Boom times? Or Bust? What's your experience?

I am still making tier Plus,But in a word I feel,,,,,,,,,,,,,Stagnation.

First of all I'd like to apologize for using an anonymous alt to reply here, but as Isablan mentioned in this thread: by just whispering the word 'profit' these days one seems to attract an army of copy cats and copybot/malice viewer people who try to make a quick buck off of someone else's work. Because of my complicated RL circumstances unfortunately I currently depend on what I make in SL and I won't take the risk to attract the wrong kind of people, that's why I prefer to not give a way my SL business brand/name here.

I've been in the content creation business for nearly 3 years, and making a profit has become a lot harder for me, even though I have greatly improved my skills, did a lot more advertising & marketing and I work a lot harder than ever before. It never was exactly easy and always involved dedication and hard work, but it has come to a point where I feel like I have to work 7/365 and at least 12-16 hours each day to stay somewhat afloat. My profit in 2009 after tier, advertising expenses, uploads and other business related costs amounted to roughly 21k USD (before tax). Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Maybe not at first sight, but considering the amount of hours spent, all the sleepless nights and the constant worries (LL policy changes etc) it's really the worst salary I've ever had in my whole live.

There are a lot of things that have changed since I first started, but here's the things that seem to have changed most (and affected my line of business):

1. Shelf life of new items has decreased a lot - it seems that now after 2-4 weeks quite a few people consider stuff old already, and after a first 1-3 days rush the items just sit there most of the time and just sell randomly. Unless I release new items each week people just seem to forget about the existence of my store. It was not like that before for me at all, even if I could not release something new for a few weeks in 2007/early 2008 sales stayed rather constant, now sales drop off immediately if I don't release new stuff all the time - not to the point of zero sales but still considerably.

2. When I started coming to SL a quality freebie was something that was still special to people, something most people appreciated. Now so many people (I observed this behavior more with newer players) feel entitled to free everything, and instead of appreciating a well done freebie they complain about this and that and never seem to be satisfied, not matter how great an item might be. Join a popular designers' or hunt group that allows chat and you will see what I mean. So many people love to complain about everything, even if it was free - the design of the sales box, the color of the free item, the fact that they have to unpack it and were not given a folder, dollarbies because omg 1L$ really is a fortune, and who cares that someone spent a couple of days to build it, 1L$ still is a major rip off because it's not freeeeeeeeeeee, attachments that have to be adjusted because it won't fit their oversized avatar out of the box, a hunt item that takes them more than 2 minutes to find, and actually paying for something? No, never - and that 's just a few examples, I could go on like this forever. I left all of these groups because I could no longer stand the never ending complaints, I'd rather be around happy folks.
I am sometimes wondering where all the joyful and happy people have gone to that I met everywhere when I first came to SL (even though of course there are still great people to meet).

3. Content theft - I know many people don't think it's really that much of a problem, but it really is. The first time one of my sets was copybotted was nearly 2 years ago. Needless to say it was my best selling set at the time and it generated a good amount of sales pretty much every day. Then all of a sudden sales nearly died for this particular set and shortly after I found out why. While the thieves have been banned from SL shortly after, the set was out long enough that a slightly modified version (thieves names still show as creator for prims but some textures were changed) is still available at many of the 'freebie stores" full perms these days. At one point I even was accused that I copied the set, and since it was hardly selling any longer anyway after the copybot event I deleted it from my store - no more sales at all from an item that did great before, ruined by a single person.

After my first experience with a copybotter it has happened more and more often to me to the point it's become routine for me - in December I had to file DMCA's for nearly 30 items (and by no means my store is one of the well known stores that everyone knows about, I can only imagine what they have to deal with). I never go out to actually look for copybotted items, it was all customers who notified me. Not all of the thieves actually sell the items, but they don't spend money either. If there was no copybot or malice viewers they might not have bought all the items they stole from me, I am fully aware of that fact, but they might at least have bought some. I'm not a particularly paranoid person, but I randomly inspect stuff (especially when I like something and want to find out where I can buy it) and the amount of stolen items I come across is shockingly high.
A couple of my more recent releases were copybotted only about 2 hours after I set them out at my store which isn't exactly encouraging. I no longer work on items that take me longer than a week to finish - I had items copybotted (and released full perms) that took me more than a month to finish and I no longer see the point in spending so much time on a single item only to have in stolen hours after releasing it.

4. The 'vibe' on the grid has changed a lot since I first started. People were so cheerful, excited and happy about this new and fascinating world we were given, and a lot more relaxed in general. I think part of the change hast to do with unfortunate policy changes, which made people lose trust in this environment to some extent. Why invest real money for virtual items when you can't be sure if a new policy might render it worthless the next day, or if a new server update could easily break stuff. When I got into building it seemed that it was a priority to not break existing creations by server updates, now they now longer seem to care about that which most certainly does not help encourage people to spend money.

5. Ever growing competition and lack of new players is also something that is a problem. It's the newer people who can't wait to fill their inventories, who might be willing to spend a bit of their money to make their avatars look good, to make their homes comfy, to find fun gadgets, dances and animations. Older players usually have most of what they need already (still buying stuff once in a while but not to the same extent). SL has become somewhat stagnant in this aspect, and the ever growing amount of businesses has already started some kind of price war among creators - and has increased the expectation of cheaper and cheaper items.

I still enjoy creating new items, but if I am honest not at the rate I have to these days in order to maintain a profit. I am pretty sure that once my RL situation has improved to the point where I will once again be able to work in my RL profession I will close my SL store and will only randomly build for my personal needs then, or even no longer build at all and find a new creative task I enjoy.

