Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

People will actually pay money for good stuff, enough to cover the listing fees
Anything for free sells well whether it is good or not.
If people want free stuff to use inworld they can look inworld for it.

The problem is that LL has once again failed to give us the tools to help them before making a policy that seems rather stupid. They could give us a few tools, which would solve the problem and do so without adding fees to the bill.

A freebie section, with the ability to toggle it's inclusion on or off in search. That alone would reduce "clutter" and allow you to find what you want. Also, for all the colors of an individual item? They could allow us to put them as sellable links on ONE listing. Boom, there goes a huge chunk of clutter. The ability to track sales of individual items.. then most of us can remove items that simply aren't selling. But what does LL chose to do instead? Add a fee that will "help."

Also, how is the fee going to "help reduce clutter," if everyone decides to start charging for that free "crap" and really cheap items? Without those tools, it's not. So, how is this going to benefit XStreet shoppers? It's not. It's just going to put a price on freebies and increase prices of lower priced items. Ultimately, the only one that's going to benefit from this is LL.

L$10 on the 1 million items left in XGreed is another US$38,000 per month LL just snatched from merchants whether they sell anything or not.

That should pay the salary of the bright spark that thought the whole mess up.

Looks like it can be found here

It's upstairs on the second level.

The best way to benefit Xstreet shoppers is of course to just list everything for free at $0L ................

How does the fact that people will pay for good stuff, ensure that what you see listed on XStreet under the new policy IS 'good stuff'?

All that is ensured is that the seller is willing to pay the new fees----NOT that the item is 'good'.

*thwaps Tegg on the head with a fish* While that might be true, that also defeats the purpose.. And makes LL even MORE L$

What makes you think that stuff is going to go away?



Again, what makes you think that stuff is going to go away? Helping to find your listings by reducing the competition is in no way shape or form a long term plan.



It's completely unfair to charge L$99 for a freebie and then stick it in a place that can't be searched from the main page, indeed I'll go out on a limb here and say it's utterly disgraceful to charge people for a service and not provide them with a service.



If everyone was charged L$10 for their uploaded textures every month there would be a furore, whether L$10 is peanuts or not.



Again, why do you think this sort of stuff is going to go away?



Alternative sites have a good answer to freebies, they list them in the freebie section.

thanks

If it's not good stuff it won't keep selling so the seller will eventually pull it from the market.

Maybe or maybe not. And how would we know if it's a good seller or not, if we don't have a way to see how many of an item we have sold? Beyond a big 0 of course.

Edit to add: I probably wouldn't have as big a problem with the fee IF they'd have given us the tools first.

Indeed.

If LL really wanted to improve the searching-for-what-you're-shopping-for experience, they'd invest a couple of bucks in fixing Search.

Because the new policy will not improve that experience. It will only bring in some revenue for LL while protecting established merchants (by raising the barriers against the entry of new competitors).

Improving the s.f.w.y.s.f. experience is NOT what the new policy is about.

Thanks, Lindal and Rime! I'll definitely have to check that out (or send it to the Linden/s who came up with this bright idea as a Christmas gift *smiles sweetly*)

I second that, Daniel. Thank you for taking your time to keep up with this and then post it.

I would loosely fit into this category. I don't sell a high volume of items, but use the profit to purchase items I may want in SL so I no longer put USD$ into SL. (ETA: Meaning I don't purchase lindens anymore; what I need I can now generate in world.)

I never listed freebies or even $1L items on Xstreet so that point is moot in my case.

Prior to this announcement, I was selling on average 1 item a day and usually quite a bit more than that. My items are low-priced (mainly because when I first began selling, I had no clue what to set prices at and began low).

I had approximately 22 or so items listed prior; I deactivated all but the 8 items that sold regularly. Since then I have not had one single sale. Per your logic, I should be selling *more* because they are now easier to find. When I was selling regularly on xStreet in the past, somehow people were finding my products through all the "clutter" and I haven't done any advertising for quite awhile. Despite that, I was getting some sales in world as well.

