Not a Telehub Poll

This question keeps springing to mind as people talk about telehub malls and, especially, boycotts. Do people actually make money from telehub shops? I'm sure the mall owners either cover thier costs or bug out. But do telehub shop owners and renters actually make enough money to deal with the pain of being located in the general environment surrounding a hub?

I ask primarily because I never did. My business does rather well as a whole. In fact, it surpasses my goals every month. But I wasted loads of cash renting telehub shops around the grid and never, ever, made any money from sales. Does this happen to others, or is my experience unique?

I didn't post this as a poll because I'm really more interested in reading people's experience than counting numbers. It is a specific question though for a specific subset of the population. Please post ramblings about being forced to travel through interminable gaudiness and lag in the Land Value or Boycott thread.

Khamon, I just don't get your sense of exasperation and indignation on this issue. Can't you leave it alone? Sit on your theme sim, have your high-end shop -- and leave others alone, please!

I have an unorthodox sort of shop, I imagine most people who deal in real estate don't both with shops because they figure it is not the way you sell. But I just use telehubs for the visibility of the advertising. In the telehub where I have a rentals shop where the rentals are right nearby, it works, because someone can click on the ad board and fly just a few hundred meters to the actual start of the rentals in Cayuga. So some of them come that way.

I also have freebies and Tier Garden, the product I sell to count your tier and prims on land with when you shop for land, and I sell some that way at the telehubs. I've actually sold more of them lately at telehubs then on SLExchange just because you get buried on SLExchange unless you can find ways to refresh your product in new version so it gets visibility for a time, or unless you have something people really want.

I've had some telehub mall rentals I closed recently because they didn't seem to produce sales but I couldn't always tell. I suppose the most successful one I had was at ground zero for a tringo game.

None of these sales and leads perhaps immediately paid the rent that week. But it's part of a method to build a customer base. One stable customer that might have come from a fly-in this way, if they keep renting for a time, is worth it. For me, it isn't so much the sales per se as the visibility, the brand recognition.

I also rent out telehub and non-telehub or near-telehub mall space. And some of the people get sales, and they get visiblity. Some of them only stay if they make at least one or two sales to pay the rent or justify the rent in terms of visibility. It's very hard to get and keep customers when you are dealing with the pre-packaged system of the mall barons. They have packages where the top designers and other retailers sell them a block of vending, i.e. they pay in advance let's say 12 weeks, they give the store out, and the mall baron, each time he acquires a mall area, can instantly set it up or instantly send out a spam list and get everyone committed and the space sold quickly. It's just part of the SL way of doing things, not like the RL, but like the closed hothouse game we live in.

I just wish those who don't find telehubs useful, or who find them unsightly, would stop harassing them. Just put them on mute, as it were. I have customers 700 meters from telehubs who make lots of sales if they have the right thing to sell people want. I have some that amaze me that they get traffic in their store in a cornfield just because they have a service that people will fly 1000 meters for. It's you who will create your own traffic when you have a produce people want. I know there are some times I will fly 1000 meters for, and other things I'll browse malls for at telehubs.

But if you think nobody goes to malls at telehubs, you're just wrong. I've camped the spawn of malls, I've watched through their stages and trust me, as I'm sitting for hours taking care of some of my malls, people do indeed come and shop in these areas, especially when they are new. Please leave them and us alone!

The Internet/SL/metaverse has to have *some* areas where people come together, Khamon, not everything can be a splintered niche!

But, Prokofy! This is not seemly! We agree for once?!

I like the idea of point-to-point teleportation, and I think businesses shouldn't count on the telehub for profitability -- the system could easily vanish at any time.

At the same time, distance from a telehub isn't an excuse for poor sales. I have no locations within a telehub sim, yet I am more profitable than ever. Just a make a good product, market it properly, and people will come.

Not to worry, we don't agree completely. I'm for keeping and promoting telehubs, you're hoping they will vanish.

While I note that some people can make sales for their product alone and people will fly that distance, it's part of that guild mentality that makes everybody come to you, even through hardships, that I think can't last forever.

