Rates of business faliure in SL

I'm selling a lot more since I went niche, though that may have less to do with it than that I've got a lot better at making things. I try to cover tier and uploads, anything else is nice because it means I can BUY MORE HAIR.

I put 'closing down' but only because tomorrow the SIM I am on is no more, busy in RL right now and making buildings & props for filming, so I'll reopen shop sometime in March. One nice thing that happened yesterday, someone IM'd to get a product I had had out on sale and they wanted a transfer version, ten minutes making the adjustments and I said just tip me what you think its worth, well they paid me 1000% more than I would have charged

Mixed results, actually, since I run more than one business venture.

My texture sales are booming, and my sim design and building work is maxxed out on my capacity to do new work. I'm turning down some requests for new work in both areas, and referring the clients to other content creators, because I simply don't have enough hours available to take on more than I am doing now. No complaints on either of those.

My "Ceera's Creations" clothing and furniture stores, on the other hand, barely break even, or in one case, loses money. This year I am paying more attention to them, and I am taking in a few partners to add variety to what is in the store. If those stores aren't profitable by the end of the year, it is likely I will close them. The impact of those stores right now is a drop in the bucket compared to my other ventures.

I feel the main reason for the poor sales in my Ceera's Creations stores is primarily because I do almost no advertising, beyond one minimal classified ad each, and I haven't been making a lot of new content to sell there. So I blame myself, and not the SL economy. My time has been more profitably spent working on textures and sim creation, so I have let my first set of stores slide, and the reduced sales show from that.

I said breaking even, but that's not quite true...however, the other answers didn't fit well either.

I have my clothing stores, which usually paid the tier for the land they were on. I've since moved them to a sim that I'm leasing, so they will simply contribute to the overall income.

I also have a nightclub which provides live talent on Friday nights and, occasionally, other nights. That talent comes at a high price - 2,000-8,000L, per night, depending on who I use. Other than donations, a small skim off the party popper and small portion of the employee tip jars, the club has no means of making money, so that comes out of my pocket.

Overall, being in business is a losing proposition for me - but I knew it would be going in. If I ever did make a profit, it would please me a great deal, but I don't see it ever happening. My businesses exist to provide a service - especially the club, because there are few like it and after only 2 1/2 wks of being open, it's already being called "the best blues club in SL" by many. I think that's really what I wanted it to be

I put modest profit, but I did not include sim design and building which, for me, is growing.

Mari

Thank you for the comment, Claire - it's appreciated When you go back, be sure to pick up an LM for the new store, as I'll be closing the old one very soon. There will be an LM-giving board there for a while though.

I may be mistaken, but I get the impression that some people think that Classifieds only appear on the first page of the All search, but they appear on every page - if there are enough ads to go on every page for the search.

I've no idea if Classifieds are worthwhile though. Some people pay enormous amounts for them, and I have to think that it's worthwhile for them. I concur with what's been said about them - a classified ad doesn't buy sales or visits, so I don't see how LL took the money and didn't deliver. They are shown in the Classifieds tab and in the All search, so what's paid for is certainly delivered.

Where many people go wrong with classified ads is that their text needs to be tailored so that they rank highly for specific searchterms. You can't just place an ad with nice sounding text and get results. The ad needs to be tailored. Yes, I know that some people here refuse to go to places where the ad text is a list of keywords, but a few people here isn't the SL population, and the text *does* need to be used for rankings purposes, or you are throwing your money away.

I haven't voted in the poll, but I have a very successfuil SL business, and I am of the opinion that one of the main reasons why businesses fail is not understanding how to get the products in front of people's eyes - how to get people to the products. Simply placing a small classified isn't likely to do it in a reasonable timescale.

Wow. I'm very surprised. If the 'grid' was anywhere near indicative of the forum community statistics, the Second Life economy would be thriving. Somehow I don't quite believe the poll results.

By far, the majority of people claim a good 'profit.' They decided to not choose the 'small profit' choice, and select 'doing well.' Which means, they are making some decent USD's from the whole thing. Well...if this is the case, then congratulations all of us...obviously SL is doing well for the majority of us. Skewed poll? I'm inclined to think so...

I'm not saying that it's not possible that the 'successful' tend to frequent this very forum...I'm just surprised that most of you claim a good profit...by what I've seen posted, by the attitude of many, by the products I see inworld, and by the marketing I witness all around...when I put all those things together, I'm actually a little surprised that the majority of SL citizens claim their business is 'doing well' (ie. more than just a small profit).

