Are freebies hurting SL content creators?

This leaves out the category of freebie that are extremely limited - open only for a few hours as a marketing stunt.

The problem with freebies is that there are a lot of high quality freebies and they are out there perpetually. What percentage of freebie takers come back and spend money?

There are many people that refuse to spend a rl dime in SL. Instead, they take from others via camping or working and shuffle the money around. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it hinders the economy's true growth.

Freebies that help others to build and create are good freebies that really help the economy. But clothing, shoes, and other avatar accoutrements? It feeds a sense of entitlement. Content creators should be more wary of what they put out as freebies.

I have one freebie, and one of these days I'm going to check my records to see if anyone actually returned to buy a house. I think that number is probably really, really low.

This statement strikes me as odd because all statistics about money spent inworld have climbed upwards madly over the course of the last year.

The freebies aren't necessarily aimed at "freebie takers" with the hope that they'll comeback when they have money. Rather it's a way getting your product into the view of others with money. The freebie takers are a walking ad.

Interesting perspective, but let's take that to another level. Where are the freebie hunters hanging out? Are they hanging out with people that actually spend money, or are they merely advertising where they got this cool freebie to other freebie hunters?

Right. Now imagine if pure moochers actually spent some money to complement the freebies they've taken.

Indeed I ran into a bit of this when I was helping someone customize some things.

It's akin to making only one model of car sold so well because you were the first one there... and not inovating because the product sells... while the other makers bring out new models that run better and cheaper than the clunky model you continue to sell...

No doubt there are specific business that get hurt by freebies.

I'm sure that MLP reduced sales of more expensive menu-pose systems.

I'm confident that MLPV2 further reduced it, by offering advanced features for free. I credit Miffy Fluffy (creator of MLP and XPOSE) that he has only encouraged me in my MLPV2 efforts, even offering beta code he'd written to add a feature MLPV2 didn't have but XPOSE did.

My business hasn't been hit by serious competition from freebies, but I encourage anyone who has the ability to go ahead. Quality freebies would most likely pressure me to improve my products. I put a lot of effort into them, but for every product I have, I can think of significant improvements I could make.

I <3 freebies and those who make them. I'm happy that someone can come into SL and have a rich virtual existence without spending a linden.

I especially appreciate those who make freebies that can be used to make products (like MLP, for example). These things REALLY contribute to the quality and diversity of SL products. I suspect Open Collar is a good example, but I'm guessing, not knowing the details.

As Henry Ford said, "Americans can have cars any color they want, as long as it's black." He wanted to keep production costs and complexity down.

That was the end of Ford Motor's reign as the leading auto manufacturer, as other brands rushed in to fill the demand for cars of popular colors.

Both!

But I do agree that it's probably not healthy in the long run. New store owners need a better way to raise awareness of their stuff.

I am stalking a lucky board right now. I spent L$5000 here already, and I have my eye on another skin. LOL, I reckon this place didn't get hurt.

I did the same thing last night with some lucky chairs, but I probably blew a couple grand less than you did.

Agreed Cristalle

The whole thing has become absurd, there's a "Hunt" going on practically every week...some even last for a whole month! This in my mind is "playing business"and it's not a very smart long term game.....unfortunately many live for today and don't plan for tomorrow. Maybe the pressure of having to pay high tier costs are a driver for "living for today"...who knows!

For me, the biggest impact with this deluge of freebie items are the changes to the current mentality of the new consumer, there's and expectancy of all products being Free.
They seem to have little understanding how long items such as clothing, skins, gadgets, hair etc take to create. I can't tell you the number of times i've had visitors come by my shops asking me "are there any free items here" That's the biggest noticeable difference i see from the 2006/7 period.

Whilst there are perfectly valid arguments for occupying a whole SIM if your Furniture creator or selling Prefabs or providing landscaping products such as rock sculpties or plants & trees where land size is at a premium....the same cannot be said for fashion sellers, skin sellers, hair sellers etc. If you take a look at a variety of sims on World Map, you'll quite often see Mainshops occupying a 1/3rd of the sim size...or unnessarily oversized buildings which are far too spacious for the Content provided. It might look cool.....maybe 295 USD a month cool........but financially unnessarily cool! In my opinion you'd be better off with smaller lands that comfortably houses your Mainshop either in a commercial district of Sims or even on Mainland......the money saved on tiers for decorative unused land, you'd better off spending on marketing, which ultimately increases traffic and sales and your monthly profits! I'd like to add that SIM with a Mainshop which has a surrounding Mall is quite a different model and would be a feasible enough business plan.

