Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

Hmm.. I love how people assume that this will cut the "crap" out of XStreet. It won't. People'll start charging for the freebies and raise the prices on the lower stuff.. but guess what? They'll still be cheaper than the rest, so they'll get the sales. And they'll still be cluttering up the system. And will LL do anything about this? No. They're getting their commission and their fees, so why should they?

Those of us that pull out are doing so because we either can't afford the fees without raising our prices or simply don't think the service is worth the extra fees.

In my case, it's a bit of both. I could probably afford the fees, but my XStreet sales are slim some months and if a venue can't support itself, then I cut it off. And XStreet is going to be the same old XStreet, because LL isn't adding new tools with their new fees. If they were to hold off feeing us to death until they had at least the ability to put all the colors on one listing, then I could see the fees as being kind of worth it. As it stands, I don't see XStreet as worth the fees, especially not when there is competition for XStreet available.

I also can't measure XStreet's value as an advertising tool. There is no counter that says, "your SLURL has been clicked X times this period," like there is for classifieds. And people don't just say, "Hey, I found your stuff on XStreet and decided to pop in world and buy it!"

This is LL at it's finest.. giving us fees or policy changes, without giving us the tools to make them worthwhile.

Your guess is as good as mine here. Of course I cannot be sure that all crap is cut out, but neither can you be sure about what you say here. We simply think different as for the way things will turn out. Only time can tell of course.


Do not think of it as new fees, but do investigate if the service is worth the charges you are going to pay. That is a very valid way of doing business, and for each person the results will come out different.
Cannot afford... well I seriously wonder about that. If you have 100 items listed you pay 1000 linden per month. If, as a business, you cannot afford that, you do not have a viable business. Remember, I am speaking as a business person here, people who simply like to build stuff and try to sell a bit, fall in an entrely different category. They have different goals then a business.


As for the competition, I think they are not even close to compareable to XStreet. Since LL owns and advertises XStreet, as a business platform it is the best choice. Again, for people that build for a hobby and are glad to sell an item once in a while, the competition might be a smart choice. For a business that is about revenue, they might be a nice addition, but nothing more then that. XStreet is pushed by LL, hence the best choice to make money. I have US150,- tier to make each month, plus I want to cash out each month as well, so I cannot afford to loose a very good way of exposing my businesses. If time allows me, I might list on the other platforms as well though.


You can measure it if you want. Of course, it could be implemented better, but simply set the landing point for the XStreet links at a different spot then your other Landmarks, and put a visitor counter on that spot.


That is one way to look at it. I call it the whining way (not meant personal to you, lots of people do it as this thread shows).
The other way is to say: This is the new policy whether I like it or not, let's see how I can best benefit from it.

As a person running businesses in SL, I choose for the latter.

99.44% of businesses in SL are paying tier and that's it. These are, by definition, viable businesses... because they exist and continue to exist. Why are they viable? Because a business in SL has basically no expenses. Not even people's time... it's an entertainment medium. A viable business with the business goal of "pay tier each month" doesn't need more than a few thousand L$ a month total income.

No, these aren't RL businesses. They are, however, the source of the majority of content in-world. Only a vanishingly small percentage of people actually make real life money.

So... the question is this: does XSL provide a profit? If not, I'll dump it, just like I dump an underperforming stall in a mall somewhere.

About the 99.44%, I do not know where you got that number from. But if it is correct, I feel very fortunate. In my definition though, the purpose of a business is to make money. Covering your costs can be a goal, but is it a business goal?

Now I do see SL as an entertainment medium as well, and I chose to do business in it. As soon as I do not make profits anymore, I will choose a different path, maybe even leave SL. Because if my goal is exploring, I can explore. If it is creating, I can create. But if it is running a business, I need to make a profit.

Now the last question is not entirely correct. Does XStreet influence your overall profit would be a better question.
- How high is your traffic on XStreet, for example. It is easy to see, per day, how many times your pages on XStreet were viewed.
- How many people TP from XStreet to your in-world presence, is another one. By setting a seperate landing point for XStreet slurls, it is easy to see those numbers.
- How many of those TP's result in a sale, is another one.

If traffic is close to zero, you can forget about the other two and simply close down your XStreet presence. Now take my case as an example: my traffic averages between 60 and 80. So then it is interesting to know how many of those TP to my store (and actually buy something). Now my sales on Xstreet more then cover the listing fees and the 4 homepage enhancements, so I never actually checked the tp ratio, but if I wasn't making those sales, I sure as hell would investigate these things before closing down there.

