have you used the following items?

I removed my lucky chair yesterday. There really was no correlation between buyers and winners, with one or two exceptions.

Well, I've never used the lucky chairs, and never even heard of the other ones you've mentioned... but.. I do own a store (seach classifeds for ClockWerks if interested!)... or follow this link:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sabnock/178/16/44/?x=150&y=150&title=ClockWerks&msg=ClockWerks%20SL%27s%20finest%20clocks


Lucky Chairs and the like are good at attracting broke newbies, so personally I dont recomend them. If you own them, you might as well use them, they can't hurt, but dont expect them to raise your sales.

However, to drive traffic to your store the absolute best way is to run a classified ad. To answer your question though, absolutely yes paying more does help. I sell clocks, so the primary keyword search word for me is "clock" or "clocks". Now.. do you have to pay 20,000L's to get to the top of the classified? Yes and no, it all depends on what you sell. If you sell clothing (like jillions of others...), yes, you're gonna have to pay quite a bit. Do you need to get to the top of the page? No, not really, however, try to at least pay enough to get yourself listed on the 1st page of results... $50L a week isn't really going to cut it, and that's most likely why you're not seeing much traffic from your ad. I pay $1001L's a week for my ad, and that places me about 1/2 way down the 1st page (when you're searching the keyword clock). The higher the better.. 1st place is the best spot, but generally quite expensive to grab. Appearing at least on the 1st page of the search results is a MUST. Most people search, and click thru to one of the results that are listed on the 1st page of results. Also, try to load your page with every concievable keyword you can think of (that is TRUELY relative to your store). For example, I sell T shirts, movie posters, and Neon signs as well, so I have keywords to that effect. Also, since I have an Indiana Jones movie poster, so I have Indiana Jones as a keyword. The more keywords you can (legitimatly) post on your classifed ad, the better. People search quite a bit using keywords, so the more you have, the better chance you have of causing your ad to pop up when people search.

Aside from classified ads, you can run events as well. They DO bring people to your land.

Also, if you dont have a group, create one, even if it's just you, create one (and be sure to add at least one other member, or LL will kill it in a few days...). Create your group to reflect your biz, and wear the group label all the time. I get people all the time asking me what ClockWerks is... Be sure to have a notecard (with a landmark to your biz) handy to hand out to people (who ask about your biz... NEVER spam ppl with it). Speaking of which NEVER hand out notecards using automatic notecard spammers scripts. I personally would never shop someplace when I recieved a notecard unsolicited. Having a notecard giver is ok, but make it touch activated rather than proximity JAMMING one down your throat. (can u tell I hate those yet?).

Also.. in your profile, in the "picks" tab... create a pick to your biz, and you can echo your entire classified ad in your profile pick. You will not get a ton of people teleporting to your store that way, but you will get a few.. When you're just standing there, people get curious, and look at your profile. Mention your biz in the general section, in other words, make your profile's general tab interesting, and they'll likely move on and check the other tabs. If they view your profile, and they general tab is blank, they'll assume the rest is too, and not check your Picks tab. I get about 2 or 3 profile teleports per 100 classified teleports (for me at least). That's not alot, but it's more than 0, and it's free to setup a profile pick, so why not.. Use a visitor counter (I use Toma Nico's greeter robot which acts as a visitor counter as well) to track the number of visits to your store. The greeter robot is really cheap, and cool too, but if you dont want to spend anything, use a freebie visitor counter.

Be creative with your logo for your classified/profile pick, and be sure to put one in. Looking at a grey box with a big black X thru it is not very appealing, so don't skip that for sure.

Be social.. the more people you meet (while wearing your group label!), the more people who will ask about your stuff, and once they're asking, offer them the notecard with a description of what you sell and of course a landmark.

The more traffic you drive to your land, the higher you will place in search places... so traffic will take care of that. Depending on how much land/prims you have, setting up a club for people to socialize on your land will also drive up traffic. You'll get some sales from that as well, and it will drive up traffic too.

