SL Market place

Ive been on Sl for little over a year now. Has the marketplace in clothes, skins, furntiure, etc changed ??? Every thing seems to be a copy or knock off of every thing else. I bought a living room set for alot of lindens, then I see not copy but very very similar for 1/4 of the price. Is this a new trend or am i just becoming more aware of it ??? I curious because I would like to start a little business but so many freebe shops not sure i want to invest the time.

That seems pretty typical. Don't open a shop because you want to make a million dollars. Open a shop if you like to create.

If you're lucky, you might cover tier.

And that, Annabelle, was probably the wisest thing I have ever read on the forums.

Na not wanting to make alot of money, just want to see that window pop up that say somebody paid you So all these business in a box deals, and the freebe warehouse have always been around ??

Think about RL. For the most part a sofa is a sofa is a sofa. There are style changes and texture changes, etc. But you could argue that you'd see the same sofa 100 times by going to 100 stores. Now eliminate the feel of the texture to make a difference, the comfort of sofa to make a difference and eliminate the overall sturdiness and quality of the sofa to make a difference and you really don't have much of a difference at all. That's what you are dealing with in SL.

I plan on opening a shop soon. It's going to be a surf shop. Aren't there already many, many surf shops in SL? Sure there are, but it's something that I'd love to do in RL. I don't plan to make money, I plan to have fun. To me, that's what it's all about.

The freebie warehouses have - YadNi's Junkyard being my most remembered example - I still browse there occasionally and say "D'oh!" when I come across something that cost me Lindens that I could have gotten for free.....

The BIAB thing is more recent (from my experience anyway) - and tends to be the unscrupulous selling on freebie items; though not all BIABs do this.

Inc

Its been like that since this alt was born.

Not just copies, but badly made copies. The originals are bad enough but copies that are even worse, from the brilliant "designers" of sl.

Shoes so big you think there's a clowns convention going on.

Hats just as large you'd think they were made for siamese twins joined at the head.

Jackets that are tucked in. Tucked in jackets, where on earth do you see this?

Unmodifiable clothes (real geniuses here) which you can't do anything with. Not even when the guys pants are skin tight or hip huggers (for guys no less) that go way below the belly button. Or shirts that go halfway down and if another piece is added you can see where they're joined together 10 blocks away.

The women have it good. It's the men that get the same tired clothes and everywhere you go you see the same exact badly made articles. Then you see them come here complaining businesses are bad.

So when you ask if the market place has changed, I'd say without a doubt and for the worse. Not that it's ever been good but you get the picture.

major areas of distinction for SL items are...

textures... unique, well joined, and properly shaded

objects... well designed, I've seen knockoff that look good, untill you notice that they took 2 times the prims to duplicate the 'quality' item... conversely I've seen low prim knockoffs that lost the appeal of the original

gadgets: scripts that are full featured, low lag, and work fast. these can also improve objects they're in... two identical objects, may have very different scripts under the hood, and this is a selling point

permissions... +trans seems to sell lower than +copy, +mod generally sells higher that no-mod

My stuff used to sell better than it does now - almost no sales. This doesn't seem unusual, judging by discussions on here.

Yesterday I visited a big freebie place and there were loads of decent freebies on offer - I picked up three nice, sensible outfits.

I have also put some of my older creations into a freebie barrel and that seems quite popular, but I bet if I priced it at L$1 it wouldn't be popular!

As a few clever people become more and more proficient with sculpties I think they will have a window of opportunity to make serious cash.