Sales STILL down. No idea why...

After the mature checkbox thing and the update crashes, my sales and traffic are still way down. For months I had steady sales, but ever since the update I only sell about 20% from what I sold before.

I have really NO clue why this is. With my classifieds, placed after the mature issue, I show up at about the same search ranking as before, even with Mature unchecked. I changed nothing in keywords or otherwise.

I'm really in the dark why this is happening and what I can do about it. I would very much appreciate some input here, or at least some encouraging words, because I'm about to lose my optimism and enthousiasm about creating nice things in SL.

What could be the reason?

I think a lot of people still haven't realized that the mature checkbox got cleared recently. Store owners that have groups for their shops might want to consider sending out a notice to let people know..

There are also other RL cycles that can cause changes in your sales volume. Spring break might be a factor right now and sometimes things just slow down.

I understand Sindy, but with my newly placed classified I managed to get about the same ranking in Search (All and Places) with Mature unchecked. And precisely that puzzles me so. Would it be just the difference between a little blue house before my land name or a SL-logo? I really don't get it.

It might not only be the checkbox thing. It seems as though there are a number of people who have technical issues with each update, things not working right with their system, etc., and they might not want to spend a lot of money until things get worked out. Also, are your items no copy and/or expensive? I know that when the grid is acting up or when there's been a recent change, I avoid buying/rezzing expensive or no copy items because I don't want to lose them.

You could have a point Annabelle. My products are no copy. That could be a reason. But then again: many, many shop owners would have a prob with that. In any case I'm not too expensive, of that I'm sure, especially not considering the quality of the things I sell.

Thanks for your encouraging words. But I'm still very curious if other shop owners experience the same thing as I do.

The mature/checkbox/search issue has drawn a lot of lightning on the forum for the last few days, but your post confirms my suspicions that this is just one factor among many that are depressing sales.

There's no question that sales are down for many, if not most, stores. The question of why is still very puzzling. Some people think it's the mature checkbox default, others have reported problems with search results that have nothing to do with the mature setting.

In my case, I never had a Places listing and my traffic is still waaayy down, and sales practically non-existent.

Personally, I think the viewer release fiasco, combined with server meltdowns of all kinds, has either damped resident's enthusiasm for spending Lindens when there is so much grid instability, or distracted them from shopping.

But who knows? How can we tell? Just keep exchanging info, I guess, until things get better.

I wonder if the number of residents spending money in world is keeping pace with the number of new businesses.

I sure hope so. I would think though that the top end of the exploding new resident population probably have fewer disposable Lindens than do those who have been around a few months. My store is very, very new.. and from my limited observation, the very new residents pop in, and disappear before the place even fully rezzes. Most of my sales are coming from those who have been around 5-6 months at least.

Since the place is so new, it's impossible for me to even identify any distinct drop in sales, and what it might be related to.

zk

Maybe some United Statesians are saving up to pay their taxes this month.

Like in the real world, eventually only businesses with added value (technical, design, creativity, price etc) should prevail. I say 'should', because first they have to find you.

Of course, also in the real world, businesses have to invest in advertising amongst others to attract customers. And I am doing exactly that. Now with more L$ than I want to. But what really makes me angry is that I have to invest a lot more these days. Not because I have more competitors or for other logical commercial reasons, but because LL themselves have screwed me over (checkbox and technique). And lots of other hard working shop owners.

I have noticed over time that periods of unusual instability of SL (yeah, yeah, I know...like it's EVER stable.. /sacrasm off) tend to errode "consumer confidence." Sales will slow. As SL gets more stable, sales rise. When we go through periods where SL is working fairly decently, the longer those periods are, the more sales will tend to rise. Then we go through a rocky period and sales dip. Every time we have gone through a really unstable period and I was convinced that the end was here, it has always rebounded and sales gradually rise to an even higher peak.

Based on history, my suggestion is to ride it out.

My shop has less than 2 months history so I can't really evaluate it against anything. I can only say that sales 'felt' slow from Monday up till yesterday. Today there was enough activity to make the week's sales 'feel' normal.

Everything I have read and seen though makes me think, in my case at least, it has more to do with instability than the mature button issue. I'm thinking of the first week of March when there were a number of grid issues, and contrasting that to this past week with a lot of people reporting problems and crashing etc. or just plain not being able to log on. The first week of March was (or 'felt') slow as well, but then things picked up again.

So I remain cautiously optomistic and have every intention of perservering. Two months in a row, my shop has managed to pay my premium and tier / rent.

-Atashi

Yup, my sales for yesterday were the slowest I've ever had.

The mature button can't be what's causing the slowdown, most of the people in SL would have noticed the mature button by now and fixed it. My traffic isn't down, I'm still getting as many visitors as I used to, they're just not buying anything.

TPs seem to be working, lag hasn't been that bad for me, so I'm guessing the real problem's somwhere betweem textures not loading and general customer confidence. People wont/can't buy what they can't see and I've noticed in the past that when things are going wrong on the grid, even things unrelated to shopping, sales do fall a little.

The Lindens aren't going to help us, all we can really do is tie ourselves to the mast and wait for the storm to pass.