The Web:
Go to SL Exchange, and put up everything you sell their too. I personally dont get a ton of sales that way, but I do get some... (Since I've been doing it for about a month 1/2 or so, I have had bout 10 sales...) Also, people can teleport in world to your store from there as well, plus you can make sales. SLX is free to setup your stuff, and you pay a 5 percent commision fee, which is VERY reasonable for having a well made, popular website hosting your stuff. Setting up is easy, you buy an SL "magic box" for free, place on your land (or anywhere you can permanently rez the magic box), and load the magic box with your items, then from the website, you can add a description, price, etc. People can buy via the website, and will receive the item in world almost imediately. Can't say enough good stuff about SLX, even though I'm not selling a ton, I am selling some, and 5 percent is more than worth it. If push comes to shove, you can up the price by 5 percent, and it's essentially "free", but I dont recomend that. I'd rather eat the 5 percent and sell the items at the same price as I do in world.

Your own website... 99.9 percent of ISP's generally give you 5 to 20 meg of space, which is more than enough space to setup an SL related web page (that happens to have an SLURL to your store). You can show pics, pricing, etc to promote your stuff via the web. Again, keywords here, especially SL, second life, etc will help drive people searching the web for SL related stuff to your website. If your ISP doesnt offer free web space, there's only about a jillion other web based freebie sites like Lyco's Tripod, and Yahoo's GeoCities. So setting up the web angle is cheap.

The product itself... Depending on what you sell, you can use your products to help drive traffic. For example, since I sell clocks, I have them scripted such that only the owner can control the clock (set the time, other settings, etc), but, if a non owner touches the clock (in an attempt go see if they can control it, or just happen to touch it), they get a notecard with a description of my biz, and a landmark to the store). That way, everywhere my product is displayed, it's a potential advertisement. Some people check the item itself (look at the creator for example, and pull up his or her profile from the edit window, so, another reason for the profile pick). So instead of making someone work that hard, all they need to do is touch my clock to gain more info. Now, if you sell clothing, this isnt an option, but even if you sell a static, non-scripted item such as a table or chair, it can still hold a notecard giver and a notecard.

One last thing... I get (on average) 20-30 visits per sale. So, if you get your traffic up and you're not seeing alot of sales, don't fret, not everyone is going to buy something just because they visited your store. Alot of window shoppers (just like RL), the trick is to get the traffic in so you'll make that one in 20 sale. Also, make sure your product is top notch... seasoned SL'ers wont buy something that is better off a freebie. Seek honest opinions from your friends.. ask them what you can do to make your product better, shop others who sell the same thing to see what they're doing, and use that knowledge to improve your product, then go that extra mile, and make it better. For example, when I started selling clocks, I noticed when I shopped around that most clocks display only SL time, and a few would let you choose from a few US only timezones. I went one better, and made my clocks settable to any time/timezone (you can set your clocks 5 minutes fast if you want for example, which some people like to do, and SL is a worldwide thing. Many of my customers come from Europe, Australia, etc, and are looking for clocks they can set to local time. When I was researching, I noticed that some timezones are 1/2 hr off most other timezones, and a few are 24 minutes off. So now I'm about the only one (that I know of at least) that has the ability to set the clock to ANY time. I also do custom work, etc... Whatever it takes to make the customer happy. When you go that extra mile, people will talk you up to your fiends, who will show up behind the guy you went the extra mile for. I had one customer show up one day, and I did some custom work for him. I had it done that day, in about an hour, I IM'd the customer, he came back, bought the item I had custom made for him, and he told me he'd be sending biz my way because he was so happy with the service (and product) that he received. That same day, I sold 5000L's worth of clocks to his friends... so be sure to take super good care of your customers, it will pay off in the long run (if not that day!).

I'm probably missing something, but I can't think of it at the moment... lol.

Hope that helps...

