Bloomin Campers Again

The way that the Classifieds are ranked is just as basic as Places. It would be hard to come up with a worse way of ranking things. They are both equally bad. If the extact searchterm is in the ad, it gets ranked. If not, it doesn't get ranked. Classifieds are more acceptable because they are Classifieds - paid for - but the results are usually lousy.

The new search is infintely better, and I think that LL is moving towards getting rid of some the tabs - which would be a good thing, except for people who rely on camping for income. I'm not against removing the Places search altogether, btw.

There was one club (Anubis Pyramid) I use to go to now and then. It was recently sold and the new owner put tons of camping crap all over and sales booths all inside surrounding the dance floor. It is not a fun place no more....

Well you sure sound nice Phil But as for me, I would choose between either make a stand as a business owner, or as a people helper. Upto a few posts ago I found it quite amusing as well as brave, that you stood up for the alt-farms. As soon as you stated your concern is for people, in stead of your business, it became a bit vague in my humble eyes. For me, your words lost half of their value.
Dont get me wrong, I understand you got the alts to compete with the false keywords company. But I find it hard to believe you did that to help people instead of helping your business

Now let me clarify my own point of view, as a business owner who could care less about profit, but who wants to sell a bit now and then of course.

Company A: My business
- Paying for a few classifieds at 55 linden a piece.
- Participate in a billboard network (not the spinning addfarms *grin*).
- Use only the keywords that are valid for my business, so people can easily find me.

Company B: Competition
- Paying 10k for one or more classifieds
- Runs 20 alt-bots (at NO COST btw)
- uses only valid keywords

Company C: Competition
- Paying 10k for one or more classifieds
- Runs 20 payed camping spots
- Use every keyword they can think of to get people to their premises

The fact B and C are paying way more for classifieds gives them an advantage to me, but a deserved and honest one. Companies who advertise, get more business. Quite simple.

Company B has a second advantage over me, by gaming the system. It costs them, but it still is cheating the system. They get a higher place in search not because of better advertising (keywords for example) but by using false traffic. Doesn't cost them a linden (well a bit of power).

Company C has a third advantage: false keywords. They cheat the system just as much as the alt-farmer (well at least they pay for the exposure). Both B and C have false traffic numbers. The false keywords trick makes the cheating even worse.

So as you see, the only fair way to get an advantage over my business, is classifieds. Well, and better products of course Camping/Alt-farms/Keyword abuse are all cheats: they get people to the store with false promises.

Now my main problem with Phils arguments: The word RELEVANT. When people want to buy furniture, my shop is just as relevant as any other. Just as relevant as Company B, probably more relevant as Company C. But I can put 1000 relevant keywords in my parcel description, without false traffic I cannot be found as easy as the so called cheaters. That sucks as my only options are: shrug and not sell, or put up an alt-farm of myself. How nice SL will get if every business owner has to put up an alt-farm... so I'll just shrug. And enjoy designing anyway

Greetings, Marcel

Also, assuming that the money tree is visible from the landing point, they typically are NOT a way to directly influence traffic. An avatar has to be there at least a minute before traffic registers, and many treeshakers poof as soon as they check the tree. There is potential INDIRECT traffic, where the treeshaker says- "oh, hey- this is a cool place!" and sticks around, but if your goal is to drive up your traffic numbers there are more effective, but less ethically-sound ways of doing that.

But how much did you pay out to campers out of that 46k that you took?

Broccoli

I don’t bother looking at the first place on the search list according to traffic, nor do I map hop to all the high traffic areas... I ask around, "So Caire, what is YOUR fav place to shop...And Trout where DID you get that cool DUNE outfit?" (Word of mouth) has been, and always WILL be the best advertising there is. So take note business owner who puts up camping pads...I am among many who listen more to word of mouth that the’ traffic' in your shop or club.

As for camping I used to camp out over a year ago ...I was a noob then, and needed money. I found THEN I could talk to several campers and they actually talked back. I got curious and tried that randomly in the last few months and NADA! not one camper I tried to talk to ever responded. Either they were (away) or they were bots.

There is a mega furniture-plex I frequent (forgot the name) where they have camping dance pads & sex pads...I noticed most of the campers there were noob avi's. There are sooooo many better ways of earning cash in a fun interactive way than camping. A hint to all the noobs out there reading the forums...look in the help wanted classified...you will find all kinds of work...girl Friday, boy Friday, dancers, strippers, and even escorts.
However if you're a 3D artist, texture artist, animator, programmer and the like, you can make very decent cash that way. Camping out and getting next to nothing for your valuable time makes no sense to me. I tried something once...I spent all my cash and left my account at $0L for a week, went exploring and meeting new and interesting people and had a BLAST! So I know one can survive with no cash and have a great time too!