I'm not frightened, however, as I have a tier-free 512 parcel to live on, have saved most of the income from my sales as well as my stipends, so if I closed down shop I could last quite awhile without putting more USD into the system.

However, when my Premium membership runs out, depending what the situation is at that time with Xstreet and other ideas the Lindens may have up their sleeves, I'll sell my 512 and just come in world when I feel like socializing. (And the Lindens will lose whatever little they make on selling Premiums; but Premiums usually lead to land sales, and often quite a bit of land, so they'll have shot themselves in their respective feet in my case and I dare to say many others.)

As far as $10L being "nothing" - true, but if it started adding up per item per month, even for the few items I had, some selling regularly, some every few months - in my particular RL financial situation it becomes more than "pennies" and pennies needed to spend on RL items.

Cool! Thanks, Rime.

It seems that so many people have reasoned out the situation the same way. Not in anger or pique--just sad, mature, deliberative logic.

I'm keeping my mainland as long as I can pay for it from my in-game income.

Oh, I'm committed to staying as long as they let me.

I'm just sad at the direction things are going, and even sadder that it didn't have to be that way.

Y.M.B.R.A.T. of course

Wasn't looking to make money, just wondered if it will be insane to do or not. Not sure I understood your post.

Insane only because of the responsibility and pain entailed keeping stolen content off your site I guess, can you delete stuff as fast as a heap of people can create alts and add it?

The new policy will drive out quality low-volume niche creators who have been deemed to be nothing more than unwanted clutter and will decamp to competitor sites while freebie & BIAB resellers who survive by conning n00bs, such as the notorious R****** R***, will thrive on X-Street. Way to go, LL.

Serious. Lack. Of. Brains.

Wouldn't it have been easier to institute an 'original content only / no resellers' policy? But, hey, that would have required someone at a desk doing some work.

Agreeing with Karyn here.

Of course there are no guarantees in life, but changes are pretty big that most of the crap will disappear. Simply because it does not sell enough. At this moment most ppl could not care whether an items sells or not, as it is free anyway. As soon as you have to pay 10 linden per month for that box, the idea becomes less appealing, as you will have to cover those 10 lindens.

What will be removed from XStreet?
======================
- Loads of crap. Simply because sellers of that crap (think freebies for sale, as example) wont be able to justify their listings with the sales.
- Some good content. Sad, but that is the decision of the merchant, not of LL.
- Dozens of listings of the same item in different colors. From what I understood there will be a template to cater to those needs, resulting in only 1 listing.
- Freebies, as they will go into a seperate section.

It would not surprise me if within a few months, 50% of all listings will have vanished, maybe even more. Leaving at least double the exposure for what is left, because without a doubt, most shoppers will shop at XStreet (see below).

So what would be smart to do, as merchant on XStreet?
====================================
List every item you think is good enough to sell. Expand even. When I look at my own pages, I have about 127 items listed, and a few more to box up for listings. This will cost me about 1270 linden per month. Imagine that, for 127 webpages of exposure of my brand, I pay 1270 linden. Before the new policy, I payed nothing, yet the chance to be found was smaller as more items were listed. So it is worth the 10 linden per item to me, and I will expand my presence.

And, I am quite confident that sales will improve there. Looking at the exposure XStreet gets simply because it is owned by LL, makes all alternative sites not relevant to me. No matter how hard they work and how nice they may be. Shppoers will be directed en masse towards XStreet.

Bottomline
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No matter how you feel about the upcoming changes, if you are a merchant, think business, not emotional. If you are serious about business, see XStreet as a marketing instrument, and try to see the possibilities. No one likes to pay more then they used to, but do not focus on the that. Focus on the future, not the past.

It's gonna be that way with the in world group as well - everything will have to be vetted as well as possible.

I'm not talking about tedium though I'm asking about financial cost of bandwidth in running such a site.

What if - just what if - things on the site would have to be approved as well. Remember it would be a freebie site, not another xstreet. Maybe a blog/xstreet hybrid, I dunno.

Money concerns first, the rest comes later.