Anyone knowledgeable about in-world classifieds?

Hello people,

Now that in-world help has been removed (which as you may have read in the Linden comments was a great improvement), I have nowhere else to ask this, so here goes.

I've put out some classifieds for my (furniture) business, and I'm catching on to how important those classifieds are, but I don't seem to know a lot about the system. These are a couple of questions I have:

- How come most of my ads don't show up in 'All' (in Search)? Other people's ads do - the same ones they have in the Classifieds section (where mine are, also.)

- How can people make good on investing $2400 USD a month for one classified? Do they really? Make good, that is. I can assure you I've seen ads for which people pay $600 per week. Yes - USD, not Lindens. I don't get it.

Would be grateful if anyone knowledgeable about the classified system could tell me a little more about it.

Xylo

Well, Resident Answers could have been a start. Your question has nothing to do with building, so I'm not sure why you thought the Building forum was the appropriate place for it. Anyway...


I don't know, I just searched for "Xylo" in Classifieds and in All. I didn't find anything in Classifieds that was not also in All. I also searched for "furniture" in both places, and again found the same ads. Your "Xylo - High Stlye..." ad, for example, came up 323rd out of the total 331 entries for furniture under All.


By the way, be careful. Going to a forum and saying "can someone please look at my ads" can be interpreted as abusing the forum for your own business purposes. Some might not believe you that you're really asking about the system, and might assume that you're just pretending to ask questions in order to try to get more people to see your ads.


You do realize your question answers itself, right? Obviously the people buying those ads wouldn't be buying them if they weren't paying off. Nobody goes into business just to buy expensive ads, of course. Everyone's in business to make money. And to make money, you have to spend money. There's never any way around that.

$2400 a month might seem like a lot to an individual who's not business owner, but that amount is peanuts compared to the monthly advertising budget of an average small business. When I was running my RL business full time, I used to spend as much, if not more, every week on ads than these people you're talking about are spending in a month. Putting it in perspective, advertising in SL is way cheap, even for those who are buying high placement.

I think your real question is do people run worthwhile businesses in SL that are comparable to RL businesses. The answer to that is a resounding yes. SL is full of opportunity, and full of people stepping up to take full advantage of it. And it's only getting bigger.

Just as in RL though, there's no such thing as "get rich quick" in SL, as you probably realize. If you want to make a living in either world, you need to work hard at it. Most business owners work a hell of a lot harder than most employees, in fact, and SL business owners are no different. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to buy high placed ads if you want to succeed, but you do need to invest all of yourself (and at least SOME of your money) into what you're doing if you want to make a real go of it.

It's difficult to say exactly what makes any particular ad definable as worthwhile. One of my mentors when I was young in business used to say "50% of your advertising will never work. The thing is, you never know which 50% it is, so you have to do all of it all the time."

I would put it this way. Whether an ad is worthwhile or not has nothing to do with how much it costs. What's important is who's placing it, and what he or she is doing in addition to just advertising. That's equally true whether the ad costs $600 or $6 million or 6 cents. So, is $600 a week a worthwhile investment to make if it enables you to reach an enthusiastic consumer base? I think the people regularly doing that would say yes, but really, the only person who can answer that question for you is you.

Thank you, Chosen, for your answer which is as usual lucid and thorough. It can take a while to write such long answers, so I appreciate it very much. It is of course also a tad patronizing here and there, but I'll take the tone along with the generously given information. One or two notes:



Well, that question is answered in my intro. Like I said, I did not know of any other place to ask it, since in-world help has been taken away. I was not aware that Resident Answers would make a better place. Thank you for pointing that out.



No, I am not one bit concerned about that. I think it is clear for all but the most distrustful that I'm asking a sincere question, and not trying to promote my business. I didn't ask for anyone to look at my ads. You did, but you looked under Xylo, who is, in fact, a competitor of mine. My business has a different name.

Thank you again,

Xylo