XSTREET Price Dumping and You!

Not necessarily..., if one isn't any good at marketing and driving large amounts of traffic to their Store at the first instance, they're not going to make many of those low-priced sales anyway. (i.e better to sell 1 item at 200 L versus 8 @20 L)

People keep using Wal-Mart as an example, but fail to recognise that it is World renowned Brand name to begin with and "Wal-Mart`s big budget marketing department would carefully select the new store openings based on demographics and other costly analysis." Emphasis on "huge marketing budget"

Selling 20 L Dresses using an outback Store on a 512sqm plot of land with a 51 L advertising budget and ineffective marketing skills.....isn't going to cut it! The only similarity to the Wal-Mart model here are the low prices of those products relative to others within that Market sector......that's about it!


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the people that only sell on SLX , those without a inworld presence are the ones that are hurting LL's bottom line.

Sell for free on SLX - no overhead means can charge 1L and make profit - Merchants with stores to maintain have to react and drop prices not generating enough to pay tier - Merchants scale down their inworld operation and start posting weird messages on some forum while becoming corrupted with negativity and start to become pissed off- Pissed off customers start looking for a new hobby or better service -.

Did I miss a step?

Reminds me of the mainstream music industry.

I've started doing most of my own textures, but it's slow going. I don't sell my stuff (currently) though, it's just for personal satisfaction.

It would make the site easier to navigate if somehow items with minor variations (skirt in RED, skirt in PINK, skirt in MAGENTA, etc.) were listed as one base item, the description of which could be expanded to show the choices.

You left how WalMart routinely strong arms suppliers to sell to them at rock bottom prices, or to sell to them exclusively. They are successful, but I would never adopt their business practices if I were to run a business.

You pretty much covered it!

According to who? Perhaps the person selling the 20L dresses is quite happy with the SL fun money they generate. Not every creator in SL is looking to make a RL income. Some of them just want to make enough to have some fun and be able to buy some things without having to dump RL money into the game. How many 20L dresses to they have to sell in a month to pay their membership? If they sell 4 or 5 a day, they win.

Edit:

I agree, by the way, that anyone who uses Xstreet should have a store in world, and should also be piof.

I think that anyone selling on Xstreet should have PIOF, but I would allow new creators to sell on Xstreet for 3-6 months before requiring an inworld store -- because it allows the new person to get started easier and cheaper. Not all inexpensive stuff is 'cheap', but if a new creator is limited in funds, then selling on Xstreet can help them gain some money to then start selling inworld also.

in a twisted way every texture I do make is for myself.. some day when I learn how to build something wiith more than one room, I will become a builder lol

Renting land isn't prohibitively expensive to anyone's budget though.

And if someone wants to pull the tired old "but I don't want to spend any money on SL" then it would be their own choice that's preventing them from being able to sell on XStreet.

As long as they are PIOF sure thing.. I approve it! Actually that by itself should be the only requirement.. no premium account.. go to to one of the resident owned sites.

In the beginning I did virtually no sales on SLX and only used it as my personal texture viewer, all sales were from in world. Then came the Push for everybody to neatly file in a row and start sharing their earnings with LL via their commissions and overpriced listing features.. now Inworld business is a lot less than that of SLX.

My solution is.. let anybody sell anything they want but if they are not a PIOF (premium with land) then sell your stuff and give your freebies away in world or on private sites only. Trying to crosscheck who has a store and who doesn't is too much hassle./ A simple " Owns Land - Does Not own Land filter will be easy to set up.

Perhaps LL should adjust the pricing of the memberships and tier for those that have to pay VAT so that the actual final cost to each user is the same.. that would kick open a few doors

Sounds like this thread got pretty complicated. I am not really a retailer. Although I have sold a thing or two in SL. It is definately not my focus. What I am is a shopper.

As far as Xstreet and pricing. I might buy something less expensive on Xstreet if I want to try out a new retailer. If they have something inexpensive and intersting I might make a more impulsive buy and give them a try.

For most of my expensive purchases, I will look it up on Xstreet then go in world to buy. Although I have a list of retailers whose items I know I enjoy and occasionally I grab those off Xstreet.

An "in-world shop required" rule would just simply be an artificial barrier to entry into the economy. Artificial barriers to entry are a bane to a free market economy.

