Classified Adverts Unfair

adds are fair,
that is retail,you got to pay to play.
instead of cashing out those profit.s mabee you should save them like many of use do!

you must use reinvestment skills to gain a better add space.

I get tired of all the "this is unfair" stuff these days.

Is it fair I saved my money and so did my partner fora long time to build a marketing cash amount so we can have 50k a week in adds,so people who get greedy and cash out every cent can have a add with mine?

heck no!!

you need to learn how to run a business!

To many people these days want it all fast,pre made templets for their tgas layer,nice adds with out really taking a year to save and learn how to market!

you can use xstreet reseller layers and 51L adds to make next to nothing.

you can take the time to learn,become something new.and walk away with more then your RL pay check every week and think (why Do I even leave the house...)

I will never forget the feeling the time I saved so i had 5 months worth of 30k a week add(long time ago when a 30k add had you high on the first page)
It was so nice to know i had saved all that money,5 months later and doing the math..... I had made tripple the return on my investment!

It is not a fast paced thing here,sure you can make 100 dollars a week easy,but 800 is much better.
Not getting rich off this,but this year I will match my RL income,and with out adding 40 more hours to my work week and trying to run from job to job!!

QFT.

Classified payments _are_ unfair, not because they charge more for higher placement, but because LL pushes up the price by using control of the platform to funnel all marketing through very limited channels.

LL pushes up nothing. You can use a zillion ways of marketing, classifieds are only 1 of them. Myself I focus on search, and post new items on this forum. But I could blog, advertise on other blogs, buy a page in Prim Perfect, rent ad boards, want more?

Again, classifieds are NOT unfair. The more you pay the more you get. If the first place is too expensive for you, find other ways of getting that name out.

I don't see classified ads as unfair at all. It's one of the most economical forms of advertising here. If you word your ad correctly, you can use a 100L ad to show up on the front page of search, in a highlighted box....right next to someone who is still using bots. 9 classified ads at 100L each, with a zillion different keywords in them....are much more bang for the buck than One listing on the Xstreet featured page.

You say you're on page 100 of classified ads....but where do you show up in the All search? Most people use the All search. Your classified ad is showing up here....off to the right, in a highlighted box. If you're still at the bottom of the heap.....you're using the wrong keywords, or you're using overused keywords.

You can also track the effectiveness of a classified ad, as opposed to most of the other tools. You will see if they teleported on your ad. If you run 5 classifieds....just watch the teleport number each week, and remove or tweak the ones that aren't working, and try again.

Effective wording on your ad: you won't make it happen by using very general keywords....you need to try unique words that aren't being used much....yes, people do type in obscure words to search. Takes time to study the searches, to see what words are not being overused, and try something different.

For instance.....do you want to be at the bottom of the heap with Low Prim House repeated a dozen times....or do you want to be at the top of the heap with Mediterranean Style Tuscan Villa - Tuscany Wine Country Cottage?

Classified ads are completely fair (assuming they have closed the exploit) and probably the only fair thing in SL. You pays your money and how much you are willing to pay is where you land in the results. That being said, I don't think it's worth it to pay more than about 50 - 100 L. It's worth it to be "in there" so that you show up in the search results, but my personal opinion is that you'll always lose in a financial arms race. You can't control WHERE your potential customers are searching -- it might be Classifieds, Search All, Search Places, XStreet, Forums -- so your are wisest to make sure you show up in as many places as possible.


Figuring out where your potential customers are is actually fairly easy. Style is what you need to look at. If you make weapons, for example, you'd want to do some in-world advertising by getting a cart or stall on various role-play sims that suit your products. Look at where people are likely to be using your products, that is where you need to advertise.

I have never used a reseller layer or anyone else's template and I make next to nothing just fine on my own

Here - I picked this up on these very forums:

http://slhunts.wordpress.com

Contact people who have run past hunts that went well.

What do you mean, "even if there were SL Radio"? There is such a thing. There are many properties that stream the same stream continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Lots of these streams do run paid advertising. Some of them can deliver so many listeners that advertising there would be too expensive, but what about the places running streams that are actually playing music chosen by SL users?

Find a place that caters to the type of crowd that your business wants to attract. Go there often and listen to the stream on the land. Also check the address in About Land (if it's ********************'d out then use View Admin Options to uncover the stream address.) Does the stream address never change? Then you've got a good place to advertise, start doing some legwork to find out who runs that stream and start talking to them.

RL radio doesn't have pictures either and people still advertise there. Not only nationwide businesses like Coke and Pepsi, but also "Joe's Corner Deli, Laundromat, Fast Lube and Tax Preparation" advertises on radio. It's a perfectly valid medium, even in SL.

I think the other poster was after "SL Radio" as in grid wide? That's what I was referring to. Spamvertising. Not for me

Indeed product depending. Not everything lends itself to advertising without the visuals. If the product is already understood then fine but if the (new) product is best explained with visuals... it's not going to be the most suitable. Use the best media for the job.

No i wasn't referring to grid wide SL Radio......i have advertised on specific popular Radio stations that were streamed (via website host) into SL. I also had a 30 sec commercial especially created for it !




I can understand if you create niche products, it's probably easy to target your potential market/ audience as Isablan mentioned in her earlier post......but i would imagine that is progressively more difficult if you create mainstream fashion like your example "cutest miniskirt and crop top" . Who are you meant to identify, when we already know most SL females wear & buy mainstream fashion.....what makes your "cutest miniskirt" any different from any other?
Do you wear your latest products and visit the most popular Clubs and flaunt your wears in front of other club goers? If that is your way.....it seems a pretty arsine way of marketing apart from being very slow & progressive.....probably better off hiring a bunch of models to do that for you! Or were you implying taking part in Fashion shows, which is a different matter altogether due to a wider reach through on-site Bloggers?

What's next? Free ads during Superbowl?

But classifieds are the only ones that can be integrated right there in the client, and integrated with the Search system.

It's just as if all TV stations got together and arranged that there would be only one channel, so that the cost of advertising there would fly through the roof because everyone is competing for it.

Even if blogs and ad boards worked just as well, that would still only be a work-around; the Lindens' own vote has been cast for classifieds to be the only system.

(Oh, and at one stage classifieds were L$50 and no more, ever, but they ran into a huge problem sorting them. Actually originally they were alphabetically sorted, and I'm sure you can guess what a lot of businesses started calling themselves...)

Precisely... why go mainstream and compete with everyone else, fill a niche... be UNIQUE