has anyone else noticed a decrease in sales at their stores or vendors?
I do not consider my stuff junk, and I was doing ok selling, but now, (since the fubar with ppl being able to buy lindens) my sales have all but stopped.
Any ideas on why sales would stop like this, any ideas what to do to try to pick it back up?
I list in classifieds, I have a lucky chair, also have my stuff on slex and slboutique, I have the slex atm and ginko atm's in my store as well. and I have a bidbox set up and will soon be setting up a mobvend
my prices are reasonable (meaning not too high not too low)
I try to put out new stuff at least once a week, have a good selection, do not sell the business in a box stuff, these are all my own designs. I have a group that some ppl have joined which I announce new items to, as well as discounts to the group members when they buy from the in world vendor with group tag activated.
I have a few vendors placed in other places as well.
my store has been in the same location for over a year
so... after all that rambling, any suggestions on what to do to try to increase traffic and sales?
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decrease in sales |
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Rhaorth Antonelli
Registered User
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 7,425
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07-01-2007 12:19
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3Ring Binder
always smile
Join date: 8 Mar 2007
Posts: 15,028
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07-01-2007 12:25
i sell very little anyway, but i noticed about 3 weeks ago. this was mentioned about 2 weeks ago too. so i think it's everyone.
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Rhaorth Antonelli
Registered User
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 7,425
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07-01-2007 12:32
heck I even used some land next to my place (was my land sold to the guy I work for on the side) i turned it into a mini mall/free yard sale space to try to drawn some traffic in, and even that stands empty, no one even using the free yard sale spaces
what is happening with SL? why is it things are slowly dying away? or is it just me? |
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Dellybean North
Registered User
Join date: 8 May 2006
Posts: 321
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07-01-2007 13:00
..summertime weather maybe?
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Ravanne Sullivan
Pole Dancer Extraordinair
Join date: 10 Dec 2005
Posts: 674
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07-01-2007 13:13
I think its due to search being terribly screwed up.
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Tristin Mikazuki
Sarah Palin ROCKS!
Join date: 9 Oct 2006
Posts: 1,012
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Econ stats suck right now
07-01-2007 13:31
ya sales on all levels are really bad
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Desmond Shang
Guvnah of Caledon
Join date: 14 Mar 2005
Posts: 5,250
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07-01-2007 13:44
We just came off the most explosive growth SL has ever seen.
From about 500,000 users to six million in about six months, or in other words, there were 10 to 12 new customers for everyone on the grid. Considering that what, maybe 20% of the grid at best was a business when this started, the last several months have been of 'gold rush' proportion. So what would it take to sustain that overall booming market? A rise from the roughly 8 million users today to 80 million in six months - that would give the 10 to 1 ratios to keep the boom times "stable". It ain't gonna happen. Now, I've seen some accuse SL of being a scheme due to this - but it's not, any more than the North American West land rush was a scheme, or a new city's housing development is a scheme. There's a time and place when everyone needs new furniture when 10 square miles are turned to houses all at once, and never again will the home item stores be so packed. Long term, there will always be a steady market in land, items, so on and so forth... and land is by far the dominant market due to recurring tier fees. What is gone forever is the greater than 10 to 1 ratio of totally new consumers to businesses, and being the 'off season' right now doesn't help either. Wait until those northern hemisphere air conditioners start coming on, humidity reaches record levels, and then the plunge back into winter. I'm personally confident that there will be a boomlet in biz again in fall 07 (early Nov) sustained through about February/March, but that's just me and my gut instinct. Presuming no major crisis out of the blue, of course. _____________________
 Steampunk Victorian, Well-Mannered Caledon! |
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Ciaran Laval
Mostly Harmless
Join date: 11 Mar 2007
Posts: 7,951
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07-01-2007 14:10
I haven't noticed any pattern in my sales at all, haven't been at it long enough to be honest but yesterday I had a really good day whereas the previous Saturday was dead.
