Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

You are assuming that Linden Lab sees long-term residents as the sources of income.

A large percentage of new residents probably find themselves, as mentioned in the BBC article, excited at first and then bored after three months. Linden Lab is probably hoping to cash in on those people: eager to customize their experience, not informed enough to know about competition to XStreetSL (which will always be the first service introduced to newbies), not savvy enough to know what they are buying so they can comparison shop. It's all about the churn.

Sadly, the only thing worse than the XStreet search engine is the in-world "All" search engine. It can be hard to find things on XStreet, but if it exists there and you spend enough time, you can at least find it. That is not true of the in-world search engine. As an example: I build houses. I wanted to find high-quality full-perm one-prim sculpty stairs to put in my houses. The in-world search produced only a few stores selling very low-quality products. On XStreet an hour or so of perusing search results found several promising candidates, one of whose product I eventually bought (by following the SLURL to the in-world store; I would never buy such a thing without seeing it in 3-D). I have no idea why that store didn't show up in the in-world search, but it simply didn't. I never would have found it without XStreet.

Some folks say SL should have Google-like search features. That just isn't feasible. Google has literally hundreds of thousands of rack servers, and hundreds of programmers, working in concert to make their highly successful "fuzzy logic" search engine work so well. No way is LL going to be able to approach that level of responsiveness. But they could still do a whole lot better with search engines. I, myself, can do better than this with Visual Foxpro and about two weeks' programming time.

they need to get away from the one word search..
also i thought the All search was tied with google anyways hehehe

I suppose it's possible that if a million people really are logging in each month, as Kingdon claims, the "churn" thing could produce more income than sim sales/tier. I would bet that XStreet isn't producing anything close to that kind of income right now though, and a sane person looking at that spreadsheet probably wouldn't be able to project that kind of income boost. Of course, much bigger companies than LL have been sunk by insane projections. Just because somebody lucked into a way to make a lot of money once doesn't mean they're smart enough or careful enough to keep it going over time. That seems like common sense, but the more button-down the "genius" appears to be, the more people seem to think that they're infallible..

Anyway, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think the real deal is the item in Pink's merchant survey about paying for "guaranteed delivery" with an official LL in-world vendor. If they put that out there, it won't be long before the only viable way to sell *anything* in SL is by paying a commission to LL.

*sighs* 600 items delisted and deleted. And I'm still trying to thin it down to manageable for when the excrement hits the rotating blades.

No, I'm not completely delisting. I'll use the site for the next month and then when they decide to wring in the new fees, I'll check out.

Hm...usually Google requires that you post "powered by Google" when you do that, though I suppose LL could have paid something to make that requirement go away. Seriously, though, I doubt it. Effectiveness with the in-world search engine seems to absolutely require that you load up your land description with appropriate keywords. Google will certainly use metadata keywords on websites if they have been put there, but it doesn't need them to bring up good results.

actually i should have said tier lol

whats the saying??life happens while you are planning the future..always looking ahead and screwing their present is going to leave them wondering what happened when they finally get to their future..

those new players they had joining the grid has slowed dramatically..if they don't watch out they will be fooled by actually believing a lot of those new players were not bots and alts..
1 million a month?? LOL ya they can count me as about 50 of those..i don't relog a lot so i'm not pulling my weight in that million

Linden labs made a great deal buying SXL and OnRez, because LL knew that would profit a lot with it, as usual!

The greater quality service they talk about improving with this changes, will benefit mainly LL, because they get already a commission of the sell and now and want fees!
If LL is so interested in the quality of the service they provide, why don't they start by providing in world better quality services, like less crashes, invetory losts, griefers...and their hanging outs!?!
Money talks louder from what i can see!

A big offering of services and items never did bad to anyone, the more you have, the more ability you have to choose and the chances of finding what you looking are far higher!

I have to say, that without knowing who had this Brilliant idea, i am pretty sure it was not a sl resident with a few bucks/lindens in the account. This sound like a complaint from a big "shark" that found out that is goods where not beying sold on SLX!

One courious point, this is something like....why they say Second Life has millions of residents....when we all know that on a regular basis only 50.000 to 90.000 people use/are in Second Life...! So many things to worry about but the problem seems to be the dificulties of fiding items in Second Life Exchange, what a joke!

I am going to move to www.apez.biz and i encourage everyone with some dignity to do it!

all the best...

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

- John Lennon
Beautiful Boy

the reason i say they were is because google used to grab your inworld profile..not sure if it still does..butit would show your groups and other in world things..maybe they changed since the website changes..

Ironic thing is, almost all newbies want freebies.

wow i was closer than i thought lol

QUOTTING:
The purpose of this notecard is to judge interest in offering an alternative online marketplace. I know there are other options out there, but hopefully you will see the idea I’m suggesting is slightly different.

My thoughts are to provide a site which is non-profit making and is controlled by the residents of SL and in particular the merchants selling goods on it, not Linden Labs or any other company. To do this I have come up with (so far) 2 clear ideas on the way this will work.



Fees

Fees will be set at a rate that covers the cost of hosting the site (not administration). Any profit will be put back in to improving the system (upgraded servers, increased Bandwidth allowance etc) and a financial statement will be made available to all Merchants (maybe quarterly?). My initial figures are:

A fee of L$500 per year per Merchant. This will cover the cost of the server, it will be a set fee regardless of how many items you list.

A commission charge of 2% per sale. This will cover the cost of bandwidth required for the server. Obviously this varies depending on the amount of traffic, but I’m hoping the ratio of traffic to sales will remain fairly solid.