Lucky chairs: they attract some traffic because there are groups of chair hunters who will IM each other with letters and locations. Typically they are not buyers. The buyers that do come into your store may sit down if their letter is up, but they would have come and bought stuff anyway.

Mobvend: dorky and spammy. Can you imagine actually rounding up your friends to get a small discount on something that costs a few RL pennies? So uncool. And when I am at a store with mobvend, I get very annoyed with all the chat messages about the price dropping and rising. I don't care if the necklace is L$100 or L$95. If I was going to buy it, I would have bought it for either price. Annoying potential customers is generally not a good thing.

Freebies: depends on what kind. If it's just a bunch of standard freebies used to attract traffic, traffic is all you are going to get. Freebie hunters are like chair hunters, they are not buyers. You can however use specific freebies catering to your buying customers to inspire customer loyalty. I have some dollarbies and cheap items in my store, but only from a service perspective. My idea: if someone buys a dress, he/she may be interested in some shoes or hair or a cute handbag. Offering those cheap is a service, it saves someone the trouble of hunting around to complete an outfit. I hope it makes my store stand out in memory. I like to create a positive shopping experience instead of annoying my customers, as with the mobvend system.

Just a shopper here...

I've never seen, but never used a bid box, never made use of a mob vender... I did the lucky chair thing for a short time but I don't waste my time any more on chairs that give out crap that I'll never wear unless someone asks me to roll the letter. Most vendors make their freebie stuff "no transfer" these days so I can't even give it away. Many players who go for lucky chairs are just chair hoppers and probably won't spend any money, but if you use your own quality merchandise, its a nice way to let someone who might buy preview your work before buying.

One thing that has brought me to a shop as a regular customer are ads posted on this forum in the new products section. I browse these regularly. In clothing, if I see something I really like, I'll go buy it. Try it on and if I like the quality, I'll go back and see what else you have there or look for the next post that you make. And its free advertising.

Furniture and prefab homes will get my attention if the item is on display where I can see it, sit on it, or walk around in it. I also like to go into edit mode and check the prim count if its not written anywhere in the ad. If you can't display all you have to offer because of prim limitations, maybe a temp rezzor.

I only use in world classifieds if I'm looking for something in particular. As someone else mentioned, using key words in your ad is very important. But for impulse buying, I come here to see whats new or if I see an unique & attractive looking shop, I might stop in.

Putting your shop in your profile under picks is an excellent idea. Lots of times, I've seen things in my neighbors yard or other places and thought, "wow, I like that.... wonder where they got it"... then I right click it, look for creator and check his profile and go buy one for myself. Once I was at one of my regular clothing shops and the owner had made a lounge area. On the sofa was a cushion that made you sit and then it rezzed a box of popcorn... I thought "how cute"... right clicked to see who made it and since then my partner and I have spent a few 1000 linden's at Pillow Talk

Keeping prices reasonable is a plus. I've bought many clothing items on impulse because they looked good and they were cheap. Maybe I only wear them once or twice, but at a low price, I can afford to do that. Also if I buy an inexpensive item and I see that its good quality then I'll be more willing to spend more for a pricier ensemble. I won't spend in excess of 300L for an outfit until I've seen the general quality of other clothing by a particular designer on an av. Pictures can be deceiving.

Freebies: I like free stuff, even now that I can afford to buy it. The occasional nice freebie item does warm me to a store, and even generates the odd return visit to see if there's something new. Quite often it'll get a sale out of me, especially if it shows off how good your work is.

Lucky Chairs: I've hung around waiting for my letter if it's only been a couple of minutes to a change, but usually only in places I already know & like the product. Like freebies, they occasionally get me interested in buying, or returning. Even in my free account days I never camped them, I was more interested in exploring or picking through freebies.

Mobvend: Gahhh! Like any chatspamming object (or person) they drive me away from a place faster than a trigger-happy griefer. Not to mention the annoyance of soon-to-be-ex-friends offering to TP you to places so they can save L$5 on something.

