Copy or Transfer? Which is better?

I started this topic because my last topic has this as a side topic and I really didn't feel like reading the crap from the origiinal topic to get to the copy or trans topic. So please all, feel free to continue this conversation here...

*HUGS*

The following URL from the forum archives may help you:

/327/d6/202923/1.html

If you have a specific item in mind, please do point that out.

There are pros and cons (or just plain preference) on either side, but for the most part it will depend on what item it applies to (most people would probably prefer a (M/)C/NT shape but would want a NC/T gift certificate) .

I depends on the type of item. Transfer is usually a must, imo, as items are often bought to give to someone else. Offhand, I can't bring any item types to mind that are better as no transfer.

However, if you want people to be able to make copies, then it's best to also have them as no transfer. Otherwise you could end up with people setting up shop and selling your stuff in competition with you.

A big aspect of a business growing is word of mouth, but if the items are copyable and transferable, the word of mouth just means that people give copies to people who like the things, and the business doesn't benefit.

I myself prefer non-copy items with transfer ability, exceptions for reasonable reasons are weapons and vehicles. Also hair and skins for possibly more RL emulating reasons.
I give stuff away all the time, esecially if I not using it, I even delete non transfer stuff to keep my inventory under 9k. I don't feel good deleting other peoples craftmanship if I could have given it to others to enjoy.
Also I lost track of the number of times I saw something I wanted for an alt, and never ended up buying, where I could have brought it on the spot, also I brought a few things then just deleted then when I realised they were useless because I couldn't send them to the alt I wanted to.
I'd love to be able to transfer stuff like vehicles and weapons between my 5 alts all on the same IP address.
I wouldn't use the same item in mutiple outfits as that could creat a huge inventory eventually. I prefer just to have a main look, then dive into the boots or shirts folder when I want change.

I usually buy for myself and I much prefer clothes and shoes to be copy, because I like to make and save outfits. Hair and skin are usually copy anyway. Mod perms are IMO essential for hair and for prim skirts, belts, jewellery and the leg part of boots because I refuse to have a stick-thin av. I would never expect a copy item to be transfer as well.

I like furniture to be mod so I can resize it and/or add my own anims. I do have some very good furniture that's not mod and I did think very hard indeed before buying it. It's definitely a minus factor for me.

I did sell my shoes with transfer perms and just before Christmas changed them to copy, because of the inventory problems SL was going through at the time. I haven't noticed any effect on sales. My next release will give customers the option of C/NT or T only .. be interesting to see which is most popular

Isobel

For things like clothes and hair etc. I'd prfer to be able to transfer items to my alt from time to time.

For landscaping items for places my partner and I rent out, I prefer to be able to copy items, so I guess it depends on what the item is to prefer copy or trans.

This is a very difficult topic, to be honest. The only time 100% of the population will be "happy" is if an item is full perms, however, that option allows anyone to resell your item for their own profit. Forgive me if this sounds rude, but you'll always find someone who's not happy about your permissions.

If you decide to go no transfer, make sure you're willing to be contacted to send a gift, or provide your customers a gift giving vendor, slexchange or onrez.

I recently read a blog where the person went off on a designer who went from copy/no trans to no copy/transfer. And by went off I mean ballistic... basically calling them rip off artists etc....

No you can't please all the people.

If its for clothes, copy modify PLEASE.
I hate it when I find a lovely outfit but I can't have it in multiple folders for different avatars.

I put big SLEx and ShopOnRez signs right next to my entry point with a URL script that takes you to my vendor page on either site.

What I never understood is why not sell BOTH?

Aside from creator preference (some items need to be NoMod, NoCopy, or NoTrans by their design, to protect the creator from teft/loss of sales), the preferences (and reasons for them) of the buyers are many and varied.

Some like to have Copy so they can mix and match outfits, or just have backups for the wonderfully quirky inventory database we have.

Others like to have Transfer so they can share with others when they no longer want the item.

So why not sell items both ways? It costs nothing to "manufacture" the item both ways. At most you ~may~ set up another vendor for the other style. Let people buy the item with the permissions they want.

Obviously, there is a market for BOTH ways. If a seller can meet both markets, then they open up new avenues for profit. Not supplying a customer with options they want is a LL way of handling things *Smirks*

ESIT: To be clear; I mean to sell one way AND the other. Two seperate sales, not Copy/Trans on the same sale.

