XSTREET Price Dumping and You!

Experience has disproven this theory. I thought this same thing myself and thus built a $200L skybox to add to my lineup -- as a test. I expected that thing to fly off the shelf since it was less than 50% the cost of my other small skyboxes. What actually happened is that I can't give the $200L model away and the $3500L skyboxes at the top end of my range continue to outsell it 5 to 1.

Not everything is as it appears.

I guess I have to disagree with this, too, just because "truly convenient" is being mighty generous to XstreetSL's search function. I'm not objecting to the crazy default "popularity" sort order, but to the limited ability to actually specify what I'm shopping for and actually get a non-zero number of results fewer than a thousand. I find it as near to useless as makes no difference--bad enough that now I almost always use in-world Search, go to XstreetSL to hunt for the corresponding product page, then TP in-world to buy.

Honestly, it's the least functional e-commerce site I have tried to use since 1999.

Back in-world, I sometimes TP or otherwise transport myself directly to the coordinates of the object I want to buy--I've even purchased objects before they've rezzed--using the coordinates on the Search / All page and some blind mouse-stabbing for object names. (Aside: Do any third-party viewers offer text search within that Search / All page? I've even gone to the bottom, grabbed the URL, and pasted it into a real browser so I can search its text. In the words of Church Lady, "How *convenient*." )

Um. What I really wanted to say, though, before I distracted myself with that rant, is that I think it's really two different, almost non-overlapping markets, Xstreet and in-world, and that may account for the low prices on Xstreet.

Speaking for myself, anyway, I only buy temporary, disposable junk on Xstreet; you know, the kind of crap I could make myself in less than an hour, but don't want to be bothered. So of course I'm only interested in stuff for L$100 or less. Anything I intend to keep for any length of time, I'll only buy in-world, and so my buying is a lot less price-sensitive there.

[...] I won't even tell people not to shop there because I personally don't want them to even get name recognition, they're best ignored by everybody.

So this is one case where xstreet has the potential to totally trounce the in-world shopping experience, and if they did point me to an xstreet page I might have been cool with taking a look at their items there.

In short, the whole thing was a major fail and I hope I never make the mistake of ever going back to that sim.

[...] It's easy to recognise the mediocre shops inworld :

1. They usually have traffic bots to fake popularity
2. There stuff doesn't look good inworld
3. The work is slap-dash, it was quick to do, they don't care about it, so they sell it cheap ...

Yeah, one of the reasons that for anything serious I only buy in-world is that I want to know just this sort of thing about the creator's in-world presence. If there are trafficbots around, no sale. If the build is sloppy, won't rez in finite time, doesn't respect the neighbors, etc., no sale. If the stuff as rezzed isn't as depicted on the packet, no sale.

And if the merchant has no in-world presence at all, forget it. I realize that there are some legitimate creators with nothing but a Magic Box, and good for them, etc., but I'm not going to spend the time to disprove the usually justified supposition of scam.

First of all....how do you know it is outselling? All they have to do is give some friends some lindens to purchase the product over and over again, to increase the counts and give stars.

How do you know all this dumping is going on? Do you spend hours watching? The time you spent watching....you could have posted 12 new products. (not that I take this advice, myself)

Do you really have competitors? That's a problem. Make stuff and offer value/services, so you no longer have a competitor. Even a texture maker can do this. There are a zillion textures I cannot find, and I search every other night. And 90% of texture packets make no sense. Why would someone offer a pack of 10 different colored paneled doors, without offering the plain panel? What can you make with that?

Do you want One Shot Buyers? or do you want Repeat/Loyal Buyers? I buy from people who were nice when I purchased, and sent a Thank You.

I have also ruled out buying from people that were nasty in forum. (can't say that I haven't lost a few customers myself, this way - work in progress) But there are some merchants in the other forum, who are consistently downright nasty with attitudes that suck. I will not ever buy from them.

There was a time period when you were repeatedly dogging a competitor of yours.....so I made special attempts to buy textures from that person, even recently. Hopefully you have calmed your ass down since then. If it had not been for that, and hinting that I might be psycho..... I probably would have gone to your product page immediately, simply by seeing your name/business in forum.

Price is not everything. Convenience is. I would rather pay 500L for a box of 10 wood textures labeled "dark walnut heavy grain wood"....than to spend 100L on a box of wood textures labeled wood1, wood2, wood3....every time I see those in my inventory, I want to wring someone's neck.

Photos. If someone has 12 pics of the item, and it is priced at 500L.....I will purchase it over a 100L item with one pic....even if it is the exact same quality. How would you know from one pic?

Most people come to the store to buy my stuff....but recently Xstreet sales are better than ever, and I haven't even added anything new for a while....so no complaints. I try not to spend my days worrying about what other people are doing......I better worry about what I should be doing.

Which takes me back again to ability to sell items needs to be restricted to premium members with verified payment methods.

Which takes me back again to ability to sell items needs to be restricted to premium members with verified payment methods.

.

I would go a step further, and require an inworld store as a condition, as well.

Other people have brought up some very good points. XStreet is the venue of choice for copyright infringers, I find it pretty easy to pick out the stolen content because the price is REALLY low and there is no license on full perms items. There was a pack of sculpty textures the other day on the homepage that was almost unquestionably copyright infringement. It made me wish there as a "report item" button. However, I also see the downside in both manpower to follow up and "revenge" reporting as a way to knock your competitor out of XStreet while someone investigates.

Which takes me back again to ability to sell items needs to be restricted to premium members with verified payment methods.

At the rate things are going, XStreet is going to become like that area of town in every city where people know they can get a "deal" on stuff that has "fallen off the truck." Not exactly the virtual commerce platform that LL has been envisioning.

As a buyer I always look for the cheapest things that are 'good enough'.
As a seller of my own products I price things low on the assumption that most other people buy on the same basis as me. It's better to sell 5 tank-tops at L$25 each than to sell none at L$125!

As I've said lots of times on here, for a large number of residents in SL, the difference between a bargain and a rip-off is the difference between L$0 and L$1 !

*Awaits an even louder round of howls.

Yeah, me too.

But here's the reasoning: Xstreet is like a perk for merchants. (howls on this, too). Reserve it for those who are paying tiers and functioning inworld, as a reward. If you don't have an inworld store, you rarely even have to step inworld, to capture your business from Xstreet. You're not contributing inworld.... (more howls)....It should be a bonus for those who are contributing inworld, and walking to the tier pay box a dozen times a week.

Some would call that elitist* and say XStreet provides an entry level market for those who may not have the funds or large enough inventory to merit a metaphysical store.

*Not necessarily me

As a non xstreet user who has been there exactly one time to get a freebie someone recommended to me, I don't have much of a dog in the fight, but from reading threads like this, it is definitely in need of serious help. I see the value of off world shopping even if I don't care to use it myself, and Xstreet has become just another one of LL's ham fisted failures. They should have left it alone.

Some would call that elitist* and say XStreet provides an entry level market for those who may not have the funds or large enough inventory to merit a metaphysical store.

*Not necessarily me

As a non xstreet user who has been there exactly one time to get a freebie someone recommended to me, I don't have much of a dog in the fight, but from reading threads like this, it is definitely in need of serious help. I see the value of off world shopping even if I don't care to use it myself, and Xstreet has become just another one of LL's ham fisted failures. They should have left it alone.

Waits for the howls to start on that one.

I would go a step further, and require an inworld store as a condition, as well.

*Awaits an even louder round of howls.

Actually, I really wish more texture artists would let me buy single textures instead of packs. I've grown sick of spending 10,000L on a texture pack and only finding two or three of the textures useful. So much so, that I've pretty much completely stopped buying.