Is it time to close SL Businesses?

I'm a small business owner in SL, along with my partner. We have been selling furniture in SL for about 7 months. We have merchandise our customers like, but we are seriously considering selling our over 1/4 sim of land and closing up, cashing out, and saying goodbye.

In the past week alone here's a brief rundown of examples why:

1) Each week we pay a lot of money a classified ad. The price keeps going up and up, to ridiculous levels to get 1st page search results under an "all" tab search. Much of this is due to the Linden's allowing flagrant violations of their own events listing policy so that results are often spammed by 21 listings or more from one vendor. The listings don't even make an attempt to comply with the standards for an event - it's just a standard ad blurb, which is supposed to get you suspended.

Another cause is allowing land listings by casinos who actively promote gambling on the listing graphic, along with totally unrelated lists of keywords such as furniture, hair, clothes, skin, etc. to mislead search results. A common ploy is to leave the land listing title completely blank so that the casino ad graphic spams you as soon as the search is completed. So much for not allowing promotion of gambling in SL.

Who benefits from allowing such supposedly banned spamming practices of search results, beyond those doing it? By bumping paid classifieds off a result page from spam, you force legitimate classified users to bid even higher.

And then of course if you do pay through the nose for an ad, you find search is not working anyway, so you never get what you paid real money for. A simple rip-off, with no way to recoup the money. Then search is back up, and you find that the amounts have suddenly escalated yet again on ads so the thousands you spent are again wasted.

2) Traffic as we all know is gamed to death by camping. Misleading keywords are used to spam the poor search user with sex and gambling when they wanted to find a pair of shoes or a chair. But businesses try to persevere and build good traffic, though of course this week our sim returned 0 traffic results for all parcels - yet another "little" glitch that was not even mentioned on the blog.

3) Just in case we managed to get some customers to our store this week despite all of the above, SL managed to crash our sim numerous times, screw up asset servers to play hell with transactions, and then of course to top it all off, kill more business with a message not to trust SL exchange, and later yet another message that buying lindens in world is impossible as well for the entire weekend.

The combined chronic failures on the technical side, along with what appears to be a complete refusal to enforce their own policies – which happens to rake more money into their coffers - makes doing business in SL no longer fun, and for the first time since we opened, unprofitable as well.

I'm looking for a reason to feel more optimistic, but realistically there does not seem to be any chance of SL improving these things in the near future. I had some hope after the "Open Letter" identified issues in a high profile way that seemed like it might just have some impact. Unfortunately, the result has instead been things not only failing to improve, but actually continuing to decline.

Conclusion:

I love creating things that are original, high quality, and enjoyed by others. It used to feel that if you did that, placed a moderately priced ad, and gave excellent customer service, you got a fair return and had fun doing it. Right now the constant SL systems problems make the SL experience a pain (I think I have PTUWD (Post Traumatic Upgrade Week Disorder)), and the rigged feeling of the classifieds and traffic systems that SL ignores, are just sapping the positive that is left away.

If you know a positive antidote or a reason to believe these things will improve, please let me know. Maybe I'm unique in this experience. If so, let me know that as well. If you are having similar experiences of SL, share what you are doing or planning to do about it.

Given all of the above, would you think it possible to even "sell out" without failure?

Can I have your stuff?

The Lindens definitely have "Search" on the operating table, though timeline unknown. From what I've gathered of the new algorithms being considered, high-frequency terms will have negligible weight in the rankings, so the current practice of mentioning the most likely things for which anyone might think of searching will push that ad to the very bottom of the result list.

And there's some suggestion that the Lindens are coming to realize that dwell-like measures of popularity based on attendance are simply obsolete, so the camping chair's days may be numbered, too. (You might be able to expedite the final demise of dwell by lobbying Meta Linden on the pointlessness of any form of "popularity" metric.)

But till something is finally done to fix Search, I consider classifieds nearly useless for reputable businesses--and alternative advertising/promoting is a lot more work.

I'm not sure if there's a business opportunity here, for an in-world Craig's List / Yellowpages, or perhaps a better model: Angie's List. For that to be a success, it would require substantial RL hosting capacity, an investment difficult to make with the current ambiguity around LL's Search plans.

As for the disastrous commercial consequences of recent technical problems... it's getting difficult to keep the faith.

That's what people said when they removed Dwell payments.
Then they said it when traffic was recalculated.
And then on another occation that I don't remember.

For a landowner to actually make a profit with camping chairs they need to...
Make them opperate in tandem with casino equipment
...which campers refuse to use.
Make they pay out really really low
...which no intelligent camper will use.
Or be popular enough of an attraction anyway.
...in which case, they don't need the chairs.

