Selling on Xstreet just got more expensive

Melita....there are plenty of avenues you can take to give away your products that do not involve having to pay tier on a piece of land.

Okay, name some. Let's be solution-driven.

I've already proposed two ways I'm willing to help.

Congratulations Linden Labs. Everything you touch turns into ashes.

I am making my SL Living with creating items and selling them inworld and on SLX. Thereby I finance my SL lifestyle, spending the money on rent and things I buy.

*I* am a part of what generaters your user-to-user transaction statistics that you hold so dear.

*I* am one of the content creators that fill the world with items that others can use !

And you are throwing a monkey wrench into it EVERY TIME !

You slap the creators of Goodwill Freebies in the face, you slap the small time merchants in the face and all that just so that there are less items because your system can probably not handle the sheer ammount of it ?

I can only echo what many here have said before.

We get Slapt.

I have to say....I think it's kind of low to use the customers as a bargaining tool on this. People are telling shoppers that they will no longer have freebies because of this. That's wrong. Many of us will continue to give out gifts in our stores, as we have always done.

Bottom line is that people don't want to fork over a few cents to build their business....thats fine...it's an option, not a requirement....you have choices....but to drag your customers into that, as a bargaining chip....not right. It's your choice not to offer a convenient service to your customers. Some of us will continue to offer that convenience, and pay for it. But don't exploit your customers in the process. And many are doing that by sending rants around to their store groups.

Mickey - so, how does one offer freebies without Xstreet or SL land?

Your new post seems to refer to something different. Could you elaborate a bit on what you are referring to? I have no idea what you are talking about in that last post.

DSN

Pep (It even has a men's channel.)

Well I would be more then happy to provide space to give away freebies, as long as there are enough people willing to give away stuff but not willing to pay land tiers. More then enough prims left on my piece of SL.

As for being more difficult for starters... I beg to differ. At this moment, according to LL, there are about 1.5 million items listed on XStreet. Of which probably 80% is either crap, or dozens of listings of the same item in different colors. Making it hardly possible to get visible. Cleaning up that space will help the smaller merchant.

It will, however, be more difficult to start without investing a few dollars. So what? Is it so strange that in order to try to make a few dollars, you first invest some? I am sure I would not have gotten this far if I had not put in money when I started. And still I often put down a handful of linden dollars to try out new possibilities.

In the end, I think XStreet will be a better place for both merchants as shoppers. And I gladly pay my share to get there. Worst that can happen, is that the plans do not work out as expected, in which case it is time to leave XStreet. But I do not expect that to happen.

QFT !

There are tons of blogs that promote freebies. There are tons of hunts. If you don't own land...simply work with another merchant, in having your freebies involved with one of the hunts or blog promotions. They should be happy to do this....it helps them.

There are tons of freebie only locations that set out boxes of freebies. Get your items set out there.

Get creative. If you're wanting to hand out scripts....what other kind of business would benefit by handing these scripts out with their merchandise. Does anyone want to hand out free door scripts? open and close window and shutters or curtain scripts? I've got a whole warehouse of curtains offered this week....set them out there.

True, although I thought it was for people with shops only.

DSN is good. I recommend it to a lot of shoppers.

(Mickey - blogs are for promotions. Not much chance or sense in listing with a blog, if you have no shop. Don't blogs send people in world to get the items, as well? I use the blogs myself and they use click through SLurl links. Hunts need a shop and land as well. Not all freebie places accept freebies; some are full and some prefer to find their own. This might give rise to more freebie places in world but someone will still have to pay tier.)

I guess I am just not understanding how this benefits the small merchant. Gives them a chance to make it? So I am assuming they will be making like 10 things and putting them on XSSL, paying their 100L a month (plus commissions if they get any sales) and hoping they sell enough to cover those costs?

What are the odds that a new creator will sell anything on XSSL? Or if they do, what are the odds that they will sell enough that after commissions and listing fees, it will justify their efforts? New creators are still learning, and it would probably be pretty rare for someone, being new, to be able to create content that they can charge so much for that one sale will cover their monthly costs in that venue.

Creators are taking a hit right off the bat. Most of them are creative and artistic and driven to be creating something, for the pure love of it. They don't earn anywhere NEAR what they deserve for the time and effort they expend out of pure love for the creation. Shall we take even what little they can gain away from them?

I wish someone could explain to me, the small merchant, exactly how these changes benefit me.

Just a closing thought, I pretty much feel it is pointless to rail against LL, or protest, or try to fight. They make their decisions across a board room table, they often pretend that your input is of value but it is only lip service. They don't really care what you think or what you want, it's all about the bottom line, and the decisions have already been made. They may lend lip service but it's only meant to blow you off. (and I don't mean that in a fun way!)

The way to fix that is to create a way to sell variations without adding prims... I mean items. People have figured that out in-world. Uchi has about 30 color variations of his rabbits, all in the one vendor.

Simply clearing out variations without providing an alternative is not going to improve XSL for either customers or sellers.

Melita:
I haven't read you exact situation, so this might not apply but, if all you want to do is get yuour freebies out there, it's so easy. Just give them to those freebie places that are always full and they'll spread around from them.

A lot of people are already doing so in other ways. Membership, land tier, shop rental, shopping to be presentable, paying tips at places one goes in SL, etc. Very few people could make profit in SL any more so than in RL by being 'invisible' or unimpressive visually (the ways for that are just different here.) In other words, no one begins a business here in a vacuum or without any startup cost at all, at least in Linden $.

It isn't about people being cheap, it's about the perception that LL continues to squash the startup efforts, while rewarding SL and RL corporations and big fish.

What you might not be seeing, is, people invest in the future. Why should people invest in a future that does not include them?

