Expensive goods!

Went out to do some shopping the other night to give my castle a bit of colour and noticed a lot of stuff is really expensive!

When ya see a single no copy no mod 1 prim rug for L$150 you do sorta wonder if you should give up then and there.

What's more annoying is when you go to buy something but it isn't quite right and the object is no-mod so it can't be fixed. A few people have lost sales from me because of that.

I guess what i'm trying to say is.. i'm more likely to buy your item if it's modable and probably a bit cheaper! If you wish to charge a lot then let me copy it.

For me reasonable prices are ... 50 or less for a rug. 50-100 for a piece of furniture or none-scripted item. 100+ for some special lots of work item..

Of course, I could contact the makers.. but by then I'm probably just made do with something else.

Hehe. Hope folks don't take this wrong. I want to buy stuff and help the economy but when you're looking at spending L$1,000 to decorate a couple of rooms you lose interest quick!

Pirate

The answer is simple: the seller pays L$311 each week in tax over an item that costs $130 to rez. It's called inflation.

A 13 prim item costs L$310 in tax a week? Er.. How?

I must be missing something.

Pirate

Yup. Don't ask me how Maybe because I can't switch off lights?

In answer to your rug issue, ask Joan - most of hers are $30, high quality textures. In this case, size does not matter

Joan does have some truly lovely rugs for very reasonable prices - as do Daemioth and Devlin and a couple of others who deal in home furnishings. Seeing as all you have to do for any number of awesome rug textures is google for images and upload them, anything more than $50 for a rug which you havent designed or modded somehow yourself seems excessive. Furniture, on the other hand, can take a LOT of time to get just right sometimes, especially if you are talking sleigh beds or sofas. Im working on a line of mahogany furniture that will probably be quite pricey if I ever finish it.

Turn off lights and your taxes will be cut by 13 * 5 = $65 minimum. Probably more given the size and tax of the rest of it.

You people dont understand anything about business.
Uploading a texture costs $10 and putting it on a prim costs another $10. Those are your initial costs, $20. Using Google to get the exact same texture you got is free of charge sowhether its $30 or $150 it always makes sense to roll your own carpet if youll forgive the nasty little pun.
"Making" another copy has no cost! You expect to recoup your initial investment on your first sale and immediately make a profit? Imagine if ATI would charge millions of dollars for their first graphics card, in order to immediately recoup all their R&D efforts, plus setting up a factory and buying the appropriate machined for it.
And Harald, there is a reason why light taxes exist, lights lag the crap out of your system, and you should never use them, not turned on by default anyway.
As for turning lights on and off, its as simple as rezzing a light object, and derezzing/replacing it with a non-light one.

Would you mind thinking before you talk???

Sure I throw away every lightbulb instead turning lights off. Duh.

And yes, keep uploading hundreds of new textures, real smart. Within a few months noone will ever be able to take another step because of eternal texture loading.

Not to mention the implied copyright infringement in your story.

Performance tests indicate no added lag whatsoever because of light settings. Loading additional textures in a lightfree area does add incredibly.

Well excuse me for having actually studied management and economics at a real university. I dont believe for a single moment that any half-decent textures out there were made by SL players, possibly excluding clothing textures of course. Besides, most textures available online are part of giant texture collections on websites set up for the explicit purpose of freely distributing them. And for a person so concerned with copyright infringement... well lets just say that last time I was at your store you were selling Linden items and bazaar stuff, thereby redistributing with intent to profit from other people's copyrighted work.

Eggy has the right idea.

Things in SL are way over priced. Why do people assume that a virtual rug should cost as much as a real life one? If it's one prim and one texture and all you're selling is a copy of it might be worth 10sl at best.

If you are selling original one of a kind objects with textures you can't find anywhere on the net then you are in a position to start charging a lot more, especialy if it's good work.

Scripting is another thing that you probably could charge more for since not everyone can do it for themselves but once again if you're just selling copies of your scripts they just are not that valuable.

I'm selling simple houses for only 100sl simply because I don't see them being any different than other smaller objects with the same prim count. Just because I call them houses dosn't really make them worth anymore than an object called a chair in SL.

Wrong on all accounts. No items are or ever were sold that did not have the proper permissions set. See www.copyright.gov. and stop flaming others if you have no clue about things to begin with. Check the ToS and CS - they clearly specify what is and what is not allowed and what happens when uploading items. If you don't like it, go elsewhere.

To undo the confusion caused by you: Lindens are selling resident created items for large 'profit' (as you put it). They set the rules and the standards in word and deed. Direct your gripe to them.

I have to disagree about items being overpriced in SL. If anything they are way underpriced. In RL if you got paid over $1000 a week, would you complain about a $100 rug? I doubt it. In RL would you be able to afford to decorate your entire house in one week? Would you be able to afford to decorate even one room? Nope.

I don't understand this need to compare the value of objects in SL to real life objects.

