SLBoutique and SLExchange

As a buyer I can answer why I prefer SLE. The categories and search is better.

Interesting, even though I sell furniture that I guess is best presented rezzed in world, I make 90-95 percent of my sales on SLB and SLX.

Search at SLX is *much* better than on SLB, still sales numbers for me are more or less equal on both.

Just this morning I moved the boxes/vendors from my old place to my new island, worked without a problem, all my stuff is correctly listed both on SLB and SLX again.

Yes me!!!

I sell much more through SLB than SLE even though I have the same items listed at both.

and I must add that I prefer the search on SLB......

If I do a search for Mulberry Cocoon Suite - (my Cocoon 3 piece suites by Mulberry Lighting and Furniture) - it brings them straight up....

If I do the same search on SLE..... well I gave up looking after 10 pages.

Now that is interesting to me, because I sell some furniture too. I didn't think my SLB/SLX listings would get many sales, because I assumed people would want to try it out first, so I haven't put a whole lot of effort into marketing my products there. Hmm, wheels are turning.

This month so far I have 76 sales on SLB and 36 on SLX (freebies included). Funnily, moneywise the SLX sales outrank the much more SLB sales by a couple of hundred L$.

Yes, me.

I've had MUCH better luck selling on SLB.

I don't get it. I just revisited SLB for first time in a couple of months. I search on Female Skins. There's 11 pages plus, but halfway down the second page the two keywords drop out and they show hairstyles?
I add a couple of letters of a well-known maker and the number goes up by about half again?

Does anyone know if there's a search bug or am I just not understanding how to use it?

Maybe it's like the fun of getting a whole new couch in your mailbox! Unlike in real life, it's just that easy!

coco

I have my houses listed at both SLB and SLX. I've not done much purchasing through either of them, but I regularly search both sites when I'm looking for something and want to winnow down my list of places to do final shopping at. Frankly, for a lot of things it is easier to browse a listing than TP and wait for things to rez, only to discover that there really isn't anything you are interested in there. I've never had problems as a seller with items failing to deliver.

That's exactly my approach as well. I use the SLX or SLB Search to find a pool of likely content creators, then go inworld to inspect the products "in person" and make my purchase.

The advantage is that I can quickly scan many more actual products than I could doing search and TP inworld. It also means I can search from work on my break or during lunch, times when I don't have direct access to SL.

I recently picked up all my boxes from SLB and will not be using it anymore.. not only did I rarely sell anything, but after speaking with the owner/manager I found it disturbing that she/he/they take it upon themselves to redeliver items to customers, do delivery "tests" at will, and without bothering to notify the designer...

I sell much more on SLE, they are more IMO, trusting and professional, easier to use, easier to browse and more reliable.

SLB is currently free, which I am unsure why, but maybe if they charged they would be more motivated to improve their system..

Please refrain from voicing this type of criticism against a specific company on the forum. It's one thing to report how much you sell on one or the other; quite a different matter to make claims about their character. It puts this thread at risk of being locked, and is not the appropriate place to air this kind of grievance.

rofl are you serious? So we can only say good things about a business? get real!

I listed SLX first, and SLB only recently, and I find I move way more stuff through SLB already. They both have issues though (for me anyway).

My evaluation:

Customer service seems excellent on both.

SLX has a better vendor box system. Being able to use multiple boxes with the same merchandise is useful given sim unreliability.

SLB is cheaper to use (free!).

The SLB keyword system can limit what you can say about your product without having it fall down the search list because of the search algorithm. If you set up your product wrong, you'll get shunted to the middle pages of search results and nobody will see it except by accident.

The SLX system is heavily biased towards popularity and high prices. You can pay extra for a front page listing that almost guarantees hits, but without that, a moderately priced product can get shunted to the middle pages pretty quickly. Personally, I don't like the feeling of having to raise my prices to get noticed.

SLB does make a lot of spurious hits because some word or other happens to be in the product name or description or something. OTOH, being a new merchant with middle-of-the-road prices, I find that getting noticed is much easier on SLB.

Most of my sales are still in-world though, by orders of magnitude.

Overall, my impression is that neither online selling system is particularly good. Often it feels like you have to game the search system somewhat to get your product noticed.

Used SLB alot and loved it until they lost some money I deposited at their ATM. Sent all the info to them with the SL tracking number 3 times, but never got a reply, or a credit. Kind of a shame, because it worked well up to that point. Cheers.

I have used both however the one I like more and I think more people know about is SLExchnage. They are the big one out there. The only thing I would say to watch our for is two things. First make sure your logged into SL and not in busy mode when you purchase something or it might now get to you. Also SLExchange does warn you of this. Also watch what your buying on there as there has been alot of stolen items on there as of late from that damn copybot things that was running around for a while. Just check product comments and you can tell from that point.

Well, I do decent enough business on the SLEx, though most of my sales are still inworld. I do like having a link I can give people outside of SL to buy a product.

About a month ago, I finally got around to listing on the SLB, and put up about half my products, but have yet to sell anything more than some of my freebies. I imagine I should put the rest of the items up, but I scarcely see the point.

Quite obviously, some people here have had the exact experience, though, and I can't argue with the cost!

I think it really just depends on what you sell. I do nothing but prefabs and my sales are not as good on SLExchange as they are in world but thats because with builds people want to see them and walk through them first so its really a hard call. Its odd sometimes on the sites too. I will go through ups and downs. Some times I go two or more days with no sales on there then all of the sudden I sell 4 or 5 in one day.

I used to be on both.

I stopped selling on SLX when the sales weren't worth the bother of updating and when AC became involved in it.

Then again the sheep aren't that great either.

For buying stuff, I search SLB because there is more junk to sift through on SLX. Then visit IW before I buy.