Yet that might be the difference in focus. Some content creators are mainly about the creation, and put little effort in marketing stuff. My focus is more on the latter, and less on the creation itself. It could well be that 50% of my SL time is spent on marketing and analyzing.

See, LL is thinking that most of the freebie "sellers" are going to pull out rather than pay the fees. Some will, that's a given. These are the ones that live up to the idea that free is free. They refuse to charge anything, but can't afford to "eat the fees," of being considered advertising.

And this will do nothing to stop the people who are already selling those freebies. They'll just tack the cost right on to their prices and keep trucking. If anything, this will give THEM a freer hand at it, because they won't have the original freebie to counter them.



I am what is labeled as a "hobbyist." I don't do this for a whole lot of profit. In fact, I do this because it's fun for me and I've learned a load from it. That's my "profit." But, I do like having the hobby support itself, since my RL money is kind of tight at this time. LL isn't aiming for the hobbyists, however.. they're going after the bigger businesses who have the extra income to do business with them.

Most of my profit comes from in world or via the other sites now. XStreet sales have always been a lot slower than in world, so I'll treat as I do a mall site or other rental spot. It either shows a profit after the first two months or it goes. I don't have enough of a budget for advertising it to have XStreet under that heading.



Hmm.. actually, you're right. The competition isn't anywhere close to XStreet. They're better, at least in customer service. The people that are NPIOF are going to be screwed, because they're going to have the same limited customer service for XStreet as they do for SL. At least third party sites will give them the same treatment regardless of payment info.

And while XStreet is pushed by LL, they're not the end all of advertising. I've been telling my customers where they can find me if they wish to shop via website. My shop has signs for them too. They're in my profiles on the various Second Life website types I do happen to visit. I've taken down my XStreet signage and will be removing it as a contact point on all my profiles and such. Will my doing that hurt XStreet? Of course not. I'm not that delusional.

Plus, many of the third party markets are learning from LL's mistakes. They're working on implementing tools that actually WILL cut the clutter and increase exposure. Slapt already has a freebie section, for example.

It'd also be silly to NOT list on the other sites, even with time issues. They're commission based and if you sell, great, if you don't, you lose nothing. It's almost free advertising. Cannot say that about XStreet once those fees kick in.




Probably could, yes. Well, that is, if I hadn't designed my shop so that people could get to what they are looking for with minimal fuss, given the size of my plot and shop.




I'm glad you're a glass half full kind of person.

But it's not whining if people are truly unhappy with a situation and are discussing why it's not working for them. We're hoping that we'll still be heard and maybe some changes will be made.. though that's a rapidly diminishing hope were anything LL is concerned. We know they've made up their mind and we're still trying to change it. I'd rather hear "whining," than crickets, because it means we at least care. We could just shut up, take our stuff down from XStreet and not say a word. And LL'd be scratching their heads wondering where the people went.

If I wasn't trying to make the best of their policies, I'd have left long ago. And yes, in my way, I'm making the best of their policies. But unfortunately, my best means leaving XStreet and trying my luck with the competition.

Who knows, I might come back, when LL decides to add value to XStreet. But given how half-done their recent changes seem, I having a sinking feeling that the tools people are wanting will take years for LL to implement, if they don't just decide to say the fees are good enough and not develop them at all. After all, why on earth would they want us to be able to put all the colors on one listing when they can charge us for each color being listed separately?

The new listing tools for multiple variations will be in place before the fees go into effect.

Ivory Soap. LL's figures for positive L$ cash flow suggest a lower number, but we know that a positive L$ cash flow is meaningless unless you account for tier payments.

That definition works both ways. The purpose of money is to motivate the creation of goods and services to be exchanged for that money. The purpose of a business is to create a profitable framework for the creation of goods and services.

The Linden economy has three benefits for Linden Lab:

1. To motivate people to spend real money on tier (make a profit for Linden Lab).
2. To motivate people to spend real money to buy Lindens (make a profit for LL).
3. To create a barrier to entry for competition (improve LL's position in the market).

None of these require more than a tiny fraction of the businesses in SL to have a positive L$ cash flow (let alone a positive US$ cash flow), but they all gain by the presence of a large number of businesses whether they make money or not. So in the context of LL's motivations, covering your costs should be considered a business goal.

I've seen that argument... and I've seen it applied to stalls in malls as well as XSL, with more justification. On the other hand XSL sales can also be driven by in-world activity. I have bought a number of products at XSL after visiting the store in-world because I wanted to buy the product for another person, or because I happened to have the L$ credit in XSL and not in-world, or because I wasn't ready to buy when I was in-world. All of my stuff is copy, so people buying gifts have to buy them from XSL.

So since the network effects work both ways, I don't consider it worth my time treating XSL any differently from any other "mall".

