Advice on Sales!!

Lol! Nothing- well- ALOT! In fact so much in the renaming alone- it skeered me It was a reflection of my being overwhelmed by your industrious nature is all *Can I hire you?*

Ohhh, whew...thanks for clearing that up, Amar.

I wish I could be hired to do organizational tasks in SL.

Now what I need to do is make more products.

Hey folks!!

I decided yesterday to axe my normal in world group for my store as i was finding minimal people would join it.

I had been looking at an IM mail system similar to the ippo and subscribomatic groups but this one has no on going costs regardess of the size of the group (you can send a message to 2500 avies at a time... so if you get more in the group youjust send the notice twice to two different lists).

Anyway it works off a notecard of names of avies and is really simple to use.

Since i put it in less than 24 hours ago I have had 20 people join my group. considering that was about the number of my group before i put it in this is huge.

anyway for those who might like to check it out

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=678446

E you got blogged yesterday

http://secondlifesurlaroutedesfrees.blogspot.com/2009/04/eclectic-apparel.html

ooh yay wow!!

I have no idea what it says cos it is in spanish????

But that is so cool. I have been blogged a few times recently actually. I have been working hard on advertising andtrying to get my name out there as much as possible

I think it is french but I'm not sure

It says "New shop for pregnant schoolgirls"

Pep (It's Andorran actually)

I was in a shop last week, looking for some new poses. Now usually when I shop, I go in, find what I want, and leave. I'm the same way in RL, not really much of a browser. So anyway, I'm in this shop and walked all around thru the whole place (it was Striking Poses), even upstairs where a few people have shops, then back down, and at the point where I was actually stopping to admire the artwork on the walls I thought..hey....

A violin concerto playing quietly in the background, and me walking all around checking everything out. Any connection? Well I realized that SOMETHING made me hang around for almost an hour in there (ok yes I bought some poses too ). Could it be the music?

So I went back to my shop, and I set the music on a classical station. And suddenly, it seemed like people are staying longer in my store...

So a few days ago I checked my traffic while hanging out in a friend's club, just for the heck of it...and my traffic was over 2k! The highest my traffic had EVER been before was like 700 or so, on a good day. I don't think I had that many more people, but I think that people stayed longer, really relaxed and walked around (like I did at SP).

So I'm passing this on, maybe I'm crazy, maybe it was just a fluke, I don't know, but it might be worth a try!

You not crazy and is not a fluke. Is ambience. And you are way onto it with this =)

Classical music works well with older people. Given that the average age of people in SL is approx. 34 there is a large number of older people. It is those people who are now coming to your place. Given the choice between death metal, muzak and say Strauss they much prefer Strauss. Also older people as a group have more leisure time and the money to enhance their time than other groups taken as a whole. And people do reward those who help to make their lives pleasant.

it was cool too, on Sunday it was Opera (does every classical station play opera on sundays??) and it reminded me of a job I had a long time ago. I was kennel manager in an animal shelter, and I kept the classical music station on for the dogs 24/7, and whenever I worked on Sundays I listened to Opera and wondered if the dogs liked it

Time for another up---date (stupid filter!!!!)

Somehow my new furniture store made it back to page one, so I have 2 listing there. The plants store is also on page one for the keywords I aim for, so I am happy regarding that part of business.

One conclusion drawn though: I still make more sales from my old main store, then my new one, since it is higher in search (#4, the new one #6). So I decided to keep it open for the time being, as long as the sales are higher then the rent, it is good business. So I quickly created a 'turnover by week by location' report in my sales database.

For the plants business all is going well too. Almost ready with the second quarter of the sim, which will result in about 900 different plants for sale. Probably will use the third quarter to sell '1 prim, 4 plants' setups, with the best textures from the 900 I collected .

As for advertising, I did renew the 2075 linden ad for the plants store as that gets me very good results in the listings (#1 for one keyword combination, #2 for the other one). About 15 Tp's a week, but also lots of exposure on the Search All page in the sidebar, makes it worth it.
Also purchased a Midnight Mania board, but so far it does not show much activity. Could be because I hardly promoted it so far, and the best known group for it (1900 members) was closed. Seems a good idea to get people to your place though, if I get to set it up right.

Then the move to my own Homestead. Probably not a good solution for most businesses, but definately for mine. Since I use only about 600 prims per 1/4 sim, I still have plenty left for the furniture, which is low prim as well of course. Just a lot of space to fill, just what I needed! And a perfect way of monitoring my scripts, got a few hundred running in my furniture store.
Monitoring script time brought me to an interesting conclusion: Those hippo vendors are quite the script time consumers. So in the end I might abandon them totally and sell the sets I have simply from prim boxes. The gift certificate system is hardly used anyway, so why bother.
Good thing is that my own furniture scripts are very good regarding script time! Hope that version 2.0, it it finally gets finished, is as good as version 1.0 regarding that script time.

Sounds like things are going great Marcel

Actually thing have been slowly picking up and are increasingly improving for me as well. I have continued to create more items and have been attempting to relese soemthing new at least once a week (not tht hard with the amount i create except that i hate boxing things up etc).

I joined the iheartsl.com blog as the fashion world of sl seems to have stopped adding new blogs. But iheartsl is linked to fashion world and anyone can join and blog on i heart so this has allowed me to showcase my stuff on the fahion world feed to huge sucess.

I also did the banner ads on SLU. To be honest i am not really sure they are having much of an impact however i have made at least that in sales the past few weeks so im not worrying about it. though i dont think the sales have really come from there, i cannot be sure.