In RL there are real production cost and the cost of the raw materials. In SL the only real cost is the time spent designing the first object. Once you start selling copies of it it's value decresses with each copy sold.

This game also encourages people to make their own objects further decressing the value of same objects being sold by other people.

The only objects in game that would have any "real" value would be one of a kind, can't be reproduced objects.

Weeeeeee another 'lets tell others how they should run their business because I can't afford X's Y' thread! Weeeeeeee

It is commercialism and capitalism. If you do not think something is worth the price you have a couple of options:

1) You can try and negotiate with the seller.

2) You can not buy the product.

If the person doesn't sell any perhaps the cost will go down, if their sales figures are acceptable to them then why should they lower the price because you think its too expensive?

At no point, independant of what schooling or business practices you have had or know about, do you have the right to tell people what they *must* sell stuff for or how they *must* run their business. That is for them to decide.

If they are fine with the 1 sale a week on an overpriced item then thats their call.

I suppose one thing missing is a consumer affairs or consumer reports (aside from one issue I think it died?). Both of those would help in educating buyers as to what was where, what products were worth the money and what wasn't, and prevent people from getting scammed (selling for profit items normally free etc). Although I suppose the lindens should be the consumer affairs division.

And really there are a *lot* of people who sell things way under priced. Also eggy your calculations for initial cost are way off from my experience. Rarely is a texture right on the first upload, which can triple or quadruple the starting cost. You also don't account for taxes for keeping the object in world or perhaps most importantly any labor costs - the time it takes to find the texture or make the texture, modify the texture upload the texture. Also there is building and maintance costs - land tax and object tax for the building used to sell stuff as well as the cost of building that store. You included those in the video card example but not the SL example. Sure you don't expect to recoup your costs on your store, the item, and all the taxes and costs associated with it on the first sale - that would probably be a multi-thousand dollar sale of a 1 prim carpet. However you do expect after a reasonable number of sales to recoup that cost. And being told you can't sell something for much more than rez cost or that it should cost less than rez + upload cost for the next person to buy it is rediculous, even if I could spell that right. When I go to taco bell I don't demand they sell me tacos for less than the price of what it takes to make one! And when I buy a video card, I am *sure* I am paying more than the cost of the materials in it. I shouldn't be paying for nvidias entire lab, fab facility or best buy but I should be paying a portion of that - a portion greater than (total cost to produce and market) / (total cards expected to sell). And the truth is that in SL that second number is so much smaller than what a video card manufacturer would expect that prices in SL should see a considerable mark up to cover production, marketing and distribution costs etc.

And no, I am not a marketing person. I'm a coder. Thanks.

Taco Bell doesn't make just just one taco and sell endless , no cost, copies of it either. Once again there is real life cost to production that just doesn't exist in SL.

I guess all I'm getting at here is that it would be nice to see some sort of SL standard of value based on the reality of the virtual nature of what's being traded.

RL cost do not really apply here. A virtual replica of a Ming vase certianly doesn't have to value of a real one.

I agree Maxen. A lot of people are missing a lot of SL costs though.

Weekly/regular costs:
- Land tax for the store
- Object tax for the store
- Object tax for the item for sale
- Directory placement fees
- Is there for $ advertising?

Once for all objects costs:
- Rez costs for the store.
- Building costs for the store - either paying someone to build it, or the value of your time to build it
- Loading costs for textures for the store
- Cost to purchase the land
- Cost of furnishing and decorating the store

Initial Costs for the object
- Rez cost per prim
- Upload costs to upload textures - enough til its 'right'.
- The value of your time in L$ spent uploading, building etc.

Now I would agree with most that unlike RL, there is no cost to produce each one - you can sell infinite copies. However to assume that the only costs they have to recupe are the rez costs and the costs to upload the textures you are buying is not fair or accurate. And aside from those costs *some* profit is always nice.

i have to agree with ama.

market pressures will let the proprietor know if their items are priced unreasonalby high, because they will have low sales.

I would think that land/building taxes would be covered by most peoples stipens, therefore no cost.

A lot of people sell thier objects in other peoples stores. There might be a small rental fee, or in some cases no charge at all.

I don't know of anyone who leaves out multi prim objects out for sell. Usually they come boxed or out of a vender cutting way back on the cost of selling the object.

The initial cost still remain for building a store, the land up loading textures, time spent making the objects for sell.


At some point the store will come down to make way for something new, the object cost can be recovered. there is also the dwell bonus that may make up some of the cost of the building over time.

The Land can be released or even sold for profit.

Textures can be reused for other builds, reducing the initial cost of the upload.

The only real cost I can see that you can not get back in some form is the time invested into making the object.

And yes, a small profit would be nice

There's very little market pressure, because there's very little market. My limited experience with selling goods in SL is that it's very easy to sell one or two items that more than cover the creation costs, then they won't sell again, regardless of how low the price goes.