There will always be some clueless landowner willing to put up infinite-use camping chairs, and I will be there to reap the rewards (I haven't had a need to look for a new camping spot in a while though, I've got some backup chairs that apparently I'm the only one that can find them and then a place with better rates that I can observe via the map for when someone leaves).

well reading from your experience, I guess you just caught up the worst of everything in the given half year time frame. One can't deny that the last 6mths were one of the most rockiest (not to mention invasive) in SL history, given the new trading/billing restrictions, implementations, inventory, server bugs, copybot, etc not to mention constant upgrades back to back.

Falling is everything, but you will only truely fail when you give up.

On the other hand, only a strong man is man enough to admit defeat and to see the point when to cut the losses and leave it be.

"Insanity is repeating the same action over and over and hoping for a different result."

I remember when they cut Dwell out, but this is the first I have heard about Traffic having been "re-calculated". What did they do and how did it affect traffic?

It cut my perfectly honest traffic figures in half, and didn't affect anyone else by the looks of it

You are not alone! I have been wondering why my traffic numbers were low when I see people at my site all the time. Traffic that should be getting me numbers in the 40's is barely cracking 20's.

I've never used camping or any other cheat to draw people to my site. If I have traffic, its because they want to be there. If they re-calculated traffic and honest sites lose out, that sucks.

NOOOOO I WANT IT!!!!! *beats Bam BU with a leg from one of the tables*

waah we're not number one so we're quitting, that's what that sounded like to me.

Yes, there are cheaters who abuse the ranking system but it's out of our hands to change that, so work with what you have.

I didnt read all the responses, but here are my thoughts after reading the original post...

I returned to SL in the middle of May this year... went through MHA to purchase a piece of land which is 6144 sq m. I sell furniture that I've created, as well as small selection of resell items I've obtained (business in a box sort of things).

In less than 3 months, my business is (in my opinion) doing quite well... it has exceeded my expectations, and I have already built what I consider to be a wonderful client base.

All of my furniture items are inexpensive, simple, and low prim... I generate enough sales each week to pay my for my land, cover the cost of my premium account, and have plenty of money to go shopping with in game if I chose to do so.

I provide the best customer service I possibly can for people who purchase my items... if someone doesnt find what they're looking for at my store, I often offer suggestions on other stores that have items that suit their needs, or (if I am able) will make every effort to create the item they're looking for.

I do not bring in enough revenue from my 'business' to buy groceries for my family, or pay my bills... but I enjoy doing what I do, and I believe that I've provided a great service for several people who like my work and have been able to benefit from it. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who think that my items are cheesy and of poor quality.

I do have a camping chair in my store... just one, it pays $3 per 10 minutes with a max pay out of $99. It is ALWAYS occupied. I pay no more than $500 for this daily. This wasnt necessary, it really doesnt do a whole lot of good from what I can tell, but it's not exessive, I dont feel that it's "cheating", and it's a lot smaller of an effort compared to several other businesses with several chairs, or 15 lucky chairs that have people sitting for hours trying to win items they could get at just about any yardsale without the hassle.

I have 4 different single gambling type games which campers and visitors could play to help increase my income... it is very uncommon for anyone to use them, honestly... and when they do I usually end up paying out just as much as they put in... if I had to make room for prims these would be the first things to go.

I pay $3200 for my classified add weekly... as well as the fee to show up in the search option. (about $450L per day)

My traffic has never gone over 3000 in any single day that I can recall.

I enjoy my business, and it costs me nothing out of pocket, and yet at the same time I make enough to not have to pay any out of pocket cost for SL as well as support my smoking habit

Im not stressing because Im competing with other furniture stores who generate traffic with 15 lucky chairs, high numbers of camping chairs or dance pads, or pay $50k for classifieds. They're not affecting my ability to enjoy what I do in Secondlife.

There are several things I know of that I can do to improve my business... I just dont have the time.


My point is this...

Perhaps you need a new angle. If your products arent selling enough to make it worth having your business... make new items, offer a wider variety of things that may appeal to the general community, improve your search options as well.

Example: I created flags that I sell for $10-25L (state flags, country flags, pirate flags, gay pride flags)... suprisingly several people have come to my store for these items that have ended up buying other items from me as well. It's an edge, a simple effort to improve what I offer to the community... and small things like that can do a world of good for a small business. Granted, there probably arent 200 people on at any given time who ever sit and think "Gee, I'd really like a flag"... but when someone does, Im one of many stores that offer it... but probably the only store in SL who sells them for $25 or less

Give the community a greater desire to shop at your business based on reputation... word of mouth has probably gotten me over half of my business.