For consumers who want to purchase straight from the website, an in-world store serves no purpose. For any consumer who wants to visit an in-world store before buying, they are free to choose not to buy the product without the ability to view it in-world first.

Merchants who can lower prices through eliminating unnecessary overhead costs shouldn't be prohibited, they should be rewarded.

That said, it admittedly reflects poorly upon Second Life that there may be a heavy advantage to shopping out-of-world for products to use in-world. The solution though is not to create artificial barriers to merchants operating strictly through a website; the solution is develop ways of making in-world comparison shopping easier. It's sad that the flavor-of-the-day for Linden Lab seems to be developing web sites to draw users out-of-world (XStreetSL, rumored Facebook initiatives), instead of improving experiences in-world.

Agreed. Look at all the junk they have on the Dashbored (tm).

for me, the in-world shop and PIOF would be geared more toward accountability. As it is, anyone can make a fake name and start selling on Xstreet. While having to identify one's self by name for PIOF might not STOP those who are out to profit from theft, it would certainly slow it down.

I agree that some sort of identification like PIOF might be good because it increases accountability, I don't think requiring an in-world store does anything to increase accountability.

ok going to ummm go in the deep water here.

So since I make a few things. And I do sell on SLX probably too cheaply to some. But I price according to what I want it to be. I need an in world store to be valid?

To me the fun is the making and figuring things out. I am not here to make a RL living. If I make a sale I make a sale.

So dont see anything wrong in what I do.

Yes, let me modify my earlier statement, I was thinking that someone should be paying either premium fees or some sort of tier...then remembered that there are stores who pay tier to sim/island/estate owners and not to LL directly. So I guess just PIOF.

And Bec, you are right, you shouldn't need an inworld store but you should be PIOF. I'm not trying to be elitist here, I'm just saying that LL needs some sort of paper trail to be able to identify who is selling what. And if someone is caught selling stolen goods, they would be all done unless of course they have an alt with different RL information

I'm not sure I agree. When you do nothing but take, it becomes a one sided relationship. For commerce to work properly, your merchant class has to participate in the economy. People buy their stuff and the merchant class in turn buys other people's stuff with the profits and everybody re-invests in the community. When the money taken in by the merchant just leaves the community, the community loses. A thriving merchant class in-world buys prefab stores, they buy land, they buy gadgets like vendors, visitor counters, landmark givers, etc. that keep other merchants who build items for commerce in business.

The more people who simply take and fail to participate in the economy, the less everyone has in the end. LL will figure that out soon enough when revenues need goosing.

hmmm I am pretty sure I put more into SL then I "take" pretty darn positive on that! I may not buy vendors or prefab stores. But I do put plenty in and I do buy plenty from other merchants.

So dont really see where I am just "taking" and not putting in.

LL should have a paper trail on EVERYONE who uses SL...in my opinion.

Bare Rose

- go there, look at the prices, look at the crowds, look at how much volume she does.

Everything's in the 100-200L range, and top notch in quality.

Low price and volume works - but it also has to be good enough for people to want to use it.

Don't take it personally, if you are putting in then you aren't one of the people who aren't.

My alts shop at Bare Rose, so I know.

My point was that there is room in the marketplace for both Walmart and Nordstrom, their customer segments don't necessarily overlap. Price isn't always the reason things don't sell and I wanted to counter the assumption that everyone needs to drop their prices if they want to compete. Style trumps price for a lot of people. What is the difference between a L$100 generic red high heel shoe and a Stiletto Moody red high heel shoe? Their purchasers are completely different customer segments.

Some of the fun with XStreetsl, is when I find hidden "gems" in the massive volume of sheer crap. Like the new bathroom I got yesterday. Modern looking, very nice colors, and such a low prize that I feel the need to apologize to the seller. Finding that in the massive amount of medieval and victorian styled baths was just win for me. I wrote the review on the demo since I got the bath inworld. Yes, the seller even has a free demo that you can order and rez home, and look close on it in 10 min before it poofs. I don't know this merchant from Adam, but she sure as hell do things right IMHO.

Then, just after that, I found the perfect downlights for the ceiling, it's a kick. It's such merchants that makes it worth browsing XStreetsl.