When chatting with befriended creators once in a while it seems that the great majority of them experience about the same - finding it increasingly difficult to stay in business.

I'd still love to see SL flourish and grow, but right now I just can't really see it happen unless quite a few things change.

Kudos to all of you who do not struggle to maintain a profitable business!

Put up a lot of new product last year just to hold at about 65% of where I was at the end of 2008. Better thus far this year, certainly better on the Exchange since all the changes made there, but I think that all came at the cost of smaller creators. Lag gets worse, forums go away, and I get a little less involved with SL all the time. I'll be making some more products soon, but to what end I'm not sure.

I agree with all of the post, but these in particular.

My only other observation is that component creators are probably doing better than retailers. There are a lot of people out there who are creating. When I started selling on SLX 3 years ago there were around 60,000 other registered sellers - now it's over 600,000 and of course that's probably a tiny drop compared to inworld.

The comment about a stagnating market is very true. Without fresh blood this is probably as good as it gets.

I look into the future and it doesn't look good. For my business I see the introduction of script limits and meshes as potential killers and in general I see LL moving steadily towards a set up where the big "professional" content creators are set apart from us "amateurs" and LL will drive traffic towards them. To compete we will need to spend an even larger proportion of our income in fees and charges to LL just to maintain any visibility. It looks bleak from where I'm standing.

For close to 12 months now I've been spending over 50 hrs each week inworld (on top of my day job) creating, marketing and doing all the normal business stuff i.e. around 3x more hours and I'm spending probably 10x+ more on advertising. The result is I'm pretty well where I was in March last year before the adult fiasco kicked off. So I'm a success in that I've managed to stay where I was but assuming that meshes, script limits and the creator certification have the same impact on my time as adult it's just not worth putting in the effort to overcome it.

The introduction of meshes and the certification I see as SL moving from a platform to a traditional game set up where you have the professional creators and the great unwashed who are expected to consume. I can't anticipate what the fall out is going to be as the timetable for introduction is not meaningful. All I know is that those who are ready for the changes will have a last chance of success before the door is well and truly slammed shut on those who don't make it through.

The changes aren't over yet by a long way. It's going to be an interesting 12 months ahead.

I reckon the amount of 'stuff' in SL has gone up even quicker than the number of residents.
There's so much stuff out there, a lot of it nicely made and some of it free, that the chances of selling an individual item are less than they were a year or two ago.

I thank all of you for your comments, especially Clever Ghost (I can't blame you at all for using an alt), for that long and well thought out reply; ArchTx Edo for his chart (Didn't need to see the exact scale of the money axis. The chart showed the trend clearly without needing to reveal exact profits); and Darkness Anubis, to whom I just have to say, I find it apalling that the Lab could possibly say that "they cant do jack on a DMCA from a Canadian".

For Gods sake, if they can't honor a DMCA filed by a Canadian, what does that say about IP protection for the rest of the world? They'll only follow through on a DMCA if it's filed by an American? That's worthless to such a huge portion of our residents and content creators.

Ceera - my sales are always a direct correlation with effort.

Caught Blot's comment about "stagnating." Although sales are not stagnating (if effort is applied).....but attitude is. Wish something exciting would come along....something to get the energy flowing again. Quite a few thorns in the side, lately.

The golden period for SL Business imo opinion was 2006/7.....2008 wasn't too bad all things considered, but in 2009 it dropped off for me in Content sales (30-35% down). Land revenues were about the same in 2009,but with far more rotation (i.e Land abandonments followed by searching for new replacement residents).

Its hard to see the SL economy ever returning to 2007 even with the RL world economy improving over time. The size of the grid compared to 2006/7, more competition and ton of LL policy changes of which several handicaps SL businesses especially Start-ups and small businesses.

Yep, think for most...the boom times are over. That's not to say that a few dozen still cash out a significant amounts......it's just harder to reach those levels.

People assume Land barons make a ton of money (a few do)....but even those Estates owning around 50 to 100 sims can easily run into trouble if the overall occupancy rates are low (lower than 70%). It's risky business.......a 100-sim estate recently ran into difficulty and I do believe LL reclaimed all or most of those SIMs

Great post Clever...agree with all your sentiments.
I've lost a lot of my enthusiasm and haven't really expanded any of my businesses throughout 2009 (Land or Content) My earnings are very similar to yours....but i've decided to go back to RL employment where my salary was always 3 or 4 times more. It was a good trip while it lasted....but i have lost my trust for LL. I'll still keep all my businesses as long as they keep churning out profits, but i've long given up the idea that a SL income could ever replace a RL income......not in this SL marketplace. (during 2006/7 it looked possible!)

economically speaking, in all my time in SL, i have never ever put a dime of RL money into the game. it has always paid for itself. as noted above, 07-08 was a good time to take advantage of the opportunities that are now devoid of the game.

plus, i've made enough (camping when it was still profitable and easy to find spots - and zyngo mostly) to host 3 premium accounts (all simultaneously at one point), buy lots n lots of land, and cash out enough to buy a new computer if i had saved it all up and cashed it at one time. in '08 i cashed out some and bought my son a ski pass for xmas and still had enough left over for 2 years of premium and 2 years of tier. that's almost depleted now, however, mostly because i have spent all of my free time in a social environment whereas previously, i spent all my time with a builder/land owner/creator/entrepreneur mindset. the minute i let that slide away, so did my profit earning income. (funny how RL parallels SL). i made money on camping, gambling, land sales, renting my mall and selling goods within the game. that's all behind me now, maybe not forever, but for now..... but it was a good ride while it lasted.