Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

It may not matter to SL, especially since I only have (had) 40 items listed, I just pulled them. Well, I sure hope I did. I removed them from the SLX box, and I deleted the box. I don't sell enough in Xstreet to justify making payments to SL for having my stuff listed there. Forty items @ 10L$ per month would come to a grand total of 400L$ per month, and I don't earn that much from there. I decided that this would be a good time to just pull it all. I've pulled all my coins from Xstreet too, and any shopping I do will be from the actual stores in SL.

Although it's only a drop in the bucket to SL, I feel good about pulling my items.
Stitcher

PS Did I say that I searched and searched and couldn't find any help at all on how to pull my items? What does that tell you?

PSS I can list items on etsy.com (REAL items, things people can actually touch) for only 20 cents per item for 4 (FOUR) months! Doing the math, that's a nickel per month. Just an FYI.

NPIOF does NOT mean free. It does NOT mean leech. I see a lot of alts that are better kitted out than a lot of PIOFs running around SL.

I don't know why, after countless forum discussions on that topic, people are still claiming that NPIOF = leech.

Also, how nice is it, more to the point how good a business method is it, to invite people in under one condition, then slam the door in their faces once they accept the invitation? People act as if NPIOF accounts are stowaways when this is the way the big boss men set it up - amid then-resident protests no less.

Put blame where it is due at least, if you have a problem with NPIOF "leeches."

I have a fair number of alts and have made as many of them as possible PIU status. When I ran out of money, I left the others at PIOF status. Unfortunately due to LL's current restrictions I have a collection that are still NPIOF status even though I've invested a fair bit of time and money on them.

Personally I'd like to see something along the lines of allowing a set number of alts / avatars to be tied to each payment-verified and/or identity-verified accout. Not too sure how that would work or how badly it would be gamed.

Exactly. However there is the residual problem that disposable NPIOF accounts are used for all sorts of dirty deeds in SL. So, understandably, alot of SL residents tend to get a bit jittery when NPIOF avatars start turning up in their midst.

There needs to be some path (I almost said the evil word 'roadmap') that would allow NPIOF players to elevate their status in some way so that they can be safely differentiated from the disposable ne'er-do-wells. Not easy but something to think about. Putting a 30-day age barrier in place before NPIOF avatars are allowed off the mainland / onto Zindra / allowed more than 4 hours access per day / whatever only encourages ne'er-do-wells to farm alts in bulk and leave them dormant until the grace period expires. So I doubt if that would really be an answer.

Ppl were complaining that buying a land was too expansive. What did they do?
- Decrease the *buying* price of land. Yeah, good news.
- Increase, at the same time, the monthly fees. Bad news for player, more income for LL

Then LL come with the Openspace sim and the covenant was light use of it, no eavy scrip, not big traffic, only private use and light traffic shop zone allowed.
What ppls do? They build clubs, marketplaces. all to have a hight traffic.
What LL do, increase the fee. It's more simple that writing a script to compare opensace sim traffic and going to throw an eye on what is really on the sim, and if it's a marketplace or a club saying "hey guy, you have two days to pull your shit out and stay in the covenant or we take back the sim.
The result is moore income for LL

The Adult rules.
They build the adult continent, all what have explicit sexual or violence content have to move there. The adult continent was first too small, that show how they examine the case.
Well sim/land owner have move, giving back their land to LL.
Now LL sell them. more income for LL
But unfortunatly for them, it's less and less ppls to buy land.


They do the same with Xstreet.

I'd be surprised if this happens, I put in a support ticket and got two NPIOF alt accounts verified so they can go to adult land, they still show as NPIOF.

Unless you were in the Hollywood Insiders, who got to run some of the most script- and physics- intensive events on the grid on them. And when people asked concierge about renting them out and operating shops on them, they got the OK. I created a JIRA suggesting that they should limit them to 10 avatars per sim to spread the load out better. Can't do that, I was told, it would stop regattas.

So instead of limiting OpenSpaces, they renamed OpenSpaces to Homesteads, increased the price, and created a new OpenSpace product that had the kinds of limits they should have had in the first place. OK, fair enough.