If someone wants to spend time and money to make money, there are a lot surer bets than SL small business, and that just became even more true.

If someone wants to help people stay in SL, they must now ask themselves what sort of a place they are contributing toward making a success. Is it just so that those same newbies can be corporate consumers and nothing much more?

It raises a lot more questions than whether to pay "a few pennies a month."

Personally? Between various land holdings I'm at around $400 USD tier a month. It makes less and less sense to continue paying that. I had a clothing line in the works which I planned to test on Xstreet first. Now that it's shot so many people in the foot I question the ethics of being part of that.

It is, once more, not about profit margin for everyone. It's about practicality and where they want to be. I don't know if I am explaining how I feel or think on this, very well at all. But it feels to me like the same thing our real world govt. is doing - string them along, don't tell them much, let them squeak if they must but it won't change a thing. Their vote is already obsolete.

The better choice would be to offer the "fat pack" on XStreet so that your potential customer can SEE all the variations and tell them the individual items can be purchased separately at your store in-world SLURL HERE.... If LL won't re-configure XStreet to account for variations, they can lose the sale to the in-world store.

I am a small merchant. I make a profit. There's no suggestion in the LL blog that this is to raise extra revenue for Xstreet, so I assume they are satisfied with the commission structure on that basis. The aims - of cleaning up 'stale' items and improving search - are laudable. I'd even be prepared to stand a small increase to help with something like that.

Unfortunately, the planned scheme hurts small merchants far harder than larger ones. This isn't a knee-jerk reaction, it's a reasoned response to the added costs vs. the perceived (lack of) benefits to my business.

Current status: small profit
Future status: estimated 36% drop in profit

Tell me at what point I rejoice for this decision. Will I see a 36% upturn in sales to counter this cost? I'm not jumping out of Xstreet just yet. I'll probably bin my (popular) freebies to cut my costs, or price them at some nominal amount to get the cheaper listing. Some people have mentioned a proposed system whereby multiple items of differing styles can be listed for a single fee. That'd be great for me, too, but there's no mention of it in the blog post, so I can't rely on it happening.

Actually according to Colossus this is something they ARE going to provide. That way people can sell 30 colors of dresses in 1 item. That benefits the merchant (pay for 1 item, sell 30 variations) and the customer (much easier to search).

To show the benefits of these changes:
Right now merchant A sells 10 different models, and includes a color changer. Resulting in 10 listings. Merchant B sells 9 models, but has 10 color variations listed, resulting in 90 listings.

This means that when searching for the item description, chances are 1 to 10 to find the product of merchant A, while they both have about the same variety in products.

In the new situation, merchant B can still use the same way of listing, but then pays 900, where merchant A pays 100. They still have a chance of 1 to 10 to be found, but also pay a tenth.
The result is probably that they will delist most of the variations, making the chance to be found more equal. And if the new listing system gets introduced, they can list all their colors and be equal to be found

So if we make an item inactive on XStreet, but don't delete it, will we get charged the listing free? I'm thinking in particular of seasonal items.

Ralektra - I don't even sell much on Xstreet. It's marketing for me. They want to see it set up, so they come to the store. I've mentioned this a zillion times.....but I keep the roof off of the store, so I can see each room setting on the map. The Xstreet drop-off points are different than the classifieds. I can see where they drop on the map. They are coming from Xstreet, for sure. I see a huge value there. Classifieds don't seem to be as effective as they used to be, and I'm seeing more come from Xstreet, now.

If I type in black leather to Xstreet....I'm going to come up with a zillion hits of freebies or 10L items, before I get to your good quality leather jackets. It will be frustrating as hell, and I'll give up before I get to yours. You're not a new creator, but that hits us all across the board, no matter how old we are.

What are the odds they will sell anything? Probably better after this policy goes into place, than it is now. Are they selling anything now at a price they think is fair? If not....there is more to tweak....that involves effect packaging, effective keywords, effective marketing.....that has nothing to do with a LL policy.

If they've got something on there, that hasn't sold for 2 months, and they have no evidence that people are coming to the store to buy it....something needs to be tweaked, or it needs to be replaced with something that is worth the time and effort to list. I've got a package like that....and I need to ditch it....off of Xstreet, and certainly out of the store, because it's eating up 100 prims that are valuable.

If you've got 200 items listed on Xstreet...I'm not going to make it to page 5 or 6 most likely....will others? You are shooting yourself in the foot, by storing heaps of product that does not sell in your own Xstreet inventory. It's cluttering your own inventory. This policy will certainly make you think twice about valuable space, and tweaking your product line for effectiveness. That is not a bad thing.

But I thought that LL already had asked people to consolidate listings, on same item different color types of things. Isn't that a separate issue?

Did they have to charge for freebies as well? What has that to do with people listing in sloppy ways?

You can sort listings by most expensive to least, currently.

But I've thought for a while now that they should list under 50L items separately. Freebies should also have their own section.

To me that makes more sense than penalising creativity.

I removed my one freebie from XStreet this morning. It was a full-perm one prim self-standing snapshot frame that people seemed to like. It wasn't a promotional item for my store, so I see no reason to pay to give it away.

I have given out hundreds of them over the last 2 years on XStreet.

Oh well, not my loss.

Well, what if Ralektra wanted to do a special promotion on leather jackets this month? If I search like that....I'll miss it. If I buy a leather jacket for 45L as a special promotion, and I like the quality...and I will, because she makes darn good stuff....then I will click on the LM that is in my inventory, from the special promotion, and I will go to her store to buy more stuff at a fair price. She got her value from that promotion. For sure.

They should organize it like Froogle, or whatever Google calls their shopping search engine these days.

Let you specify price ranges, group similar items together, and so on.