Business suddenly fell flat

Friends encouraged me to sell some Christmas items I had made for them. (I had never sold anything in SL.) I opened my store two and a half weeks ago. I'm selling just a few things: primarily Christmas stockings, tree skirts, and holiday yard flags. Personalized Christmas stockings are my best sellers.

On my opening day, business was better than I had expected. It increased exponentially and I've been amazed by the success. I got a nice boost this week when Prim Perfect's Kghia Gherardi called my stockings her "favorite treasure" among Christmas items. My store does quite well in searches for "Christmas stocking" (new search and old).

Wednesday morning was my best morning ever. Then the grid went down. I didn't expect business to recover suddenly once the grid was opened, but I have had almost no sales since.

Every problem I can think of, such as people finishing their holiday shopping, would result in a gradual decline instead of a sudden change. For those of you who have SL business experience, is business usually very flat for a day or so after a grid collapse?

Thanks for any advice.

Any time SL has troubles, customers get scarce. They don't want to spend L$ and get nothing in return, or to buy a nice no-copy item and then lose it when they try to rez it the first time. If your stuff is good, and you are advertizing and/or in a good location, they will come back eventually.

Um, lots of people are at work, some still sleeping, and the grid's been back up not even 14 hours. Give it a chance

People are very much afraid to spend money right now, because so many lost money yesterday in the hours before the grid-shutdown.

So I should be...uh, what's the word...patient?

/me thinks he can be, and ignores the laughter from everyone on his friends list

Lot's of people took a hit from the untimely outage of the grid yesterday...including myself.

Sounds like overall you've got some good business, not to mention a great 'passive' ad in your initial post here.

Some things to check.
Are your vendors online and working? I use a vendor system that is pretty robust but have had changes in SL suddenly set all my products to inactive. If you are getting any sales at all then this is probably not the case but it doesn't not hurt to check.

In any case, you are not the only person that has remarked in a sudden drop in sales recently. For me, last weeks sales were 50% of normal and this week, so far, is 12% of normal. I expect to continue to see low sales until after the holidays. My reasons for thinking this are two-fold.
1 - RL expenses are up with christmas buying so less desposible income for entertainment. Second Life is, after all, entertainment for most residents.
2 - There has been a plethera of bad news events in SL so peole are less likely to spend money until they see how it all comes out. 3rdQ numbers are down, some large corps have pulled out, Senior managment squabbles, all these things make people leary aoubt spending their money. Also new land sales on hold with the rumor of a new continent to be added in 2008 so some people may be holding off in expectations of a large purchase later on.

Bottom line, sales are slow for everyone right now.

You`re also selling Christmas items...there`s going to come a time when people uh....stop buying them. lol

But on a more serious note, new businesses...it takes awhile in its life to see accurante ups and downs, you can not see that in a month of being in business let alone 2 weeks. Of course this is pertaining to items that sell well year around. But your problem was more than likely due to the grid being down.

Nice sig you got there Michael. Pot/kettle/black?

Janice makes a good point though- several of our vendors went down during the grid problems yesterday. We had to reset them, and unfortunately only knew there was an issue when a customer reported he couldn't purchase something from the vendor in our main shop- who knows how many people TRIED to buy from us but silently went elsewhere when the vendor didn't respond.

We're now making it standard practice to reset each vendor after unscheduled outtages like yesterday's.

Not my intention. Thanks for pointing it out. I've edited the original post.

Brace yourself my friend... business in SL is every bit as tricky and fickle as RL...even more so. I opened a shop at the beginning of the summer and it did quite well in the first month..... then SL had a steady decline of sales all over the grid and my shop never really recovered. I have adds up everywhere.....I've had people tell me they think my shapes are the most beautiful and realistic they've seen in SL......and yet my sales remain pathetic. LOL Ya can't worry about it.....just have fun with it.... if you try to look at it as a way to support your SL habit, you're going to be in a for a tiresom frustrating ride.

It seems to me.....from what I've seen in SL in the year I've been here.....you either have to really hold the market on a unique and high demand item........or just completely saturate SL with calssifieds and add boards to market your stuff. Don't let it kill your desire to create tho..... that is the whole appeal of SL.... creating what we want. The only reason I opened a shop is I just didn't know what else to DO with all my ideas. lol

In short, yes when the grid goes down, it takes a while for things to ramp back up. Also, the Second Life economy goes through cycles which are affected by both RL events and Linden caused events. For example, when there is some sort of RL PR blitz and SL gets a large influx on noobs, your sales might spike. Conversely, when the Lindens do something such as the gambling ban, it has a ripple effect across the SL economy.

If you are going to run a business in SL, my best advice would be to think long term, invest time developing as large a product portfolio as you can, track what sort of patterns affect your particular business area, and be prepared for many external variables over which you have little or no control to impact your business in both a positive and negative fashion.

Is it just me, or does this thread title strangely remind you of the Escort Biz?

Never mind.

wat

business...fall flat... escort... fall flat

fall flat

flat

fall


^_^

Think

"viagra commercial"



=pPPppPp