Are freebies hurting SL content creators?

Yes i've belonged to that group for several months now...i never use it for announcing "freebies".....as I don't do "Freebies" . I use it to monitor consumer behaviour patterns....that group is just a sample of what's out there.

I belong to 3 freebie groups, 2 of them quite large. I also belong to 3 Midnight Mania groups, and 3 shopper groups. I have group notices turned off for all of them, I go in and scan them when I feel like it.

Really group chat hasn't bothered me much, I just close the little group chat window and it kills it till I log off. The MM groups have a HECK of a lot more chat than any of the freebie groups. I usually turn them off as I log in.

To many freebies would just junk up my inventory, I'm mostly pretty fussy on what I buy or take, at times, curious, greedy or unsure, I take a freebie have a look and delete it.

I never take one just because it is there.

is a L$10 hunt item considered in the "freebie" range?

That article is discussing "entitlement" in terms of consumerism....not of creation.

I set my Customer Group to "No Chat". It's heaven...no more spam or unnessary chat!

SL is built around the Economy otherwise LL would be charging you a monthly fee to login just like many other online games.

80-90% of LL Income comes from Tiers and sales of SIMs.....a lot of that comes from Store owners........shop owners are required to generate sales to cover those Land tiers + running expenses..........if shop owners make less sales than costs, they'll need to fund it with RL money. At that point the shop owner needs to consider their RL disposable income..............if they can't afford it, they close shop!

The more creators that shut up shop, the poorer the SL experience. Without all the content provided by those same creators SL would be quite unappealing!

Socialism and providing free content for all would not work well......LL for one would lose lots of Tier income. Think how much LL land are owned by store owners.

One of the groups I belong to give away great items, most of the time not in the main colours but they are of the same quality as the items they sell. The place also has tables of free times and for these you dont have to be a member. I have noticed many who go in for the free table do not look around the shop so this must have an effect o their business.

Also the comment about the freebie groups I have been in a shop when a swarm of ppl came in took the free item then left. In one group you had to join the group to get the free item so they join get the item and leave the group, making way i am sure for another group. The same with the chairs ppl come to places after being told what letter and where then leave they do not spend so this all must have some effect.

Yep good observations Windsweptgold

Basiclally i think there are 2 distinctive groups of Freebie hunters

- ones that belong to Fabulously Free and Fashion Groups who search out free "samples" and then go onto buy further products if they like the quality. They spend real Lindens in the SL economy.

- Freeloaders who join same groups and customer groups and practically live their SL lives without spending a Linden....these are the types that frequent Hunts, join and exit groups just to collect freebies.

As a Content Creator you need to be targetting the 1st Group somehow. There lies the problem.

Maybe setting a high join fee would sort out the chaff from the serious shopper.
Say if "Fabulously Free" Group would have set the join fee at 500 L....i think that would have gotten rid of most SL freeloaders....what you'd predominantly have left are the serious shoppers looking for good samples to determine where their Linden dollars are going to be spent. They'd soon make back the 500 L join fee through all the quality goodies they'll receive. This kind of "Freebie" concept i'd more than happy join and participate in. I would say this is like showcasing your products to a particular audience much like a Fashion show.....so you don't mind creating additional free content.

Having said that I can't understand the desire of Content Creators wanting to grow a huge customer group? What does it serve, if say 70% of your group are made up of the 2nd group which are non-spending freebie hunters? Having a large Group sure doesn't help you move up the "All Search" ranking, it's not a recognised IBL....it doesn't help you in the other remaining Search tabs. I really think those Auto-Group inviters are a bad marketing tool, sending out invites to just about anybody arriving on the Parcel.
For one it pisses off a lot of serious shoppers, myself included....and doesn't help target the right group.

My own 2 customer Groups are invite only. I manually send out Group invites to those that purchase a Product...about 30% accept those Group invites. These are the people you should be rewarding in terms of Group freebies......the ones that spent hard Linden dollars. The biggest of my 2 Groups has 1700 members ......sure it could have had 5000 by now using an auto Group-Inviter. What's the point If i send a notice and 70% are not interested in purchasing Content anyway, no matter how good it is.?

I think some Content Creators are their own worst enemy not thinking out solutions and what you ultimately are wanting to achieve.

I think in the end it some down to different ways of thinking. I often join groups of store ihavent purchased from, especially the subscribomatic type groups becuase i wentto the store for whatever reason and although i found nothing that appealed to me that day i likedthe persons style and the look and quality and wanted to find out about your new releases.

Had i been to your store Rene you would have missed out on my potential business.

I dontcaareif my group is big small or in between. But I want to easily allow people to join it and find out about new releases. I can understand maybe having a second group for VIP customers who have spent a decent amount and offering exclusive items and gifts (in fact i like this idea and think i will start it with my store). But i want my updates to get to as many people as possible and samples of my work.

