Ok SALES have even got worse?

Hmm, I suppose I've noticed the slump too. My less expensive items still go pretty regularly (I assume others shop like me - "Oooh, cheap! I'll have that as well - and that, and that...) but the larger sales are noticably lower. Time to pimp me wares, I spose.

Let's all aid the economy by going and buying something today. You don't have to join in, but I'll take the excuse *goes off to be a good little consumer*

I would say that my sales are down about 35% to 40% so far in April from March and February. I sell both hats and furniture in side by side stores. What I have noticed is that the hat sales are steady and may have even gone up...... but the furniture business is almost dead.

I think the observation about the demise of first land is on point. There are so many new residents...... who don't own land. These new residents (who contribute almost nothing to LL's bottom line other than the transaction fee to buy the few L's they need) are only buying things for their Av. No land means no furniture or prefab buildings or landscaping.

If its casinos its wont be gamblers who have less money. (on average)

It would be the owners and employees and associated campers.

The caino advertizing budget went to Linden Labs - so that wont affect our sales.

However there might have been a fair number of emplyees affected.

I think it has to do with wonky Search results making it difficult to find items and/or stores. It's worth tracking your weekly Classified results in your spreadsheets.

I also think that, related to Search, the PG/Mature issue is affecting if your store is found at all. Personally, I moved one shop that would have required Mature and turned my whole sim PG.

The billing issue is, obviously, a big one, but not one retailers have any control over.

The Chinese farmer plague has hit SL too?
when i was playing world of warcraft, the chinese had famring bots that would farm all the best grinding spots and then sell the in-game gold for hard cash(illegal in WoW)

Ive seen a documentary about chinese gaming sweatshops where kids work 12 hour shift farming any MMO's in game currency to sell for money....they have brougt down whole economies on some servers in world of warcraft!

reminds me i need to finish PG-ifying my Vendor Pictures.

As a new user (1 week) I'd love to go shopping, but I can't.

Besides camping or chasing money trees, the only ways I know of to make L$ in SL are buy them, which I can't do even though I've updated my credit card info twice, or by selling items, which I can't do because I can't get the L$ to rent the land/retail space.

So, I spend my time building things and chatting with people I've met. To me it's like not much more than a Lego play-group.

I guess I'm the exception... my sales did drop on the last round of BadSales, but they've come up. Lately it's been pretty good overall, but it does seem a little erratic (less consistent, and less spread out - sales coming in bunches of the same product). Mall sales have been almost zero, and my PG-search location doesn't even move my freebies very much. It hasn't been going on long enough that I can draw any solid conclusions but my gut says that drive-by shoppings are down for me, while targetted shoppings of people after specific products is up.

LoL thats the best interpretation i've seen of Second Life in a long while.

Sales have been steadily increases for 2 years with each month exceeding the last and other than a few slow days after the last update, i've not noticed any overall decline.

maybe it`s because there are other shops where ppl went to instead of ur`s?

haven`t been really shopping for a while but spent all day looking for stuff i wanted and saw better, worse & better again till i hit a sho where i spent a good amount of money at and then again blaze shopping for myself and a gift for a friend.

maybe time to update some products?

No one mentioned this, but I think it is a factor: flood of freebies.

Why buy when you can get for free. Even if the item is inferior, not paying is better for most folks. These "businesses in a box" that people buy, then fail at making money, wind up in freebie piles.

this is a big issue - I hope they fix the billing soon.

How many times do they need to fix it? It seems it goes down once a month.....

Add me to the "sales is way down" list. Heard the same from others lately, too.

Mari

They must have done their homework before they hired this new billing company.

you know, like - did their homework in the hall 5 minutes before class by copying off someone else's paper, dodging local PDA's

Copying from someone "Stupid enough to hide their own Easter Eggs"?

You know your going to get in trouble if you copied your paper word for word off someone and you BOTH got the "Name:" question wrong.

My shop is attracting more and more customers. Now I am at a point that I immediately see if something's wrong in SL. Could be tp and search issues or simply lag and very very slow rezzing. At such times I just don't see anyone in my shop, where I normally always have good traffic every part of the day. At such moments I quickly ask my friends if they have issues at the moment and the answer always is yes.

So right now there IS a problem (again) in sl. I can hardly get any work done because things don't rez. Let's hope it's just temporary. Hang in there!

Exactly but then that has always been my policy, if it isnt copy especially for expensive items i will not buy it. other than non scripted furniture or something along those lines.
and Lilith Heart and my obsesison with her work, LOL

My sales have been slow also BUT all my COPY/MOD items have picked up gradually.
as for land rentals, we have 6 sims that are nearly full, we have 2 openings which normally fill by themselves with no advertsing other than word of mouth from our residents, usually it would be full sooooo read that how you will.

I`m on a mature sim, my sales are soaring.



But, also keep in mind, many can not buy lindens right now = no money to spend.

slowed down for me too, was getting steady sales then over the past week or so, hardly any.

was thinking oh lord don't tell me, my stuff really sucks,, but... I still get the occasional sales, and am always adding new stuff, sometimes 2 or 3 things a week.

strange though, I thought the shoes I made would be good sellers but they just sit there

and I am not charging an arm and a leg, only a toe and a finger (200L is not bad for a pair of shoes or boots)

at least I did not think so...

I have plenty of ppl say omg I love your outfit where did you get it then I tell them I made it and sellit at my store, give them the LM and they never buy...

why ask?

heh anywho nice to know I am not alone in the matter

Billing is messed up. I know at least yesterday was extremely laggy with no textures loading. I look the the Lindex and see how many Lindens where bought that day and lately its been lower and that tells the story.

You would think LL would be on this billing issue a lot faster considering they are in high interest of selling as many Lindens as they can for Supply Linden.

Your sales are probably down because once more classified ads are not renewing, LL seems incapable of fixing anything and having it stay fixed.

There has been a real sea change in SL (literally); the user population is becoming much more international. In the March statistics, US residents are less than 27% of the active members -- that's a 5% drop from February!

Germany and Brazil are big growth areas right now. Those are both countries where the SL residents mostly speak their own languages, not English... and that probably means that they shop primarily in their own language areas. So the issue may not be that overall business is dropping, but that it is shifting away from English-speaking areas (and thus away from most of the people posting to this thread) to other parts of Second Life.

It may be time to consider active marketing to speakers of other languages. Ads in other languages, multilingual store signage and vendors, perhaps satellite stores in other areas. And if you can speak other languages (or find assistants who do) and provide customer support in them, even better.

That's a great idea, I hadn't considered multi-lingual locations. I've certainly noticed an increasing number of my customers don't speak english.