Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

Abuse report and DMCA are the tools for theft/copy content, but ppls must be willing to fill them.

If it's optional then I'm cool with that. Some people will knock themselves silly to get a higher listing.. but the problem is, with the current search feature, they'd still have to compete to get any higher up on the list.

Hank, you aren't a bad consumer. When I do use things like classifieds, I usually go by reverse order, lowest priced to highest. Usually, I use search places and lowest traffic to highest. Found some pretty good starting designers that way.

And what will you do with the stone, hat, tree, boot, shoe, complete AV and other things showed also in the result of your jacket search??

For me those things are crap too, even they are a very hight quality.

And they will not do it, charging preferably 60L$ instead of 10l$.

LL needs to nail the ones that are gaming the keywords and don't have the items.

They also need to fix the search to work like Google's. They could even implement the ability to list all the colors on one listing, making them deliverable via that one listing. And they could do these without adding fees, though I doubt many of us would argue if they raised the commission by 5%.

Pigs could also fly in formation over the Little Rock National Airport too.

Guess which one I think is likelier at this point!

I'm part of the same mob, Catherine. Pulled my items, deleted my magic box, deleted my in world ATM (and after all the hassle I went through just two months ago to get it, too, as a service to my tenants). I'm in the process of selling my $L balance and transferring my money back to my PayPal account.

My XgreedSL T-shirt was the last thing I'll ever buy on XStreet.

And I still think delisting everything just because you disagree with the developments, is not smart.

What will probably happen on XStreet?
- Most people selling crap will disappear, they wont pay the 10 linden per item.
- 30 listings per item/color will disappear too, hopefully indeed by using a special way of listing
- most freebies will disappear too.
- Most people will just list the items that they think will sell, instead of listing everything and hope the best

End results is a lot less items, which makes the chance your items get in sight, bigger. People will find your stuff easier, so chances are bigger you actually sell. Luckily you can check your traffic numbers on XStreet, so it is easy to see if this will actually happen.

My advice:
- If you make a profit now, stay. Absorb the costs, a lower profit is still a profit
- If you have traffic but glad to break even, stay. Chances are that your extra costs will be payed for by extra sales, plus the traffic means exposure. For 10 linden a month per item!
- If you have no traffic and no sales: delist and search for other means.

Myself, I am in the first group, so I know it is easy spoken. I pay 12K for my homepage features, and still make a decent profit. So yes, I can easily absorb the extra costs and will keep my freebies listed too. yet I see XStreet mostly as a promotion site, and even with no sales I would stay. My traffic is between 60 and 80, so 60 to 80 people per day see my brand name and some of the stuff I sell. Worth the price, I would say.
Traffic is the most important parameter on XStreet, as it gives you an insight on how many people visit your pages. And paying for that, is better then giving it up.

One more important thing: Do not let the few vocal people drag you along. We, on this forum, are very vocal. Most users hardly know about a forum, nor the blogs. They will still shop at XStreet, simply because that is promoted by the Lab. XStreet is not going to die because a few dozen people pull down their items. There are about 1.5 million items there!

Dont follow my lead, don't follow other peoples leads. Think for yourself, and decide what is wise in YOUR situation.

So disappointing to see some of you give up. I offered to help anyone who is starting out in business, or who is interested in doing it for profit, in the Long thread. I know I said I was done with this thread, but feel that I need to do the same here. Xstreet is a valuable tool. Classifieds are a valuable tool. Both pay for themselves, easily, and I can show you how that is done. There are tons of free tools, too. Hard work is required. I'll take the time, as long as I don't have to chisel away at a chip on the shoulder....won't spend time on that.

For those handing out freebie benefits....in a year and a half, I don't recall one person ever asking me to help with that, and I have a large group of enthusiastic people who are enjoying SL....perfect place to toss some things out. I would be happy to put them in a box, and set them in the store, or toss them out in a box, with a group note.

That was not a "whine." The first sentence was a huge pitiful sigh of frustration.

Not any more. About 2% of the listed items have gone away already.

But I do agree that people should make up their own minds. I'm off XStreet, because I fall into your Category 3.

Well they did succeed in their goal- to weed out the chaff? I 'pruned' like i said about 100 items. I did keep the things that have a better chance at selling - for now - the cost hasn't gone into effect as yet. If my sales were to improve in XStreet where the cost wd be effective, then perhaps as Marcel says, a marketing tool- but right now, so little of my money comes from Xstreet that as it stands, it wd be a loosing proposition- and i am not doing this to LOSE money.

Well I'm wearing my T-shirt with pride



You can pay for enhancements and the rest and still turn a profit? Good for you. For the other 99% of residents (I just pulled that number out of my... never mind, so don't ask me to back it up) the proposed changes are just money grabbing by LL.

Yes, the enactment of these proposals will 'clean up' XGreed but at the cost of all the weird and wonderful objects put out there by ordinary folks not necessarily looking to make the big bucks.

You want 'predictable experience'? Well an XGreed devoid of the weird and wacky is sure as hell going to be predictable. Fun? Not so much.

A decent search and results filtering engine combined with enhanced listing abilities would have resolved the clutter issue.

Well the new breed of resident looking for a predictable experience can purchase their McIsland pre built by LL, spend their MasterVisa L$ at XGreed for the requisite 'name brand' items and then sit back and enjoy the view.

Yawn... I need a nap.

Rime

Who said anything about giving up? I would hazard a guess that all the people pulling product from XGreed have no intention of giving up - they will just pursue other avenues of trade.

XGreed is not the be all and end all of SL commerce. It's just the one that LL can milk for some extra donut money and the potential half a million US$ raised by the L$10 listing fee alone will buy a lot of donuts.