I give out free items as a sample of what i can do. Right now when i do a gift it is usually a new type of item that i am beginning to sell. for example my current gift is a unisex shirt which looks good on both men and woen and is shaded and wrinkled to work on both shapes (which is actually very difficult to achieve). It was an example of my new unisex clothing line. That gift s part of a hunt has had many people pick it up. IT has been blogged by 5 blogs that i know about and the other colours of the shirt sell exceptionally well.

As a content creator i might wan to e targeting peope who buy as far as selling to them goes sure. But i also want to be targeting those ho may never spend money too as a marketing exercise. People wearing my stuff, talking about my stuff, blogging my stuff is all going to help me get people into my store.

Freebies alone and using them as your sole or main marketing tactic is never going to work. But Jojo said this to us once in the 'Adice on Sales' thread "that you should be marketing yourelf and your store everyday and in different ways". Using the use of gifts in the right way has benefits. Using them in the wrong way has ppit falls.

But hey using XStreet in the riht way has benefits, using it the wrong way has pit falls. It is like all aspects of life

Yep, smart marketing is the key.

I don't find any value advertising to freeloaders who won't be spending a Linden dollar anytime soon!

I can't speak for the fashion industry as they seem to have more avenues for marketing i.e Fashion Shows, Fashion blogs etc......most other type of content will be found a different way.

I once carried out a survey, with my Models asking people how they found the store. We had 16 different options.....the highest results came from "All Search" and surprisingly "Word of Mouth" referrals. Admittedly i have never taken part in Hunts, so that wasn't an option at the time of the survey.

I think for my business sectors...All Search, "word of mouth" and possibly using XStreet are going to be my main traffic generators. I would participate in something like "Fabulously Free" group if it had a high Join fee...i see no mileage attracting freeloaders...all they do is lag out the SIM whilst picking up their freebies.

I understand your sentiment but do you think yourword of mouth wouuld increase if more people were wearing your items??

I kow i often ask people about stuff they re wearing and get a LM and explore the store. That can be all kinds of people fro those freebie collectors to peoplewho spend hundreds of thousands

I actually like the idea of a small fee for the freebie groups too. The owners put in a lot of work for those groups and the accossiated blogs. I would probably keep it reasonably low, but even 50L would be good for something, even if simply to keep out spam from people.

Each person is gong to look at this differently. Right now i am focusing on the ALL search and getting my positioning higher on there. However I like to use as many avenues as possible to market myself and if the occassional gift does that better and cheaper than a classifed etc then yay.

On the note of bloggers Rene, I have had many contact me asking for review items after seeing bogs about my free items or after participating in hunts. Blogs can be great, and the freebie blogs have a HUGE following. If i have gift blogged my sales uually double that week. As opposed to say Ana Luetia who blogged me recently... my sales increased around 10% that week

Don't treat the second group as "lost sales". Just make sure the freebies are good advertising but not substitutes for your regular products.

Like the bright purple "signed" special edition rabbit avatar I got from Satch Flan's rabbit release party.

The idea of spending L$500 to join a group? That sounds too much like those $20.00 coupon books the Scouts sell that contain "local merchant's coupons worth up to $200"... but you'd have to spend almost $200 on things you wouldn't normally ever buy just to make back the $20. If I saw something like that in-world I'd assume it was a scam.

A real life mailing list with 30% good prospects? Holy hell, the average junk mailer would have an aneurism thinking about that!
That's for sure. Any kind of unsolicited group invite (whether I bought a product or not) tends to turn me off. Automated inviters have poisoned the well.

Well having sold content for 2.5 years, i hope there's enough word of mouth going on......hell i sell enough on any given day. (probably just cursed today's sales! )

I find "Fashcon Consolidated" Group with 11k membership far more useful then any freebie group to be honest....you can send a notice to potentially 9k of shoppers who are interested in new content. Ok...its not really 9k, as many have probably left SL already.....but whatever the pool thats left, these tend to be real shoppers and not freebie hunters.....that's more useful for me personally.

You're in female fashion.....you have more marketing avenues available to you as that's by far and away the most popular business sector in SL. If you're creator of Furniture, Prefabs, scripting services etc etc.....one would have less marketing options. Not too many out there are going to blog the latest super duper Prefab!

Don't confuse RL marketing to SL marketing....it's a completely different ball game. I have over 20 years working for RL advertising and marketing companies....techniques that work on the outside don't work in here, i learnt that very early on. I had such grandeur ideas to begin with and soon became disappointed. My RL working background only gives me a minimal advantage.....not a huge one like i thought it would.

PS I have been corrected by Phil. "A group's page links to the group founder's page, which adds some strength to any links from the founder's page, so there is a slight positive impact for any page that the founder's page links to, but it's marginal.
Still i don't think it would help me much in terms of having a group of 1700 like I have now or 5000 with the use of an auto-Group inviter.

Hehehehe well of course there is a good amount of word ofmouth I get enough too I getmore than enough sales to make me happy, but more word of mouth does men more potential sales. If i am gettgn word of mouth cos someone loved a gift i gave them well awesome!