Telehubs are going to get better. GIGAS, the one that was at least nice to look at, is proof of that. And people like walking around malls.

When they get so they rez faster and have more access coming and going and have directories and searchable lists and such people will use them more.

Telehubs remain important for some people just to reach the fly-bys.

Wasn't there another thread on this topic not too long ago? Anyway . . . I rent some locations near telehubs. The sales are usually good at those locations. However, usually my purpose in renting a small location in a busy area is really advertising. My telehub locations drive a lot of traffic to my two main locations.

All telehub shopping venues are not equal -- some are quite nice. I don't rent in ugly lagholes, regardless of their locations. Wouldn't want to be associated with them, and surely don't want to encourage their continued existence.

I don't think telehubs should be abandoned. There are lots of people with investments in land around them, they're historic, and they're kinda fun when you have the time to poke around in them.

Is there some reason why we can't have them along with this PtoP whatever it is? Along with, say, five home locations of our choice we can set? Or is it a choose one?

coco

coco

On the topic at hand, I have found telehubs to not be particularly beneficial to my business. I am not quite sure of the reasons for this, but two of my stores (Mavericks and Inari) that are extremely far from a telehub and have no malls or anything else around them do probably 50% of my business or more (out of 12 stores, some directly near telehubs). My store in Blue also does very well, and it is not next to a telehub.

There is such a glut of shopping centers that I think people ultimately are just tired of them. Also, if I go to a shopping center, I will generally hit one on a private sim anyway. Most of the mainland ones are godawful. There are two people in particular who just seem to populate every telehub they can with the most generic eyesores possible. I would not want my business associated with that.

I am very much in favor for P2P teleports - but the telehubs don't have to go away. I would just like options - the whole flying and telehub concept is as arbitrary anyway, there is no reaosn it can't evolve (or devolve back to the p2p teleporting we used to have).

This quickly degenerated into redundant attack verbiage. I'm sorry I asked.

It may just be the case that people don't buy plants from shops. They do seem more than willing to fly to the garden. But it's not guild mentality that brought me to using a boutique model. It was months worth of nonsales at hubs and growing sales at the central location. If other people do fine at the hubs, I'm thinking it must be the type of merchandise. The next question then is what types do well in malls and which are better sold at boutiques.

However, any question I ask or conclusion I reach now will just be viewed as an attack on telehubs right? So I'll drop the query. There's generally less and less to care about in Second Life because everything we try to talk about becomes a senseless shouting match with everybody taking sides and trying to prove a point.

As a point of fact, I've stated dozens of times that I don't care whether telehubs exist or not. p2p won't kill telehubs. Margaret stated it beautifully here.

Ugh, yes, I remember when I was new, I hated these shopping center lagfests. From a production standpoint, I don't make *any* money in malls. My best sales come from positioning in unique, one of a kind shops.

I used to rent spaces at telehup locations, but they simply weren't worth the hassle. It was usually so laggy that updating became a dreaded chore, and the sales didn't make up for the effort. I get far better sales selling from non-laggy locations than I ever did at hub shops.

Now, I just don't sell anywhere I have to pay rent for. Not because I'm cheap (which I am) but because the locations that invite their merchants rather than putting up rental blocks tend to have a higher quality of merchandise, hand picked by the location owner.

I am not interested in telehub land, but I do prefer that my store be relatively close to one. That way it takes the customer less time to get to my place

I hate flying for too long to get to a store, personally.

as a customer... i simple hate telehub malls to stick around for them to rez. and they seem to be getting taller and taller to it makes it harder and harder to fly away from them. i keep getting stuck in unrezzed rooms. it's as bad as the miramare telehub and the telehub in the secondary welcome area.

but i think if you're a new resident... there's alot to catch your eyes. if you don't know what's available, or haven't learned the nuances of find, or just exploring, the malls provide plenty to look at.

as a shopkeeper, i find that having things in the same consistent location fuels sales better than having a good location for a short period of time. word of mouth seems to be the best way to get new sales - at least for me.