Advice on Sales!!

If you like I can let you set up in one of my roadside shops for a little while, I have one not in use at the moment I would charge 200L per week for a roadside 512sqm if you get settled and make sales there, but the offer is a free trial for a week or two, to see how you get on.
Which will work out less than a premium account payed monthly.

Hi Amar,

You've gotten some great advice so far. Here's my two cents on two different background options.

Option 1: Do a solid color background (I usually choose all white or all black). You can do this by creating a large box to set your items in, color the box white or black and then make it full bright. This makes the corners disappear. This allows your items and your store name to "pop" off the background.

Option 2: Set your bridge, gazebo and table/chairs out in some beautiful garden setting and take a stunning picture that gives the buyer an idea of what they might look like in their own garden setting. Put a solid strip across the top of the picture and set your store name/logo in that strip.

Just ideas...take 'em or leave 'em.

Cheers!

~ Desi

I actually read it the same way as Rha did. Somehow maybe the eyes are traveling that way. I would try perhaps making the letters the same red as in your bridge. That might be "too" much, but worth a try

ETA: Woot! You tried red for the lettering before I posted this (and before I read your post)! Definitely think that adds color and ties it in with one of your items in the ad.

Oh Marcel! I am so, so sorry to hear that.

/mumbles lots of bad words

I know you'll bounce back, but the *#$&YU%_$&# scum people who do stuff like that just is unbelievable!!!!!

I actually was going to say this as well (about always liking your original logo) but since you were asking for input about the other one, I did.

Love the white background....but i would take each item and photograph it undividually or by the set. So many things in one pic does not give me the ability to see the detail that i want. just my two cents amar...you are better than me...I photograph nothing lol

Well I did AR the dude, and do not expect to hear from that one again. Dropped a notecard to both the new owners (a land rental group), they were accepted and no news from there yet. Since the landgroup of "P & K Enterprises" contained 79 members (excluding the owners) they probably receive dozens of requests like mine.

Though I intended to tell this after it was final: Both my businesses will move towards a homestead. May take a week or so to get this arranged, but the furniture business will use 1/4 sim, the plants business 3/4 sim. Since it is all pretty light commercial, I am convinced this is the best way to go for me. Even though I think the homestead pricing is a scam compared to the full sim prices, I need the space more then the prims, so not much of a choice.

So yeah, I will bounce back. About 6k plus a 2k useless classified lighter, and an experience richer We read about these practises on the forums often, this time it is me who got scammed. Sitting down and whine is pretty useless, so I will move on and expand as I already intended to do.

Envy me fellow merchants: Over 100 items in XStreet to change (landmarks to my store), a succesfull furniture store to move, and redesigning my plants store

yeeee I don't envy you at all Good luck with it, hope everything goes smoothly.


OK all, I need opinions and advice. I am seriously considering hiring someone to write 'ad copy' for me. There are a couple ways I can do this: I can give them copies of each outfit they write the copy for, or I can give them a texture with my ad layout and let them write the ad from that. I write my own now obviously but I find my descriptions to be somewhat flat. Some people are more gifted that me at writing nice descriptions (well, not some...more like A LOT). Here is my question:

How much would be a fair price to pay if they also receive a copy of the clothing for free to write a description from? And if they worked from the ad itself instead, what would be the best way to pay and how much would be fair to both them and me? I have thought about a weekly rate (with a cap on how many I would give them in a week - don't want it to end up like most RL salaried positions that offer a good salary but expect 120 hours a week out of you and the good salary ends up being a slave wage). Another option is a per-ad rate.

All opinions are welcome.

Last night i was replying to Desiree when i lost my internet connection- til this morning..

so -

I like the gradient use of greys and black in your advert Desiree -

I will work moreon this since I too am not enamored of it- thanks again all for the input and contributions- eku sent me a lovely work up also.

All I can say is that I had the picture that is now my parcel picture, made by someone. Had 2 different ones made, one 2:3 and one 3:2 (one is for a magazine). Payed 500 linden per picture, and the person did create a few ones before I said it was what I wanted.

well I am fairly satisfied with the ad pictures for my boxes, but it's the descriptions which are kind of flat.

I mean like on XStreetSL, forum ads, etc. I end up sitting there staring at the keyboard thinking 'what can I say that would best describe it or enhance the appeal, or make sure that the person looking sees details/features?' And the problem is, it takes me too long and I'm drawing blanks most of the time. For example I might have a minidress on XStreetSL and all I can come up with is "cute black minidress". blah. And I can look at a competitor minidress and they have a whole paragraph with all the bells and whistles.