Fashcon is ok, but to be honest there are so many notices going on any of the smaller stores do get over looked. I get an ok result when i send a message through Fashcon, but it isnt actually compariable to what i get in sales when i send a notice about a gift to the freebie groups.

considering I HAVE actually tried both i would say that is pretty telling, especally when i find mny other creators who have said the same thing to me. they get more pople turn up from the freebie groups and more sales per notice.

I am in female fashion (and now mens too i guess ith my new unisex line hehehe) and there are a LOAD of great advertising options and i utalise as many as possible.

Hehehehe on that note i just had while I as writing this one person buy 5 fat packs. Checking my transctions guess what they picked up a few days ago....


My SL Discovey hunt gift.

Well if you were part of say the "Fabulously Free" group....a 500 L join fee would be a bargain.!! This is a group that searches the Grid far and wide for Freebies 24/7...many of which are from reputable Designers. You could make back the 500 L in a few days....maybe even earlier than that. Eg. Adam n Eve having a freebie skin set out the store for a limited period. Even a understated quality skin is almost worth the 500 L alone from a premier designer.

I kind of agree with you...FashCon no longer has the same impact as it use to, say 1 year ago. i think it's hit critical mass......meaning their are far too many creators there and far too many notices being sent. A notice dropping down every few minutes has become a sort of irration in a way....it doesn't feel so special like it use to.

Nope, you still haven't tempted me to actively use "Freebie Groups" or Hunts -hehe
I have 2 Designer friends that have shops on my Commerical lands......i can monitor traffic and sales that way (i recieve commissions as opposed to rents) from their participation in 2 current Hunts......without having to sell my soul!

Perhaps you're not seeing the results you expect because some of your assumptions are wrong. For example, perhaps that group doesn't consist of 30% good prospects and 70% freeloaders. Perhaps it consists of 100% freeloaders. Has anyone ever actually done an analysis of their group memberships?

Similarly, when you get free samples in a store you get a single squirt of perfume or a tiny cube of bread with a slice of sausage, not a free bottle or a free loaf of bread and package of sausages. But "free samples" in SL seem to consist of entire outfits, often with multiple layer options or colors. Would you run a campaign like that in RL, *even if* you could do it for free?

Maybe you did things differently, but I see people in SL running campaigns that are completely unlike any RL ad campaigns, then complaining that all they get are freeloaders.

Im not wanting to convince you to offer freebies. In fact you not offering themmakes it a better marketing tool for me, the less people who offer them the better in my book.

I am however trying to point out that they can be a positive and affective marketing tool.

They may not be one you want to try, but i think given the evidence by many creators in this thread about the impacts of offering gifts to people you would have to conceed that they can be a positive marketing tool and can have a positive affect on business

Yes, that's what those $20.00 coupon books always say. They always contain coupons for things that I couldn't even imagine buying.

Case in point. A human skin has no value to me.



A good jacket for men, sure, but the last time I saw something like that as a freebie it was at a store I'd already bought it from.

More to the point: if that group had a L$500 join fee, most of the people who are currently in it hunting for freebies wouldn't have joined in the first place, because people who go to that effort to look for freebies are the ones who you're putting down as freeloaders.

As strictly a consumer, I find the places to buy things in three ways - seeing something I like on someone else, various hunts and notices in the fashion groups I am a member of, and random teleports. The Search in world I rarely use since there is so much keyword spamming it is impossible to find what I look for.

Profile picks, wore items, and the give aways/demos that allow me to truly see the item is what I go on. Considering that I am not one of the standard 'Tallers', I have to be even more concerned if the item will truely look properly on me or not, so those places that has demos of the outfits, or a outfit I manage to get from a hunt are very important.

By the way, the #1 way I find stuff I want to buy is by seeing it in-world, inspecting, and checking the creator profile for their store in picks. So if you give freebies, make sure they include prim parts, because I have to REALLY like it to bother someone by explicitly asking.

And of course it is always fun to edit/inspect that car or jet that tries you run you over, and laugh while they are frozen while you inspect.. ;P

E - I completely agree with your comments. As for the makeup of my store group...the number is consistent and i dont see people adding it to get my free gifts and then dropping out. for the most part they join because they want to, then stay and often return to become great customers. I realize this may be different for me because I sell furniture and home decor as opposed to clothing.

rene - i agree that marketing in sl is much different than rl. some of the concepts are the same but the channels and methods and effectiveness are very different.

i have helped many many folks in sl grow their biz through classes i have taught, consulting work that i used to do and just by mentoring and being a friend who shares marketing info. one of the things about this freebie debate that i keep thinking is this. if freebies are hurting the sl economy, then why are so many biz's using freebies effectively and prospering? seems like if it was hurting things, the use of them would have faded instead of having increased. sl moves so fast, i would expect a "trend" to be gone quickly if it had no traction.