I think this structure will work out cheaper for most merchants than the 5% commission charge at most other sites. PLEASE NOTE. I am not asking for these fess upfront. I am stating these are the fees I would expect to charge once the site is up and running and it can start being used. All I am currently looking for is feedback on the idea as a whole



Decisions

All major decisions regarding changes, improvements etc to the site will be done via a voting system on the site. Every member will be allowed to vote, Merchants and Customers alike, unless it’s a decision that solely affects one side (for example fee changes only affects Merchants).

The results of the vote will be clearly published, and decisions always taken on a majority rules basis.


_______________________________________________



What I want from you

Initially I’m looking for feedback on the idea; there is no point me putting in a lot of work to get this off the ground if no one is interested. I’m particularly interested in feedback in 2 areas:

Merchants

My initial figures are based on around 100 merchants signing up once the site is up and running. Obviously the site is not going to have thousands of hits from day 1, so I realise many Merchants will think they’re better off waiting to see how it goes before committing their L$500. Unfortunately I can only fund the server fee myself for so long, so this kind of thinking will not benefit the site.

I am looking for feedback on how many merchants would be willing to take the risk and sign up early on, in return I would offer a guaranteed fixed fees for life for the first 100.


Help!

This is a fairly big project and ideally I would be looking to put together a small team to help get it off the ground and keep it running. Keep in mind this would be on a volunteer basis, as there is no profit. I would be looking for help in 2 key areas:

Developers/Programmers/Scripter’s

People who have skills in the areas of website design and development as well as LSL. It’s not essential you have skills in all areas, as the project will be split into sections.

Marketing

This project can only succeed if we get both Merchants selling and buyers buying. If you have clear ideas on the best way to achieve this, and the skills to help realise those ideas your input would be greatly appreciated.



If you fit in to any of these categories and this project interests you, please drop me a notecard and let me know you’re interested, along with any feedback you may have.


ABOUT CHIP KIPS:
About me


For those who don’t know me I thought I’d tell you a little about myself, hopefully it will give you some confidence in me and my ability to make this project a success.

From the age of 17 I started and ran several small businesses, all of which were successful to one degree or another and all of which I was able to sell when I decided I wanted a change.

At around 27 I decided I wanted a change in direction and to pursue a career around the passion of my life, which for my sins is IT. I am now working as a Systems Architect and SQL server specialist, designing and implementing Systems for small and medium sized businesses and providing them with 3rd line support when required. I have a string of Microsoft Qualifications including MCSE, Technology Specialist SQLserver 2005 etc, etc.

As a sideline I also do both programming and web development, I'm self taught in various languages, most notably PHP and VB.net. For the past couple of years I have put much of my spare time in to working with LSL and like many here have put my knowledge of both this and PHP to good use developing custom network systems inworld.



Chip Kips
(form more info contact chip kips in world)

There is only one lab.

Oh...Google's "spiders" are clever enough to assemble those connections on their own. When you have an organization that huge, you can accomplish amazing things.

Yes, but Linden Lab doesn't care (at least not anymore) about residents who don't spend money.

If Linden Lab can obscure the fact that high quality freebies are available- making them hard to find- then some people who actually have money will buy products because they just aren't aware that the products are there for free. Just like me when I was new- I have an inventory full of L$ 200 outfits that I bought, unaware that I could easily buy half of them in a full-perm business-in-a-box version for something like L$ 10, and the other half were re-sold freebies.

Others are looking for freebies because they don't have money to spend in Second Life; these people are a cost (grid resources) with no income potential. They are leeches that Linden Lab doesn't care about.

I would guess that Linden Lab isn't too keen on having high concurrency numbers anymore. When Linden Lab was presenting Second Life residents as an audience to be tapped via advertising, the numbers of residents and concurrent users were important. Now that those advertising-sim experiments have failed, Linden Lab may be moving toward a Second Life where organizations are in their self-contained worlds (like with Enterprise). They may have resonsidered whether those great numbers that free accounts helped boost are really worthwhile afterall.

If the freebies were clutter, then maybe non-spending residents on free accounts are clutter, too.

Someone might remember more clearly than I do BUT

I think some of the major players from google were early venture capitalist in LL. ALso if I remember right I think I remember various announcements of how elements of the google system were going to be incorporated into the new search system we got when the ALL tab was coming in and Places tab was supposed ot be got rid of.

SO yeah google did have something to do with in world search.

XStreet was a separate project done by a third part so whole diff system

WHich is partially why I suspect that accounts that get a neg L$ value at XStreet are going to face the same suspension/deletion problem that premiums in world do. Get rid of more clutter/dead acts.

I hear what you are saying - playing devil's advocate?

But - a lot of residents begin as NPIOF, freebie wearing no money having 'tourists' to see if they like the place or not. Many go on to buy land, own/run businesses, create various things, teach, learn, etc. Not to mention, patronising businesses, shopping, adding to site traffic, etc.

It would be a huge mistake to disregard their importance, in my opinion.

Yeppers..it was back when the new ALL search was brought in..I knew i remembered hearing it at some point..thank you Darkness

Although I agree with you, I cant help but feel that LL is in the milk the cash cow then dump it mode.

If so, they severely botched it. Google can produce good results on a search term that is contained anywhere within a web page. It is not dependent on HTML metadata. If they were involved, perhaps they didn't understand how to pull in the name of a sale-able item in an SL location; that's the only explanation I can think of for why the in-world search engine couldn't find my stairs vendor. However, given what Google has been able to accomplish in the "Wild Wild West" environment of the internet as a whole, it's hard to understand why they couldn't get similar results in what should be the much more disciplined data structures in SL.

You think they are changing things to look good on paper so they can sell the company?

I'm not sure if they are involved anymore..i had tried my name on google when we had started talking about it and couldn't get my profile to come up like it used to..so maybe it's not part of it anymore..i just get forum and flickr stuff now..