While I do usually manage to come up with something that I can use, the problem is the amount of time it takes me to do it. I've been thinking for a while about just flat out hiring someone who could write a nice, descriptive paragraph. And while yes, I could take the time and sit there till I figure out something ok, I would prefer to hand it to someone and have them write something I can use. It's time consuming enough to have to photoshoot, set perms, box, install on SLL (I guess this is what LL is calling XStreet?), change out mall stuff, etc etc., and all the time I have to put into that takes away from what I really want to be doing (making stuff!). I'm lucky enough to have a partner who manages a lot for me (keeps track of mall rents, checks all my work, checks shops to look for probs etc.) but I have a hard enough time trying to get him to throw away the freebie mis-stretched jeans he's been wearing for a year now, I don't really think he's the right person to write my ad copy hehe

Me too and it drives me mad.

Maybe theres a niche market for panel and sales copywriters in SL?
interesting..
I usually end up writing something tongue in cheek and then toning it down.

Ralektra, I can answer, at least from my perspective, one part of your question.

Creative writing is actually one of my skills - I used to work part-time for a local magazine, did some tech writing, just love to write in general. Writing the text for my classes is part of the fun of teaching for me. However, I have too much on my plate atm trying to get my business going so unfortunately I can't offer doing that. (Will keep that in mind as a possible niche business though...glad you brought this topic up.)

Now on to my answer - I honestly have no idea what a fair price would be but as for giving someone an outfit vs the photo from which to write the copy, I personally would prefer the photo. For me, and possibly other writers, the particular outfit may not be something the writer would personally choose. That offer could also potentially limit the pool of people who write copy.

The ideal arrangement would be to find a copywriter who adores everything a particular merchant sells and would love to write in exchange for the clothes, but I'm the type that likes one outfit from one merchant, one from another, but not the entire line from any one merchant and I suspect there are others like me.

I'll be interested to see how that works for you...if I get frustrated being a business owner, I might just decide to go that route.

Blogs:


Ok so I FINALLY got myself a blog YAY!

The thing is I dont really know what to do with it?? I mean I know i need to update it with items I have created recently and i know about the fashion planet and have asked to be added to it but what else can i do??

How do i add people to the list of other blogs i like or seomthing?

What else can i do with it??

Any ideas??

You ask other people to add you to their blog, and you add them

Give me the URL in IM and I'll add you to mine

how do i add other people's URL's though??

I looked but i couldnt find a way to do it. i must be missing something

Take a look at mine- see if it serves as some sort of guide. It's in my siggy

Post a link to it

And link to it from any xstreet listings you have. I would also add it to your inworld profile, under the web page (homepage?) tab. I am a profile reader, and when people have a website listed I usually open it up and have a look. I've ended up on several product blogs this way.

As to what to write.....I am pretty awful about that. I keep mine almost exclusively as a place to talk about new products. It's a great opportunity to display lots of pictures and write lengthy descriptions of products. I'm also sure to have a slurl to my mainstore somewhere near the top of the page. I want someone who DOES find it to be able to quickly scroll through and see lots of product photos to get a sense of what my inventory is.

Since I sell furniture I don't think it gets too many hits, but any hits are a good thing.

http://eclecticapparel.blogspot.com/


This is it

But i still have no idea how to add other people's blogs to it like honey's

I use blogger too. If your set up works like mine, try this...

From the blogger dashboard, go to layout.
You will see boxes in the main text column and the side column you have on the right, representing the arrangement of your blog.
The top box on the right should have text that says "Add Gadget."
When you press that you will get a popup with all sorts of nifty gizmos you can list in that right column.
In the Basics tab you can choose either the Blog List or Link List gadget.
Once it is in it will have its own box on the layout screen.
You can edit that, and add your links.



BTW, I would add a simple gadget of some kind in that column where you list your slurl too.

Ohhhh thanks Nim!!!! I will play with that later on

At my free texture shop I get a lot of non-English speaking types, so I thought I was covered by having national flags on the walls which gave out translated instructions. After I got my 3rd offer to provide a Spanish translation I realized this wasn't enough.

the name for each flag was "LM and notecard giver" - I'd just shift+dragged from my original notecard giver and put a flag texture on it without too much thought. I changed it to the first line of the translated instructions (something like "How to access the free textures" and put useful text in the description. I also made a few other changes in line with this, all to make it more obvious there were translated instructions when you moved the mouse over various prims

In the past week, my tip income has doubled.

Maybe you want to take a look at my free language kiosk, available at Xstreet SL: https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1328062



Thanks!