Advice on Sales!!

Hi Phil and welcome! We are trying to get our business to flourish! With out turning things into the Picks thread or another Bot thread- we are very interested in how the big guys do it- that would be folks like you and Marcel and others of course, but you two are quite active in the forums in regards to these things. It's not all about advertising- we also critique each other's builds and strategies- displays, etc. We would be happy to have you contribute.

Miles- I love your suggestions - and I was thinking while I read it, it may be a good note to hand our to my store group as well- ask them how they found me- what do they like or not like... what they suggest. Recently I started a side line of tattoos - there has been great response- but before I began releasing them- I put one out only and asked my group to test drive them for me- got a bunch of good feedback!

Happy belated bday Miles. * Hugs and balloons for you *

I REALLY need to start looking at the birthday listings!!

MEGA-HAPPY BIRTHDAY (Belated) to you, E and Miles!!!! And many, many more!!!!!!

Glad to see you'll be open to joining in discussioins, Miles

This one area - improving search results - is a major mystery to me. I would LOVE to explore that in more detail!!!

I'm able to be on day or evening (and when I have insomnia, all night EST). So I can make meetings all kinds of times. Perhaps either two meetings could be held a month, one for European/Aussie, etc. time zones and the other for North American evening time.

There seem to be a lot of people who can come at all different times, so that may not be that much of an issue, E. Would love to get your input as well...I love the layout of your stores.

(BTW - I had to claw my way through a mob of people in your store when I popped in to pick up the gift you advertised via FabFree yesterday (I think it was). Whew!! Talk about traffic

Those are some well thought out questions Miles and i have a couple i'd love to ask aswell but i agree with shopping pet peeves lol, i have a few of these.

Hi Phil welcome to the thread

I agree Czari, finding the right words to improve search is very hard especially clothing because the market is so satuarated.

I know what you mean Eclectic and i love that idea Czari, maybe we could appoint two people to hold the talks, one during UK hours and one during USA hours. We'd need to pick appropriate times so we can all get to the talks. What does everyone think, sound like a good idea?

P.S Happy Bday Miles and Ecletic

Oops- Happy B-day Eclectic too- didn't mean to dis you - I hope I got Rha properly b-day'd somewhere- but if not- Happy B-day- very belatedly to you Rha!

oooops was it Rha's aswell, i'm terrible with Birthdays, i'd forget my own familys if i was not reminded each year lol.

Anyway Happy Belated Birthday Rha)

I forgot my husband's... you can imagine- I have not lived it down as yet and it was in July...

ooooo not good lol, though i did forget my partners birthday last year but he did forget mine the year before lol. We make a right pair lol.

Works for me A lot of classes are held that way - one each during Euro and USA timezones.

Ack, I feel for you, Amar.

/e giggles... yeah but for yu yesterday was the 16th... for me the 17th (oh well it depends on when yesterday my time we are talkiing O.o

Happy Birthday Miles and Eclectic!

LOL, I thought about that, E. I looked at when you posted and considered the time difference...mine is the 17th!

Thanks, 3Ring!

Thats the best advice anyone could suggest.
I agree on all accounts.
Took me 2 years and a LOT of investment in some recently discovered dodgy crap!
If I couldnt make it I bought it..I saw a gap in the market and bought the stuff to fill it.
Success only started to come when ppl said " my friend told me about your store" thats when I knew things were changing.

My BF would go nuts at the amount of money I would spend in investing.
Running a bussiness is a gamble. Period.

Example:

I realised there were no " full AV" stores in SL just ppl selling shapes and using other ppls skins and hair which IMO was misleading exp to noobs
These shape Cos were asking upto 800L JUST for a shape!
So I invested $3000 ( yes RL $ ) for 2 skin designers to sell me the rights to use their skins in my full avatars.
I also invested a further $2000 ( real ) in 2 hair designers to allow me to sell their hair designs as part of my full AVs
I Further invested more $$$ in a small line of clothing..so that we ended up with complete avatars that looked exactly as they would when they bought them
And sold them for L$800 which was a good price...a month later...full perm stores came out.. then because skins were being sold full perms...full AV stores opened...I lost thousands of dollars in an idea that at the time we launched it was unique and unheard of.
Timing is key.