~Jessy

99% copy
1% modify

Outside of stuff that is both very well made and cheep or impossible for me to modify it to personalize I never by stuff that is not mod no copy. While give people stuff at random is fun I much much prefer to be able to change, resize, reshape and everything else. and I would never by anything that is ment to be rezed in world if it is no copy cause then i could jsut watch it disapear. Or worse yet the "only undoing moves on the root prim' problem could come back. I have enough no copy stuff that has one prim hanging off in mid air with me having not the faintest clue where it went before I tried to undo something.

That's a very sensible suggestion. I've seen it in a sex poseballs shop. The copy versions are no trans (of course), and cost something like 3x the no copy version. That makes sense to me, because multiple sets of the items can be realistically placed and used. Things like clothes can't be, so they would be the same price.

I've toyed with the idea for my furniture, and two days ago I put some out that are copy/no trans - at 3x the normal price, but I'm still not sure about it and I may remove them. I haven't even put a sign up to say what they are yet.

I agree on the higher price for multiple use items. A landlord could buy a set of tables and use them in several pre-made houses. And before you think this is a reason to not go copy, think of the free advertising here *grins* Eventually those renters will become landowners, and buy their own frunature.

The higher price for individuals kinda sucks, but most of us realise there's no way to decern between those that will use multiple copies in-world at once, and those that wont. I, personally, would pay the higher price for a Copy simply for the backup purposes. I despise the lack of inventory protection, though LL has been getting better at it.

And yes, clothes have the easiest times with this. Copy/NoTrans, or NoCopy/Trans. Both work, and neither should cost more. Simply preference by the customer. (prim parts of clothes may be an exception)

~Jessy

updater scripts. Certain types of updater scripts will only work with no-transfer items.

Updating transferrable items tends to be a nightmare, particularly for new users (try updating an excite package sometime).

Imagine if you had one of the regular updaters. let's say it's a collar. The user wears the old collar and gets sent a replacement, they wear the old collar again and get another replacement... again and again until they have gotten hundreds of copies of you collar, then they sell it for whatever they like.

Even if the replacement was no transfer, The user wears the old collar, and the server sends them a new one. Now they hand the old collar to a friend, they wear it, and get a new one, they pass the old one on again and again.

As I say, the methods for updating transferrable items are prone to problems. even at the best of times, using an automated system to remove the scripts from an object and replace them, then possibly via script, renaming parts or rearranging, retexturing, whatever.. anyone who's had a teleport crash while wearing an unsaved attachment knows how perilous this can be.

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There are also customer service reasons not to provide transferrable items. there's an old saying in SL: "No Transfer means No Refunds". Copyable items can't be returned to the seller, and their deletion can't be assured by any means. so refunds are generally refused for no trans items. Likewise though, no transfer items are MUCH easier to get a replacement for if SL eats it. After all, if a customer comes to me complaining that their cherished widget it gone, sending them a new one doesn't harm me any, because I know they haven't sold it, and even if they have two, the second one can't be sold.

Whereas when your items are transferrable, you can do upgrades, but you may have to do them MANUALLY and what a headache that could be! likewise you can do refunds, but you have to be hawkish, people buy and then use and then return. they buy, steal animations and then return, etc. always suspicious, always inspecting everything that is returned. And FORGET ever getting an item replaced if SL eats it.

That's why I'm still unsure about it. I do get people buying many copies of things to furnish the places they rent out. I give very good quanity discounts when asked, of course, but the idea of landlords buying a sofa, for instance, and making dozens of copies for their places instead of buying them individually seems like bad business to me, even if they pay the 3x price. So I'm wondering how many other people would buy the copy items at 3x the price to offset that. The reason it's come up at all is because I make and sell a temp rezzer but, ironically, none of the furniture that I make and sell is suitable for it, because they need to be copyable.

The future buyers thought is interesting though.

I can't even count how many time I bought something that was no copy and it pissed me off...lol I don't blame the seller, I can understand that if you want to sell club tables and chairs, that you'd rather the buyer purchase 10 of the exact same set, instead of purchasing 1 and being able to copy it as many times as they want. It's a little more like real life to be no copy/transfer. But as I see it, it's a virtual world and most things are way overpriced as it is for a virtual piece of furniture that you will never get to touch.

I create all sorts of things, and one of them is furniture. The first thing I built was a kitchen set, and in my opinion it was very nice. It took me about 2 hours to build it and it was not really a tedious task. When I had to decide how much to charge and what the permissions should be, here's how I decided...