I agree with Argent; I think they're being penny-wise and pound foolish.

I can understand the need for maintenance fees. It's a simple and effective way to encourage vendors to delete listings for products that aren't selling. I assume there's a cost to the data warehousing and that it's significant enough to want to do this. (Otherwise, LL is not being even penny-wise ...)

Maintenance fees are not necessary for "stale" listings. Repeated failure to deliver over a sufficiently long period (longer than any typical region outage) should make a listing go inactive, with an email to the owner. Problem solved, stop BSing us about this LL!

But I think they're really botching the freebie issue. They're catering to businesses that don't want to compete with quality freebies. IMHO, even if they were just a point-of-sale website, they'd want to encourage freebies (or dollarbies) just to pull in customers.

But they're far more than that, and making freebies difficult to post and distribute detracts from the quality of life for most residents in SL.

They claim that customers complain about freebies listed in search. There's a real simple solution to that: put a checkbox for "include freebies". Default it to empty. Then measure and see how many customers leave that box empty! Of course, they won't do that because it would prove that one of their arguments is pure unadulterated, unmitigated BS.

I also reject their claim that freebies are only for marketing purposes. I guess "pro bono" isn't in their lexicon.

Lumping all freebies into a single category will make searching very difficult. If they have the same categories for freebies as for normal products, and we just have to search twice, then ok -- I'll open two browsers!

Currently, the freebies always end up at the bottom of search anyway. I usually find a suitable product before I get that far.

Really?! Where did they say it, please? What I last read from LL was that it wasn't, but I could have missed more recent stuff, especially office hours.

This could put a mild spin on my opinion of LL. It'd be the first in a really long while that they actually did put the tools in place before making the changes "official."

Unfortunately a lot gets buried in group chats and lists, but these are comments from the merchants discussion group.

Resident: Which means hopefully adding a way to list demos and items with slight variations on the same listing possibly?
Pink Linden: we absolutely want to add that in as well.
Resident: Well I just dont see a reason to pay the new listing fees for each item that may just have several colors.
Pink Linden: that was clear in the merchant feedback
Pink Linden: that's why the listing fee is set farther out in the roadmap, to give us time to implement the pieces that merchants asked for like multiple colors

Would be nice if demos were included too.

In all of this I think the one thing that has become crystal clear is that there are two classes of people who list items on XSL: Let's call them Merchants and Sellers

Merchants are those few who turn over a lot of sales and make big bucks and in doing so make LL big bucks.

Sellers are the rest of us: hobbyists and do-gooders that just add clutter.

When LL 'Listened to the merchants' just how many individuals exactly did they listen to? How many attended the office hours and how representative of the feelings of the entire community were their concerns and wishes?

What I'd like to see would be TWO XSL:

XSL Merchants - Pay to list, fancy features, home page features etc etc
XSL Marketplace - Commission only, fewer flash features, no cross listing

I'd also like to see a comparison in traffic and revenue generation for both these sites. Does the dog wag the tail or does the tail wag the dog?

Rime

You can go to alexa.com and plot the website reach (you can also plot the other merchant sites on the same chart). That does not tell you about your items specifically, but it does give you an idea of the relative overall site importance.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.xstreetsl.com

Hm.. not doubting you, Dimitrio, but I honestly think that both Colossus and Pink need to sit down, discuss the issue and post about it.

Frag, searching the flogorums for all posts by a single person is impossible. How the heck is that an improvement over THIS forum?! See, I recall a blogorum post by Colossus saying that it wouldn't be implemented before the fees, because it was time consuming code wise. Or something akin to that.

Edit: Thanks Dimitrio for bringing me up to speed in world. Pink sounds pretty confident about it.

My thoughts exactly.

Excellent points.

(I can't help wondering: if someone made the suggestion about the checkbox in an Office Hour, would the Linden simply ignore it? [and...in which Linden's office hour would it make most sense to bring up Lear's suggestion?^_~])

(The LL defenders who are so quick to characterize those with criticisms as 'not understanding business' or 'irrational whiners' or such, are failing to recognize that many who criticize love SL and actually DO want to see LL prosper. We just think they've chosen a road that will not lead to prosperity.)

Sorry, Marcel, my experience does not bear this out. As I stated in my previous post, as humble and few as my items are compared to your large number, I sold on average 1-2 items/day and usually more. Every day. That was enough for my needs/wants as a "hobbyist" as I dare not call myself a "merchant" in LL's Xstreet's new ethereal heights.