But...

Linden Lab pushed this as people abusing the product, and probably some of that did happen, but the majority of people using the product were given the OK by Linden Lab. The problem wasn't people abusing the product, it was Linden Lab failing to appreciate what the product really cost. Which is OK, really, that happens, but they should be up front about it instead of pushing the blame on people who were doing what they were told they could do.

So, if I were to script a totally inworld shopping network that allowed...

1. Listing with color/style variations
2. Ability to get a free demo for an item
3. Allowed teleport to the creator's store inworld (optional) if one existed to view products in the SL 3d world
4. Allowed shopping from the convenience of a HUD
5. Allowed for searching by keyword
6. Allowed browsing by category
7. Allowed sorting by creator, price, or alphabetically
8. Showed you an image of the product, a short description, and the ability to get a notecard with even more info
9. Maybe even allow the creator to extend credit (if they desired, totally optional) for purhase of items
10. All with only a 2% commission rounded DOWN to the nearest L$1 which would allow commission-free sales for items L$0-L$49 in cost?

Would you use such a system if you were a consumer or a creator/designer?

Note: this doesn't violate the forum rules as it is shopping within the SL world, totally within the world, and is not external.

I really wish the Lindens would spend as much time fixing issues as they do looking for new ways to screw everybody. All I have seen for the past year is a strong push to do what they can to get rid of people. I don't get it but what do I know... I am just a user of the system.

i might, if i am confident it is scripted with low lag in mind, yet stay fast and responsive.

Probably not. I prefer shopping in actual in-world shops when I'm in-world. I use XSL mostly when I can't get in-world.

The HR Shopping Network HUD would allow you to browse for products and buy them right there, but would ALSO allow you to teleport to the creator's store and then goto their actual in-world shop to look at models, displays, etc. Should help to drive traffic to people's SL stores as well as for those who just like to browse a world-wide catalogue.

As for purchasing outside of SL, yeah not doing that at the moment. Want to keep the shopping experience simple for the shopper and the creator/seller.

I'd rather not have a HUD..I don't line screen clutter. All I want is a decent search funtion, where I can use keywords. Right now I use "Places" to search for stuff, I find it better than "All". If I type in shoes, give me an alphabetized list of stores. I'll do the rest. I like going from store to store, it's a form of exploring for me.

I put in a ticket and got my two NPIOF accounts showing as PIOF now. This was after I had put in my payment information on both at creation AND again to update my payment info.

LL really needs to get it's cranium out of it's rectum.

Oh, for those merchants wanting a sign, I have one that I'm using for my shop to make people more aware of the XStreet issue. Feel free to go grab a copy of it. Just edit the card for your tastes.

Yes, but maybe not often, maybe not for long, and maybe only for certain kinds of purchases. That's just by way of introducing a few cautions:

First, you know that script memory limits are coming, right? So a purely in-world data store is going to hit the wall eventually. Trying to store all the relevant data in one place might be more than the total script allocation for a full sim. An alternative approach might spread the data across peer-to-peer terminals with redundancy and self-healing and... that would be really slow, and... the overhead to implement that may already be too large to be supported on the average parcel where terminals would live.

Second, being limited to in-world access only is a serious limitation compared to other third party sites. One might have expected to be able to serve up web pages using the new http-in, but no such luck: it's limited to text only.

Third, you're stuck with whatever data you can get about the products from the merchants who list them. It would be nice if you could integrate or augment that information by scraping search.secondlife.com--except they don't allow scripts to access that site (and there'd be a 2048 character limit anyway).

Relying on merchant-supplied data is not a disadvantage over other third-party listing sites, of course, but they all have a limited window of opportunity. Ultimately, somebody at LL is gonna wake up, kick out the current Commerce Clowns, throw this Xstreet ballast over the rail, and replace it with something that actually uses the wealth of information LL has about our accounts, our in-world purchasing and other behavior, to seriously target promotions. Then all the third-party sites are pretty much history unless LL decides to expose all the relevant data--for which they'd have no motivation.