Vale

Hmm well there are so many new businesses about lately, and so many new residents refusing to put RL money in and so many people taking RL money out and so few jobs to earn SL money too. But the more free residents and cash extractor campers the better right?

And actually non transfer cheese me off more than no copy because no copy stuff I'm not currently using can be safely stored in a rarely online alts inventory, I'm thinking perhaps I could start naming new alts Shoes Smith, Vehicles Johnson, Furniture Wilson etc.
And I often see stuff I would buy for an alt or buy a second one for an alt, but then find they are no transfer so don't. I mothball good stuff at times with alts, I'm bored with, when really I'd like to transfer all to another char anddelete them, better yet when are we finally going to be able to change displayed names? You can't use the same name in Medievil & Sci Fi easily

I think sales dipped this time last year too.

Looking at stats from the last qtr my overal traffic this week has droped by 50% and sales have fallen by about the same percentage. Sunday is normally the best day but I only had 40 visitors yesterday, Normally I would expect to see 250 - 300 on a sunday. I strongly suspect not being able to TP anywhere for a portion of the day yesterday was the main cause. Althought the change for the default setting in the 'places' search has changed i dont think this is the only cause, grid instability, end of the tax year, end of the month, all of these are contributing factors I think.

Ive been in business in sl for a couple of years and you do see severe declines in sales and traffic on occasion, but like an earlier poster said, sales have allways returned to their usual level and beyond. I suggest you wait a month rather than a week before determining if your down turn in sales is permenant.

I thank you all very much for your replies and kind advice. I've been in SL just a few months now. But because I'm very busy trying to create original and creative products, maybe I am too involved in daily sales developments. Indeed I should wait it out for a month, but it's pretty hard.

Tegg's suggestion about non transfer is worth considering too. I remember seeing a topic about this issue some months ago. Actually there is no reason to make products non transferrable, but as a new creator I thought this was the way to go. In fact, maybe it's even better to make it transferrable. Yesterday I payed money back to a female customer who said she bought a displayed light version of one of my products by mistake. She said she wanted to buy the regular version instead. Because she couldn't give the bought product back to me (non transfer) I payed the amount back and she could keep the light version. After that she tped out and I didn't see her back again (scam?). So you could say it's also in the benefit of the seller to make products transferrable. By the way, she actually bought the light version, but has it now for free.

A little bit off-topic, but all things might help.

The only things that probably need to be non transferable are guns, but that is so griefers can't just swap their super cannons between alts as they get AR's because infinite free accounts are allowed, all hair seems to be non transferable because it makes sense a bit, but then again most bodymod AV's seem to be transfereable. Vehicles aren't which is a pain in the butt because I could see non copy cars selling well secondhand, and even collectors versions ore those tha have been modified like in the real automotive world, you could also sell last years Ford to someone then upgrade to this years, but then again seein cars don't work and there are few roads or houses with garages, it's not going to happen.

Many people who buy prim items, like hair and prim skirts etc, tinker with them to get them to fit right. People somtimes mess things up when they edit them, or linked parts explode, so copy right make more sense than transfer rights.

Vale

I send updates to my customers when I upgrade my products (we're talking about clothes here). How would I be able to do that if the clothes I sell were transfer/no copy? I would have no way to know who actually owns a version of my clothes.

My clothes are mod. You can tint them, resize them, create outfits... copy is especially important for items like flexi skirts and hair, like Val said.

I can understand why some people prefer transfer, but please don't assume everybody does.

Most of my purchases are clothing, and I will only rarely buy clothes that are No Copy, which inevitably means No Transfer as well.

That's fine by me. If I wanted to give this stuff away, I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. What matters more to me is the ability to save an entire outfit instead of having to root around in my Inventory for every single dang item of an ensemble I've created.

Given just how useful it is to have Copy clothing, I've never figured out why clothing designers continue to set No Copy permissions, especially when they allow Mod. Great, if I bork a piece of clothing or a pair of shoes by modifying, I can't return to the original.

Shoes are the biggest problem for me since I almost always need to modfiy them, and whenever I've been tempted by a really lovely pair and taken a chance, I've been burned. I may need to learn how to build shoes, because they are the hardest part of my wardrobe to get right.

99% of the time i refuse to buy clothes that are no transfer..id rather them be mod/tran that way i can adjust them for my body and give them away or have a yardsale later on down the road

nothing to me is more frustrating then going to purchase a gift and find out its no tran when it was not marked that way no signs in the store

i feel i waste money on no tran clothes

but i also understand the sellers pov..i sell homes that are copy/tran only because it was the only way i could think to save customers issues if they rezzed it in an area that didnt allow it..ive seen parts of houses eaten that way...sim boundaries...neighbor borders etc so thats why i have the homes set the way the are

ive seen a drop in sales not sure why hopefully things will pop back up soon

I sell prefabs and use mod/copy/no trans. When i first started out I sold them as no copy/transfer and this turned out to be a nightmare, customers kept trying to make modifications and completely screwing the buildings up. By selling copy/no transfer they allways have a fresh copy in their inv for when those DIY disasters happen. obviously different permissions are more suitable to different products.

Selling anything with copy/tran permissions is not a good idea. Anyone could take your houses and start reselling them in bulk. Should be either copy or transfer but not both IMO.