Opening up shop.

Im a little apprehensive about venturing into business.
Is there a place in the market for people who create fantasy skyboxes and gathering places, or is it all replications of boring RL stuff.
Is there enough imagination in the grid for my product, or have I got to resort to selling boring things cos of all the boring people.
Any input would be appreciated

The reality of SL marketing is the exact opposite of the condition you fear. People are always anxious to spend thier Lindens on the New, the Unique. That is why there is such a Huge market for Custom Builds. Put out a Line of Skyboxes, they will Sell, and you will probably get a Large number of enquiries to make anything from Minor Changes to ground-Up total Rebuilds.
That is why so Many of the other Content Providers have "Sorry, No Custom Builds" in thier Profiles. The Orders just come Too fast for them.

"You nail together two things that have never been nailed together before and some Schmuck will Buy it"
Galligher.

Angel.

Seems different from what ive experienced, every shop i've looked at, and every residential area i've been to has the same old run of the mill stuff, houses mansions castles that kinda thing. People dont seem to want for example, a larger gathering place with a glass domed roof and floating waterfalls, its as if people are allergic to thier own imaginations lol

The demand side for new and imaginative, once it breaks through the recognition barrier, is strong. The supply side is more than a touch unimaginative - which leads to the few who truly are creative wishing they'd never heard of SL because of the people clammering for their time and business.

I guess if I were breaking into this and really had some creative and interesting stuff, I'd find one of those creative types stressing out over IM's, and offer to help take some of the load off of them in exchange for being able to build and sell stuff under their wing. Don't take the "I wanna sell stuff so I gotta offer my services to you" approach, take the "I'd like to help out for supercheap and learn the business and over time launch my product line with your help, but in a way that won't interfere with your business" route instead.

Also understand, the vast majority of sellers are lucky to recover their tier, and sell as a sideline to dump some of the nice stuff they've made for themselves.

Hahahahah.............my secrets out

But on subject..........I'm sure there's a market for fantasy houses. Especially really unusual ones. But, and sincerely believe this, the biggest selling point of all the prim items for sale in SL is the prim count..........the lowest number of prims possible to get the thing built. Save a prim every chance you get. You'll do good if you keep that in mind.

There's a couple of reasons why there isn't that much completely original fantasy-style material in SL. One is that often, people's judgments about what is "good" are based on the real world, and things that don't match with that often just seem surreal. Note that this by no means means that they are bad (take a look at the artworks by, for example, DonCoyote Antonelli and Alastair Chamerberlin - they're highly surreal but I think very beautiful), just that is harder for people to judge them than otherwise, and there is always a bit of worry of the "if I buy this house, I really love it, but all my friends might hate it and not come over' type.

Plus, of course, there's always the pressure to try to make back your tier, which means selling things that are more likely to sell. It isn't quite as bad as suggested above though.

The second reason is simply that there's more support for "standard" types of build. For example, when you want textures, it's quite easy to buy or find freebie textures for the regular realistic or "genre icon" builds. If you're doing an entirely original build this is impossible, of course, because since it's entirely original the texture artists haven't thought of it yet either.

What I'd suggest is building some, maybe putting them on sale, but just making them visible so other people can see your skill; and then offering to custom build them. There's not so much pride in living in a totally original looking house if your next door neighbour can just buy the same prefab after all.

Hmm, food for thought indeed, thanks for the input peeps. Much appreciated.

Some people are cheap.

Apart from prim count (which is what some people look for), there's also the expense. Some yahoos are happy with a 50L skybox they could have built for nothing in a half hour because it's cheap and easy. Some people want to try a cheap something first so that when they wreck it five times (I'm telling on myself) they can replace it and start over for $1L (thank you Gnubie store, lol).

So, consider having many different things for many different people. I for one would be interested to seeing some of your more interesting stuff. My self built skybox is getting boring, lol.