If you're looking to make a seven figure annual income with a furniture store, you're not likely going to have that unless you come up with something INSANELY unique that is not available anywhere else.


If you want any other ideas, or suggestions... feel free to contact me in game, I will be happy to share my ideas. Im doing what I do for fun, no other reason than that... and I truly believe that it's the only reason my business will continue to be successful.

Like Daryth Kennedy did with her dragon avatars. She controlled how many were for sale at any given time (up until a couple months ago it was 10 of each design went for sale (5 noon, 5 midnight SLT) every 3 months (solstice and equinoxes) and the first people to get the script to trigged the pay() event got the av (a wyrmling (about 25 feet long) costs L$2500 or so and an adult (about 40 feet long) costs about L$3700).

There's now a random lottery for them, and the wyrmlings are now freely available (at the same cost), but she has over 15 different designs and EVERYONE wants at least one, if not the whole set. I did a search on SLex once and found that ONE of the dragons had sold more on SLex than anything ever made by VGA (the casino/camping equipment that sold for bajillions that every casino owner used). I hear Daryth makes enough to support herself using the av making as a real full time job, even after the cost of two sims. And I'm not surprised in the least.

Traffic? Here's what I want to know.

WHY do they conveniently forget or neglect to update traffic stats on the days when I have crappy traffic? When I have a decent traffic number they update.. When I have horrible, crappy, low traffic I end up stuck with it for days. I've been busting my bum trying to boost traffic and for the first time ever I had oodles of people just hanging around my store yesterday - traffic should have been fantastic today but so far it hasn't updated. I'm stuck at just over 400. Usually if it hasn't changed by now it's not going to change. Crossing my fingers that I'm wrong on that one.

In addition, I have my first clearance sale ever and guess what? SL is down for a majority of the night I announce it.

I know this it's silly to think this but it really is starting to feel like they are deliberately out to ruin my business. I KNOW that isn't the case but it sometimes feels like it. Pessimist much? Yes, thank you.

i just talked to LL via live support chat about that. they said, if my figures didnt change, so my traffic didnt change. LOL

same with sploders and new policy. my question: what about sploders now? answer: read the FAQ in the blog. question: theres no significant answer about sploders. answer: then submit a support ticket. LOLOLOL i was in live support.........

maybe really time to close your business and save your last L$..........

Just because casinos are closing, does not mean small business is dead in the water. That is a ludicrous claim.

If casinos ceased to exist in the real world, would furniture shops be forced out of business? Makes no sense at all. You can sell furniture to the many other new and old citizens alike—if the majority of your business came from casinos, you’re doing something wrong with your strategy.

Business is not going anywhere folks. Instead of being so close-minded, try and realize that there is a silver lining here.

you didnt get me. its about Lindens general behaviour that makes me think about closing. Its not that casinos are banned, its about they cant find a clear answer to a clear question....
they are not straight and thats what was mentioned in the first posting in this thread. thats the problem!

I checked out your classified ad in game last night after posting here... and to be honest with you, it seemed as if you put more effort into putting other businesses down rather than trying to sell your own. And honestly, that sort of attitude may appeal to some people, but I would ASSUME that a lot of people (like myself) might be turned off by it.

Today I went to look at it today, I was going to use quotes... but apparently you changed it, or Im just crazy.

But seriously, in MY OPINION you should offer facts about what you sell, not what YOU think about how good your business is... because in the end you may think your business is "the shit" while others may think yours just isnt. Let the costumers decide if the shopping experience you offer is better than everyone elses... they arent going shopping for furniture and back massages at the same time, they just want the items they need and that's what will make them find your store in the first place. You need to let them believe that they're going to find what they're looking for at your store. Make your sellpoint what sets your items and selection apart from other furniture stores... not the "experience".




Now, just in case you misunderstand my intention... I am not posting this to insult you... you asked for advice, Im giving it... this was an effort to help you, not put you down.

If your figures didn't change, your traffic didn't change?? Scuse me while I fall out of my chair laughing... Nice excuse LL, deny deny deny.

Guess traffic didn't change for any of my stores then because they're all at exactly what they were yesterday. It was ludicrous of me to assume my traffic stats would increase today, I mean just because my normally empty store was crawling with people yesterday who actually hung around for much longer than usual. What was I thinking?

