Winterfaire & Holiday Marketplace--Profit or Bust?

OK, I know perfectly well that I'm walking on thin ice here, so I'm going to try my best to be diplomatic (those of you who know me are guffawing at that--know that I can hear you... )

Winterfaire... The blog post goes up, apps are taken, and then, as if by Linden-made magic, a dozen or so winter-themed places are listed in Hot Spots. The initial post said that Lindens would "list as many as possible", but to my knowledge, the changes in that first list were few and far between. The blog also said that there would be promotion for those places listed, but I've not seen any (not looking hard enough perhaps??).

So I guess my question is this--how were places chosen to include? Were those folks notified that they'd be included? Did anyone else (besides ME) apply and not hear a word? Was anyone else "ignored"? Am I paranoid to think there's a conspiracy out there ? (ok, that last one was a stream-of-consciousness thing that just kinda spilled from my keyboard...ignore).

Finally, how is everyone doing in the Holiday Marketplace? We bid on a plot, won, put up a small store of our things, and haven't seen JACK as far as traffic (I know, Jack rarely visits, but still.... ::insert eyeroll here:: ). Is anyone else seeing any profit from their Holiday Marketplace ventures?

Any takers on this one? Comments? Answers? Complaints? Flaming? Bring it on...I can handle it.

No. But then I didn't really expect any, since the things I build aren't really holiday or winter-themed.

I figured I was paying about US$32 for whatever it was they were going to send us (apparently a t-shirt, as the email asked for a size) and for the fun of terraforming and setting up an installation (which is genuine fun for me).

The Hot Spot situtation, I don't know about, as I didn't apply.

Well my partner and I visited Winterfaire this past Sunday. I only saw a few people there and was surprised that it didn't have the traffic like other faires. We loved the balloon ride over the sims. I did find a great shop there and went to their main location and purchased a few items. The creator happened to be there and I commented that I found them at Winterfaire. She seemed genuinely surprised by my comment, which in turn surprised me. Perhaps what the OP has written, that may explain the creator's reaction to my comment.


Me, personally I thought it was going to be similar to SL B-day fair or other LL sponsored events. With it being a holiday theme I expected more.

To be perfectly candid, I think that once they collected the Holiday Marketplace auction receipts, they considered their involvement to be at an end.

Hence, no more mentions on the dotcom or SL opening pages, and no other promotion that I can see. Even though it will be up for another six weeks or so.

Oh well, I enjoyed building my Ice Gazebo and will re-purpose it for garden uses--I'll never recoup that parcel price, but, what the heck.

Edit: Is my face red!...I just went to the dotcom homepage and there IS a mention of the Holiday Marketplace.

But I'd be more impressed if they'd mention it on the actual SL opening page...

I avoid LL sponsored events. Ive only attended one, last years burning life, and only for the SL kids builds.

I guess my big gripe isn't necessarily about the Holiday Marketplace, as that was a risk we took knowing full well it might not amount to much, but rather with Winterfaire. I looked back at the initial post and it says they would rotate in as many builds as possible, but to my knowledge, that happened randomly if it all. I know it wasn't a money-making venture, as participants couldn't have commercially-oriented areas, but I would have liked to share what we created. :hrug:: It's history now...gone the way of many open-sims when the increase hit. Oh wait, did that sound bitter????

To be honest, what has happened here doesn't surprise me. I certainly felt those holiday marketplace plots went for more money than they warranted. Even rotating places in showcase wouldn't have made that much difference, promotions like this need to be more highly visible, not tucked away in showcase.

Wait . . . there actually was a Winterfaire sim/sims in SL? I thought it was just hot spot thingie on showcase search. I looked all over for "Winterfaire" in search and got nothing. Then read that split second message again that popped up as I was logging in and noticed "Showcase: for Winterfaire: search Hot spots"


But there actually was a Winterfaire sim or sims? So I missed the snowball fight, yet again, and missed whatever this sim, or sims were?

*whimpers*

Dotcom homepage . . . what dotcom homepage?

For that matter, what the heck is this "Holiday Marketplace"?

Dotcom homepage . . . what dotcom homepage?

For that matter, what the heck is this "Holiday Marketplace"?

One of the sims name was Prancer and I believe Donner.

That makes me sad. I really wanted to see it but couldn't find it in world.

We sent in the application for Winterfaire, and a few days later a Linden visited and left IMs to say we would be in. A couple of other Lindens visited over the next couple of days, but we had no other communication from them, the land just appeared in the Hotspot list the day it started and stayed there until the day it finished. It seemed to me that all those there at the beginning stayed, and the only rotation of places was in the order they appeared in the list and a few new ones were added. We kept expecting to be rotated out of the list and it never happened. In the end we assumed they hadn't had enough applications to make it necessary to rotate, but sounds like that wasn't the case.

I was extremely disappointed that several of the sims listed in hot spots (Wintermute, Big Apple) were gone long before January 5th.

In the map, it showed as a couple of islands between Sansara and Heterocera Atoll continents.
I can't believe people paid such high amounts of money for a temporary parcel...

Honestly, I ignored the whole thing. Too busy with the RL Holidays and a major build I was finishing for a client. So I neither considered setting anything up for it, or visiting it.