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Aleister Montgomery
Minding the gap
Join date: 30 Apr 2006
Posts: 846
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07-01-2007 15:12
We just came off the most explosive growth SL has ever seen. From about 500,000 users to six million in about six months, or in other words, there were 10 to 12 new customers for everyone on the grid. Considering that what, maybe 20% of the grid at best was a business when this started, the last several months have been of 'gold rush' proportion. So what would it take to sustain that overall booming market? A rise from the roughly 8 million users today to 80 million in six months - that would give the 10 to 1 ratios to keep the boom times "stable". It ain't gonna happen. Well, it's rather an increase from around 7,000 users daily, not altoo many of them being alts since the number of accounts per person was restricted to 2 at that time, to 40,000 - 50,000 users per day, a lot of them alts which are only quickly logged in to check for new IMs. We also shouldn't forget that a large part of the new users if not the majority uses unverified accounts, without the means to buy and spend noteworthy amounts of L$. I have two shops, one for verified residents willing and able to buy something and one for... well, the masses. Simply to keep my serious customers safe from griefers, naked newbies showing off their giant freebie genitals and sexual harrassment by unwanted IM pickup lines. I noticed that the number of verified customers increases very slowly, while the number of unverified visitors wanting to play with my demo toys shot through the ceiling in the past months. I also noticed that about 95% of my revenue comes from verified customers. And I noticed that the same names often show up in my transaction history, names that I already read a year ago. There aren't that many new verifed residents willing to pay for their entertainment. Most of the boom happens only on the paper (LL's papers). The increase of account numbers was caused by two things: elimination of age / payment info verification and elimination of the 2-accounts-per-person rule. I created (and paid for) only 5 new alts, but I know of others who created a dozen. And the newcomers who made camping chairs so popular? Mostly people who were unable to join before and are unable to get verified now. And not because they were adults unable to get a credit card or to sign up for paypal, which is a very unlikely case in the countries where SL is most popular. The statistic "US$ Spent Last 24h" on the SL homepage looks impressive of course. But every L$ transaction helps blowing up this number. Camping chairs, money trees, money paid by old accounts to their countless new alts... a lot of it is simply circulating. I don't say there is no growth at all, but it's much less impressive than one could think when looking at LL's statistics. |
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Desmond Shang
Guvnah of Caledon
Join date: 14 Mar 2005
Posts: 5,250
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07-01-2007 17:12
Well, it's rather an increase from around 7,000 users daily, not altoo many of them being alts since the number of accounts per person was restricted to 2 at that time, to 40,000 - 50,000 users per day, a lot of them alts which are only quickly logged in to check for new IMs. We also shouldn't forget that a large part of the new users if not the majority uses unverified accounts, without the means to buy and spend noteworthy amounts of L$. I have two shops, one for verified residents willing and able to buy something and one for... well, the masses. Simply to keep my serious customers safe from griefers, naked newbies showing off their giant freebie genitals and sexual harrassment by unwanted IM pickup lines. I noticed that the number of verified customers increases very slowly, while the number of unverified visitors wanting to play with my demo toys shot through the ceiling in the past months. I also noticed that about 95% of my revenue comes from verified customers. And I noticed that the same names often show up in my transaction history, names that I already read a year ago. There aren't that many new verifed residents willing to pay for their entertainment. Most of the boom happens only on the paper (LL's papers). The increase of account numbers was caused by two things: elimination of age / payment info verification and elimination of the 2-accounts-per-person rule. I created (and paid for) only 5 new alts, but I know of others who created a dozen. And the newcomers who made camping chairs so popular? Mostly people who were unable to join before and are unable to get verified now. And not because they were adults unable to get a credit card or to sign up for paypal, which is a very unlikely case in the countries where SL is most popular. The statistic "US$ Spent Last 24h" on the SL homepage looks impressive of course. But every L$ transaction helps blowing up this number. Camping chairs, money trees, money paid by old accounts to their countless new alts... a lot of it is simply circulating. I don't say there is no growth at all, but it's much less impressive than one could think when looking at LL's statistics. All of that is true - my personal indicator of a substantial boom is the grid land map and land stats. That's real money spent by real people or corporations at a fairly well known rate, and from that we can get a pretty good idea of the health of the grid and the Company in general. So far, since last year we are up a couple of major Company continents, a couple of major private continents (Anshe's, Adam's, and arguably Dana's and Alliez') along with literally dozens of minor continents and several hundred individual sims. Most of it is being utilised and all of it is being paid for by somebody. _____________________
Steampunk Victorian, Well-Mannered Caledon! |
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Tegg Bode
FrootLoop Roo Overlord
Join date: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 5,707
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07-02-2007 02:40
Hang around the Newbie areas a bit the most common question is how to I make money from this game, rather than what can I buy here?
