options, and you do not care how much extra work goes into getting those options out there for you. I have a feeling you would not want to pay extra though.


what about your business, would you release your stuff copy/mod or mod/transfer?

I would think scripts would be a HUGE argument to not allow mod...

however if a new scripter was not aware that it can be copied and was told mod/transfer is the best option, then they would be screwed because you and I both know, people would copy it and call it their own.

What if I said I want the options... would you be willing to offer your scripts copy/mod or mod/transfer?