Latest trends in SL economy (shopping)

Yeah I still get cranky and overwhelmed but I learned a trick with that just walk away I get that way about scripts and few other projects.
When I came back last year I really felt the only way I could have the space to create what I wanted was if I spent more and more for prims and I constantly felt whatever I spent was just not enough. It made me feel like quitting few times but I got over it.
Luckily I got good friends to help me through those days. Two of my closest friends I have know for over 8 months.

Agreed. Every so often the idea gets floated around that certain groups are more entitled to be in SL than others based on what they "contribute". There are two classes of citizens, good and bad. That's all I care about.

They were a mixture. Some were people who never played a game in their life. They didn't have the patience of the forsight to understand why they should have to go through anything to get to the mainland. What's in it for me mentality.

A couple of others were gamers. More of the Sims 2 type than heavy gaming. They were immediately bored and found the lack of a "game" uninteresting. They probably would have become more interested if they gave themselves time but in the me me me, now now now society we live in, they didn't give it a chance. I suspect many others will not do so either.

I was at Sarah Nerds the other day when two newbies got new clothes. As soon as they were done they asked each other "What now?" and had a few laughs about it, but were really clueless. Unfortunately I had to log off and it was one of those times when I couldnt assist someone like I would have liked.

I understand what you're saying.. but you need to take care.

No business has ever succeeded by watching the customers come in, turn around, and walk away, and then discussing how psychologically flawed those customers must be.

True, but SL is not for everyone! LL can and should do the best it can to make this easy. But if people are impatient, they are better off elsewhere. SL is all-inclusive, but not everyone is cut out for it. It cannot be all things to all people, and shouldn't try, or it will fail miserably.

Excellent point.

If we are happy with the current SL numbers (whatever they may be) then the system can stay as it is. If we expect growth then it needs to change. I think it's safe to say that most of us are adventurous. As much as we complain about the current system, it's part of what we love about it. The average Joe or Jane out there wants no part of it, though.

True dat, they're coming in like a river in flood. Fand, I'm a mentor. I agree that the very best way to teach SL is one on one. I dont' have time to do it often, but I DO do it that way when I can. Usually when someone catches my eye by being unusually quick to pick something up on OI, or is unusually polite. But you're the perfect example of the type of person I was holding up to Yumi as being the basis for the SL economy. You're the person who buys land and "stuff", and makes it all go. I bow down to you three times!

Yumi, anyone who feels intimidated instead of inspired has got something wrong with 'em, I say. We all look up to those more talented or experienced than ourselves...or at least, we dam' well should.

Agreed. I continuously put money into iTunes. What do I get back? A bunch of digitized sounds? They aren't even on a CD with a pretty liner, for crying out loud. And yet, yet, I STILL DO IT. Imagine that. It's perceived entertainment value.

No, it can't be all things to all people, but it can be different things than it is now. If the sales slump continues to get worse it may simply be forced to change.

Oh, and I have to point this out too:



What do all those roles have in common? I'm sure you spotted it... none of them involve paying in real money.

Pie was exactly right. SL cannot continue operating on the basis that the final goal that most users want to work towards, is to pay nothing for the product. We have to stop people wanting just this, and have more people wanting to pay in real money, by whatever means. As Carl mentioned, it seems that there are already some people who are happy to, but these people need to be encouraged and more people need to have that attitude.

We all look up to them, but sometimes people look up to far.. they say "well, I can never do that".

And yes, it's sad, but it happens. You probably know that I run show and tells to help new people get noticed, and several times, I've had one of the later entrants pull out because one of the earlier entries was too good and "I'll just look like an idiot compared to them". I normally try as hard as I can to convince them to stick around anyway, and sometimes I succeed but sometimes I don't.

You have to also bear in mind, one of the saddest things I've ever heard, but it's true: in the modern era, an lot of school-level education is having to _encourage_ people to think this way. Because otherwise you have the problem, of the teenager who ignores all their lessons because they only want to be a pop star.

So how do we, the average Joe/Jane, do this? The only possible way that I can see this happening is to create a more interactive environment, where people need to interact with things and objects as well as other people. To do this, they'll be encouraged to stay in the SL to complete an interaction. One example that I can think of is the Pothealer game in Numbkalla. Even though I haven't been there in ages, it was an engaging "search around for clues" game that kept me logging in for days. And, of course, I couldn't wear the same clothes each day! I was encouraged to interact with the Pothealer game and thence the world of SL.

