Mysterious Lack of Sales

I have been puzzled by a drop in sales of my goods. I used to sell one or two items a day (boxed houses mainly) from a number of 32m plots of land dotted around the grid. I sold off those plots and not surprisingly sales dwindled. But now I have a chain of bigger stalls on 64m plots, selling exactly the same goods plus a few new items, and yet absolutely nothing has sold from any of them. They are in the same kinds of locations and are more attractive and notceable than the old plots.

Obviously it's not automatic that people will buy my things, I have no right to expect that! What puzzles me is that things that sold consistently up until a month or two ago do not sell at all now. Has anyone else had the same experience?

My sales (clothing, animations) have died in the last couple of weeks. Summer Vacations? Lindex problems? The Paypal dabacle? I guess we just have to wait it out.

All these' plus I would thik a lot of Daily residents are Shopped Out, and most of the new arrivals, that aren't altbots or griefers aren't committing to anything.

It seems to be SLX and SLB too not just in world sales (in fact SLB sales for me seem to have nose dived into near oblivion).

I know I've curtailed my uncontrollable spending over the last two weeks, but I didn't think that it would have such a massive effect on SL's economy!

I've noticed a slight cooling, as have others I know. Especially for big-ticket items.

Mari

A lot of in-world friends been complaining about sales not working and can't buy lindens for the last two or three weeks now

for me, i have less sales too.

but, i'm also buying less. i'm bored with wut's out there, and am looking for unique things, at this point.

Part of it could be that newbies get no starting money now so have no incentive to even participate in SL as consumers. They either beg for clothes, or head for the nearest camp resort only to burnout and never return. What a shame.

maybe a lot of newbies are minors -_-

Now I can tell my GrandAlts that I survived the great SLDepression of 2007...

We can have it all in SL, and now an economic depression... a SL Market Crash... A run on the Linden Bank

No more Ivory Halls on Manicured Lawns ... We will have to put on our rags, make a Particle Dust Bowl Script, and put our shack in the middle of it all. (If you need a free shack I have one on my freebie boards in Chodron)

.................................................................................................

Or if you are a "Glass is half full" kind of person, you can look on it as an opportunity to step your creations up a notch.

I know me for one, got kinda of bored and stale in the last few months, and I guess I need to snap myself out of it, get off my butt, roll up my pixel sleeves, learn this sculpt thing (being an old geezer in SL, I don't like change...lol), and step it up

So you admit it! I knew it was your fault. Now, just get down to my shop and SPEND SOME MONEY!

Maybe a lot of them are. But those that are not, who come to SL but want to wait before dropping $10 or $20 for Lindens need to get a feel for how shopping works here. The OP is about drop in sales…consequently I’ve seen a drop in the number of newbies with boxes on their heads.
Coincidence?

DK

Damn! .. wish I'D come up with that one!

It's a combination of all the factors mentioned previously... plus, it's summer time. People are either outdoors grilling/drunk, camping or just flat outdoors. I'm waiting until late July before making a decision on the whole outdoor thing, because in Arkansas, it gets HOT and then people would rather stay indoors at that point.

I've noticed that my vendor-based sales are down for clothes and for furnishings, yet my texture sales are booming, as is my sim building work. So it is a mixed bag, for me.

I haven't been watching the numbers closely, but it does seem the explosive increase in numbers of new accounts has stalled out. Maybe the new account sign-up procedures, which now require a human being reading a graphic on the screen, have halted automated bot account generation? I've suspected for a while that a large number of the new accounts were being spawned by programmed sign-ups for bots, and not by real people. The fact that many common given names are suddenly "used up" for ALL possible surnames also points to the possibility of someone using a hacked client and / or an external program to sign up thousands of bogus accounts for use as bots. It stinks of someone using a database of common given names and signing up for each available surname in the list, one after another...

...that's the kind of advertising that make me want to BUY!

=)

I think they are causing land parcel searchs and classifieds to silently "fail" for a % of the time for tiny parcels, I've noticed that small parcels tend to not show up in search anymore (not always, but a lot). This could be your problem. If so, I think it's great they punish people who cut SL up into ugly tiny parcels, like you. My theory anyway, but testing this bears it out.

Oh, and also I don't get the whole roadside ad thing anyway, no on "tours" through these deserts of ugliness, except the poor souls who are stuck with a parcel next to them.

Here is another theory: people are on to the whole tiny parcel thing, and are boycotting vendors like you, hurrah!

My sales of treehouses and prefabs collapsed in February. I wasn't all that bothered as I was shifting my focus back to music... I joined SL during one of those dreaded 'mid-life crisis' times and SL was just what I need to get my mind off things back then. However I've since found that plenty of places wanted me to play but few were willing to pay and even fewer audience members paid tips. Heck, even the strippers and pole dancers make 10 times what I do without having to bust their RL guts to deliver the goods. What's the reason? Who knows? Who cares? I'll keep on with doing my thing here in SL anyway. Might have to be a bit more picky about the venues I play at though.

There is a good number of people, myself included, who enjoy going on "walkabouts" regardless of how ugly the grid is. It's a roleplay thing, at least to me. Doing this, I wind up seeing a lot of roadside ads, but the benefit gained is on my part, because I gather a mental list of businesses not to patronize.

Yes, has been mentioned in this thread and others, a seasonal drop in sales is normal, and things will pick back up in the back-to-school season. I have two other theories for the O.P. though:

1) JEVN vendors have been breaking like crazy. At least three merchants at my mall have replaced their JEVNs with competing products because of lack of sales directly due to recent JEVN instability. Sometimes when they break, they LOOK fine, but the buttons don't do anything- and the vendor owner gets no feedback other than the fact that they're not selling anything. (Occasionally you can tell when a JEVN vendor is down because it will put up an 'under construction' texture- and I always report this to my merchants when I see it- but you can't always count on that.)

2) You mention you've sold on 32m and 64m lots. Depending on where these lots are and how they look, there are a lot of residents who simply won't purchase anything by folks who ugly-up the mainland with their ads/boxes on small parcels. I have never seen your lots, and don't know whether you're doing this in largely residential sims, so I can only offer that as a possibility.

it's not all that mysterious. Summer is here, 4th of July took a lot of people out of world, and SL has been sucking royally (no doubt in part due to the 50% reduction in sim performance which it seems was discovered.) It will rebound.

And the gas prices anticipating holiday driving went up too ... If it costs you extra to pay for your gas, you cant buy virtual whatsits.

What 50% reduction in sim performance discovered? Where?

coco