Yeah I know I need to get a life. Something like this really shouldn't be so important. I'm normally an "easy going, way to go LL, oh well I'll use the downtime to clean house" kinda gal, but now I find myself wanting to smack someone because my traffic stats didn't update.

I dunno if I'm just losing my ability to cope or if all the crap has finally caught up with me. Maybe a little of both? Bah!

QUOTE = "you didnt get me. its about Lindens general behaviour that makes me think about closing. Its not that casinos are banned, its about they cant find a clear answer to a clear question....
they are not straight and thats what was mentioned in the first posting in this thread. thats the problem!"




Lindens dont determine whether or not people go to stores and buy stuff... I honestly just dont see what's so bad about the game or the people running the show... Sure, I have experienced a whole lot that I can bitch about as far as game issues... but nothing that has been the determining factor behind whether or not my business needs to close.

The classified section really does suck. It needs a complete overhaul. I can honestly never find what I'm looking for because of what the OP stated. I hate doing a search for something and seeing 5-1- blank title shows up first then a bunch of others with stupid symbols in front of their names.

LL sorely needs fix this. Classifieds should NOT be sorted based on how much a person paid for the classifieds. Or, create a paid tier system of FIXED amounts. Implement user tagging!!! This way we do not have to rely on the search keywords by the owner of a classified ad. If some ass hat is using terms like furniture and he's running a casino, users can tag up his classified or his casino with CORRECT information. Let the users direct other users on where to go.

I honestly have a hard time find ANYTHING I am looking for when using the search function. There are no sorting functions either. If anything we should be able to sort by traffic. What about a user rating system? It would be nice to type shoes, sort by the highest rating, and be able to find (QUICKLY) the best shoe shops in SL.

These things really need to be fixed and improved upon.

If I was the type to be insulted, I would be by your comment here--and your last sentence doesn't make it ok.

Let me explain. Are you telling me that companies don't downplay other companies to get business? What planet are you from? This is a strategy they teach in school for creep sake. Give me a break. Your bashing the very strategy that is a proven form of marketing? Wow.

More importantly, do you see me bashing anyone in particular? Have I slandered any particular company or designer? No, I simply said that there is far too much horrid design in SL...am I wrong? Heck no I'm not.

(FYI--I didn't change anything in my ad, I didn't even know you posted this until just now)

I get kudos on my work all the time, and I get business not from the fact that my ad steers people away from other designers...I get business because my work IS "the shit" (as you put it, not me). Have you been to my studio? Have you seen the quality of my work?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with my marketing strategy. I've not heard one person (other than you) complain or feel turned-off. I rent a small, humble office on Silicon Island, and I'm getting great business because I do great work, for a very reasonable price (and if you are cool, and have an interesting project, I'll work for free!)

Don't down my ad. You'd be surprised how many people I get visiting my studio from my signature graphic alone. Do you know why? Because it shows I actually care...which is what SL needs more of.

Lastly, compared to the real world, my ad campaign is nothing compared to the big business brutes. I'm actually quite soft.

And I'm a nice guy. Don't be a hater.

Well, first of all the classified ad Im referring to was found via the profile of the original poster... not yours. In which case, I would assume that you're the original poster's partner.

Now, if you are in fact the original poster's partner then my question is this... if what you say is true (that your marketing strategy is flawless and your products are in fact "the shit" why all the complaints on the original post?

If you are NOT the OP's partner, and you're just making assumptions that I was talking about your business then well... I wasnt talking to you

However... in reference to downplaying companies... yes it happens, yes it's often productive, but it all depends on how you go about it... there are A LOT of people (believe it or not) who are turned off by people who think their shit doesnt stink and believe that they're superior just because they want to believe it's true. You may not be one of those people who are turned off by it... hell it might be effective for more people than i'd like to think it is... but that, my friend, is why I stated that it was my OPINION.

There's a WORLD of difference between statements such as "we sell higher quality products than our competition" as compared to "everyone else's stuff sucks, come shop here instead".

I am a business owner and (*gasp* believe it or not) a consumer too!... I can only state what my personal beliefs are. And my opinions in game are the same as they are in real life.

How I am personally influenced, in regards to where I go and what I buy, (in real life and in SL) is often determined by advertisment. In the REAL WORLD I cannot, for the life of me, think of any business or marketing campaign (other than radio stations) that utilize shit talking to attract customers. And believe it or not even in broadcasting when that strategy was used it upset numurous people and was cause for much complaint (resulting in the ads being removed completely) Sure, 90% didnt give a shit that radiostation_X was bashing radiostation_Z... but there ARE people who highly disapprove of such thing in any sort of advertising.