As for myself based only on product sales--after I've paid rent on the two small storefronts and studio I rent, pay for the five modest classifieds I run, and fork out the few lindens for assets I purchase or upload...I end up making a small profit. It's slow and steady, and very little work has to be done in the customer service arena. It's a self sustaining business model. I tend to have around 20-25 K in my bank account at all times, after all is said and done. This amount is slowly growing, as my products begin to saturate the market, and Glowbox gets a name for itself. It's a long-term commitment, and although I have a definite business model and strategy, I'm in it all because I love art, creation, and community...not because I seek fame and fortune.

On a side note--when I'm hired as a modeler and texture artist on big builds, the money and profit goes way up...in fact, the profit is such that my employers choose to circumvent the SLexchange all together, and pay me via paypal. But, because of the way the SL and RL economy is going, these kinds of jobs are far and few between. Which is one of the reasons I think the poll results are slightly skewed...from my own experience.

Anyway. I'm happy. I love this medium...hell, I did all this for free on spare time before Second Life...it's nice to make a little exchangeable Monopoly money while I'm at it.

After seeing these polls....if they are true at all, I'm very excited to see the future of Second Life. Sounds like most of us are thriving, and enjoying ourselves.

p.s. All of my products are MOD/COPY--if someone wants to give a gift, they usually IM me, and I hook them up with a transferable version right away.

p.s.s. My sales have gone UP since the new search.

But still, Its nice if people put a short description before they fill it up with the keywords. I don't mind that so much as when they just put in a ton of keywords that have absolutely no link to what they actually sell, the shop name isn't clear and there is no description. You'd have no clue what kind of shop it is! lol

Mari, Ceera, when you talk about "sim design" do you mean building everything on a sim yourself from scratch, or does it include buying prefabs from multiple people and co-ordinating them? Or a mixture of both?

I've shut down again. Just don't have the first clue about marketing in second life. Had the first place open for roughly 8 months. Had second place open for roughly 2 months.

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That isn't really true about the "first clue about marketing" as there are things I could have done, that I thought of doing. Time on Second Life is just too limited though. And the things I'd do in real life, I can't really do in Second Life. One idea would involve a wine tasting event (can't do that in SL). Another would involve a murder mystery type event (which you can do in SL, but is somewhat easier to set up for a bed an breakfast type place in RL). Only one I could think of that works better in SL than RL would be a music event, but I've been to many. The venue sometimes gets looked at, but with the lag and all, all your getting is traffic numbers, not "viewers" of your work (which I know from personal experience when I had artwork up at an art gallery that had a "art show" . . . . with music. The people that showed up for the music were happy enough . . standing there listening to the music, the ones that showed up to look at the art couldn't move from the lag). Of course all of the ideas would be just a draw to bring people in to see the place, see what you have up.

Oh, and the first time around, I did everything I could to just put my products everywhere where someone looking for that type of product would look, and did a bunch of other marketing things. I had several neat builds with lovely parks, gardens, etc. Nothing worked. Mainly because I just can't figure out SL marketing and just don't have the time to learn.

I agree with that, Claire - and I do have the name in the title Unfortunately, if I include a nice short sentence in the description, then I have to short change some of the product types that I sell. Unfortunately, all searches except the All tab match searchterms exactly, so a place that has 'low prim, low price furniture' in the text, won't be listed at all for 'low prim furniture' unless the words are repeated again in that order. It's worse with plurals. 'fireplace' doesn't matches 'fireplaces', and vice versa. To be listed for both, both words must be included in the text, and there is very little text to work with if a place sells a variety of product types. If a place only sells hair, for instance, then there is a wealth of text to work with, but a lot of places sell a variety of product types.

And then of course there are the usual variations to try and cover. Some people will search on 'low prim furniture' and others will search on 'furniture low prim', with 'furniture' being the main thing, and 'low prim' being an added qualifier.

Of course, people can be criticised for including things that they don't sell, but I don't anyone can be criticised for trying to cover what people search on when they are looking for what the place offers, even if it means just a list of words.

Most of what I do is building entire sims from scratch, designed to meet the client's exact specifications. I do the terraforming, the landscaping, the buildings, the custom textures, the scripted gadgets... All of it. There are some things where I will buy pre-made content, such as multimedia systems. And in some cases I will subcontract parts of the job to others. But for the most part, I'll do virtually all of it myself.

I just finished one sim for Rutgers University, which features a full-sized rendition of their football stadium, detailed to the point where the conference logos are on the playing field, and you can see the blades of grass. The only content in the whole sim that I didn't create is a handful of trees from Heart Garden Nurseries, a few Linden Labs trees, and a teleporter system.

I'm starting on another for them that will include detailed reproductions of 6 structures on their historic "Queens College" campus, including a chapel and one other building that are on the National Historic Registry. When I am done with that chapel, it will be detailed inside and out, to the point of having all the right paintings in the right places on the walls, and virtually all the stained glass windows exactly as they are in the original building.

