Advice on Sales!!

Just an update on seding quick im to those who shop in my storeto thank them and offering to add them to my update group.

It is going REALLY well. At this point I am having around 35% say yes to the invite. Im also making note in every profile about if i asked so if they dont say yes and come back and shop i wont bug them a second time and i can just send a thank you im next time with no mention of the update group.

My sales have picked up siince I did this and even without a new release yet I have seen those i have contacted returning and picking up more items. The IM seems to remind people about my store. Also gives them a chance to chat to me andI have made a couple of new friends out of it (and found out one or two small issues like an outfit was missing a layer).

Found the type of AFK thought bubble I needed:

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1370521

I can change what it says so I can customize it on the fly for if I will brb or gone for a longer time.

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That Answering Machine I received from a DNS designer is great! I put one up at all my shops with the gift inside. I will be curious to see how many people actually leave a message for me. (It is a tool to see how people found my shop - then gives a gift if they respond.)

I'm really enjoying receiving the DNS gifts. I plan on participating as a designer, but still trying to get my Main Shoppe a little more finished first.

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Thank you for sharing the success you're having with contacting customers, E. I've always wanted to send some sort of thank you to new customers. May give this idea a go.

Daros and I completely remodelled the mall last night. It now has a grunge theme and we have a lot more room to place everything. In fact, we actually have empty areas that we can expand into, which is unusual for us!

I've made a grunge-themed group gift that I'm going to place in the mall, and when Daros logs on today I'll ask him if he wants to add to it before I send the notices out.

Busy busy!

update:

I entered two hunts, plenty of the hunt items going out, but sales are dead (and by dead I mean zero sales)

Hitting that point again of why bother...
was discussing it with hubby last night and I am gonna give this one last try. Starting monday, each day I will be releasing a new item, with notices sent to the group, and posted in various places and also update my own blog (even though most days it has zero hits)

I am at a loss as to what else to do.

I rebuilt the store a little bit ago, but fear the new build makes it even more difficult to shop. People seem to like the more open space feel, so now I am debating if I should redo the shop again...

I hate feeling this way... when sales are low I start questioning the quality of my work. (even though in my heart I am sure it is good quality, I still end up with doubts)

I entered the sellers network thingy, and even though my samples are going out, I do not seem to be getting any sales from that either.

I do wonder if it is just that my stuff has become stale, which is why I am planning the 1 new release mon-fri each day, to see what happens.

*sigh*

I wish I knew how others do it.

I think one of the biggest things for me is keeping my product current, release something new every week if I can, put out the new release along with a sample and call my groups (shoppers and freebie groups) once a week. Aside from that, I use Midnite Mania boards, and belong to three active MM groups. I can call my boards two or three times a day on those groups, and keep a flow of people coming in until the boards lock down (except for times when the group chat is all BROKEN like now). But I really think you hit the nail on the head when you talk about going 'stale' (for lack of a better term). You should try to release something at least once a week and make sure you get a notice out to as many groups/people as possible. Keep your blog updated too. I don't even know how many people go on my blog, I don't count...quite possibly no one. But I still update it when I have something new (it also gives me a nice date record of past releases if I want to look something up). It's hard to get people to visit your blog when everytime they go there, they find no new posts in the last several months. After a month or so, I would just not bother unless I had a way of knowing there had been an update.

There are two ways of looking at it I suppose. The first is that you create because you enjoy it, Art for Art's sake etc., and you don't care if anyone buys it or even likes it. And you create or not, as the whim strikes you (YOU being people in general, not you specifically). And if you prosper, all well and good, if you don't, it doesn't matter, because you are doing what you enjoy.

On the opposite end, you push yourself to create, and to market yourself every way that you can think of. You keep your name out there for people to see and eventually recognize, you try to find where your advertising dollars are well spent and spend them.

There are several places in between of course depending on how hard you are willing to work at a hobby. While I do try to market myself and keep my shop updated, I don't work as hard at it as some others do. Will those others be more successful than me? Yup. Will I be more successful than someone who doesn't market themselves at all? Yup.

Look at it this way. Let's say that we all make our product with the same degree of professionalism. All of our seams match, all of us innovate, all of us try to make our product look good. Once our products are all of equal quality, what is the thing that will determine success for some and failure for others? Marketing, pure and simple.

I think in essense you are right but I dont think sales purely come down to marketing, but i DO think it is a big factor.

I have come to work out it lso comes down to voluume, the more you have avaliable in your store for people to buy the better chance you have OF someone buying.

Rha if your products are harder to see from one position then yep id say switch out your store to make it easier, iwder open is easier for cam shopping which a LOT of people do. I have my shop set out so you can see 90% of the products from the landing point.