Echoing Dementia & Johan's posts: Profile picks of your business are a huge bonus. No end of times they've been the only way I've had of locating a store, given how flaky the classifieds can be. Usually it's gone Spot cool item -> Search builder's name -> read profile for a location, but occasionally I've found great stores from just reading an interesting-looking av's picks.

As a shopper, I never pay any attention to any of the gimmicks that some stores and malls use in an attempt to run up their traffic stats. When I do a search for a particular type of item, I, more often than not, start at shops that are not at the top of the traffic list.

I look for quality merchandise at a good price. The places that provide that with a good selection of merchandise is likely to get repeat business from me regardless of their traffic stats.

Im a store owner.

Lucky chairs are bordering on camping I think. I did a lucky chair for about 2 months. Popularity grew as I added more unique items to attract custom. I wasnt using it to increase traffic, more to display my product to more people, i.e. the lucky chair groups. I'd advise putting original content in your chairs and not freebies or crap. Overall the chair proved popular and traffic increased but sales did not noticably increase and things got a bit laggy when there were lots of chair sitters around wearing all their bling etc so I got rid of them.

For me nearly all traffic and business is generated by my classified. My classified ad gets about 500 - 800 clicks per week. For me a higher classified = more traffic = more profit. I am now happy with my listing position. I pay about L$15K - L$20K per week. Ive tried paying up to L$50K per week before now but sales did not increase to justify the expense. Therefore play around with listing using different priced classifieds each week and monitor your trafic and sales. Eventually you should arrive at a classified price that suits you. It's taking me years to get my classified up to that level becuase I never pay more that 10% of my previous weeks profit for classfieds/advertising.

Regarding other gimmicks:

Make sre you advertise on SLB and SLX. I sell prefabs, and even though allot of people don't buy my stuff from SLX they will have a look whilst at work then visit my plot in world later.

Maybe make a group for your business to alert the customers you do have to new products, good deals etc. If people join the group volunterely you can them spam them with new product info etc.

Advertising other than in the search facilities is a saturated marked so I dont bother any more. It never really did allot for me.

Lately I've been exploring cross promotion. I sell prefabs, so I am creating a group of business partners who sell products complimentary to my buildings. So far I've joined forces with a lighting/art store and a furniture store. I place ads for their businesses in my store and they will do the same, I will include free samples of their products along with LM's with my builds. If someone is selling lighting then the chances are their customers aleady have a house so I dont expect my BP's to directly help increase my sales. However if I can advertise free lighting, furniture, garden accessories etc with my builds then I think it will increase sales somewhat. As I have an established business, other newer businesses are happy to provide products for free If I agree to promote their stores to my customers. This idea came about by a small business owner contacting me and presenting the idea. So maybe think about complimentary products and then contact the larger store owners to see if you could to a bit of cross promotion.

The newer 'wonder chairs' use numbers, and there are thingies - don't know what they're called - that will give you a number of destinations to chairs with your letter/number. They look like white globes with red, green and blue rigs around them. Ox DOS!!!! well, something like that!

On the subject of lucky chairs generally, my husband has one in his garden shop, and we only put in things we have made. It mght not generate business at the time of the win, but if our products are out there in the world other people will see them and possibly come over to shop.

I sometimes go lucky chair hunting if I'm bored or my friends are busy. I've won some lovely things, some of which have been full perm, so I've been able to share them with friends. But most of the time I'm too busy with my freebie shop at our new mini-mall.

In my shop I have one lucky chair, giving out my own products. I hope they get spread around SL in that way and they will advertize for themselves.

I have also done some lucky chair hunting as a 'customer', but in general I was disappointed by the quality of the prizes I won. I like only the chairs where the store owner is offering his own products.

In places with lots of lucky chairs people pay attention to the chairs ONLY. They are far too busy to browse around the shop and spend money.

