Advice on Sales!!

The biggest I'll go is 512*512 too. For signs sometimes I go 512*256 since I am going to use it as a rectangle too.

Also, I've made a few textures that I use as little signs around the store to highlight certain products. Things like "new", "texture change", or arrows to point at something. I can fit a few of these on one 512 texture, and then scoot it around on the sign so I only have to pay for one upload. That way all the signs are really the same texture to be loaded even though what the customer sees on them is different.

Surreal thanks for that link, I had read Chosen's tutorial on transparencies and alpha but had not read this one. It's great! Lot of info there that I will be using, going forward.

Weeeeeeeeeeee i am STILL puting the new vendor script i got into every thing i sell in my store and boxing everythign up and doing the notecards.

It is a lot of work but I am already getting positive feedback from those who have used it and a couple who saw the signs I have up about it in my store but who were buying things I hadnt put the script in yet.

I really think the script will pay for itself pretty quickly as there are so many varying opinions on wanting trans or copy verions of the things we buy esp in regards to clothes and accessories.

Anyway it is slow and tedious but i think it will be worth it.

I would LOVE to see more transferable shoes on a personal note *giggles*



Regarding the textures? I generally do 512 by 256 for almost everything as most of my textures are for display boards and i dont like square ones *giggles*. The textures I make i vary between 525 by 512 and 512 by 256, but i only create from scratch about 1/2 the textures I use, although I usually eport the ones i buy and edit them t give my own flare before puttin them back in world for my stuff

In the Gimp class I'm taking, the "rule of thumb" our instructor gave to us is: use the smallest texture size possible, yet still large enough for the detail needed." She said a LOT of the slow rezzing in SL is due to people using way too large textures when smaller ones would have worked better. (She gave the example of people using poofers and all one sees for awhile are big gray squares - meaning they used textures too large.)

She is also a Master Jeweler and says she has used textures as small as 8 x 8. The first assignment we have (create our first texture and then display it on a prim) is to be sized at 256 x 256.

The ads in my shop are 512 x 512, mainly because I got used to using that size for uploading photos for my picks page. When I do new ones I'm going to try going with 256 x256 and see how that looks.

Did anyone try this out? I put one out last night but can't get it to initiate- (I'm Amaranthim- account probs- split personality disorder )

wow.....finally got to the end of this thread has taken me quite some time, think I was around page 60 when you and I spoke Rhaorth, and I know that was some time ago
Thankyou for the editing colour help as well....worked perfectly for my business partner, but am still not sure about downloading the latest viewer myself, my poor laptop struggles as it is and am in two minds whether to risk the latest viewer and possible functionality problems or not.

I have pages of notes and things to try out. Our business on sl may be considered by some to be big, coming up for second anniversary in December, but I have still found loads of good ideas in this thread. It is great to get perspective from others. If they are still being offered would love some reviews of our main store, but please bare in mind I only just finished reading this thread and have a ton of things to implement. You may want to bring a packed lunch with you too, our main store has gained a lot of weight since we bought our first piece of land and started on a 4096 plot, we just kept buying pieces of land and clearing the surrounding ad farms, to the point we now own approximately a third of a sim. The store is a bit of a maze and we are considering a complete rebuild, so any thoughts anyone has would be great before we hit the delete button. You can find the lm in my picks.....need to add slurl, slex etc into my sig here, is on my to do list though, honest

I have already visited quite a few of your stores a little while back and made notes for reviews, but think I may need to revisit as I know many of you have made changes since I visited from what has been posted here. So bare with me, I'll try and keep up with this thread now.

huggsss with love

Rhia xx

*waves a hello*

Hey Rhia, glad to have you join us.

waves back to Rhianna

been lurking on this thread for a couple of weeks now, but did not want to post until I got to the end, but have to say a big thank you to you for starting this thread in the first place

Rhia xx

hi there and did you give us the url of your shop and I'm just blind and can't see it?

*giggles*

due to a rl glitch, my cable company has hit a lag spike I am moving this weekend, but my internet wont be moving until the 23rd. so until then, no cable, no phone, no internet...

ah well, wonder if I'll come back with any awesome new outfits?

*reminds me to google Nieman Marcus before I go offline*

nope you're not going blind....did not give it yet

if this works my sig should now have my slurl and slex site...fingers crossed

Rhia xx

Hey I've been in your store and have a couple of your tatts too, lesse I have Wiccan Back and the full body red phoenix I forget the name of it

and E is gonna have to be careful when she comes to see you lol or she might shop shop shop

I will try to check it out tomorrow (I have just logged for the nite) but dunno for sure because omg busy trying to sew up loose ends before my away time

awwww thanks

not totally sure which phoenix you mean as there are a couple of full bodies with red ones, could be the tribal fire phoenix set or the phoenix humming bird set

good luck with the move, hope it all goes smoothly for you

btw guys how do I get a pick in my signature, do I need to get a flickr or photobucket account and link from that to here or something ?