Rha get your newest items out to the bloggers. It does crete a buzz when your products end up on a number of blogs, people do notice. Also make sure your blog is syndicated with the fashion feeds and if they arent join i heartsl and use them to syndicate (i do that as fashionfeedofsl seems to be no longer taking on newblogs).

Another thing i like doing is asking my ore regular customers what they would like to see me make next.... and then i attempt to make it. It is a good way for me toget creative and work outside of my normal box annnd it almost garantees me a ale when it is finished hehehe. I always give them one colour for the idea but they almost always buy all the others. And usually tell their friends about the item e! made on their suggestion.

Tonight I am sponsering an event at a well known jazz club which gets great traffic. The DJs and managers are all avid shoppers of mine and love my stuff so iknow i will be well promoted. It is a chance for meto get my name out to a bunch of people i dont know and normally wouldnt have contct with and may not know abutme yet.

been doing some research and from what I have seen many people are using the premade template packages out there, then price their stuff super low, thus selling in volume

I don't want to use someone else's templates for clothing (I do buy (or did buy) sculpties as I just can not make those) but I can make clothes so won't buy the template packs -again- (I tried one template awhile back, just for the heck of it, and when I did use it, the results sucked, and it just did not feel right for me, so ended up making my own and it ended up so much better)

The hardest part for me, is traffic, getting people to the store, getting buyers to the store I should say.

Getting plenty of people there, from the record of the amount of the hunt items that went out (have not totaled them from the start but the other day it was well over 100 gone out, I am a high number in one of the hunts and the other had a lot that did not follow through, thus breaking the chain and sadly a lot end up getting screwed when people do that)

hopefully when they take the time to unpack, they like what I made and do come back to shop.
I probably will not do another hunt though, just seems like too much work, for so little return, especially since I could have spent that time making products to put out. (shrug)

I am going to try releasing at least 1 item mon, tue, thur and fri (not around on wed), and see how that does, also take the advice of Eclectic and send some stuff to bloggers (even though I know I will feel like I am being a pest) and hope for the best...

(I also plan to update the 2 blogs I use, my own and one that is part of another site, as well as see how to get into the thing Eclectic mentioned with blogs, and send out the stuff to different groups (such as fashcon, going to see if there are others like that, not the free ones as I do not put freebies in the store anymore, other than the hunt stuff)

also rethinking the store design... it does need to be more open.

*sigh*

I find i do rather well from hunt ovrall, but then i do look at them as revenue makers but more as exposure. Im right in the middle for the SL discovery hunt and im 69 for the OMg hunt the two ihave running at the moment.

For my hunt item i ALWAYS do an item i sll or iintend to sell but in a colour that i dont. It makes the item more exclusive as ill never sell the colour but also means if someoe likes it and comes back to the store i know for ure they will find at least one item theylike.

The first monthof the SL Discovery hunt netted me 1500 people who picked up mygift. Now thats a lot of people who have just found out about mystore. I also had a huge surge in people who joined myupdate group.

I dont understand the using of templates either, it is very easy to make the outline for an outfit.

I do sell my items reasonably cheaper than you (between 50L and 80L per colour) and i do think that does help net sales overall. I have been inceasig y clothing items a touch in price now, not much but I now have a rule of nothing under 50L. But part of that is i feel my skills are improving now to the point where i cn up my prices a little and still make sales.

I have however made a decision my items will never be sold at over 100L for any one item unless i get into intricate outfits rather than seperates. The other things I have done is as my single item prices increaseI m keeping my fat pack costs about the same. this means the fat packs actually become a much better deal, and hopefully increases the sale of them overall.

Rha i guess it really depends how far you want to go with marketing but there are a lot of thingsyou can do to increase exposure. I really do want my store to succeed and I work every day to market it in some way. One of my biggest pushes the last few weeks has been Xstreet. I now have EVERY item i ell on there in everycolour option etc. My ales on Xstreet have increased dramatically from this.

Templates are a tool like any other, I prefer to draw my own things but I'm not going to dun people for using the tools that are out there, I do think though that they need to learn to do the stuff themselves. But look at it this way, if everyone is selling the exact same top because they all bought the template, you will be the one who has something different (and therefore sought after).

not dissing anyone for using templates, I see it the same as using sculpt maps or textures, etc

I just dunno if we can compete with the prices (the quality on some fo them rock)

I decided to try something.. I purchased a template for clothing, going to use it and see what happens (of course, messing around with it in photoshop, by the time I am done it probably won't even look like the template I bought LOL

so far though, it has given me some ideas on how to do other stuff in photoshop, while I was messing with layers to see what results I could get LOL

(If you can't beat them... join them I guess)

(has become a semi template user... for this one anyway LOL)
(at least this time around, the template is of a much better quality, very close to my own personal standards for seam matching and such, which is a good thing)

Ohhhh Rha you mean the templated with the texturing and shading etc work already done on them???