"I'm not putting money into a game I can play for free" is pretty common too. I suspect a lot of the residents online are bots of some sort too, also there are so many retailers with empty malls, because not enough shoppers. _____________________
Level 38 Builder [Roo Clan]
Free Waterside & Roadside Vehicle Rez Platform, Desire (88, 17, 107) Avatars & Roadside Seaview shops and vendorspace for rent, $2.00/prim/week, Desire (175,48,107) |
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Sweet Valentine
Cupids I&D
Join date: 18 Feb 2006
Posts: 39
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07-02-2007 13:11
no one wants to spend money on items lindens will just lose and not replace people work hard for what they have and value what they have in SL when lindens are messing up inventorys every week losing peoples stuff who wants to spend money
my sales have dropped by 2/3 since may also which has made me realize SL is not a good place to run a business after all to risky to invest money on land and uploads or buying textures in game to support the economy ect when its as unstable as it is ....when u have a server that is down or not fuctioning for a web page 90% of the time its time to go shop f0r a new host with more stability and LESS bugs |
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Ceera Murakami
Texture Artist / Builder
Join date: 9 Sep 2005
Posts: 7,750
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07-02-2007 13:32
I have about half a dozen retail outlets for my clothes and furniture and miscelaneous items that I sell. I have minimal ads for each location, and they are dragging so badly in sales that I am seriously considering closing all but one of them, and retaining the last one just for 'old time's sake'. I am busy enough with building and texture making that I don't have enough free time to design much for these stores. Hard to get enthusiastic when sales are slow to begin with.
My texture sales, on the other hand, are booming. I have over 700 textures for sale at Textures-R-Us, with more available each month, and every day I am racking up sales in that area - enough to pay my land tier, and my daily expenses for myself and all my alts. Sim development sales (terraforming and building whole-sim or multi-sim projects, as Fox and Ground Construction Company) tend to be boom or bust. When I have a good contract, the money is great and comes in as fast as I can work the job. When I don't have a build in progress, it's flatlined - but it also doesn't really cost me anything, either. Right now, I have a good "Patroness" whos is paying me to build as fast as I can for her, and I have some other possibilities lined up with others when that runds dry. I've been in business in SL since late 2005. In close to two years of doing business here, I have seen the market shift back and forth a lot. To remain viable, you need distinctive, fairly unique goods or services that people want. It is no longer enough to be "just another dress maker". There's thousands of others out there, diluting the market. _____________________
Sorry, LL won't let me tell you where I sell my textures and where I offer my services as a sim builder. Ask me in-world.
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poopmaster Oh
The Best Person On Earth
Join date: 9 Mar 2007
Posts: 917
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07-02-2007 14:24
Last weekend, the friday before SL4B was my biggest sales day to date! w00t
otherwise they have not slowed much, in fact seem to be gettin better each week _____________________
InSL u find every kind of no-life retard you could possibly imagine as well as a few even Tim Burton couldnt imagine u find 12yr-olds claiming to be 40 men claiming 2 be women, women claiming 2 make sense and every1 claiming 2 have ideas that are actually worth a damn if only someone would just listen to their unique innovative and exceptionally important idea
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Zak Moore
Registered User
Join date: 3 May 2006
Posts: 4
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07-02-2007 14:33
has anyone else noticed a decrease in sales at their stores or vendors? As a matter of fact Rhaorth, I have noticed it just today. There has been a pattern to my sales daily and on the weekends. All of a sudden today, a sudden interruption that has me wondering what is going on. In addition, I haven't seen anybody on my friends list online today - when I've checked, of course...which is still odd that no one has been there. I am going to watch the rest of the evening (eastern time zone here) to see what happens. Otherwise, something seems a little screwy to me. Oh yeah...before I hear about the search...these stores do no depend on ads or classified searches for traffic flow/customers. Rhaorth, maybe later this evening things will get back to normal  |
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Raudf Fox
(ra-ow-th)
Join date: 25 Feb 2005
Posts: 5,119
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07-02-2007 14:42
*looks at the forums and sees a major reason for why sales might be lower than normal* It all starts with, "I can't use my Paypal to buy L?!" or "I got locked out of my account, since I couldn't use my Paypal to pay for my account?!" Seriously, these are people wanting to spend their money, but LL isn't allowing it. This is going to hurt sales because a lot of verified users don't want to use their credit cards after that fiasco last year and they were assured that LL accepts Paypal.
*shrugs* My two cents worth and opinion only. _____________________
DiamonX Studios, the place of the Victorian Times series of gowns and dresses - Located at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fushida/224/176
Want more attachment points for your avatar's wearing pleasure? Then please vote for https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1065? |
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Finora Kuncoro
Impish Stoic
Join date: 11 Dec 2006
Posts: 213
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07-02-2007 14:48
Same here, sales are way down. I've not been around long enough to blame the summer weather, but it seem plausible to me.
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<Now fully Trout Certified>
I give you a solid 8.2. You can come across as very pure if you want to, but inside, you're a dirty, dirty girl. Shame on you, and congratulations. Designer of clothes and owner of Built For Sin Designs. Come visit us at: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Centaur/5/85/399/ |
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SqueezeOne Pow
World Changer
Join date: 21 Dec 2005
Posts: 1,437
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07-02-2007 15:23
My sales have been pretty steady overall, but I did have to lower my prices considerably to match the "tax bracket" that most of the people that I met at my stores were in. A lot of people liked it but said they'd have to camp or whatever for a while before they could afford it.
