SL Sales

I'm just curious if you SL business owners experience such odd lulls in sales. I opened a shop a couple months ago....and over all my sales have grown steadily.....but every so often (like now) things seem to come to a screeching halt for days and I find myself checking and re-checking to make sure my add is still being run and my sales boxes are still working properly. I'm sure this is just the way of business and the fickle consumer....but I am just wondering what your experiences have been.....especially at the beginning stages of launching a new biznez.

It's not you. Things are sllllllllllooooooowwwwwwwww.

Yeah -

with all the instability / activities being banned / and whatever else -

My sales have dropped off considerably.

Every tuime they start making a comeback - something else goes wrong.

In the last 6 months I have probably averaged 50% of what I thought of as my normal sales per month.


My normal being rather consistant sales for well over a year.


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Back before the front page changed I notice one thing that I think helped contribute.

Even though the total accounts climb and the users online climb -

LindenX activity has been much more flat.

Since LindenX activity is actual money flowing in and out of the economy, it remaining flat with more people around, means we each get a smaller slice of the overal Pie.

*sigh* I almost tempted to just open a freebie shop and put out a tips jar. I make shapes....I love it.... I opened a shop because it was something to DO with all the shapes I was churning out. When I'm bored...I make new AV's..... perhaps I should just start a noobie bargain basement...but dam it...it's just too cool to log into my transactions page and discover I've made 4 sales while asleep. Oh well....anyone want to try a new shape for ha ha's....IM me. lol

Same here, as a fairly new business owner I too have noticed the drop off in sales. I do recognize it's due to the recent bans, hope it will pick up.

I assume it also depends on what you sell. I set clothing and attachments such as jewelry and belts while my b/f sells furniture. I get no sales what-so-ever while he sells his furniture... idk.

I have ups and downs in sales too and have never been able to really pin them to any specific thing. Stuff will just sell like mad for awhile and then *poof* there will be a huge drop for no obvious reason. I am learning to just look at the longer view and not obsess over daily numbers. That said, I have pretty low expectations when it comes to sales and run my shop mostly for fun.

Well, I love buying clothes and finding new shops.But a big part of the problem I see as a consumer, is search stinks. Most of the people up top have a huge number of traffic but crappy(IMO) products.Or they have so much traffic the lag kills any pleasant shopping experience. After awhile,you just get sick of searching and stick to what you already know. Feel free to send me a landmark inworld and I will come by and check things out!


Signed

Loves to shop.

I opened a furniture store in January and had bug sales for about 3 months...... now it has trickled out to nothing. I also opened a cowboy hat shop and sales have steadily declined although I keep adding inventory and advertising.

I am guessing that spending in SL is down on the whole.

It partly that it's August, and people are on holiday. Student users are away from college. That accounts for a _lot_.

The loss of gambling has also removed a number of free L$ sources for new users, thus removing part of the bottom end of the market.

My sales over 1.5 years have had highs and lows, based on seasons or if SL is going through a greater than normal period of instability. August was off approx 5% from average.

sales nearly dead, considering pulling up stakes and selling land, and just have places in some malls or cities

being land is low tier cost, and I prepay yearly for my account, I am thinking may as well keep the land, because it would probably be cheaper in the long run.

considered buying some ad spaces somewhere in magazines or something

I've never sold anything.
Never.

Just today, I had the undisputed high point of the last few weeks by selling stuff for 20 $L (but only because somebody who got my free tinfoil hat was kind enough to buy two of my texture tiles while they were there).

Then again, I'm only doing this for the fun of it anyway and have, all in all, mabe made 500 $L since I got into SL. And it's a small prefab "shop" with just about 30 or so items, mostly framed pictures and simple furniture.

That's the way I look at it. I have been making clothes in Photoshop. Luckily I am well versed in PSP and Photoshop long before SL. I'd like get up to par to sell them.But just for fun. I don't expect to make any real money doing it.

Someday I'll stop shopping and wear my own clothes exclusively,lol.

I think there is several reasons for the drop in sales. The season of course is a major one and then add that people are haveing problems buying L's and unless they can buy them it is more difficult to earn them. They dont want to buy items and have them get "lost" or completely disapeer from the inventory or not all show up. And moveing around SL is unstable which takes the fun out of shopping. I'm sure there are other reason but I have noticed about a 50 to 70% drop in sales the last couple of months.

Also I think when LL opened the gates and people were coming in droves they were buying like crazy which of course made all have huge sales. That went on for about 4 months or so and now people arent coming like they did (6 million in a short time).We all got used to the sales from that and now things are back to before the gates opened and then add all the other problems.

Just hopeing that this month things will be better for everyone.

I imagine at times people get tired of spending their money of badly made clothes and/or buying the same designed outfits but in different colors which you see in just about every shop.

Then if you happen to try to get an exchange you have to deal with the shops owners huge ego where they won't want you to bother them or they refuse to do anything for you although you just spend cash in their shops.

People get tired of dealing with problems like this and just don't care about going out to shop many times.

Sad to say, neither have I. I'm giving a vendor shop a try for 2 weeks, but if I don't make back at least the price of the rental in it, I'm going to probably pull out of sales for the time being and tier down. I never had hopes of making lots of money, but I did hope to make enough to pay the 3$ tier bump from a 1024 (not even the whole 8$ tier... just the 3$ bump). My premium subscription is up for renewal on the 15th and the only thing that's making me consider keeping it is the stipend. I like my land but if I'm not actually selling *anything* I might as well lop off the shop part of it instead of paying for it.

Ah well.

Giving your quality creations away as freebies or nearly nothing is not the answer. Promotion and patience are.

Another reason why people may not be shopping as much. The prices in some stores are outrageous.IMO. I won't pay anything more than $500L for an outfit and for that it had better be a high quality one. I just went to a store and they had really nice gowns,priced at $2000L. Are they serious?

In part I agree with this, there are the rare occasions I, myself, will absolutely fall in LOVE with something and have to buy it. I buy even less if it is no transfer...no transfer and too expensive = no way, even if its fabulous. The things I make are not this high fashion perfect quality, I think they are ok and they are priced occordingly and sales are 'soso'. I have never done any big advertising and dont intend too, its not worth that to me since I make just enough atm to cover tier. This works for me since I use the extra unused land to live on, so my 'home' is free. Works out well enough!

I think the summer months are the biggest reason for the downswing in sales and have high hopes for sales to pick up...for everyone, because if they pick up for everyone they will for me too lol.

2000L for one or a complete package? It really depends on how much time was put into it and if it is selling for that much, then it may actually be worth that much. When comparing that to how much land was selling at a few months ago, thats really not much at all then.

Anyways in two or three months I don't think we'll see any of these "SL sales" are down threads.

its pretty simple. people don´t buy when search, tp, transactions are broken. and that happened a alot this month. in addition many stopped buying no copy items after loosing alot the last 2 month. i think sales will go back to normal again when people get their trust back (but only when sl gets more stable soon)

$2000 for one gown. It was beautiful,don't get me wrong. But there is just no way I would pay that much.Maybe $1000L if there is a special occasion I needed to go to that requires a gown. Which I don't see happening any time soon.(I need special places to go to first,lol.)

However, I have no problem buying a dog for $1500.

On the other end of the spectrum...... I just found a pair of shoes that are really cute that change colors(about 50-60 different colors) They were only $190 L. These are great because I now have cute shoes to match every outfit. I would have easily paid at least $500L for those. But don't tell the shop owner that...