Those to be honest I really dont like, most people who buy them simply put them on cothing layers as is and sell them, so yeah it is hard to compete with thatwhen obviously for those that make from scratch we have hours of work involved hehe

I thought you refer refering to the templates i have seen which are basically white blocks over the atarat shape of a top etc which wan be used to give a good shape for a top etc. Those i can see being veryuseful to those who cant match up seams etc but want to be creative

Will be interesting to see what you do withthe template. woud love to see a before and after shot when your done

heh yeah the ones with the shading and such

oh! I thought you mean the templates like chip midnight made LOL (now I know what you mean)
not the basic outline templates, but templates with actual folds, shading etc

after 3 years of making my own, I decided what the heck, let me try to see what I can do with someone else's (prior to this one) and well... it sucked and I ended up making my own item and shading and it came out much better...

Then after posting about it here, I decided what the heck, let me try again (after all the more tools at our disposal the better) so I picked up another one, and so far been having some fun with it (although waiting for the creator to send the psd files to see just how detailed they are.)

It is also interesting to see how people do the same things, in so many different ways, and it is a nice way to learn new skills and ways of doing things (this time the templates seem to be much better than before)

but yeah, it is hard to compete against that...

I can spend easily a week on one item, getting the folds just right, matching the seams perfectly (or as near as possible on SL), stuff like that... whereas those who buy the premade templates can crank out stuff in minutes.

(amazingly though, after helping out some folks by hitting some lucky chairs and midnight mania boards, I have actually gotten things from some of the bigger names that I immediately recognized as premade templates... heh) so I guess almost everyone uses them.

(I will post a "just add color" pic and a "after I got done with it" pic when I am done heh)

It depends how one defines "success." In especially Western cultures success very often equates to $. And for many, their SL business *is* their primary income and that is important.

When I owned land and I needed to make x amount of sales to pay tier, I was stressed most of the time and the fun of having a SL business was sapped out of me. I regrouped, sold off the land and the stress lifted immediately and I could enjoy SL again. A few weeks later, I was miraculously given a large shoppe, so I'm now working on items to fill it, but still without stress or pressure.

Also, I live with a chronic health issue that rears its head unpredictably. I can have the best of intentions to release something new weekly, monthly, etc., but become ill and all my plans fall by the wayside.

Now, I build, do ad copy, and promote on my good days...enjoy doing it and if I sell something...it is icing on the cake.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing I have learned in this little business/hobby is to not compare my work/products with anyone else.

yea the point kinda got lost in there somewhere most like because I run circles around things

I meant that if one determines their 'success' by their entity's ability to support itself, then they need to work to ensure the success. There are a lot of people in SL who create for the sake of art, and their own success would be determined by their personal satisfaction, and whether their 'business' makes money is irrelevant.

and for E, yes, the amount of stock that you have does make a difference...so I will reword that as well.

"All else being equal" what will determine an entity's financial success? Marketing.

there hopefully that helped clarify a little lol

I agree with the amount of stock thing....i can go into a clothing store and love the designs, but not love the 3 colors somethng comes in. or i can love the designs and already have something very similar. but if there are many things there, chances are i will find things i actually want to buy. that happened with me at E's. when E first came out with a few clothing items they were lovely but not my thing. now she has a greater variety and lots of colors and i find things i want to buy.

in my store...i try to make a ton of each thing...lots of diff textures and styles. but i stick to essentially a few items with just a huge variety. because of this I have become known for some items and people come and refer other people to me for those items. i also have a ton of people who tell me they have many of the same item since they liked the diff patterns etc. i find this works better for me than making a ton of different things. for example, i have prob 60 diff blankets out right now in several styles and many colors and patterns. same for curtains and blinds, but i dare say ive got near 100 of those. consequently i sell more blankets and window treatments than anything.

I was basically agreeing with you, Ralektra...just wanted to add the various ways different people define "success."