I had a thought...what if the only way one can sit in a camping chair were to have to fill out a questionnaire with code letters to input at the end. That would bring the number of true campers to a realistic level and eliminate 99% of the bot traffic that is hogging the servers and SL bandwidth ...and monetary resources.

I don't hate camping, I do hate what it has become...

Marcel:

I only push my place up the "relevant" rankings. Others do it differently and I've no objection to the words "cheat" and "unfair" being used for them.

I can understand your observation about my sudden claim to being helpful, but it doesn't conflict with what I've been saying. I didn't say that helping people was the only reason I decided to get the top spot ahead of the one that is being unfair (as far as I can tell). I did it to get more business. A side effect of doing it is that it improves those results, which is helpful for searchers. I pointed it out, that's all.

Having said that, I am helpful by nature I've even been helping someone to get a business going that will compete with mine. Customer/visitor experience is what matters to me. I don't care about how they got there as long as what they are looking for is there.

I don't see the morality of staying low down in the rankings, where what people are looking for is out of sight, on the 'principle' of keeping the results 'clean', when they haven't been clean for years, and will never be clean again. It's far better for searchers (the SL population) to use the methods that other people use, and push relevant places up the right results - hopefully displacing some of the places that shouldn't even be there.

Nothing.

When I used to camp I used to chat to the people there. i usually went to the same spot and we all were sorta friends. We'd welcome anyone as well. I guess sorta like the hangout without the music and dancing and panties and pie and the truth dare games and the .... Ok not really like the hangout then lol
Recently I hung around that old spot. Dead silence! what happened I wonder? Have the all been replaced by bots? or are they using IMs? But then half of them had gone afk.
Anyway, it was not nearly as nice a place as it was. it changed quick.

If it's better it's only because fewer people are actively abusing it to increase their ranking.

Give it a few months and it'll be even more useless than the old search since it's actually easier to game the new search than the old one.

Well Said, and very nicely written. You'll never get to 9000 posts taking this much time for each though

That's already happening. It's better because it ranks pages on relevancy, and it ranks pages that don't have the exact searchterm in them. It's just better - by several orders of magnitude.

Or even more useless is the watchity watch watch example the other poster gave is accurate.

QFT. Most of us don't make nearly that much. And most of us don't game the system. What's right? What's fair? I personally don't have a problem with 1 or 2 campers, as long as they're doing something interesting, like gardening. And if you're going to have campers, you might as well pay them well. I remember back when I started, camping would pay L$6/10 minutes or L$15/10 minutes if the camper was doing something active, like dancing or something. Yesterday I saw one camp chair that paid L$1/60 minutes! How insane! Seems like the rates in general have gone down to L$2/10 minutes, which is just sort of sad.

I do think that running 10+ alts on your property is abuse of the system. I wonder if people would have as many alts if it still cost $10 USD to buy each one.

@Broccoli: Reading Phil's postings I assume he uses Alts. Those do not cost more then the electricity for the computer running them

@Phil: My postings are not ment as some personal attack to you, but you stick out your neck for alt-users, so I am happy to chop *grin*.

As I tried to say earlier, I did admire the fact you stood up for the fact you use an alt-farm. Most keep quiet about that What disappointed me is the fact you tried later on, to "soothen" it by putting the focus on the good you do for the people. That is a nice side effect, but nothing more then a side effect. And don't get me wrong, I am sure you are as helpful a person as you say to be. No reason to believe otherwise. But in order to defend alt-use, you should keep the focus on the business side, not the "doing good". At least in my opinion.

Your say you do not see the morality of "staying low", because others do game the system as well and always did. So why not join them when you cannot beat them.
That argument makes no sense, compare it to: I can as well eat meat, since the steak in the store is already there anyway, if I dont eat it someone else will. Well I have news for you: the cow died because we want meat, its not that we want meat because the cow died (btw I do like steaks..).

However I understand why people create alt-farms, I refuse to join them. If every business owner that want to make a buck, sets up an alt-farm, we soon have 100.000 concurrent users, without a living soul to see around.

Result:
- no one benefits from those alts, as we all try to push eachother off the first page by using more alts.
- SL getting laggier then it is now, because more concurrent users do put a load on the system.
- people drop out of SL as they do not see the fun of it anyway, the only thing they see are alts staring into deep space.