I kept listed all of my BEST SELLING items; the ones I was selling daily. Since that time (and since my last post on this subject) I have now sold exactly one item. If "crap" and "clutter" are getting cleared out, I "should" be getting more exposure, or so those merchants (usually the large, established ones) keep saying. It definitely "seems" logical, but my personal experience is not proving this.

Were customers previously saying, "Ohhhh, I want to find some crap," then looking through the dozens of pages until they said, "Ohhhh, look, here's some of Czari's stuff!"

If people cared enough to purchase my few items when Xstreet was "cluttered," and there were more competing items, it is extremely curious to me that now, as my items can be found more easily (ostensibly) the "dumpster divers" don't want it anymore?

(Yes, I'm being facetious to make a point. And I would love to hear from other small "hobbyists" if they've had similar experiences.)



I disagree I paid nothing previously. I had a percentage of my product sale deducted. I considered that fair for the service. However, it's the listing fee PLUS increased percentage of sales that will push hobbyists/small merchants out. But perhaps that is what LL wants - to only "showcase" the larger merchants. 10L to you may be chicken feed; to me it is a lot per item.[/QUOTE]



I *am* thinking "business, not emotional" as it does not make good business sense to keep items listed, pay 10L/mo per item that is no longer selling when it USED TO!

This is nothing personal against you, Marcel, but I am really starting to get annoyed at hearing this same argument which, again, tends to usually come from larger merchants.

And there is no law in RL and shouldn't be in SL how large a business is to be considered a business or even successful. In RL some people prefer to shop in large stores such as Macy's, others prefer the boutique with fewer items.

To bring it a bit closer to home, I live in "The Foliage Capital of the World" meaning this area grows a majority of the plants sold in the country/world. In the rural areas there are the nurseries where the plants are grown in endless rows - every variety one can think of. If someone wants to go to that business and tramp through rows, and rows, and rows of plants, that opportunity exists here.

There are also specialty nurseries that have particular niches. One in particular advertises coming to a person's home, doing an evaluation of what plants would not only be aesthetically pleasing to the home, but would grow the best in given areas. An estimate is given and the homeowner can accept or decline. If accepted, then a plan is made between the nursery and the homeowner on which part of the yard to begin with first, etc. This nursery also has a shop for customers who only want several plants. In RL this shop would probably be comparable in size to maybe a 1024 SL parcel, but it carries some varieties of plants that are hard to find other places.

I'm trying to make the point that there are choices in RL and *should* be for merchandising in SL. And there were on Xstreet, before LL decided to pretty much change the system in favor of large merchants who can afford to pay listing charges for thousands of products.

Emotional? No. Trying to make the best business decision for MY little business, yes. And at the moment, Xstreet is pretty much running me out of town.

Second verse, same as the first.

That is YOUR opinion of what a business is. As I said in my previous post, a "viable business" does not have to be large to STILL be a business. Before all this Xstreet baloney, for ME, I had a viable business. It may not be large enough for you, but I'd really appreciate you quit being the arbiter of what a SL business is.

You phrased that much better than I did/could and I agree with this statement 100%....however...



You've given me an idea. After this post I *am* going to shut up, delist the few items I'd left on Xstreet, take down my inworld Xstreet box and use my time & energy to begin the process of listing on the competing sites.

Color me one more person LL can wonder where the people went.

Umm.. that wasn't really what I was advocating doing, but I can see the point, considering when I made the post, I was ready to just call it quits on discussing the issue at all.

See, I keep swaying between giving it the two months test that I reserve for malls and other rentals, and just simply walking away when they announce they are going ahead with the fees.

I knew you weren't advocating that, it's just that your post prompted my own thinking on the subject.

This was the main part of your post that gave me an idea (not saying you were saying to do that as you used the word *could*):



The last post I saw from the Lindens re: Xstreet on the Blogorums was that the matter is now closed to further discussion (or words to that effect). That seemed to (rightly) irk the main posters on that merchant forum who, in the beginning were gung-ho on the idea. So, with that attitude coming from the Lindens, I decided to add to the group that has taken all their products off Xstreet with the hope that if enough numbers leave, LL will re-evaluate this issue.

I left 8 of the items that I sold at least one of every day prior to the new policy being announced active and just deactivated everything else hoping, like the rest of your post, that when the dust settles, LL will add value or they will rethink their new pricing system; heck, many of us have asked for more value added to paying to be a Premium member, so I'd even take something like that as a bone thrown to us that could offset the price of tier, or the upload of textures...anything positive.

However, after reading yesterday's posts, reconsidering what has transpired with my products on Xstreet even before the new policy goes into effect, and evaluating my budget like a "business owner" (although I heartily agree with Argent that the reasons any one of us begins a SL "business", "hobby", or whatever term one wants to use, is not always measured on a spreadsheet), I decided to just take my mind off the whole affair for now, hope that being another person who has left Xstreet will combine with others and cause LL to take another look at this idea, and use my time to set up on another site/s.