Because of the fact that each piece is seperate, I'd like my customer to be able to set up their kitchen however they want, to buy the cabinet with drawers one time and be able to place it twice, and to have the cabinet with doors and place it as many times as they want. I also wanted everyone to be able to buy the whole kitchen set linked together just in case they liked the way I had it set up and didn't want to have to think to hard about it. Therefore I made it copiable. Most people would say that if it's copiable, that it should be more expensive. That's true for somethings, like club furniture, because you can bet that the buyer is going to use a bunch of it. But for a kitchen? They will only need to have 1 kitchen, so I'm not worried about it.

To this day I make my furniture copy/mod/no transfer, but I have a sign in my shop letting people know that if they have any special requests, that they can IM me. simple as that...

That's quite a coincidence, Penny. I only do 2 kitchen varieties, but they both come in pre-linked assemblies, and individual units for people to design their own.

Individual homes only have one kitchen, as you said, but what about a landlord who has 20 individual homes, and who can buy one of your copy kitchens and use it in 20 homes? I'm still a landlord (allowing it to fade away), but I had 60 individual homes rented out. I didn't put kitchens in them, but if I did I would have welcomed finding your copy ones, and only paying for one.

It's the seller's individual choice. If a landlord with 20 places wants my furniture in them, I'd personally rather be paid for 20 copies with a discount than for one copy.

Maybe you could IM me in world and I'll send you a free copy of the kitchen, and you may use it as you want. I'm not very stingy..I'd love to see my stuff being used by so many people. I think they look pretty awesome, very detailed, but kinda primy. Yeah, perhaps my kindness and lack of greed is the reason my furniture shop is failing. Or it might be that people don't really like my stuff..lol

I don't have a kitchen in my home - I don't even have a bed lol. But I'd be interested to see your stuff.

Sometimes. But that multiplier is tricky. I guess obviously: the "fair" price is "what the market will bear" but figuring that out a priori hasn't been reduced to a science. Any attachment, for example, should be worth much more as transfer than as copy because the copy permission is mostly a convenience (maybe I get to keep one in each outfit, or if modifiable, different customizations I dream up)--whereas *transfer* actually changes the value of the thing: I can resell it, or hand it off to my alt. In such cases, transfer perm cuts into the seller's revenue more than would copy perm.

Landscaping is one product area that I have a hard time getting my head around. For my purposes, these are almost always useless without copy permission, but once in a great while I'll see something of which I only want a single specimen anywhere. The thing is, for that particular item, it wouldn't have cost the seller anything to make it copy-perm, since I'm only gonna use it one time anyway. (Theoretically it cost the seller something to give me permission to copy the ones I actually copy--except that it was a gating factor in the purchase: if it's not copy perm, I'm not gonna buy it at any price: I'll just find something else, or take the time to make something myself.)

I kinda imagine that, if I bought furniture, I'd feel the same way. It's just that furniture is so much fun to build and script that I don't have any experience buying it. I guess same with pre-fabs.

i don't see how it really matters anymore wince any tom dick and harry can come steal all your stuff now anyway.

transfer is best, to unload stuff you don't need anymore.

my case for copy:

Convenience:
Items are able to be placed in multiple folders, allowing customization of avatars

Insurance:
Items are not lost do to crazy landlords, region reset borks, sim crossing deleteion/modification, script damage, etc. just rez a new copy.

exclusivity:
items are one avatar, one sale. no competition with resale markets like yard sales. Each avatar can be uniquely identified in sales transactions. Replacments pose no risk, refunds are generally unnecessary. simplifies accounting.

udpdates:
optional updates can be sent out replacement style, removing the need for complex updating methods.

the +Mod case:
items that are +mod are likely to be changed by users, having a backup prevents user problems, and allows multiple user customizations.

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the case for +transfer

gifts:
needs no explanation, however there are methods to buy no transfer items for others via onRez/SLX or name2Key databases.

refunds / replacements:
allows possible refunds, this can be a negative from an accounting standpoint. replacements pose a risk in that one user could remove key parts transfer it, then the next user would request a replacement, and maybe be angry at being cheated by the reseller, or at the vendor if they refused replacement on a defective resell, both hurt your sales.

Alt -passing:
one RL user, one sale. allows people to pass items to a new alt (possibly to excape harrasment under an old name) w/o having to rebuy items. but who buys something expecting theyll be abandoning one account for another?

Newbie drops:
allows users to drop items on newbies that they no longer use, this of course means you lose the sale to the newbie, but it also means a newbie has your brand.. free advertiseing (though donating to freebie stores is better IMHO)

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I've noticed people that buy +Transfer rarely buy more than one to gain any of the benefits of +copy (like having backups, different customizations, convenience, etc)