Location also dictates much of the sales. You can place an item for sale for an outrageous price and make sales, as long as it's in a prominent high-traffic area. You can place the same item for sale in a less trafficed area for cheap and never sell a one.

Frankly, there's just not much of a market either way. All the things I've thought were really remarkable and high-quality work have either been not for sale, special commissions, or given away free.

First: I am bored and procrastinating - hence the way too many replies.

I am in favor of abolishing taxes. And stipends. And bonuses. Completly. All of em.

I don't see a reason to expect a store owner to cover their store costs with their stipend and bonus. Maybe the use that for their home, or personal pet not for profit project. And besides I see more people with taxes above and beyond stipend and bonus then below it. It may also be good practice to get an edge by using the stipend/bonus to your advantage. I don't see it as a requirement though.

I have been in stores with lots of multi-prim objects out on display, and frankly, I'm more willing to buy something I can see than something from a vending box.

Even in RL land is often resold at a profit, including the building and costs etc associated with it. That doesn't mean it isn't a cost to be covered. That money is used while you are selling your items, and so that money should be recovered by the items you are selling.

And Ananda has some very good points - that are valid in RL as much as SL. Location is everything.

If the game didn't have taxes and stipens the market would be a very different place.

lol we could go around and around this all day but I've got to go to work.

I remeber way back in beta when people still sold textures at huge mark ups, nobody could get away with that now.

I'm sure overtime the players will start to understand the real value of what's being sold and a fair price will be reach and everyone will be happy.

The one thing I took away with me from working at a used computer store (besides a truckload of old Macs!) was that you sell things for the price people pay. What the item cost you actually has very little impact on the final sales price. For example, we sold old 486s for $100 at the time, and paid $5 for used ones. Another one the other direction is the old game console sold at a loss idea.

Most of the stuff I see I think of as reasonably priced for the work put into it. I've done clothing for sale, and some furniture. They're only $10 for a box and $10 for a texture upload if your time is worthless. Things I've put for sale the cost depends more on how much effort I spent working on it than any in-world costs. However for clothing, effort spent usually translates into lots of uploaded textures so there may be correlation there.

Another thing is no one really sells the same stuff. So there's really less competition as there would be in the real world where I can go to Wal-Mart and get the off brand for cheaper. If I want to go buy Chip's PVC bodysuit, I have to go buy Chip's PVC bodysuit and not anyone else's.

All that said, there are a lot of things that I think are beyond my means. So I don't buy them.

I don't think that items in general are overpriced in SL, but there are certainly some exceptions. There seems to be a fairly good effort to keep things reasonable, since except for a handful of players, most players do not have that much money in the game. There are certain players who price their items much higher (2 to 5 times the general market price for similar items in other stores), and that is certainly their perogative, but it does not mean I would reward them by paying an inflated price for their items. We have premium brands in RL, so they can certainly exist in SL (it is a shame that most of the time the quality of the item does not match the inflated price, in either RL or SL).

If someone wants to charge $150 for a rug where they created the texture themselves, then more power to them. It does not matter if it is one prim or woven out of 50 prims. It is what the market will bear. Is it overpriced? I suppose that is in the eye of the beholder.

I have to agree with Harald about the light taxes - they are excessive and should be revised, given the peformance improvements of the client with 1.1. I have used only a handful of lights, most of them small, and I am paying $800 a week in taxes on them. Funny thing is, my framerate does not suddenly drop when I get near my builds - the lights have no effect on the performance, why are we still being penalized for it? The stupid particle effects in 1.0 had a lot more impact on my system, but people who used and abused those didn't have to pay anything. Anyway, I digress, as this is about pricing.

All in all, the main point is it is what the market will bear. If you don't want to pay $150 for a rug or $250 for a shirt, or whatever else, there are plenty of other places selling things. Taking your business elsewhere is the only way to send the message to bring the prices down to more reasonable levels .


PS - don't even get me started on the no modify option - considering that scripts and textures can now be protected, that is just plain rude, especially on clothing. I am not opposed to no copy, but I also pass up no modify items when I can help it.

I agree on the no-modify clothing. There's a seller that I just won't go to anymore because I can't modify the stuff to suit myself.

Is this a big deal, or make any difference? I suppose that's up to the seller to make that decision, but I spend just about all my money on clothes. A couple thousand a week usually. Does losing my business make a difference to one person? I really doubt it, but on the other hand, it gaurantees I won't be walking into their shop dropping 1000 or so anymore.

No-copy's fine with me, but no-modify on clothes sucks.

Come to our store in Aqua, its the glass building on the end near Same Song's music carpet. We also think things are over priced in SL and try to keep our prices low.

If you need something and don't see it, send me an im and maybe we can create it. There are a couple of extremely talented people involved in this venture.

And if you have nice stuff to sell and don't have a place to sell it, contact me in world too. If it fits our store's theme, you can put it out for sale, no rent..

We don't do guns tho...

fen-