There are certainly lovely places in SL, but we could use a few more actually interactive stuff going on. The graphics engines right now sort of prevent that... e.g. driving a car in SL is a joke, etc.

You seem to be contradicting yourself here though: the reality is that the majority of people will never create something from scratch that will be worth anything to everyone else and they really shouldn't be told any different.

One reason I buy things I want is because I know I could never create something that looked as good as what I'm buying. If I had someone convince me that if I just tried hard enough I could make the same thing I would have long given up on SL, because I'd constantly be dissapointed over and over again.

Which is exactly what I've seen happen with a few friends who fell for the "you're either a content creator, or you're nothing". Time and time again they'd try to build something only to give up because they just didn't have the talent and eventually it drove them out of SL altogether.

If you want people to spend money on SL, stop trying to convince them that they too can create something or that creating something means they're better than people who pay for something.

Well - that might be true. But this leaves Mentors and other helpers in a really difficult position because nobody can ever know for sure that someone else doesn't have talent, and nobody really wants to discourage someone else. I mean, if you are going to take that attitude then we would have to ban classes (!) and tear down the Ivory Tower (!!) because people might visit them and develop false hopes... The moment that happens the whole idea of SL as a world of creativity is completely destroyed.

The bigger problem is that the editing features are SL's most notable unique feature, and if you're saying they're essentially unusable by the bulk of the population, then it needs to get another unique feature, like, yesterday. Otherwise it will be vulnerable to a competitor stealing those users away.

Every time I've seen a clueless newbie stumbles upon a Linden during their office hour they get told the same thing: "Create stuff, sell it and people will buy it".

I constantly see mentors and other residents pass on the same fantasy to newbies: "If you want money, just sell things" or "Go and camp". Both of those things just reinforce the belief that putting RL money into SL is "evil/dirty/lazy/whatever", while in reality it's the one and only reason SL is around at all.

There's a big difference between helping someone with an interest in building and telling someone they need to build to amount to something or to "get the monies".

Someone who is new to SL and thinks they can be the next (fill in name here) does need to be confronted with the reality that what they create isn't likely to anywhere near the same quality and their business is more likely to fail than it is to succeed.

The majority of residents do not create content, they merely consume content.
Those who do create content are more often than not solely inspired by commercial reasons.
Those who create to express their creativity with no commercial intent whatsoever are a very small minority.

I see the diversity as SL's most notable unique feature, not its editing features. The average person really doesn't care whether their purchased content comes from a private individual or a big corporation just as long as they get the same entertainment value.

When I was a nOOb, that's all I ever heard. "You need to learn how to build, how to make things in Second Life". So I pushed myself to become a content creator, learn photoshop, and how to work with prims.
However, my first thought was that I wasn't going to end up with a store with it. My boyfriend in Second Life, who joined in mid-2006, had been building since he got to SL, but never had a store.
I just figured, since he never had a store before... and his items he makes are very good, I'll help him with the start up to get a small shop. Hey, I'll throw a few things in myself just for fun, lol.
Never did I think that 6 months later, I classify running our SL business as a 3rd job. (2 rl part-time jobs come first)

But, there's not much one can do than sit and watch how SL economy fairs through the next year. On the news today, I did notice that 1 week before Christmas, and RL stores are seeing a slump too... and it goes to show how much SL follows in RL footsteps.

Well, again, it's a tricky issue. Most mentors don't tell people to go and build things any more; but if they don't mention camping, someone else will, and then the newbies will start distrusting the mentors because they didn't mention something that gives them free money. Also you have to bear in mind, that there are at least some newbies with stories like Dementia's. I mean, there was something that I really wanted to build myself, but now the market is fairly saturated, but at the time I joined it wasn't and the creators who were involved then were more open to helping others. But I missed my chance. Maybe if someone had badgered or encouraged me enough I wouldn't have missed it - and so I'm not about to let the same happen to anyone else I'm helping.



That's only an evolution that's happened in response to SL's commercially oriented structure, though. And we haven't even considered what could be done in SL to raise the quality of content that ordinary folks could produce.