I did all this last evening and had bittersweet feelings, but afterward I noticed my inworld linden balance was higher than previously, checked my transactions history. Someone had purchased one of my products inworld. That excited me because I have done almost zilch marketing lately due to RL reasons and to me (as silly a this may sound), since i got very little sales inworld in the past unless I did a LOT of marketing, this sale gave me hope.

I honestly am looking forward to listing on some other sites and see how my sales do there.

Thank you to everyone who has posted in this thread, including those with whom I disagree as often looking at an issue from another perspective does provide clarity.

It's not *just* the money. SL is a social place, and they are treating us badly as people. Some people will move to the other sites just because they are treated as people over there, not as a statistic to be made a profit from.

Those were pretty good sales, more then I am making (freebies excluded). The clearout, however, is only starting, so I would a bit longer before drwaing conclusions. Sales were lower for me as well the last 2 weeks, but that happened in the past as well.
By the way I do not have a large number listed either, 127 at the moment as far as I remember. Have a few more to add though.


As I said, the clearout has only just started, it is too early to draw conclusions. From what I saw in the past, your stuff is clearly not part of the clutter




You paid nothing to list, you payed only when you sold an item. That is why I say you payed nothing. Listing was free.
If things will proceed like many expect (lots of items disappearing) the exposure will simply get better, which would make the chance people actually get to see your stuff higher.
Now I do not know how many items you have listed, but for 100 items you pay 1000 linden a month. Which gives you 100 advertising pages (that is the way I look at XStreet). Of course, in the past we payed nothing, but it is of no use looking back. The question for now is, do we think those 1000 linden for 100 listed items is worth it. We clearly think different about that


Not taken personally either. But I do think you are thinking too much short term though. Did your traffic get much lower as well? That is an important indicator to show if indeed less people saw your stuff (i.e. exposure).
By the way, I do not see myself as a larger merchant on XStreet, for that I have way too little items listed. Yet I do see the possibilities for the future system, though only time will tell if I am right.


Of course that is true. My only indicator of successful is profit, when business related. If a business fails to make a profit in the long run, it is not successful.
Take my furniture store as an example. Currently 1/4 sim big, competing against simwide stores (even multi-sim wide probably). It must be profitable though, else it it not successful. Now I do cheat a bit on that level, as on my half sim I run 3 stores, and am happy enough if the end result is profit. Instead I should calculate the profit per business, and close down the furniture part if it happens to contribute not enough. As for now, all businesses run well enough though.



Here is where we disagree again. Small businesses pay small money for listings. 50 items equals 500 linden, or US$ 1.80 per month. 1000 items equals 10.000 linden, or US$ 36 per month. So smaller businesses are just as capable of listing their stuff, as large businesses.

In my opinion, the only people that can get hurt, are real hobbyists, who list but never really expect to make a sale. However, if you are serious about building a business, those 500-1000 linden for 50-100 products should be worth it. XStreet will only be pushed more in the future (at least I expect), and for a few dollars a month you have a perfect medium to expose your business.

One thing I said in the past and I hinted to here again: Watch your traffic on XStreet. For me, the only good reason to pull your items off XStreet, is very low traffic there.

Which does me bring to one important question: Did you pull items off, or are the same number of items still listed? Remember: the more items you have, the more cross-traffic you are getting. If you had 50, and only kept the 5 most successful, do not expect them to sell as well in the past. You will be missing all cross-traffic from the items that might not have sold, but were looked at. For all those pages, the possibility to click "All from this merchant", are gone.

Well of course I am expressing my opinion
And.... I DO believe that a viable business, either already makes a profit or is o the right way to start making profit. Which has nothing to do with size. If you rent a 1024 parcel, and make enough sales to cover tier and other business costs, and make a few linden profit, you are as viable as a full sim business that makes a small profit. On the other hand, if you have a full sim for your business, and fail to make tier with that business, your business is not viable. It is not about size here Czari. My furniture business was viable when I rented a 4096 plot. It was not viable anymore when I rented my first homestead: I tried to grow to fast.

So I adapted ad made it viable again, which meant scale down.

The arbiter of what a SL business is sounds kewl, but I do not see myself that way. I DO express my opinion of what any business is though, RL or SL. And in my opinion, businesses are about making a profit. Even if you spend that profit on shoes and dresses, and never cash out a dime, you made the profit. So once more: it is NOT about size, it is about making a profit in the long run.