Price fixing in world?

I'm relativley new (relative to most of the well known posters) on Second Life. Came on here while looking for something to do while i recovered from chemotherapy. Well, im still here, still recovering from a string of health issues.

At first i just visited clubs, danced a bit, chatted, used SL as a live "myspace". Then i got my own bit of rented land...then expanded...then got a second bit of rented land and opened up a little prefab shop.

The prefab shop lasted all of 3 weeks, once i seen that builders on SLX/XLStreet were giving away some dang good looking homes for free i closed the building side and concentrated on the original business sideline...photography.

The original price range of the studio was on par with some of the mid to well known studios out there in SL...we're talking 5000l + for a wedding shoot. After a LOT of mass advertising in various romantic locations and spending a fortune getting the new studios and holodeck studios set up and running to the way i wanted the studios to run i sat back and got....nothing....only 1 wedding shoot in 3 weeks. Thats when i realised...why the heck should i set my price to the way the other studios have set theirs? I dropped the prices studio wide.

Something interesting started to happen. It started 2 weeks ago.

When i agree on a shoot i always check the profile of the person I am doing the work for, get hints to their nature and what they like or dislike in their profile. More and more i started photographing people who had ties to...or ran their own photography studio. Last week i was approached by 4 seperate studios, this week so far i have been approached by 2 more all asking (and in some cases demanding) that i raise the price's of my studio shoot to a more level par of the average base rate for wedding shoots.

They never came near me when the original price was set on par with the dozen or so well known studios...now i have slashed the price but have the same level of studio (and in some cases a much better studio) and now i got half a dozen different studios who OBVISOULY must be part of some organization who have seen that my little studio is getting more business than them now telling me to raise my price?

The last one who had a full out arguement with me stated that photography in SL is an "art" and that i am cheapening this "art" o.O

Price fixing in Second Life within a ring of busnisses...is it going on in SL now?

wouldn`t suprise me tbh

if your business is picking off, i`d say stick with it!
any one trying to haras you, file an AR and take things lightly with a piece of humor

about the prefabs, even if people give stuff away for free, what stops you to have a small corner and keep it on sale?
perhaps on a 4x4 plot for seperate land advertisement, only costs 30L extra a week

GL with the ongoing recovery!

The entire history of human economic activity may well be replicated in this little virtual world.

Price fixing is something humans always try to do.

But in a 'world' in which start-up costs, as well as the costs of doing business in general, are so modest---unless the cartel can get a God of this world (in other words, a Linden) to make some sort of unilateral declaration that would act to protect their monopoly....their gooses are cooked.

(Huzzah!)

I can't think of a more clear "early indicator" that you're doing something right.

i completely agree...when the masses start whining that you are doing something that gets you more biz and you should stop...id say you have gotten their attention. Dont change a thing LOL....interesting that the real cost to them and you is prob about the same. you just choose to get more biz at a lower price point. good work!

It is normal for there to be a range of price points in business. Don't yield to pressure to price fix.

Congrats on being able to do some things some of us who have been here for while aren't
able to figure out, especially me. I just don't have energy or perhaps what I am doing
is just crap LOL.
I have health problems too, I just don't always have energy for it all.
Most of stuff that takes literally days I rarely sale for over 100L down to 20L
and I rarely make a sell.
Price fixing I don't know if you in luxury of having clients and they want to pay you
more or less for your product it really doesn't matter because it all adds up eventually.
Some people will never spend a dime, while others might if it is only dollar, while others will
spend more.
I create something and I often don't have energy for anything more so the fact you're able to do what you are recovery Cancer, do even half of that. Wow!

Congrats, sounds like you're doing something right
If you're covering your costs and are happy with your pricing, stick with it. Don't let anyone else bully you into doing things their way. Quality, price and originality will always win.

Also, as Alicia said, if you've got the space, set up a shop for your prefabs... not everyone uses xstreet.

When you make your first million, don't forget us little people.

Congratulations on your success! I haven't heard much about price fixing in world before, but it doesn't surprise me too much. They're just jealous that you're getting business and that your work is actually good. There are some rather nasty sorts of people in SL, though, and there is a possibility that this mob may try some retaliatory tactics or attempt to ruin your reputation. But don't give in - document everything these folks say to you and if there's ever a problem, you'll have evidence for an abuse report for harassment.

Congrats
Tell them you're quite happy with how you're doing things, tell them
No thanks you're not interested in their advise.
If they pursue it file a harassment report.

Well... I'm not so sure. There are two sides to this question--one of which is obscured by the vaguely menacing approach taken by the "price fixers." But, the other side: I've written many scripts for my own use and for friends, tenants, random strangers, etc., that do everything some commercial products do (and usually more or better, or I wouldn't have bothered to write them in the first place). It would be very easy for me to release these things into the public domain, or start to sell them for pennies on the dollar compared to the products of other scripters. If I were to do that, would it be generous, smart business, or evil?

I suppose, if I thought I needed the L$s, maybe it would be smart business. Still, it would devalue the hard work of others. So... well, I don't do it, at least not intentionally, and at least not unless the thing is really a major improvement over other products.

But even with a new product: how to price it? I mean, it's not like there's any way to recoup my RL billing rate with SL product sales, no matter how they're priced, so what's the criterion for setting prices? It's really just "what the market will bear" which is pretty much synonymous with "what everybody else charges for things that are roughly similar."

(For brand new things, though, that's really hard to determine. One of the few products that I actually sell, I've been repeatedly told I've priced far too low--not because anybody else sells anything like it, but because it just seems underpriced for what it is. I suppose somebody who actually can be bothered with such things might have done a little marketing research before setting the price. )

... All that said, though: It's odd that the critics should invoke "it's art!" in defense of controlling prices. Competition undercutting margin is really the problem of commodities, not unique products such as "art." If they weren't afraid that their service really was interchangeable with that offered by others--that is, if they were confident that it was "art"--competition shouldn't be a concern, and *price* competition least of all.