I now make more than I did before and am able to pay for the game with my income! I R smart!  What this tells me is a combination of the "6 Million Alt March" on the main grid and land prices and SL performance vs. premium accounts benefits has made less people want to go premium to be able to have a lot of money. Admittedly if there wasn't First Land (like there isn't now) I probably wouldn't have gone premium when I did...if ever. I also had the benefit of being from a time when 5,000 people on at once was big time so things worked better, although there were fewer things to have work! I think voice and a few other features will generate more "quality" residents that can add to the economy but the performance issues will make the average person that's used to high quality computer/video games coming to SL alone say "what the hell is the point?" It's a tricky balance! I wonder if there is an economist for LL that pays attention to this stuff and advises accordingly... _____________________
Semper Fly
-S1. Pow "Violence is Art by another means" Visit Squeeze One Plaza in Osteria. Come for the robots, stay for the view!http://slurl.com/secondlife/Osteria/160.331/203.881 |
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Jax Huskerdu
Registered User
Join date: 28 Jun 2006
Posts: 250
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07-02-2007 15:24
Same thing here.
 Maybe the rush of sign-ins died down. SL is so big now that random searching and flybys may have lessened. I know I'm much more direct in my searches now, and know I miss a lot of the stuff I may have wandered into a year ago. The market is so flooded now too, that something has to be really good to catch my eye. I closed my main shop a month ago to slowly remodel and restablish a new "plan". Niche markets are great, but unless you're lucky enough to find a themed SIM to house your flag ship in, it's not a sure market either. I was makng more from a rental shop with only swimsuits than in my whole store at times. Think about breaking your stuff up to localize. Keep pluggin'. I do it for fun and it's a real hoot to log in ans see that someone's bought your stuff! If you're buisness model is good enough and you keep pushing yourself to improve and refresh, you'll build a core clientelle who'll tell others. I read the forums too and look for certain favorites. It's a great venue for getting your name out there. CHEERS! and Good Luck! _____________________
omigodileftthebabyonthebus!
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Tekelili Tantalus
Registered User
Join date: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
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07-02-2007 17:03
Those of you with dropped sales using Fastpay vendors? I noted this, went to my vendors, and have realized that they aren't payable. Using 12 panel Amythest multivendors. No idea why this is happening, or how to fix this.
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Johan Durant
Registered User
Join date: 7 Aug 2006
Posts: 1,657
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07-02-2007 17:05
My sales were way down Friday and Saturday, and then yesterday was my best ever single-day sales. I try not to pay too much attention to variations from day to day, because I just plain can't make any sense of the day to day variations. Looking at sales from week to week, I've not experienced any drop recently; April was the last slow period, but since then my sales have recovered.
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 (Aelin 184,194,22)The Motion Merchant - an animation store specializing in two-person interactions |
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Valerie Viking
Registered User
Join date: 2 Mar 2007
Posts: 93
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07-02-2007 17:13
Those of you with dropped sales using Fastpay vendors? I noted this, went to my vendors, and have realized that they aren't payable. Using 12 panel Amythest multivendors. No idea why this is happening, or how to fix this. Second Life residents Ruud Lathrop, Thomas Conover and Seronis Zagato, to name just a few, have noted a significant performance decrease in simulators grid-wide. Performance of all scripts appears to have dropped a full 50% across the board, since the rolling restart on Thursday. This appears to be impacting residents in subtle ways, including causing problems with twork vendors and security systems, and problems with the scripted orientation systems on Linden Lab's orientation islands. http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/07/02/residents-complaining-of-widespread-performance-drop/ |
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Jesseaitui Petion
king of polynesia :P
Join date: 2 Jan 2006
Posts: 2,175
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07-02-2007 17:17
by 50%? geeze. I wonder if that explains why my scripted guitar just stopped working one day.
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SqueezeOne Pow
World Changer
Join date: 21 Dec 2005
Posts: 1,437
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07-02-2007 17:26
That also may explain some issues I had been having this weekend...and I thought it was time to defrag and clear caches!
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Semper Fly
-S1. Pow "Violence is Art by another means" Visit Squeeze One Plaza in Osteria. Come for the robots, stay for the view!http://slurl.com/secondlife/Osteria/160.331/203.881 |
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Tekelili Tantalus
Registered User
Join date: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 84
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07-02-2007 17:27
Thanks for the insight Valerie, explains a lot!
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