I do tell newbies about creating, and camping. But only AFTER I tell them that the best and easiest way to get $L is to simply buy it. You know what? I have only met ONE person who took me up on that. She probably had more fun with SL, in less time, than the many, many others who think that spending US$20 or so on entertainment is stupid.

People, we live in a tourist economy here. US$ (and other real world currencies) are our Holy Grail. We'd best start getting more people to buy L$ if we want an expanded SL economy.

I create drama ... everything else, I buy ... and I'm having a ball.

register your chat logs and forum posts with the Copyright Office.

My store has been seeing record sales over the last few weeks so I'm not sure what's going on. I typically would have expected my sales to go down around Christmas as people are more involved with real-life events, and my stuff isn't really oriented towards being gifts (though some people have strange gift ideas).

Yet people are buying them quite happily so I'm not sure what it is, I suppose more people will have holidays so need a way to occupy them.

For those that don't know my store caters mainly to the furry adult markets. So eh, there could be any number of possible reasons I suppose.

My store was open last year but had none of the "flagship" (read; "adult" *sigh* None of my PG stuff sells!) products it has now, just a few nice T-Shirts, a nice simple (and IMO quite stylish considering) pre-fab house and other bits and pieces.

I do build things for myself but nothing innovative and different enough to sell. I think there are several reasons for the downturn:

1. The grid presently seems swamped with freebies, so how does that give newbies the inducement to pay in real $?

2. There is a lot of clothing around which is extremely poor quality, shoulder straps not meeting, seams not matching and hundreds of shops selling items which I have no interest in. Not every female in SL wants to look like a hooker. There are swathes of malls and stores, all selling these inferior products and the clothes all look the same.

I have found a few great furniture shops and clothes shops and won't shop anywhere else. The only other place I look is on the New Products forum, if I see something nice, I tp straight to the shop, buy and tp back.

Those people are Consumers, and they are economically the most important segment of the Second Life population. Their individual choices of how much to spend, what to spend it on, and where to spend it drive all the entire Second Life economy. As a group, they have more power than Supply Linden and the LL Magic Land Printing Press.

I'm amused whenever I encounter a content creator speaking of his or her customers as somehow a "second class" part of Second Life.
That's an amazingly arrogant and stupid attitude.

The trouble with that is you never know whether the person you are talking to will turn out to be one of the percentage of new residents who's absolutely brilliant at something here. Usually, neither do they.

I would suspect people giving that advice are out of touch with the newbie experience as it is today. At NCI, I tell people the best way to start off in Second Life is to use a credit card or paypal to buy a few thousand L$. Use those to explore, learn about the world, and what you can do here. Learn what you like and what you are good at.

I also suggest checking out some freebies at NCI and other places (you can look great using just freebies clothes, skins, hair, etc.--especially if you are a woman). If they still insist on trying to get money inworld, I direct them to Money Trees, NCI's virutal stipend ball, or Camping, as a last resort.

I think we are seeing a washout here. With a alot of people selling the same things, the only way to compete is to keep undercutting the other guy's prices. Sooner or later the downard effects on the revenue spiral meets (or goes below) the cost of maintaining the business itself.

The most important thing to realize is that the spending of Real Residents is'nt increasing at a rate to offset the general decline in prices. If you cut your prices in half it takes a doubling of sales to simply tread water! The number of new people is not increasing at anything like that pace--and they are'nt spending anyway. Most of the reported growth has been in alts to game the search engine! Everybody knows it.

You can't really survive in business forever by simply tricking the search engine--not with a lot of other people selling the same stuff that you do and undercutting your prices every day.

So I see a lot of quick buck artists dropping out before long. After that though, I think higher quality stuff will have a market here--and if it is creative, it might even make the game interesting enough to see premium accounts start rising, land prices moving up and a more solid economy. I can say that because my things--that are unique--are still selling--not like they were before, but they are still selling.

I've done my share of bitching here about the system, and I hate some of the things that I have seen--like texture theft and Alt farms. But as I think about it more, I think the gamers might have created the engine of their own demise. A lot of them--did not watch the quaility or uniqueness of what they were trying to sell, and now it is coming back to bite them.

The trick will be to wait it out and get busy creating the best stuff I have ever made.

Mostly, I will know if that does not work then nothing else would have either.