Build from scratch, though I might from time to time buy some elements (Lilith Heart trees, etc.). I'm actually new to this field in a professional manner, so ask again in a couple months.

Mari

Sales are down significantly this month. But I'm still making a profit, small to my mind compared to the past months, but still well above the cost of tier and expenses.

I pay only the minimal for land listings and classifieds. I tried a much larger classifieds in Dec, enough to put me on the first page, but saw no significant increase in traffic or sales.

must agree with Michael, also with a fraction of people who come here, it is no indication how actuall it is

for who comes here and posts, those are the ones wich might take the extra steps to advertise and make it known to other people who take it more seriously

hope we`re just in a dip and looking at a bright future now that some expensive world wide hollidays have past and LL can atleast keep the grid reliable enough for no mass payment/transfer issues

also, the market is saturated with alot of stuff and there are decent freebies available.
if newbies want to succeed, they need to think out of the plywood box or rely on their skills (learn if not having any)

be original

I think you can do both. My ads, I believe, are nicely worded ads followed by some search terms as well. I am on the front page of almost every search category that is important to me and usually within the top five. Just throwing a few dollars at an ad is not going to do the job.

Only skewed by your interpretation of it. That is one thing I saw flawed with the poll initially. What is "good profit"? That interpretation is going to be different for everyone. It sounds like your interpretation is that it means receiving decent US dollars. To some it may only mean making decent Linden dollars since they only may be looking to use to it spend in world. I would say I fall somewhere in the middle. I don't spend a lot in world these days but my expectations weren't real high having a new business right now. I'm thrilled that I make a months rent in a few days, but am I making substantial US bucks? Well, let's just say that I'm not planning a trip to Rio anytime soon.

OK, way off topic but, LOL, HoneyBear - I did not realize that your club's been open only 2.5 weeks!!! I must have walked in just after it opened! I love your club. Great music and fun company. Keep it up!

I'm doing ok, I'd be doing fine if it hadn't been for VAT, which is not the fault of LL, but it is a big factor in my land business.

The new search, quite frankly I think it stinks. Classifieds are a joke, shoved to a little sidebar, even if you search just for classifieds they don't return results based on the amount paid for the ad. Whereas I'm open mouthed at the amount some people pay for ads, they should find that paying that sort of fee gets them higher up the search.

Parcel descriptions are silly for business. Lots and lots of keywords because that's what gets results but in terms of reading what a parcel is about, it tells you very little.

I figured this was something I should have explained...the way I see it is, the average of the average would have taken 'small profit' as meaning: able to pay for all my SL stuff, and gather some Lindens in my bank account on top of that. And as far as 'doing well' (the level above), I took this to mean: I'm making enough Lindens, that I am able to make a few USD's off of the whole thing (few meaning $50-$500 a month). I think that's a pretty fair assumption...but I suppose some of us think of 'monies earned and spent' as being solely Linden-based. I was leaning towards a good number of us here voting to consider 'profit' to mean USD as well (regardless how small).

Does that all make sense?

Complete sense. And based on your interpretation I'd still say I'm doing well. That was my interpretation also for the most part, but again all interpretations may be different. No ones is wrong, it's just the poll isn't specific enough.

The other thing to consider is the average forum reader tends to be a bit more saavy than your typical SL resident. The thousands who slap up four ugly walls, throw junk in there and then wonder why they aren't rich usually don't end up in the forums.

My points exactly.

Doing quite well here, but I'll spare the details as I suspect people are sick of hearing about it

not really

Malik,

I really hate hearing this, and hope you don't quit. Forgive the snippy comment here, but: don't ask to hear from the people who gave up. Ask for advice from the people who thought they were beat, but turned it around!

As for the new search, I agree with you that it is extremely easy to get lost in it, and be completely defrauded of the money you spent. Under the old search, the amount you paid gave you a direct return on the investment you put in. Under the new search, you have to use a combination of paying money but carefully crafting your advertisement. The trick to beating it is: pretend that you are a customer and test, test, test, research, study, and learn. Search this forum too, because we have discussed this in detail, and there are some great tips buried in here. Look at some previous posts by Phil Deakins on the subject.

My teleports practically disappeared during the first week or so of the new search. I was one of the most angry complainers about it, particularly since I had just the week before, expanded my very successful 2-region business to a now-what-seemed-doomed 3 region business. After studying very hard, and testing, and crafting my ad to make it more relevant to my intended consumer, I recovered, and I'm now doing better than before the new search.

The general advice I give to anyone running a business in SL is: never invest more money in your business than you can afford, even assuming you earned no income at all. This gives you the freedom from stress that you need to have fun and just create things.

I didn't see what your business is, but you might try finding a good shop space that appears to be well-traveled (not with campers). Let the mall owner worry about the classified and traffic headache, and paying LL tier.