Disheartening

I've resisted the urge to jump in on the "Mature" problem in search, but really am starting to wonder. I've had a 4650m shop since November and have enjoyed modest sales since opening. Last weekend my traffic dropped to below 20 and this weekend was zero! What's happening? I have a classified ad, but haven't posted to forums in a bit ,but have in past. That's not the issue. I can't imagine what would completely kill "foot traffic". Anyone else take a hit? I picked land in a mature area because I didn't want to limit myself, but with the recent developments, methinks this was the wrong approach (who knew last June?! I've been thinking for a few weeks of selling land and moving shop to PG.
Anyone try this with a positive result? If so, should I kill my 3 other locations in Mature malls? They've completely died too! Seriously...OMG, WTF!? This is my first weekend since I've opened my shop to not at least sale a single $L75 bikini or $L50 pair of pumps!

I tested this out a few weeks ago

I have land in both PG and MAture, Exact Same Classified ad on both, same price on both, 60l i think

everything is identical

Mature gets 2 to 3 TIMES as many TP's as my PG land

BUT Pg gets more sales ...(figure that one out)

My test has been runnin for two weeks now and everyday its the same

more ppl goto mature land shop then pg land shop but pg make more sales....

Wierd but true.....

As for your problem? maybe the database lost your ad for a day or so

Good Luck

Hello Jax, according to the official blog, this weeks update should fulfill the rest of LL's promise about tagging by mature content rather than mature land.

On the other hand, there have been immense inventory probs the last few days in addition to TP-ing so businesses have probably taken a hammering anyway

Yeah my sales had just about recovered - then theyve slowed again since the grid attacks and the rest.

yay.

I did a not-as-controlled test a few days ago: I bought a small plot of PG land, made a skybox and listed in 'places' only. The long and short of it is that I do get some traffic there, but not nearly enough to make a difference to my bottom line.

@Jax: Sometimes I have days that are just bad - my best days outsell my worst days by a factor of 10 or more, easily. OTOH if this is a consistent problem, you may have a weakness in your marketing strategy. It could be *something* that you do that brings in the bulk of your business/traffic that is no longer working. How is the traffic of your malls? If that's low, then it's mostly a mall problem (time to change malls? maybe they need to work on their marketing?). If the malls are doing ok, but your stall in particular is not, there could be some local competition or something. Traffic of 20 is pretty low, that's a level you can get just from fly-bys. Maybe your sim was broken/heavily lagged for a while?

I have purchased very little recently. Between database problems that prevent me from purchasing Lindens, problems with search and teleporting, and all of Second Life seeming to get slower rather than faster, my buying impulses have usually died down before I have been able to close a purchase.

Check out if a casino recently opened nearby or some other reason causing too much lag or making the sim full. Unless someone really really wants to buy a product they cant get anywhere else nothing makes a customer leave quicker than bad lag. Its just too annoying, also make sure no griefers have been targeting customers, but if not maybe add a lucky chair or a bid auction box or freebies to bring in customers ? Or it could be advertising try putting more info in your ad to let others know what what you are selling, if that fails have a sale and advertise it , or create an area where you discount discontinued items and tell people about it.

Elinah

The first two weeks of that latest update wreaked havoc on my sales as well, and on my traffic. I've had to shut down some mall stalls because of it.

Sales seem to be going up again...but not the same as it was before.

I've accredited it to competition, maybe...and with all these tp/transaction failures...to that too. And LAG! OMGWTF the LAG! Rezzing ANYWHERE is a nightmare...so that comes into it as well.

I don't want to quit my store, I love making my formals... hopefully these problems get resolved soon.

Was thinking of purchiasing PG land, but even those plots have gone up in pricing. But I don't know if that's a temporary fix or whatever...especially not knowing if LL will revert search back. I hate not knowing or having any control over my own land situation. Ugh!

Anyway, all I can offer ya Jax is that you're not in the same boat. I sypmathize, empathize and wish you the best of luck. I think we all need it at the moment.

Take care-
Elle

Thanks for the responses. At least I know I'm not in it alone. I don't want to give up my shop either. I bought the land when I first started SL and lived on it. Since then, all of my old neighbors have moved away, but it's still centimental. I don't mind the tier and my house is on an estate SIM. I'm trying to hold out. I never intended my SL career to be anything but a creative outlet. When someone buys something I mostly flattered. I just don't want to waste time holding on to a dead parcel. We'll see what happens after Wednesday's update.

Yes, same here...I'd love to make what I make irl...but me and sewing machines equals MAJOR DISASTER! LOL!

And yes, I feel very flattered when someone thinks my stuff is good enough to even purchase, considering all the other great makers in game.

I'm holding out until someone from Linden labs says anything more concrete.

So, what do you sell?

For the record, "sim" is not an acronym. It's just short for "simulator." And "sim" doesn't just refer to private estates. Every simulator in Second Life, whether mainland or estate is a sim.

Most people just call private sims islands, and mainland stuff "mainland sims" (I've also heard people in real estate call mainland "no covenant" land to highlight the difference between ownership in mainland vs. islands.)

Also, PG land seems to be selling at pretty much the same list prices as Mature these days. It's certainly not rare, and can easily be had for experimental purposes if nothing else.

Yes, sales were noticeably quiet this weekend. Friday was my second best day ever, which offset the quiet weekend nicely. Considering my prooduct lines, it has not been surprising to see a downward trend lately. What is surprising is that the downward trend has not been nearly as severe as I had expected. I'm still exceeding my weekly targets with only 2 classified ads and one store.

Do examine your advertising strategy and note any recent changes in competition or neighboring plots. But also remain optimistic, because lots of residents still need to buy lots of stuff

Jax, I was in your store the other day buying something and there was a ton of lag. I already knew what I wanted so it didn't prevent me from buying something, but if I had just wandered in off the street I probably wouldn't have waited.

You make beautiful clothes and deserve to be successful. Hopefully the lag problem won't be ongoing--
Good luck!

This may or may not have anything to do with this issue. But for the past 5 days or so I've not been able to teleport to half the places I try. I'll look up something in Search, see a shop that sounds good, and fail to teleport there multiple times. I'll move on to the next search result that looks good, and probably not get around to visiting the others for quite some time, especially if I find what I'm looking for.

Not to mention I'll immediately leave an area if it's too laggy. I wonder how many sellers think about the negative effect camping chairs have on their business. Doesn't seem like they do.

Well all us new starters from Xmas have got everything we wanted to buy now so are now learning to make stuff so we can open our own shop to compete against you and to add more empty malls to the overabundance of land.

LOL well some of us have no motivation as yet to create so still trawl the shops and malls but when the lag gets so bad that you can't even turn round without losing the cursor for 5 seconds or more, then the motivation to shop wears off too.

Yes, many tp's from search not working first time round .. but I usually retry sometime later.

More or less full time SL consumer here.

SL was unplayable this weekend and a lot of my friends (also hard core consumers) haven't played the last couple days because of the issues.

Hopefully the major issues, like inventory, teleporting, lag, attaching items, rezzing things will be resolved in the near term to the pont that enjoyment > frustration again.

I would attribute any sales decline since the weekend to stability issues before I assumed that it had something to do with the type of advertising you're using.