I also switched out froma conventional SL group to a subscribe type group to HUGEEEEE sucess. In less than a week my membership to my group has quardrupled. In this time i havent had a freebie out to advertise or a new item so i suspect it will pick up again when i finish boxing up the new items i have to put out and advertise them.

I am also making an effort to ge my name out there. Dropping items on bloggers, freebies on the freebie writers. I am making a concious effort to get my items noticed.

So far this seems to be working i think. My sales have been slowly improving and I am seeing a LOT more traffic, which is fantastic.

Good news Eclectic!

Those banner ads I intend to do as well in the future, even though you can never say if they result in sales. Neither can spending 2k for a classified, though you can at least follow how many TP's it results in. But do not underestimate the power of exposure. The more people see your brand name, the better they will remember you. Thus, banner ads like the one you purchased always will work. The only real variable is the design of the ad, something you did put a lot of effort in.

That is the reason I am not doing them yet by the way: I do need a good designer for my ads. Knowing I am not too good at that part

I paid for the designing of my ads. I think that has helped a lot. I now have a template i work from for all my ads and i really think that does a lot to help sell things.

She also gave me huge pointers on how to shoot items to get them to look their best. Esp in regards to hardware settings etc. Which i had no idea about until she commented on them.

I am looking at a classified next. Im not sure about spending 2k on one but i really do need to at the mimimum put in a 50L one a week, i dont know why but i keep putting it off. Trying to find keywords which dont have the top at 50,000L is pretty hard unfortunately

I have decided I need professional help in the design thing too- done with attempts at shooting for ad boards etc. Need soon too- Homeshow coming up!
Recommendations?

Hmmm well Shane Giordano did mine but to be honest she hates doign ads with a passion, she did mine mroe as a favour than anything. Mind you what she did was amazing.

I guess it would depend on what yu wnted. If you just wanted a layout done she would probably be hppy to do it, but if you wanted your items shot as well im not sure she would be up for it.

Siobhan Quinnell is also another possibility. She does amazing graphics work and designed my logo. I suspect she would probably only do you a template base though as she definately isnt an in world photographer.. she works with graphics programs in rl and is a wizz with illustrator.

Really though once you have a template worked out the ads are sooo much easier to do yourself. I just take a pic, cut it out and paste it onto my template. She sent me all the fonts etc so i just use those and add in the text and save.

As much as it wd be nice to have someone do it all i suppose the template is the best option because then one is not dependant on another for production. I hate having to need something from someone because i don't like imposing.

/me nods

I hve found however that once youhave a template made up it really doesnt take too much time to whip up an ad.

Really it takes me around 10 minutes to put together a look for a shoot, 5 minuts to shoot, 10 minutes in photoshop and im done.

The boxing up on the other hand....

Do not bother to pay 2000 linden if it does not bring you in the top 5 (6) for a keyword that is important to me, it will be a waste of money.

For my furniture, I pay 151 for the classified, as that brings me at the bottom of page 1. Every linden payed more is a waste. Probably I already pay 101 linden more then justified though, but that is petty cash.

For my plants though, it gets me on #6 for 'one prim plants' and on #1 (or #2, not inworld now) for 'low prim plants'. Both very visible in the sidebar of Search All, especially because I also rank on page 1 there. So the combination of ranking and classified, makes my name very visible. As soon as for both keywords I would not rank 6 or higher, I pay no more then 50 linden, or I must be able to get higher for a reasonable price. 50k is not reasonable

yeah i agee. I need to basically look for keywords which i can use tht are within my budget.

I also need to finish optimising my parcel for search. However i had an issue with my store the other day when my items went poof so i need to re do some of the descriptions.

To be honest im still not sure what works best for optimising search but hey ill play around with it and hope i work it out

Hi all!



I started using the HippoGroups service a few months ago, and I agree adding a non-SL group really boosted membership for me too. My groups are very small, but the HippoGroup is FAR more popular than the SL group. I just had my first new product release in awhile over the weekend, and got the biggest sales response to a new release in the first 48 hours that I've seen. I have to think that the Hippo Group had something to do with that.

a couple of things about adding group members...two things I did that have dramatically increased my membership. one was to add the info about joining into the greeter msg that goes at in chat when someone arrives. the second was the offer group only weekly gifts. my group members have grown from about 45 to almost 500 very quickly. i also check to see if they are staying in the groups and they are. it makes it very handy for releasing new items to know that just one notice hits almost 500 really interested customers. i hit send and the start landing almost immediately and many have become friends since i see them just about every week. i have one SL group and one subscribo group and the membership is divided just about equally between them.

i also agree that releasing things on a regular basis helps sales tremendously. but i think that is true in world or on slex. the key is the have customers expect things and want to see them in your store. once they step in, chance are they will buy

I recently opened a satellite store at Cherry Park Mall.Sales have been good but last Saturday I was gobsmacked when this little 50prim shop beat my main parcel 2k+ prim in sales.
I must be doing something very wrong.

I'm doing really well at Cherry Park,too. WOW 2k + prims...I'm really glad I don't sell furniture lol! I have had days where my satellites beat out my mainstore too.

E and Nimue, did you keep your traditional groups and add the HippoGroup or close out the traditional SL one and go solely with Hippo? Also, from a bit of a discussion on this in the past, if I recall correctly, is there a website or some notification when a new member joins? Or at the very least a place to see your members - ie. a website.

Thanks in advance as I'm considering this as well.