Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

I am but also in the general context of the new XStreetSL up-and-coming fees, and maybe it'll help others trying to replace XStreetSL.

To make enough L$ to make running a website or shopping service worth-while, you have to make money somewhere to cover your expenses and time.

For example, if you are charging a 4% commission fee (and no other fees) if you have gross sales of L$1,000,000 for the month that would translate to L$40,000 or USD$150 for the month. Is that enough to cover expenses?

What about charging L$15/week per seller (up to 100 items) (note: you already pay LL L$30/week for their crappy inworld search). If you have 1000 sellers that's an additional L$60000/month or USD$225. I was toying with just charging a fee to let users teleport to the location of an item to buy it there instead of through the shopping service, kinda a "click-through" charge like banner ads especially since there would be a loss of commission.

I don't agree with per-item fees, and I do agree freebies should be free.

No matter how you slice it, it's not a lot of money unless you can get the volume up there.

There are also in-world vending systems that currently allow world-wide searching and purchasing of items. What are they doing? People happy? Why or why not? Why haven't they replaced SLExchange especially with the new fees coming?

I also don't agree with all those "listing enhancements" that sites offer. I think they are more flash, and don't help the consumer out at all. Consumers seem to think the "featured items" have gone through some sort of vetting process when they simply are products people are willing to through L$ at to advertise. Also, so many products are featured, your items for sale kinda get "lost" in a sea of "featured" items anyways. To me the seller and the consumer both lose.

I'm not opposed to fees of some type because I understand there is a cost to maintain a service. (My irritation, putting it mildly, with LL was new fees on top of existing percentage of sales and foisting it on us with little to no prior discussion, then saying the residents wanted it; as well as since Xstreet is now a part of LL, it's another way to wring money from us, etc., etc.)

But back to your question, I thought the original SLX system was fair because it charged a set % (iirc) of the item purchase price. My items are so low in price that it didn't cut into the small profit I made.

As far as listing fees, I'd have to give that more thought. Something like a "one time registration fee" to use the site is an idea or a one time fee to list each item. The monthly listing fee per item PLUS commission Xstreet is going with will likely prove unprofitable for my items.

(Just thoughts off the top of my head before I'm really fully awake...plus business management isn't my forte...lol. )

Re: the in world vending systems - I had no idea they existed; never saw one.

I totally agree with your second point. I pay absolutely no attention to the listing enhancements and see them as more annoying, flashy things on my monitor that get in the way of what I'm looking for.

Yeah; that's why I'm hesitant to charge ongoing fees even though the system has to maintain the item in it's search. By allowing people to keep their stuff available on the "network", it enriches the amount of items that people can choose from. That hard-to-find item can sit, unpurchased until someone needs to purchase it. Otherwise, unless it's a hot-seller then nobody wants to keep it up for sale.

As for any kind of "up-front" fee, that is a barrier to entry for new creators and also for new shopping systems trying to get a foothold.

I think any fee should have an immediate benefit. Get a sale, fee is incurred. No biggie, I just made a sale! Got a customer to come to my store, okay I agreed up-front to be charged since people can come to my store. Gotta compensate the person sending them here.

Trouble is if you offload all of the revenue-generating fees to the commission, then people think you are more expensive than the competition because you charge a higher commission. Currently, I believe and correct me if I'm wrong, but other sites charge 5% commission and some less or more depending on circumstances.

I'd rather do a commission-based system.

Linden Lab would only be engaging in long-term thinking if its current financial situation lets it absorb a current loss to realize a future gain. If Linden Lab is having trouble paying the bills now, then they may be looking at a strategy with XStreetSL that turns profit now, because otherwise there is no future for Second Life.

Even if their "now" strategy is likely to hamper Second Life's future anyways? Not that I'm actually suggesting that this could, but danged if it doesn't seem like they're trying hard to kill it.

Then, let's just shut out the lights now. Because the result will be a SL that probably won't be worth using anyway.

I have nothing against up front listing fees. I think it makes you think twice about what you throw out there. I have nothing against commissions. I don't even have a problem with ongoing listing fees. (Like classified ads.) What stinks is LL suddenly doing all three in a highly arbitrary and non-participatory way.

How about something like this:

1. Charge an up front listing fee of say 5% of the item's selling price or $5L whichever is greater. Sell something for $50L and the listing fee is $5L. Sell it for $1000L and the fee goes to $50L. This could also be tiered based on price points (a la eBay). The more expensive the item, the lower the listing percentage.

2. Lower the sales commission to 4% flat (or some percentage).

3. Charge an ongoing bimonthly maintenance fee same as 1.

4. Price changes trigger a new listing fee.

5. Anything priced less than $5L must go into the freebies and demos area.

I'm not sure what the exact amounts & percentages would be but it seems to me that this would level the playing field a bit and not penalize freebie sellers. $99 for maintaining a freebie listing is just evil. $10L as a minimum ongoing fee is punitive to low price merchants and discourages offerings diversity. LL shoving it down everyone's throats based on a few office hour sessions where the outcome was already decided is sad but typical lately.

