Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

Bingo!

I found the OPs post here from the blogorums amusing (more amusing if it weren't so true):

https://blogs.secondlife.com/thread/5451

Every merchant's experience with Xstreet and in-world sales will be different due to a variety of variables, but for me, 95% of my sales came from Xstreet so someone was buying something. I also never placed anything on Xstreet for 0L or 1L.

Even when I had a larger shop and did a lot of in-world advertising utilizing various methods, I *still* sold most of my items on Xstreet. I have no idea why but for me, this move may, at least initially, cut or eradicate my sales online as I'm a very small shop and am not going to pay 10L/mo. to list an item that sold every once in awhile.

For now, I took everything off except my top 8 sellers; one of those 8 was offered in several different colors so I pulled all but 1 of them as well and stated in that ad that "more colors are available in-world." (Xstreet's Guidelines said that statement was permissible but saying "this item also comes in blue, red, gold and green" was not.)

I plan on listing with one or two of the competing websites, pulling out my Christmas/holiday items and re-evaluate after the first of the year.

Certainly not! Verdict first, trial* afterward!

*or informing us of the rules, perhaps, instead of 'trial'.




Also: I don't think this is just about stamping out hobbyists; it's also about placing barriers to entry for those new creators who might otherwise evolve into competition for the established merchants.

hi people...

I am just wondering when the new fees for listing on xstreet take effect. I dont want to have to pay for every listing for every item I create, I hate the new policy/xstreet.

I wonder because I want to know when do downsize my items. I wouldnt want to come home from RL work & get slammed with a $L bill for all of my current item listings all at once, just because they are still exist on xstreet.

Anyhow, again, I hate the new listings fees.

thnx for answers
Selexia Aero

I've seen people mentioning this a lot but I'm still awaiting a proper answer as to how if people wanting everything for free is becoming the norm, how did Xstreet record, record level sales last quarter?

That's an open question to LL too. They originally said "30 to 60 days" for the freebies tax and minimum commission, "60 to 90 days" to remove free items from search and add the 10L tax for non-freebie items. Then it became clear that they never took inactive listings into account, so the whole thing has been delayed for an unknown time while they figure out how to keep from charging those.

Laundering bots?

What would bandwidth be like on that? I wonder if it would be cheaper than tier for say, half a sim. Lol.

Yeah, free listing and not charging any commission on all those $1L sales is going to make you a mint

What's the resale value of cognitive dissonance?

Any one with any sense would have seen this coming for months now its just ashame that linden labs has to use a stupid cover up story about search optimization to hide the real reason that we all know.

The real reason is money stop lying linden labs and just admit the truth FFS.

Also everyone be aware that this is just the 1st in a long line of extra charges linden labs has been working on for the last year.

Either charge us a fixed fee or take commission YOU CANT HAVE BOTH FFS thats just greedy and wrong !

Why does the thought "The Nightmare Before Christmas" keep occurring to me re: this issue?

(Although that is one of my favorite movies.)

Because in spite of Jack's good intentions, he got shot down and badly. But unlike Jack, I somehow don't think LL will learn from their mistakes..

My favorite movie of all time!

Maybe we should give LL shrunken heads and boxes with teeth that chase them around for Christmas...lol.

An animated box with teeth would be fun in world. Something to unleash on the occasional pesky person who wants to display his preenis.

Not a box, but close...

On Xstreet or inworld? There's an abundance of it anyway.

LOL, Lindal, that's priceless!!! Does it have animations by any chance?

Yes, it's animated. The thing looks like a normal chair until it eats you. Comes in three colors. Search XStreet using "carnivorous" and you should find it.

I remember coming across that chair a while ago. Yes, it looks like a regular chair until a victim sits on it whereupon they are chewed up in a gory display of body parts Cool!

Is it available in world?

As of today, Xstreet is down 105,000 listings (9.2%) since Nov 19th,

Other sites I am tracking are up 23,000 listings (16%)

I'm posting regular stats on SLU

Hopefully... 'cause an xstreet seach for carnivorous chair did not produce results within the first couple pages before i lost interest in searching. Another unique item that has been poofed?

Thanks for this update, Daniel. I know many of us appreciate your taking the time to compile the information.

I don't suppose we know what the normal 'November into December' figures would be (or figures for the past couple of years, anyway)----but one might speculate that 'normally' this period would be showing a marked INcrease. So that 'down 9.2%' might represent an even larger drop in sales, relative to the 'normal'.

I only started tracking the data the day of the announcement, so someone else would have to supply that.

Seems to me that this is GOOD news for users of Xstreet, not bad. Have you tried to shop on there? There is so much CRAP stuff that it takes a LONG TIME to find the good stuff, free or not. Some people list LOADS of the same biab freebies over and over with slightly different colors, etc. The site was going to get progressively more UNUSABLE without finding some way to clear out the clutter.

I can see that this might be a frightening prospect if you just sell a few low cost items to pay for membership or tier, but keep in mind that your Xstreet sales will likely go up if people are MORE likely to find YOUR items when they are not buried under tons of ancient abandoned listings (or the same old freebies re-listed by multiple people).

Freebies are a great resource for everybody in SL and I generate a lot of traffic of my own by giving them out, but a lot of time the reason freebies are free is that they are just not good enough to pay for. A lot (not all) of the best freebies on Xstreet are from merchants drawing attention to their paid listings, so it does't seem unfair to charge for that service. Yes, there's some incredible classic freebies, but they CAN be found in world as well.

I'd rather have people come explore for freebies in-world than have them just collect them on Xstreet and never pay a shop in-world a visit. No reason why non-freebie listings can't invite people to visit locations in-world for freebies!

Besides we are only talking a few pennies here. How much is $L10 or $L50 in real world currency? $10L is what it costs to upload a texture, basically nothing. SL already as a whole can be an entirely free experience as it is, one doesn't need to pay anything at all for unlimited exploration and in-world freebies. A few pennies of expense to list an item on a web site designed for merchants doesn't seem unreasonable.

Also there seem to be no shortage of people listing well-known and common freebies for SALE on Xstreet, perhaps in hopes they can trick and charge noobs for free stuff. Xstreet adding a tiny fee would help discourage this kind of annoying clutter.

Perhaps somebody can start a site solely for freebie listings. It certainly won't stop freebie-hunters from gathering unlimited amounts of them inside the game.

Also, if you have a very popular freebie, try charging a ridiculously small amount for it, say L$2 or L$5 and see how much the popularity drops off. That may give an idea of if it has any value as an item whatsoever, or worth only absolutely nothing at all.

What is there, in this new policy, that will distinguish 'good' from 'crap'?