Some might justify having a SIM for dual purposes ie. having their home on the same SIM. Personally, i prefer privacy for my main home, i don't want visitors straying onto my homeland or camming inside my building. I prefer to live on a Residents only type sim.

Nope, i don't suffer from P@nis envy, I have a number of my own sims, but i would never think of converting any of them into Commerical sim to house my own shops.....instead i'd much prefer to collect monthly rents which become additional profits.

I think freebies *may* cut into sales of some products more than others. Clothes and related apparel seem to be one more directly affected just from personal observation.

Freebies haven`t affect my business significantly since my products are priced very low. I offer the occasional dollarbie or 5L items to bring people into the store.

both have been around SL from the start, so I really dont care

From a scripting standpoint, and knowing many friends who have used freebie scripts and bought scripts, with freebies you don't get tech support, usually they are fast written, and are code and forget. A bought product almost always comes with customer service, if not, they don't buy from their again. Lear is one of the few people that I've seen, that has released a free product that he actually continues to improve and is happy to help support.

As for clothing, my wife loves to shop for clothing, and as has been mentioned before the "gifts" or "freebies" reflect the quality of the products. If she like the product, how it's made, looks etc, she'll drag me to the store to look with her, and often we'll buy another outfit or two. It is hard to judge, especially clothing, how it actually looks on an avatar unless seen on an avatar model, or through the freebie/gift. So, freebies/gifts I think help sales much more hen they hurt sales.

As for Hunts, I have done a few, and would have never seen some of the stores that take part in the hunt. It is a good way to get people to see your store and what types of products you create. There are so many shops, some many neat things out there, that you can't rely on search alone to draw people in. Hunts are great for this, especially the smaller shop owners.

Did Mozilla hurt Microsoft Internet Explorer?
Did GIMP hurt Photoshop?
Did DAZ Studio hurt Poser?

and... the king...

Did Second Life hurt the sales of the tons of other MMOPGs that charge money for the software and a forced monthly fee?

----

Sure, all those things had an effect on sales, but it most certainly didn't "hurt" any of the paid versions - assuming the paid versions were worth the money in the first place. In computers, there have ALWAYS been free or very cheap shareware alternatives to the "big boys". The same will always be true of any specific application or game in an open market.

As far as the Open Collar thing - I have seen only one or two collar makers in SL that didn't start working from that base freebie collar system that has been floating around for years. That's why most all collars are pretty much the same. There are a few excellent systems out there that are above and beyond this original system - a few started fresh, a few have had several years to evolve and expand upon the freebie code that is out there.

If you make a product that can't compete with the equivalent freebie out there - that says more about your product than the freebie one, doesn't it?

Exactly.

I have NO idea how the practice effects me across the SL board....hard to track that.....but found that my own practice of tossing out "gifts" (prefer to call them that) right and left, for months on end....has conditioned my group members to expect those constantly. If a week goes by without tossing out several.....I definitely hear about it.

Have been testing out this theory.....and haven't tossed out any gifts or promotions for about two weeks to group. Traffic and sales from classifieds, search, Xstreet, whatever....is fine....group members have hardly been into the store at all...the more days that go by without tossing out a gift....the more it dwindles. Several have even gone so far as to tell me that they love the new pieces that I set out....but are waiting for me to do a promotion on them....hint, hint.....

I've conditioned that behavior. Kind of bums me out. Not sure what to do about it. And not sure if it effects sales in the long run.

If I did a promotion right now....they would flock in like crazy....and it would boost sales like crazy. But....divide a one day boost out over the two weeks that I didn't do a promotion....and it about evens out. If I stop the practice....I lose a ton of very good customers, most likely. Already losing group members due to my test.....but most of those were people who never bought anything....only came in for the gifts.

Promotions to group were always great sales boosters....the rush was so good...got into the habit of doing it several times a week....which it appears is shooting me in the foot, now.

Surely the same effect works across the board....that conditioning.

Agreed, the no.1 effected sector most definitely would be Fashion, particularly female fashion. Someone owning a business selling like Furniture, prefabs, gadgets, land scaping products are relatively unscathed .......for now!