Rhia xx

Hi Rhia- {Rhias One & Two Like Thing One & Thing Two }

Yes to post a picture it has to be hosted on something like photo bucket- use [img]tags around it so it will show here- of course, photobucket gives that to u automatically. Welcome.

Hi Amar, and thanks for the welcome, wow that was so easy, thanks for your help

Rhia xx

Ooops forgot to say i'll love to check out your shop before and after the rebuild and i love your sig by the way Rhia

Good luck with the move Ralektra, hope too see you soon

I got it and it works, you have to load your ad pic and landmark into it before it will display ads from other places

Phoenix Hummingbird!

morning all, just checking in before heading for rl work

thank you for the compliment Rhianna about my sig, it took us several attempts before we settled on this final design, for quite some time our sign was just black and white, but it just felt too stark in some settings and being light photo-sensitive myself, when it came to stores that had white interiors it was all just too bright for me. So our addition of colour and a the black background was partly a necessity. Our sales boards have evolved a lot over the last 2 years as well, from being plain white and quite boring to the current ones we now use.

Thought it might be that one Ralektra, it is still one of my favourites and I wear that one myself a lot of the time

Looks at her to do list......heck list.......it's more like a novel right now

proudly ticks off one line.....sort forum sig.....yayyyyyy

huggssssss Rhia xxx

Morning too you too hun, yvw hun, it really does stand out the sig

Should tick off adding your slurl and SLX link too

hee hee, they were all part of sorting my forum sig, maybe I should have listed them on my to do list separately.....could have ticked off 3 things then

I do have a question for people though. Just over a month ago now we lost our manager when he quit sl. He had his main store on our land with free rent as part of his salary package. meant he could keep an eye on his own business as well as ours, worked perfectly for both of us. On average we were paying him for 80 hours a week, so no small drop in the ocean. When he left we decided to see how things went without him.
He used to greet customers, take custom orders, help customers find what they were looking for, deal with gift certificate and delivery problems and anything else that got thrown his way.
The question is....our sales have dropped by around 25% in the month since he left.....do you think it is due solely to him not being there or are there other factors that may have caused this effect ?

Rhia xx

Well one can never say for sure how much business one is bringing in in that kind of situation. I would suspect that he probably did bring in a decent amount of business, esp if you an your partner are rather busy people.

However..... other factors which may have influenced your sales recently (may or may not have been relevant depending... just other things which do impact):

-the time of the year (August is renown in SL for being a crappy selling month)

-word of mouth (someoen may ave had an issue and if they have a big mouth it may have impacted)

-less new players entering SL (which means less sales ....well all purchaed moe in the first few months in SL than we do now)

-Other designers entering the market

-Over saturation of the market



There is a good chance that your manager was bringing in business from the sounds of it. You should be able to calculate to some extent what he was bringing ineven on the basis of the custom orders he did. That should give you a big idea.

However I ask this question. 80 hours a week is a lot of hours for someone to put in. I do wonder in my head if you wre payign him for 80 hours a week was that overall making you a profit. *shrugs* I dont know your business or what you were paying them, but I would be evaluation what 25% of your sales are (what you have lost) compared to what you were paying him. If what you were paying him equates to like 15% of that 25%?? then i would say dont freak out cos I would suspect that drop will pick up beuaseof the other factors.



(On a side note I havent been to your store cos im scared to *giggles* cos they have me downpat... i would spend a lot. I love tatts, but I cant afford to shop right now )

Keep in mind that August was tough for most everyone. If you have the numbers, you might want to look at the difference in sales of custom orders and gift certificates to see if there is a pattern there. It seems like those would be the sales where he would have had the most influence.

Maybe u can help me out later? 'Cause I did - I thought - load both- but it failed to initialize.
Thanks -

ok i'll put the figures out here to give you an idea, have nothing to hide and although these figures may seem large when you factor in how much I pay out in rents I make enough to cover our tier plus a little bit.

our sales for august have dropped by around 50K compared to the 3 previous months. we were paying our manager around 16K a month, plus free access to all tattoos, skins, eyes and t-shirts, plus the rent for his main store which on an average of say 3L$ a prim would have been another 1200-1500L$ a month.

I have to say if anything I have seen a significant rise in custom orders, but a slight drop in gift certificates being used. So am really thinking it was him helping people to navigate round the store which has had this impact. I know our store is massive and can be quite daunting to a lot of people. I do have a load of new signs to put up to help people with common questions, but am wondering if that little personal touch of having someone there is something we should like at bringing back. I know August is usually a worse month, but compared to last year this is a massive drop in sales.

Rhia xx