Spend money? I rarely meet people who are prepared to spend more than L$ 1 for anything

I did buy something from a mobvend once or twice, when a crowd happened to be present. I would never call all my friends to help me get a price down.

I never used a bid box nor a lucky pyramid.

ppl are forgetting that todays broke noob is tomorrows landowner with a stippend and payment details on file. lc's are best used to build store/brand recognition. the goal is not to lure someone in with a lucky chair and then sell them a $500 outfit 2 minutes later. if thats what youve been hoping to achieve its no wonder you feel lc's failed you somehow.

I used the lc's and other stuff to try to get my stuff out there in hopes someone will see it and say hey, where did you get that? advertise it as it were

however I did not see a lot of ppl using the lucky chair, seems a lot of places have what they call a letter caller who posts to the lc groups what letter is where.
I tried that for my store just to see what would happen and yep sure it brings ppl in and they sit get the item and leave, heck doubt if anything has time to rez.

so now I try without the chair, I placed 50L ads, will try a 1001 ad and see what happens with that. time to test I guess.

as for website, hmmm dunno really how that would help, pretty much the same as putting on slex slboutique and slshopper..

I have a domain but not quite fitting for my shop LOL (my shop is Rha! my domain is lindensforsale.com
when I tried the sell lindens thing, which... sadly did not work out so well.

I was trying to help those who used up their limits, so I would buy from lindex and resell to those who needed with a small markup to cover paypal and lindex fees, and wouldn't you know some ppl decided to claim unauthorized use of cc to paypal so I lost the $ and the L's (to the total of nearly 1000 US)

now I think damn! the use I could have put that money to promoting my store GRRRRR

so unless there is some way to make lindensforsale.com work out as a store site I have a useless site LOL

(unless someone wants to buy the domain heh)

anywho... lots of good ideas here, lots of comments that I hope will help me in the long run.

(I do post new products in the new products forum)

On one occasion a store owner announced in an LC-group there was a W-chair in her shop. So I TP'd there and won a nice dress she had made herself. After that I looked around in the shop and bought , yes bought, another dress from her.

It was a nice encounter both for the shop owner and for me. I think this is the way it is intended to work and in the case it DID work in this way.

Do you think stores like Maximum Minimum need lucky or camping chairs? Do you know why they don't? Look at their ads, and then check the store out. It's beautifully designed.

Now THAT is what gets my business and attention.

First, in the interests of full disclosure: I'm the guy who invented the Lucky Chair, Mobvend, and Bidbox. Just so you know

To answer the OP's question from a purely empirical viewpoint - at least 10,000 "sits" are registered on Lucky Chairs around the grid per day. However, these stats only apply to the "3rd Generation" chairs that went into circulation about a week ago (that's the point where I added stat reporting to the Lucky Chair network!)... folks with earlier chair versions (the majority!) don't register in this count. Neither do "clone" chairs made by rival lucky chair sellers (obviously); the actual figure will be several magnitudes larger... So, in terms of raw traffic, yes, Lucky Chair usage is still *massive*.

That said... I think the Lucky Chair has possibly passed its peak as a useful marketing tool. The problem is, the chair-hopping scene of 12 months ago had a *huge* social side to it, with people manually collating and sharing chair details, discussing prizes, etc. Chair hunting involved hanging around stores for long periods (to track the letters), and discussion of where the best loot could be found - all leading to sales conversions.

Unfortunately, the most fanatical chair fans eventually came up with automated "solutions" to chair hunting... scripted listening devices, off-world databases... Chairhopping nowadays is simply a case of wearing the right HUD... whereupon you'll be automagically informed when and where your letter is showing around the grid. You can tp in, claim your prize, and tp out again before most of the shop has rezzed. Great for chair hoppers... not so great for chair owners. I mean, the traffic *is* still there - but the conversion rate from "winners" to "buyers" is way down.