So again: I do understand why you started using the farm. But that doesn't make it right. Not in my eyes that is.

Greetings, Marcel

NOTHING hun, they are HIS alts lol all naked alts stood in the same invisiprim box in the sky, all naked cos it was too much hard work to dress them too lol and all in the group to make the group look bigger too.

Titania xx

Basically you are saying, since the system is totally corrupted by gaming, you need to game the system to keep up with the Joneses.

That doesn't make it right. Just understandable.

You forgot Company D: Competition
- Paying 1k or less for one classified
- Advertises in relavent magazines
- Participates in charities and auctions

Advertising DOES work, even if it's expensive. No one ever said making $ (SL or RL) isn't hard work, if you're going to "play fair." There are many many ways to play fair and still boost traffic.

Why not join in the community and hold amateur building contests, with gift certificates as prizes? That causes traffic, and invovles real people who want to learn real stuff.

Live music performances, comedy performances, book club meetings, "how-to" classes; these all cause traffic. My local RL bookstore hosts meetings for lots of little groups, and guess what? Its RL "traffic" is huge. People go to the meetings, see the books and stay to browse afterward.

How pathetic.

Anyone fancy a reportfest, "unfair use of sim resources"?

Broccoli

Ok, I own a small company in RL, and know a little about how not to go bankrupt

I don't really understand why the "business" owners on this thread gripe about "fairness".

Often these are the same people who'll go on and on about how SL isn't a game, but another "reality"

From what I make out, camping chairs, alts and advertising hyperbole are all pretty straightfoward innocuous SL versions of standard RL business practices.

There really are no morals or ethics involved here. Unless you have particularly high moral standards and never personally negotiate hard, or stretch the truth, or make yourself look better than you are, in RL of course.

Small business in RL isn't for the most part all about egos, or big cars and houses.. most small business owners I know would make more money and have fancier job titles and cars, with less stress if they went back to normal employment.

Business, for most people is a lifestyle choice, but which also comes with responsibilities, the biggest of which is to look after your employees.

My experience is that you have to use any legal, financially viable lever available to you just to stay in business these days, without having to go the extra mile to screw anyone over.

Anyone who thinks otherwise isn't in "business", they're having some fun doing some RP as a business owner.

Not to say there's anything wrong with that Just don't be so holier than thou about people who are actually trying to run a profitable business in SL or RL.

Yes. I would welcome a clean Places search, or no Places search, but since it is there and it's dirty, I don't see any sense or morality in staying low down out of sight when searchers actually want the right places at the top of the right searches.

Typical. I can't make someone agree with me so everybody come with me and we'll report him. Oh, and while we're doing it, let's invent a charge. I know. How about "unfair use of sim resources".

If you're looking for 'pathetic', look no further

No they don't.

People want to shop in somewhere that provides a quality product, at a good price, at a good venue.

Somewhere that's lagged to hell because of camping chairs/bots/alts destroys that.

Having to go through 20 places that contain the word 'furniture' in the keywords to actually find somewhere that sells it, rather than simply using the keyowrd because it's popular, means I now have 19 stores I won't go back to.

Even because a place actually sells what I want, it might not sell the style I want. I still might have to visit 5 places until I find a place that sells a glass topped coffee table, instead of just tables generally.

If someone is cheating, or gaming the system, doing the same just means that you have no imagination or sell crap products if you don't get visitors.

I'm sure that "well, everyone else was speeding so I didn't think it was a problem if I did too" will get you a long way when a cop pulls you over.

Something else to consider, more of an abstract sense: We see only the campers sitting, "Doing nothing", and some no doubt are, but how many are organizing their inventories, IMing friends, reading something, maybe even creating something, like many of us do? I sometimes sit at my home for an hour, and outwardly look to be doing nothing. It happens at the hangout, several people sitting around, each doing something on their own, to an uninformed observer it can look like a camp site. But because it's done in a manner that's more socially acceptable, it's not considered a waste. I'm not necessarily defending the presence of camping, but when it's done by actual humans and not by farming bots, it is an activity in SL just as legitimate as any other and we shouldn't judgementally demean those that chose to do it.

What you're doing comes under "Disturbing the peace" in the Community Standards - "other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace."... your bots add lag, which is slowing server performance. Your 16 or so alts are using a disproportional amount of the sim allocation on your 8000 sq m - 1/8th of a sim = 1/8th of 40 avatars = 5 people allowed on your land at any one time to not infringe upon the rights of your neighbours.