is the RL economy affecting your SL business?

I just want to get some feedback from any store owners regarding if their SL business is taking a hit with what is going on in the RL economy. I have definitely notice a huge drop off in my store sales, and this is with having higher traffic than a few months ago, and running the same classified ad as I usually run. I even started a group that has about 90 members, and putting out bi-weekly announcements. I have a florist/garden center business called "Flower Power". My sales are now 1/3-1/2 of what they used to be! Anyone else taking a hit like this?

shopping in SL is the cheapest entertainment i can think of. but yeah, i am making less sales lately.

My store is fairly new- but I had seen some decent sales spikes and now, as you noted, though I have had major increases in traffic, sales are practically non-existent.

My sales dropped suddenly about a year ago. Since then any efforts to revive things have failed, so now my stuff is only on sale to passers-by at my home and on OnRez.

I have had my highest days of sales ever over the last week. I still believe that grid instability is the largest factor in low sales and ineffective marketing. With the probs on the grid the last couple of days and then not being able to post notices, etc...my sales were almost none for those two days. However, as of yesterday things are back to normal.

and also, consider other factors that might be affecting you. Competition, pricing, etc. I would take a trip around other garden centers and see if there have been any changes in 'market standards'. It might be that no one is buying, or it might be that the competition has gained an edge. I'm not saying this is what happened but if I were you and feeling a consistent loss in sales, I would probably tp around and look at other garden suppliers to see what they are doing.

There seems to be way more sellers than buyers, just my observation.

My sales have slumped a huge amount for the first time in two years. I am not sure if it's the economy as it happened the moment of the Open Space Sims announcement, probably a bit of both.

Mine went down a little over the summer, but that was because I didn't release much of anything new for a few months due to RL morning sickness (should be called all day sickness by the way ). Now that I'm working again, sales have gone back up.

I agree it's a mixture of both. I can't say sales have went down.. But I do feel with the amount of new products we have relased they would be better in a more stable economy.

I have a friend that lost a DJ job because the club had to close due to RL Finances.. So there is some of us that will feel the pinch in SL due to RL economy.

I don't keep the best records in the world, but things have stayed pretty stable, showing continued slow growth, for me through the fall so far this year. The week before/including Halloween wasn't great, but I didn't sell themed merchandise, and with all of the SL/RL activities related to the holiday, I expected to take a hit then.



Agreed! (and Congratulations!)

Thank you

My sales have been in a slow decline for 2 or 3 months. September was slightly lower than any earlier month this year, October was slightly lower than September, and November looks like being slightly lower than October. I'm sure there are a number of reasons, but I imagine that the RL financial situation is one of them.

I have noticed a drop in large donations for the club . Those who normally give 5,000 now only give 2,000 but that's not bad really. Our Mall sales have actually increased quite nicely .
The drop in donations were made up thru the increase of sales at the mall this month. So it really hasn't been too bad..
The thing i really noticed was at the first of November. My adboards got empty because a large portion of them were land owners selling plots on OS regions. When the OS region BS started, the adverts dropped off hard. But that has recovered now and all are full again with other advertising .

Wow, yes...the OS sim issue really factors into this too! I have one, and I'm really pissed off!

I actually have put more money into SL in the last 3 months than I did in all of the first year of being here -- and pretty much all of my SL money does go for clothes shopping.

For me, it is far cheaper to drop $20-50 inworld every week or two than to go hang out in a bar drinking or go out to dinner.

With the economy being what it is and the way my mind works, I only see my SL spending continuing, and possibly even increasing a bit.

Sales have dropped by 40 percent ever since the initial OpenSpace pricing change announcement. I wont deny the possiblity that the RL economy crisis factors into it as well.

I think it's too early to say whether the RL economy is having an effect, certainly in countries like the UK and Australia where the currencies have dropped in value against the dollar, that will have an effect on people's spending because that's an easy to measure cost increase for consumers, but overall I don't think the econmic issues have started to bite.

LL's decisions are more likely to cause an economic crisis inworld.

So far my Q4 sales have been as forecasted and this month’s revenue is what I would expect from November which traditionally has been my strongest month of the year for 4 years running. I've noticed about a 20% rise in traffic in the last month too However my percentage of sales hasn't increased proportionately with he traffic increase. Also with prefabs, it’s common for some people to visit my store 2 or 3 times through the day before making a purchase as they obviously want to see other people’s products before making a purchase. The amount of people doing this has vastly increased this month. So my conclusion is that people are being more cautious with thier L$. They are shopping around more to find value for money; they are more indecisive taking longer to make a purchase which is accounting for a traffic rise and multiple visits.

My sales were down a few months ago, mainly because of the new search system. I took care of that and ever since my sales have been good and stable. The only times when my sales are down is when there are grid problems, such as 2-3 days ago. When the grid is good, my sales are good. Didn't notice a drop because of the RL economy.

I am soooo bad for keeping records.
I have been trying to download them often enough so that I do not have any gaps, but... end up missing a day or two

I wish they had a larger history for the transaction download, say 3 or 6 months (I know it would mean more storage on their spaces etc)

hey maybe that could be another premium thing. larger history for the transactions downloads...

(has anyone suggested that?)
or am I the only one who always ended up missing days because time flies by so fast

as for the topic of the thread, I have no idea

my sales have always fluctuated, so I dunno if it is just happenstance that I get sales, or "shrug"

I am just happy to see a sale heh

I have seen consistent growth over the last 4 months. I expect that because I am still new, and expect to hit a plateau here soon. I agree with an earlier poster that we are affected more by the openspace issue than we are by rl economy. I hadn't really thought about that before, how our SL economy is affected by inworld issues as much as FL economy is by FL world issues.

I was a bookkeeper for some years, and so I enjoy doing my monthly accounting

Good idea about the premium feature, would be very low cost for LL and very handy for allot of people as the I expect most people selling stuff are just having a bit of fun rather than running a busines with records etc.

Rha, regarding exporting your transaction history, try and get in to the habit of doing it weekly, then if you forget to do it for a few days it wont be a problem.

You need a trigger event. Every time you see a new pointless Friday thread then D/L your transactions.

Hard to say if RL economy is affecting me. I've had steady revenue through Aug, Sept and Oct in spite of adding new items. But that is better than decreasing revenue! I'm having an increase of revenue in Nov but that could be due to recent marketing efforts and the success of my holiday items.

I'm thinking that SL is cheap stay-at-home entertainment where shopaholics can get a fix for a fraction of the cost of rl shopping.

Only time will tell.

I'm mighty glad I've got a business where lots of people are dropping a few dollars, rather than a RL job with risk of layoff. I'm counting my blessings.

LOL ok I will be downloading them everyday

cuz there is always a pointless friday thread around here

seriously though that is a good idea, something that would remind me to download weekly reports (and that also helps in situations like last week, where I was in the hospital and unable to download until I got my laptop there, and not everyone would have that ability)

ty for the great suggestion