Still - for folks who have business models that rely on traffic rather than conversions - 10,000+ engagements a day through "automated" chair tours is NOT a stat to be sniffed at (there can't be many other SL inventions that generate those kind of daily usage figures?)... and if your prize item is high enough quality to pique an interest in your paid-for products... you've got it made! ... but if you want YOUR slice of that traffic, it's vital that you get connected to the appropriate letter-sharing networks. (Check out Ox Triangle's "oXDos" system, or Popfuzz Bamboo's "Lucky Chair Station for the two leaders in the field).

As regards the other devices... I find that MobVends can be a very nice little earner (I run a couple myself, at clothing stores!), but it does rely - to some extent - on the owner's ability to "seed" the crowd, and keep the prize items circulating. If you can generate the initial interest in a particular mobvend - grab the attention of three or four people - I find you get a magical "tipping point" at which crowd hysteria takes over, and before you know it folks are tping in and throwing money at you from all directions. It's not quite the drop-and-forget device that a Lucky Chair is... but - with good products, a little showmanship - they can be a *very* nice people magnet. (And, unlike the lucky chair, you actually get paid when people use it!).

Positioning bidbox is a whole different can of worms; you can't really expect a Bidbox to sell itself by word of mouth. Look at it from a user perspective: if I see a must-have bargain in a particular bidbox, then it would be unwise of me to tell other people that I saw it there, or they might slap a higher bid into the machine and I'd lose my bargain! As such, bidboxes seem to work best when positioned in areas that already have reasonably high traffic levels ... (or as a distribution mechanism for "limited edition" products that you're already advertising through more conventional channels). Ultimately, we're hoping to come up with a grid-wide advertising network that showcases bidbox auctions in-progress around the grid ... kind of like a rolling "tv shopping" channel (you can see a prototype of this running the the Lucky Designs store) - which should redress this to some extent.

Anyway, hope this info helps. In a few days time, we're hoping to launch a brand new prize merchandising device ... to win on this one, you actually need to hang around in the owner's store for a short while, and then demonstrate a basic familiarity with their products. It'll be interesting to see how that one fairs...

Forgot to mention... just sit on a lucky chair that's showing a "T" (T for Three) ... all recent Lucky Chairs treat numbers this way (at least, the ones that I make do!).

Shep, dude, you've got your hands full...good show. Cheers.

hi shep wow never knew that about the numbers on a lucky chair, interesting

as for your product, obviously I like it, I bought it LOL

I really liked the idea of the networked bidbox, I would be one to go see the auction slideshow

alas for me right now though, these things do not seem to help my store

oh yes about a year ago lc's were so much different, then along came free accounts, that is when they seemed to bottom out

As a shopper who spends a lot in SL, I have never used any of the above. They just get in the way of shopping IMHO. And they create a lag in the store and I always think of stores that use them as not confident in the quality of what they sell. They create a cheesy atmosphere.

I also ignore classified ads on the whole. I will search thru them but I check to see the picture more than where it is on the list. If the picture is just a sign, its 50/50 if I visit the store. But if the picture shows the actual products available, I will always visit. So the picture is more important than where it is on the list.

I also go by people's picks..more than almost anything else. So store owners could be giving shoppers an incentive to put their store in their picks. I also go by word of mouth in these forums.

I would put notices in the new products in the forums when you put out something new. And I would make sure you go for quality, not quantity. Do variations on a few really good items rather than walls and walls of not-that-good-stuff.

And give great customer service. Do events..

There are lots of ways to create a customer base that returns. You could check out how the successful stores in your category do it too.

I think the Lucky Chairs and camping chairs only draw folks without money and drive away folks like me with money.

i'll try one out. thanks.

ty everyone for your imput

I removed the chair and bidbox and mob vend from the store

be sure to go visit (hehe)
link in sig here

I have not ever used any of those items, as either a store owner or as a consumer, and never will.

.

either you misquoted me or there is now another Rhaorth in the world and antsomeone is not a name I have seen

very interesting