The "company" still exsists.. Total Transform but we just give 30% profit vendors away on SLX so ppl can display the vendors and get 30% on any sales...we even started selling the skins alone... your lucky if we make 10K a month in L$ 12 months on.

Dont expect success in the 1st year..if you make enough so you dont ever have to buy L$ again thats success..anything more than that is very hard and harder still these days because of the competition...stores piled ontop of each other , full perm stores, ripped skins and clothing selling for peanuts by ppl who live in countries were $10 a week is like $2000 a week to Westeners..

SL is not the same place it was 2 or even 1 year ago.

Whole different playing field. Plus even long standing once successful stores are struggling with the RL recession... sales are down...L$ on Lindex isnt selling as fast as it once was..
Its going to be a bumpy 12 months and I suspect many stores will close.
We are getting customers telling us they have sold their islands as ppl renting cant afford to rent because their not selling anymore.

YAY!!! then we share the same birthday

I actually tried to brush your bug off my PC monitor! lol
very cool

LillyBeth,
Yes, most people do fail at business and the market crash at the moment must be affecting spending in SL.

I have not been on SL very long, but I have been an online marketeer for a very, very, veeerrryyy long time (showing my age here). The pattern it is following is very similar to the internet. At first it was all creative, then the companies joined in, then there was everything you could imagine on the internet, some people made big bucks on the .com era, millions joined in trying to sell the same things over and over, it all collapsed. The get rich quick crowd are still out there today, people looking to get on the internet with no previous experience and make a quick buck, start a shop, sell something. The only ones who succeed are the ones who have an original and very specific market to aim for. The more specific the topic/market, the more successful the website/company. Success being measured in hits per day for a website, which translates either in sales or advertising revenue.

In SL things will go the same way. There will always be the newbies who come in and think they can make it work with little or no experience. I know personally of three people who started a club with no previous experience and have lost L1000s on them in the last couple of months.

At the end of the day it is about passion. If you are passionate about something, whether a creation, an idea, a concept, something that is yours and you love, and you learn how to market it, you will make it out there. Everything else is a hobby.

I disagree about the market crash affecting sales. Yesterday I had my highest sales ever in SL. I still will say that it all has to do with promotion and creative marketing.

I think it's possible that people will actually do more shopping in SL if they are unable to do as much in rl.

Gah! I'm so sorry about that, Rha. I didn't realise that I'm required to review and publish all posts made by others on the blog! I've just published it for you, and I'm trying to find out how to give you permission to make posts without the need for me to review them all. (I hadn't checked the blog stats page for several days, so that's why I didn't know you'd made a post.)

Well I have something to share- I do belong to FabCon, Freestyle and FashCon... all great groups for exposure- my own group has over 150 members already and that is very cool- so essentially I have four sets of folks I can inform of new releases and sales and such. Obviously you abide by the rules and don't spam and my own group i know wd get bored if i constantly sent notices- but--- I try to time my notices so that I hit each group while playing by the others' rules and not annoy my own peeps. But i manage to get a nice saturation and keep myself fresh in their minds. It seems to be working for me Thought I wd share- pace your self and your notices - I do wish I had another couple of BIG groups to hit so I could get more notices out - but oh well...

the only problem with more groups is that it will end up being the same folks (I find that with the 2 freebie groups)

I feel the 3 groups plus my own is plenty


to skell: I posted that ages ago LOL (I had a feeling it was because you had to approve messages, and I just figured that the whole thing was just forgotten or something)

OMG I missed birthdays...hangs head in shame

Happy very belated birthday Miles and E, hope your days were filled with love, light and laughter

have been so busy with the rebuild I really have not been on the forums much at all this last week. estimate another week at least before the new build is finished. I still have all the names of those who were interested in the free vendor spaces and will contact you all soon as the place is ready for you to all move in.

but here's another sneak preview of the new store.....



huggsss with love

Rhia xx