I don't think the "hard work of others" should ever be a restriction on what YOU do. Maybe that sounds harsh, but I can't understand a business hurting themselves to help competitors.

I say tell them to stuff it! It's your business, charge what you want. If they can't handle that it is their problem, and they need ARs filed if they want to harass you over it.

this one always makes me giggle when they use the art thing in defense.
it's about the music dude so where's ma check
i'd say those prefabs were more about the art than these coming up to you bitching about the money..
the ones that have not came to you are the ones more likely doing it for art.
it's a free market and there is nothing they can do about it..
ban and mute and AR if they get too be too much of an irritant

Well, different strokes. It's pretty much the same question as whether one crosses a picket line. People just have different ideas about that.

My opinion? Of the ones that have approached you with complaints, find the one who charges the least, and raise your prices to close to their price. That way, you aren't selling yourself short (which you probably are) and they won't have so much to complain about. If you are doing quality work, word of mouth will probably be your biggest promotion, you are smart to do what you need to do to get that out there.

My Resident Geek has a part time business doing wedding videos. In that industry, the people who are doing it for a living full time, are (understandably) upset with the hordes of "hobbyists" who get a camera or two, set really low prices, and are in business for a year or two until they realize that they're putting in way too much time for way too little return.

While they are learning this lesson, they are taking business away from the "established pros". Also, the quality of their product tends to be quite low, so they don't do the reputation of the industry as a whole any good.

It's not a matter of price fixing...I'm pretty sure that there is no "club" or secret society of SL photographers who get together and decide what they should charge.

You should set your prices where you think they should be. But don't be surprised if you don't make any friends among your competitors who think they should be a lot higher.

Another vote for free market here. 'nuff said.

As others have said, it's a reasonable concern. The problem is that Second Life isn't a self-contained world, but people would rather like it to have a self-contained economy. If the economy of SL isn't self-contained then you have the infamous problem of, for example, Ford bringing out a fantastic car in world and giving it away for free, because they can bring in all their income from the next universe along, where the sale of one real Ford pays all their tier. Meanwhile, in-world professional car makers are swept at the knees. As it turned out, the real-world brands didn't have this effect because they weren't experimental or integrated enough to attract sufficient interest, but for an in-world creator who IS integrated to make a catastrophic undercut could be just as bad - witness the furore over Anshe's L$10 furniture line. For the economy to be such that to compete in SL, you have to be making all your real money somewhere else, would wipe out a great deal of SL's economic model.

Scripters and services suffer especially badly from this, because their products are interchangeable to a large extent. MystiTool, Omega, etc, get a lot of praise here - but they have had an unfortunate effect on the market for gadgets.

This thread mirrors the real life debates on the marketplace. I'd say that it's fascinating, but really it's to be expected.

The flip side to Yumi's post is that when there's a free market that's allowed to find it's own equilibrium, the consumer wins. 10L furniture? Bring it on!

But I will agree - in order to guarantee your place in an SL marketplace, you must find something suitably unique. Or work very very hard. Hopefully, both. Original artwork comes to mind for uniqueness, while stores like KK and DE places describe the latter.

That's exactly the problem, though. L$10 furniture would essentially make it impossible for anyone in-world to devote themselves entirely to making furniture. All furniture would have to be made by people with alternate income streams, and the incentive to get into furniture making would be much lower. That limits the range of potential creators and thus the range of product available; and that limits quality.

Sorry, I can't agree. if 10L furniture is poor quality, people will still pay more for better goods. If the 10L furniture is great quality, then nobody has any business charging more. And who's to say that 10L furniture makers will continue indefinitely? There are many factors that can come into play - because it's a free market. In both our scenarios, I think the consumer wins.

And if there's truly no profit in making furniture, why would you expect to be "prop'ed up" artificially? Find something else to make.

I can see your point about external influx of capital skewing the market. But the truth is that there is no SL without the RL, including the computer you run SL on. There's no way to seriously consider the SL economy in isolation. Again - free market.

I don't know if 10,000 residents bought 10L$ chairs it still would be 100k if you could sell
that many. I mean eventually it catch up and cover the cost of the "manufacturing" virtual prims cost, and any custom textures at certain point.
There are real life therapist here who charge 1000L in SL it cost you over 20k in lindens if you paid in cash in real life.
Depends on the person and what they want to charge.
I find it personally ridiculous that someone would charge over 1200 L$ for book of LSL scripting information you find on the wiki or wonder around their "university" read the book
for free but they have that right to charge that much.
Yet anyone has the right to charge whatever they want for their own services here,
they may get buyer, they may not though.

One other thought: the very money you earn selling furniture (or whatever) for the most part comes from SL, via. the Linden exchange with USD. If you really wanted a closed SL economy, you'd have trouble selling anything at any price.

Again, I wouldn't be quite so sure. One notable danger, for example, is that if high quality furniture is available for L$10, camping will increase (even at the lowest rate it only takes around an hour's camping to make that much - so just surf the web while SL is open) and content creation by newbies and inter-newbie trade will decline. This is bad for US$ investment in SL, and also bad for retention - people who create things, even if it's just for themselves, have a much higher retention rate.



Right - but that might need to change if the SL economic model is to be maintained. Yes, SL may require protectionism But it is unlikely that many people will be willing to invest large amounts in SL businesses when there is the risk of the entire economy being leapfrogged from outside.

The entire SL model is a disaster in terms of large external investment. There's a reason why SL has no real competition (other than open source - one day).