Well, I've already got the script memory limitation figured out. I had an inworld search replacement system setup a couple of years ago, but was more designed for script-movement teleportation. It used massively parallel processing, redundancy, and relies of the merchants to provide the data to the system so that if they remove their stuff from the system it's gone and they are responsible for adding it to the system. Worked a charm before under the old LSL before MONO, and should work even better under MONO. Unless you are saying that LL is going to be "taking away" the memory we already have.

I've never thought of the HTTP sites as a benefit, more of a bandage on the limitations of the many of the inworld shops. I've been able to make something totally inworld, that replaces what XStreetSl and others do: to provide a single point at which people can find products they are shopping for. Yes; it should be in the user interface....but like all good things, if LL gives us the tools, we'll make one better than they ever could. Which is why SL is losing it's way by trying to get it's fingers into business and content.

Raudf, thanks for that, but I just went to your shop and the sign wasn't set to 'take a copy'.

I've just made one of my own which is at my store (see picks) Should have just done that in the first place but I was just being lazy..

If anyone wants a copy my sign (w.notecard giver), look for Sioda Silks in the Grumio sim.

x

Pearl

I agree with you 100%, Raudf.

Then last night I signed onto the SL website via the dashboard. I generally pay no attention to most anything on it and come straight over here, but the topic of a thread on this subject caught my eye so I opened it.

YOWZA!!! I felt like I had fallen down the rabbit hole. After spending a good deal of my afternoon yesterday keeping up with this thread and the general negative sentiments against the new Xstreet rules, the "thread-that-caught-my-eye" (and not sure if I can include the URL as in this brave new Linden world ya just never know) began with a quote that those who disagree with it are "whiners" and a few other choice put-downs. The OP's main thesis was that LL is not a charity.

What really blew me out of the water before I just couldn't read any more was that the vast majority of posters on the blogorums agreed with the OP - most of whom I'd never seen the names of before. (That's another thing that seems strange to me; posting types in any community in which I've been involved like to post. Where have these people been the last number of years? And they're not all new residents as the OP spoke of being on SL 4 years.)

Anyway, that thread was almost the diametrical opposite of this one. After awhile, I saw a name or two from over here trying to explain the reasoning of those of us who disagree (we realize SL is not a charity, it is a business (albeit a rather badly run one), there have been so many changes so quickly, other areas of SL need to be fixed first (lag, tp, inventory issues, etc.). I even saw a person I haven't seen in over a year and didn't even know he participated in forums. (He didn't like the new rules either for the same reasons.)

To all the posts that didn't support the OP's position of SL not being a charity, the response from the OP was basically, "Don't like it...leave."

Just...wow!

I wonder if LL's definition of no more free accounts is:

(1) Everyone pays a monthly fee, perhaps less than a Premium account

(2) The return of the policy that alts have to pay a one-time sign up charge

OR

(3) ALL accounts have to be premium

If #3 happens, concurrency and number of residents will not only decrease, it will nosedive, crash and burn!

One thing that I noticed was that there were a few people who were all gung-ho about defending LL that can't possibly realize what the heck it means. One person I looked at is basically a BIAB reseller type person (not that I care, as long as the content wasn't stolen) and you know the type of quality to be found in those goods. Well this person has like 400 things listed (and not free)...and the majority of them I have to ask myself...does anyone buy this??? Does this person realize that they are soon going to be charged $4000L plus commissions (if they sell anything) a month? I mean...how can they?

Sheep?

Not only YES, but H**L YES!!!!

This is how I shopped as a consumer on Xstreet. I don't want to use my limited in world time to use All Search (which isn't much, if any, better than Xstreet imo), then tp to a store, stand there forever to rez in or find it if I don't land near it, etc., etc. when I could be using that time to build, work on my own store, be with my partner, etc.

Instead, I searched through Xstreet, narrowed down the items I was interested in to several, then tp'd from their SLURL to check it out in person.

Thank you so much, Raudf!!

I would most definitely use this as both a consumer and a creator. I used xstreet mostly as a tool to find things and then would buy in world whenever possible anyway. So - the ability to search well and then TP directly to a store would be a great combination.

But how about just selling the HUD outright, Hank?