I think there are some misconceptions here. Winterfaire was a promotion whereby residents with winter builds and/or winter areas (non commercial) were invited to apply to be listed on the Hotspots page under the heading of "Winterfaire." The idea, I thought, was to rotate in as many spots as possible to the Hotspots area in search so that others could visit and enjoy.

The Holiday Marketplace, on the other hand, was the auction where residents bid on parcels that would be there for either 60 or 90 days, all commercial. The Holiday Marketplace is still there, located on the Prancer, Donner and other aptly named sims.

Wulfric, we definitely applied. We had a winter sim with a skating rink, dozens of animals set in their natural habitats, snowman building, sledding, Santa Claus and romantic dancing. In addition, we had a huge furnished cabin with a roaring fire where we invited guests to sit and relax. We never heard a word. We were asked to submit pics to the Flickr Winterfaire page, and obviously one of the Lindens came to visit at some point, as there was a pic of I think Torley in one of our ornament chairs. :: shrug :: Wish I knew where we fell short!

I'm sure these Linden Lab projects went the way of so many Linden Lab projects.

Linden Lab goes through the thrill of brainstorming great ideas.

Then they have the joy of advertising their great ideas.

After that is the work of planning to implement those ideas.

Starting the plan is a chore.

And by the time that the follow-through phase rolls around, everyone has lost interest, especially since it's much more fun to spend time with the thrill of brainstorming great ideas.

My reading of the winterfaire criteria was that it should somehow emphasize diversity by showing the various winter holiday traditions of various countries and faiths. When i went to several of the sites i was surprised to see some nice builds, some nice decorations, alot of decorations for sale, but not much in the way of diversity or tradition sharing. If i had known it could have just been a nice place with an ice skating rink and some decorationsk, i would have applied also.

The application process was presented in the forums (you're soaking in it) and was the same process they use for the showcase any other time of year. We were not notified wed be included as we has applied to be included. I knew we were in there because I kept checking the site.

I would say that being in the Winterfaire was a positive thing for Livingtree, and I think a lot of people who'd never thought to visit the sim got to experience the fun stuff we put together for the holiday.



My traffic has been disappointing, due to having a somewhat "off the beaten track" - no one else on my side of the region between the bay and the mountain. That said, I mostly did the build somewhat for fun. I feel that some have enjoyed the little space I put together, and that's fine by me.

I believe the Holiday Marketplace was there (I know I followed a SLURL from it) as well as mentioned on the loading page at least once. I also recall them being promoted by LL (mainly Katt and Torley) on Twitter. I also ran into Blondin Linden doing a tour of the area the other day as an informal followup. He'd probably be the best person to direct opinions to.

Mari

FWIW, our area will be largely intact through to the end of January: just because Yüle, Christmas, etc. is over does not mean that warmer weather has returned to our island just yet.



60 days, so those will exist into mid-february. Valentine's Day, anyone?

Oh, and it's Dasher, Prancer, Donner (sic.?), and Blitzen.

Mari

Yay! More time to go ice skating!

Forgive small correction, but: Prancer, not Brancer.

And yes--up until mid-to-late February, in most cases.


Also: thanks for the advice on who to contact--I wouldn't have known, and am glad to have the info. I may well shoot a communication Blondin's way.


Also also: another poster had queried my use of Dotcom Homepage. I was thinking of this (even if it's not called The Homepage....?), on which there are two spaces, blue rectangles, that rotate through various notices:

https://secure-web10.secondlife.com/

That was my understanding as well, we kept expecting to be rotated out of the Hotspot list, but it never happened. My guess would be that LL just never followed through with the rotation, like so many things that seem to be promised here and never really happen.





Sounds very similar to what we had. To be honest I thought most of the Winterfaire builds I saw were very similar, nice individually but a bit samey, and I'm including my own in that. The only one I thought was really original was Wintermute, and that was in the execution rather than the concept, although I didn't visit all of them. There's nothing in your description to suggest it didn't deserve to be in there.

In your first post you asked about whether there had been a conspiracy, if there was we were unwitting beneficaries, although I did feel there were one or two who might be in there on reputation rather than on anything they'd specifically done for Winterfaire.

As for the point about things disappearing before the end of Winterfaire, we left most of ours up, in fact its still there, although some things have gone to free up prims for our next build. But traffic dropped very noticeably after about 27 December, I thought it might be because we were lower in the Hotspot list, but if others had the same they might simply have felt it wasn't worth keeping the thing up.

In terms of attracting people to the land it was well worth it. We met a lot of people and had a lot of nice compliments. Ours isn't a commercial setup, there's very little for sale, and nothing to advertise the things that are for sale (you'd have to click on them and notice the Buy option) but we sold one or two things and we put out a couple of donation boxes and raised almost enough to pay the rent for the 2 weeks or so of Winterfaire.

It's a pity you didn't get included Arielyn, but as with most things in SL, I'd put it down to incompetence rather than conspiracy on the part of LL. Maybe for those who still have their Winter builds up there's room for an informal continuation? Post the SLURL here and I'm sure some people will come to look, I certainly will.

Here's ours for a start:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Samhain/89/120/30

The more explicitly Christmassy stuff has gone, and other things are starting to vanish as we start to work on our Spring build, but it's still nice.

Typo. I corrected it in the above.