On a brighter note. perhaps this fiasco will see an increase in in-world commerce.

Rime

Rime said: "On a brighter note. perhaps this fiasco will see an increase in in-world commerce."

Rime, you hit the nail on the head. Stall rentals, land holdings, are the one item that can't be bid down to the cost of textures and time. Driving the freebie and cheap merchants from XStreetSL, is going to create more demand for inworld retail space.

Face it the race to the bottom persists whether XStreet acts as the neighborhood garage sale or not. Most of the time when I see clothing, furntiure, hair, what have you... I think... "Can I make that?" A lot of the time, I can. The exception is animations. And no, I don't write scripts, but there are lots of free scripts and animations.

In case any one is curious, I have a one prim sixteen item vendor that I am working on filling (It's clunky at the vendor end, but it's not clunky for the consumer) and I have two offers on getting it housed cheaply. Actually, I have three options and I may find more.

I am also going to reconsider Slapt.me I was fairly hasty in my judgement and if more people like me use it, it will improve, and I still have the store structure I'd love to use.

Well, since I've watched it bring in a good portion of traffic, and new customers...thus sales...canceling it would be giving up a large piece of the pie. By packaging effectively, even the few sales that I do make would more than pay for some listing fees. Just offering to pass that along....on how to make it work.

Until yesterday, I sold a HUD on XstreetSL that did a clever little trick (IMHO) that's actually pretty useful for certain kinds of paired or group collaboration. It sold for L$300, or L$500 a pair, with a +copy+transfer receiver unit that I distributed there for free. The receiver had a few other functions that made it useful even if the for-pay transmitter wasn't purchased. Each week I "sold" about a dozen of those free receivers from XstreetSL. The transmitters were much less popular; maybe two a month on average. So I certainly can't justify keeping any of this stuff listed there.

Well, fair enough: the Xstreet sales really weren't making me any money. And they weren't making LL any money either--not from direct sales, anyway.

But now that they're gone, it's one fewer thing you can find on XstreetSL. And I'm not the only one delisting legitimate--albeit non-blockbuster--products. The fees compel such delisting--and that truncates the long-tail of demand.

One certainly can no longer assume that "if it's in SL, it's on XstreetSL"--not nearly to the extent that one could before. So, yeah, maybe now it will be easier for time-pressed shoppers to find all the same standard-issue slutwear and sculpties--it will be faster for the masses to homogenize their wardrobes and surroundings--just what drew them to a virtual world with user-created content, right?

The "merchants" got what they so wanted: a "Marketplace". A "web mall"--remember those? And for extra measure, the changes add fees--actually *increasing* the friction of transactions.

It's beyond bizarre that the LL web team is so intent on systematically undoing all the advantages of web economics.

I am really disappointed in what LL has done to XStreet. I'm thinking about pulling all my items because I don't want future hassles. I make several thousand Ls on the site per month from textures but a lot of what I sell is priced low because it's silly, fun lawn art. It won't be worth it to keep it listed.

I enjoy shopping, or rather have enjoyed shopping at XStreet because of all the odd things I could find. I loved the freebie section for that reason

@Qie:
Free receiver = 99 linden a month
HUD: 10 linden a month
HUD pair: 10 linden a month

Costs: 119 linden

You say you sell 2 of the huds on average, so thats 600 linden - 30 = 570 linden.

Now that seems more then the 119, so why couldn't you afford it?

I'm not at all convinced by this argument, less items yes, but there will also be less eyes. People who sell on Xstreet often buy on Xstreet, those who delist are likely to stop shopping there too.

Until the debacle, I had not cashed out one single Linden- money in XStreet was play money - I would buy most textures on line, gifts etc... I am certainly not going to be putting money in and i just cashed it out so... hm- guess i will be shopping in those other venues as well as listing there -

Hmmm - and this just in...

https://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/4956

I didn't say I couldn't afford it, rather that I couldn't justify it.

Granted, even without the fees it was never worth my time to keep the products in the server boxes updated. So it doesn't take a lot of discouragement for me to just say "screw it" and pull them off the website. I can get rid of those server boxes, and it's no loss to me.

And I absolutely grant that it's certainly not much of a loss to XstreetSL as an individual item. but there are lots of individual items--some turning even less profit than these--that are going to disappear.

Cost of in-world single prim vendor at base cost of mainland = L$7.50 to buy the land, plus L$2.75/mo assuming 512 parcel, annual premium with stipend factored in.

Cost of item listing on Xstreet = L$10/mo

Cost of setting up an open membership group to give away freebie items in group notices = L$100 flat rate for as many items as you wish to post every 2 weeks in the group notices, up to the daily limit for group notices (I believe that is 200 notices a day).

Cost of giving away freebie items on XStreet = L$99/month for as many items as you wish to pack in one box

(I predict some people will make freebie packs On Xstreet combining items from many people, and setting the price just high enough to cover overhead ie listing fee plus commission)

Umm.. there's one number you're forgetting there. The commission. That's not going away because of the new fees.

Edit: Frag... didn't realize I had left Trill logged in because I was getting her flagged! This is Raudf, darn it.

Not sure the could ever do that...Xstreet uses the same delivery systems as the other Shopping sites. If you block it, you block XStreet too. I can't see how they could possibly outlaw other sites from communicating with avatar in world. It's a bit like these 3rd party viewers......you can't block them from logging into SL unless you have a "closed" client system.

If others take off, I'm sure they'd find a way to allow only their own system to make deliveries, even if it's just intercepting the others - same as they can intercept 3rd party viewers and clients if they want to.