(I run in circles and can get a tad wordy...*grins* so I hear ya )

And yes...all things being equal...marketing is what I have personally found to be the main factor in selling merchandise. There are still a lot of avenues I want to explore within that area - great new thoughts on these forums ie. the DNS system.

what makes you (general you) decide to visit one store and not another (all thing being equal, even marketing)

what is it that makes you go... oh I need to go there, instead of this here one.

the things that make me visit a store are....they have an event listing in search, they send a notice via a group i am in - either a larger group like homestyles etc or the actual store group, i see something blogged that looks interesting, or i see an item in world and click on it or ask someone where they got it from. I also will do an all search for key words when i am looking for a specific item and tp from the search results.

If I go on the spur of the moment, then it will most likely be because of a blog. I rarely make impulse purchases but when I do it's because I saw something on the feeds and 'had' to have it. My new short hair that I love , one morning last week while having my coffee I checked the feeds and within 5 mins was logged in and at the shop lol. But I had never been there before, and if I hadn't seen it blogged, I wouldn't have gone and bought it.

I also watch the new product forums here and on XSSL, and if I see something I like I will go and buy it.

If I am looking for something specific, then I let my fingers do the walkin at XSSL, and when I find what I am looking for then I go to the shop in world. I discovered Earthstones when looking for a 'partnership' anniversary present, I found a neckace I liked on XSSL, went to the mainstore and um yea, I've been back probably 4 or 5 times Even Zep is onto it, when he wants to buy me a present he says 'comon lets go to earthstones' lol

Ok well lets take one form of adevertising : Fashcon.

Fashcon is a good one becuase there is large volume and you do havto weed out what you want to se and what you dont...

There are pretty much three ways you will catch my eye to click and open the notecard

1. You are a store i already know and love

2. You have a title that catches my eye and then a body to the message which catches my eye

3. You have a sale on and i notice it in the mesage or you have pricings that i will send in the message (i like messages ith the price in them)


These things get me to at least open the notecard. It still may not get m to th store depending on whats in thatnotecard.

If it has no pictures... chucked

If it just has pictures and no information like pricing etc ... chucked (unless its a store i know)

If there is a wall of text...almost always chucked

If i dont like what i see in the pictures .... bye bye



Now if you pass all that i might TP over hahaha

but if the notecard was the same info same quality etc as another store, what would make you pick one over the other (and saying you never heard of either one)

If everything is about the same, quality, form of advertising, etc, what would make you choose one over the other?

Personally, I wouldn't necessarily choose, Rha. If both notecards appealed to me, I would visit both stores. I receive many notices each day, but nothing forces me to choose one over another. No matter whether there are two or ten that appeal to me, I will visit them all.

I agree Skell


Rha the thing is nothing is EVER going tobe exactly the same... the way the notices are written could appeal to me differently... or maybe the pictures in one notecard appeal more than the other.

The thing is there are always going to be some people who dont like your work and others who do. YEs of course we are trying to make sure more peope find us and like us, but i think you are focusing on the wrong thing.

I personally think the best wayo get your name out there and get people interested is people seeing your work. Honeslty i still use fashcon etc but i dont think they are the best form of advertising ... in fact i think they are the worst as far as getting noticed goes. You are in a sea of around 100 to 200 notices a day.

Things like getting blogged, getting everything you sell on Xstreet, gettign epopel to wear yourstuff (all my friends get samples at some point as well as random strangers and random people who buy), having a few different satelite stores are far more effective methods as the first point of contact in all thsoe are pictures of your clothing... not just a notice that people first have to decide to open.

Different people find things in different ways. On a typical day when I feel like shopping, I will consult (among other things, and usually in the following order) - notices for groups I'm in, various freebie blogs, various fashion blogs and feeds, and then I'll TP around some of my favourite stores just to see if there's anything new out, or anything old that might go with something new I've bought.

The place where I usually tend to discover new stores to visit is the fashion blogs, notably (and obviously, for me) the male ones. I realise that for the much larger female clothing market the spread of bloggers is wider, but I simply can't imagine all those male bloggers find the sometimes-tiny stores they get their stuff from; it has to be sent to them by the designers, on the whole. So perhaps pick a few fashion bloggers that you read regularly and send them some of your best or newest items, together with a notecard similar to the one E detailed a few posts back.

Some will reply, some will not, but don't let yourself get discouraged if none of them reply or blog about your items. Fashion bloggers get inundated with offers and most of them will post once a day at most, cherry-picking the best of what they're sent and have found to put together their 'look for the day'.

It might be good to go for the smaller bloggers to begin with, rather than the big guns. You're more likely to get blogged by the smaller ones, and less likely to get discouraged than you would be if the bigger ones didn't blog you.

I hope that made sense. It's just before 5am here and I haven't fully woken up yet

Little question here for you folks in the DSN - I have received a number of nice things from fellow creators - how do i find out where if at all anyone has blogged TF? TIA~