Oh and all of the above would ONLY be done once search was improved and you could combine listings so there were color selectors and/or size selectors.

Hey how about this? If XStreetSL had a real shopping cart and wish list feature.

Sadly instead of making XSL more useful, LL is simply focused on short-term money wringing.

Dear Snickers

You have just hit my list as the Number 1 eternal optimist. Congrats! Where the rest of us have given up on LL listening to any of our suggestions you forge ahead with a reasoned and well thought out plan. I sincerely hope you are right and they are listening.

Dark

LOL, if you had read some of my blog posts lately, you'd know I was anything but. But then, I had a couple of glasses of wine so I might be feeling more generous than usual. I get wild thoughts and have to express them.

The Flying Fizz 3, arguably one of the best racing dingis in SL, is free now:

Cool, why would anyone bother going into the business of making Racing Dingies when most of the competitors will just use a freebee.....................................

It's the nature of digital content, whose design cost is high, but manufacturing cost is almost zero, to approach free after a while. So either you put out an ever-improving product, or you lose out to a free or cheap alternative.

Witness Firefox vs. Internet Explorer. It's forced Microsoft to upgrade their product lest they lose out all their market share. (I know they don't sell IE, but they make money off things it's tied to).

From the consumer side, stuff gets better, or it gets cheaper, either way they win.

Even IBM has adopted this model for their Linux offerings. The software is free, but they charge you for the hardware to run it on, and training you how to use it, or support.

I am oppsed to them raising the fees at all

Funny how slx turned a profit BEFORE LL bought them huh?
SLX was making money... this is just being greedy.

Good luck with that. I've removed most of my items. The ten or so listings I still have all have pictures with SLurl links to my inworld shop now.

Since this has all started, and even before I deleted any of my listings, traffic went from 100+ per day on all my items to fewer than SIX views on my items in total.

I have gone from six sales a day to Zero on Xstreet. There is a mass exodus happening with both merchants and customers.

While I have no issue paying 100L per month for a bit of advertising, I do have a problem with a broken system. I will likely delete the rest of my items by the end of the year, simply because it makes no sense to "clutter" the site with things that aren't selling.

Right, Linden Lab? Isn't this your nefarious plan? To delete Xstreet entirely? So far, so good. Your merchants are leaving in droves, regardless of quality of product.

I was just at your store to pick up a copy of your sign/notecard giver and it wasn't set for Take Copy or Buy for 0L. Would love to have one if you're still giving them out. Thanks

Oh how strange... I just checked both of them and they were definitely both set for Anyone Can Copy. But I've set both to Buy for OL now

See, I wasn't the only one who forgot! I had to do it too. I forgot that Anyone Can Copy doesn't work as advertised

Thank you both, Pearl & Raudf, for leading the way in notifying our customers what is going on with Xstreet.

They have vendors and an on-line marketplace.

Well the traffic of the few items myself and my alts have on XStreet has always been close to zero anyway at any price, with zero sales in 6 months, so I just jacked all my prices up 400% and I'll probably pull them all from Xstreet, I'm not going to cater for people who are too tight arsed to spend 17 cents anymore. I know my stuffs not flash but I used to sell a few a month back in 2007, before the "gimme everything for free" crowd became the norm.

At least this will mean the copybotters will lose money when listing stuff with their disposable alts. And maybe it will boost the bottom market price a bit too, it would be a shame if people other than the money launderers actually had to put money into SL.

OMG what the hell was wrong with it? oh.... search features would help the the site out a ton.
like search for, "Latex AND pink" see that Boolean? Excluding merchants that clog the results? "Latex AND pink NOT sage sideshow"

Even with the changes you propose, the ones that got me ready to pull my inventory, my alts inventories and it seems a good many people's inventories, the more robust search is what I am waiting for.

Instead you go and make policy that will alienate the small time merchants, the generous givers of fine freebies, etc.

No big deal. I never created nearly as much as I could, because I know LL makes crap policies and sooner or later it would affect me. Well guess what? screw you LL I didnt make so much junk that I have to worry about your policies.

I have never had much faith with LL being nice, fair, freindly and they have never failed to deliver what I expected of them.

+Latex +Pink will do that.



This you can't do as far as I know but it's a good idea. I'm not sure why you can't do it because if you search for a name it finds results for that name but there seems to be no way of excluding a name.

How about a weekly listing fee to keep the network stable from folks trying to rez thousands of boxes and crash the network, and then make the commissions free until they equal the amount of the listing fee (i.e. L$15/week listing fee for all items in one server box, and then you get L$15 in free commissions for that week which basically makes the listing fee moot if you make more than enough sales to exceed that amount of commission)? If only freebie items are in the box, then there would be no charge at all.

Or, just a flat rate commission. What is a competitive commission? 5% seems to be the going rate (and even one site, I couldn't figure out what the commission was to tell you the truth, it was "hidden" somewhere...which would worry me as a seller). What about charging L$1/landmark to the seller? That would cover those businesses that don't make any sales through the shopping system (i.e. no commission) but are getting free or cheap advertisement?