The problem with clothing/shoe freebies is this: it is difficult to "graduate" to other avatar apparel unless the freebie is crappy, which would defeat the purpose of the freebie as a marketing tool. You can graduate to other stuff with houses, furniture, but not so much with clothing unless you start adding (laggy) scripted prims. But the primary, fundamental, basic thing that adds value to clothing is the texture.

I have a small freebie house that is something one should grow out of if they spend any amount of time in SL and own a home. It's a highly-efficient 10-prim house (8, plus 2 teleporters). It's a 10x10 box with some decent textures, and privacy features. It is enough to allow someone to decorate decently with low prim furniture and live a sustainable life on a 512. It even fits a 256.

But it is intentionally so that people will eventually move up, and hopefully some have come back and gotten something else. I did custom one for one small property developer and reworked that house so that he could use it for rentals. In that instance, the freebie paid for itself many times over. That was a good use of the tool.

But I haven't released any more freebies. If I were to release another freebie, it would be a loyalty freebie to just a group of people that have actually purchased something. I would hope that the fashion groups are giving out group freebies that way. It would be a more strategic way of applying freebies as a marketing tool. Like PixelDolls - I certainly appreciate the overwhelming amount of gifts in their group gift pack! I blew so much for their sales, it was a nice thing to get this pack and I'll certainly go back.

Have you put out notices or anything in that time your not throwing out a gift. I rely on my groups to let me know there is something new. Otherwise, unless it is a place I have a huge wish list in, I have already looked over the inventory and have what I want. I don't neccisarily want or need a freebie. I do join the group when I want to know about new products they have.

I created a small but detailed pirate-themed arbor (containing two poseball seats) and set it as a freebie, both inworld and on Xstreet/SLX, many many months ago. 'Sales' of this freebie were pretty much guaranteed at 5-10 copies per day.

A couple of months ago, feeling rather depressed after examining my Xstreet transactions for a bad week of sales, I decided to try recouping just a tiny bit of money from this item. So I changed the inworld price from 0L$ to 1L$. One single Linden dollar.

Since then I have sold just TWO.

Yes, I think freebies are impacting content creators. Many of the people posting here have said the quality of a freebie on offer will make them return and buy full-priced items. Lately, having seen the way avatars pop up in the store, then vanish after a few seconds, having grabbed just the freebie item, I am coming to the conclusion that you are in a minority.

I have nothing against the freebie culture that has sprung up; I create because I love to do it and the fact that other people like what I do and are happy to pay for it makes *me* happy. Sure, it would be nice to make enough sales to cover my inworld costs, but it's not the be-all and end-all of my SL existence. But it's a double-edged sword. Even when you're *not* creating in order to pay tier/rent/finance your inworld shopping habit, it can be depressing to watch a lousy sales week go by.

I have been told that my prices are *too* cheap, and that raising them would bring in more business. That's not something I particularly wish to do, because in all honesty I don't think I would sell a single damn thing if I did that.

I'll leave you with a screencap of the issue that depressed me and caused me to set my freebie item to a dollarbie: seven days of sales on Xstreet back in February:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3440/3297447200_ba8ddc1f3e_b.jpg

I know how you feel, Skell. I have several hundred threads in my email from Xstreet / SLX over the last 18 or so months for that freebie, and I can probably count on hands and feet how much I've gotten in sales for other stuff.

Oh, I just looked at your stuff on Xstreet. I love it! I am going to take a look in world. I will be picking up that freebie and some other things. For sure.

Well...sort of shot myself in the foot on that, too. After Christmas...started offering every single new item made...to group members only, at half price....for one day. That's been an awesome promotion tool.

So now...I can't really announce a new item...unless I offer it half off. Just about every single group announcement I've made for 5 months included a gift offer. Too much Conditioning on that!

Feel like I can't even say "Hello" without attaching a gift. I remember a few times when I may have sent something along the lines of a "Hello"....and group chat went off saying "where's the gift today, Mickey? I can't find it."

On XStreet, I use L$1 rather than L$0 for my freebies. I found that it dramatically cut down the number of deliveries. I figure that the vast majority of those who'd get a freebie but not pay L$1 probably has little real interest or need for my item. So, I did it to reduce the load on LL servers as well as script load on my sim (delivering the freebie from the SL box).

Also, at the time, I figred XStreet deserved a little bit for their hosting the product. (Yes, they do get their commission on L$1 items.)