"This is no social crisis... it's just another tricky day"

I recently joined an in-world, Linden directed group called "Second Life Commerce Merchants." The purpose of the group is described as thus:

A place for merchants in second life and on XStreet SL to talk business.

There hasn't been a great deal of activity in the group since I joined a few weeks ago, partly because I don't think merchants have a clear idea as to how much we can or should utilize the group for discussing business... I'm not sure the Lindens running the group -- which includes Pink and Colossus -- are certain of its purpose either.

In the last two weeks there have been two notices sent out, both by Colossus Linden -- the first, encouraging us to put all of our Valentine's Day related merchandise into the recently expanded Valentine's Day category.

Sounds good, but I already did that a few weeks ago when I saw the notice in the blogorums.

But then there was this additional tidbit:

But, don't stop at finding what you like... share your favorite items with your friends. We've just added share links to Xstreet SL. Log in, go to the detail page of an item you like and try it out. The share link is in the box on the right side of the detail page beneath the purchase options.

Okay... I'm sure this is a good idea, but in the larger scope of things, this is what the Commerce Team has made a priority?

Today's notecard missive was more promising. The Commerce Team has launched a trial program to assist shoppers in finding merchants on XStreet, by using tags. To wit:

We presented an idea awhile back of adding some common tags to item descriptions in order to make it easier for shoppers to see the subset of items they are most interested in. We'd like to give this a shot with an initial set of tags and if things go well, we'll expand and refine our official tag set.

Okay, this is interesting, do go on...

Merchants, if you have goods that fit into the following communities, please add the respective tag(s) to the end of your item description:

* tagTiny
* tagGorean
* tagFurry
* tagEmo
* tagVampire
* tagSteampunk
* tagGoth
* tagNeko
* tagPirate
* tagFantasy
* tagCyberpunk
* tagScifi
* tagMedieval
* tagSpace
* tagBeach

*the Victorian seamstress waits*

Okay, maybe they cut off the end of the list... I'm not seeing a "tagVictorian"... or even a "tagWestern." Nope, no "tag:Historical."

*the Victorian seamstress reads on*

We're also providing a few which are a bit more purpose related than community related:

* tagEducation
* tagAdultContent
* tagGaming
* tagSports

Merchants, this system will only be useful if these tags provide shoppers items in the area of their interest, so please do not spam these tags in unrelated listings.

*the Victorian seamstress realizes she's holding her breath and is starting to turn blue*

Uh... hmm.

The immediate issue I see is that my business does not necessarily fit into any of those categories -- yes, I have a few items that might be useful to vampires, goths and possibly pirates, and even one or two that are vaguely "steampunk." (Perhaps it's time to put that steampowered corset back on the drawing table...)

Will that mean we get dinged for keyword spamming if we put my items in those categories? Because without a Victorian or Western or Historical tag, our potential customers will not be seeing work by merchants in those categories. We'll be lumped in with the whorewear and BIABs.... which makes for an interesting dichotomy.

Addressing consumers, LL has this to say:

Shoppers, we don't yet have a true tagging system, but we're making use of the search system. You can click on the tags above to search on that tag, or you can type a tag in with your search query when searching on Xstreet SL. Remember that if you're using multiple words in a search query, adding a '+' before a keyword makes it required within all results.

So, once again we have an example of Linden Lab's reverse engineering strategy. They claim they presented this idea awhile back. If they did, I never heard of it, and I try to skim the blogorums on a regular basis, to keep up with announcements.

Nor is it likely many of my fellow Victorian merchants did either. LL has implemented yet another program in a half-assed manner before it's been properly researched. If you've been following the Avatars United debacle, or the XStreet revamping, you know exactly what I mean.

We will look to expose these tags/communities from the homepage and if this system increases sales and shopper satisfaction, then we will look to expand on the tags we are promoting.

That's all nice and well, but historically, LL's movement on fixing any of their hastily thought out plans is like watching moss grow. So we have a few months to wait. Wonderful.

Good luck.
--The Commerce Team

Good luck, indeed... *sighs*

What's "quality" content?

An XStreet customer left a review for my one prim buffet table over the weekend. I had to use a translator, as the comment was in German, but the fellow apparently felt that 60L was way too much for a single textured cube.

Of course, he never bothered to contact me before he left his one star rating -- even though there's a link right under the "purchase" button on the listing page to contact the seller.

If he'd simply IMed me or sent a notecard, I would have been more than happy to refund his money.

It's an example of of an issue that I think will come to a head this year in SL: just what exactly is "quality content"?

Yes, the buffet table is one prim. It was designed purposely that way, for people who have limited prim allocations, such as in role play sims. It and the round tea table version served me very well when I owned a hotel/restaurant/theater in Deadwood.

Originally, I'd made both tables with legs -- the buffet table was five prims, the tea table three prims (on a pedestal) legs. This was pretty early on in my building career.

One day it occurred to me -- why do these tables even need legs? No one can lift up the tablecloth to see whether the table is standing on its own. This is SL, after all, where people can fly. So I removed the legs, and voila! A fairly realistic looking table with a white linen tablecloth. And only one prim. For 60L.

I've probably sold a hundred or more of those tables since I made them about a year ago. The only other negative comment I've had was also on XStreet, but that had to do with the table's permissions mysteriously reverting to no mod. That customer didn't contact me either.

I was originally encouraged to sell them by people I'd given them to, who'd seen them in my RP business. These are people, like many SL residents, who don't have the time or patience to make their own furniture.

Coincidentally, these tables are what started me on designing low prim Victorian furnishings. There are some amazing furniture designers in SL, who make beautiful, complex, realistic furniture. However, many of these items are heavy on prim count. That's what makes them beautiful, complex and realistic.

But you easily can blow half of your prim allotment in a RP sim on a single desk and chair set from one of these designers. So, seeing the need for attractive, realistic, affordable low prim furniture, my furniture making career began.

I'm not sure if this table would be considered a "quality" item on the new Linden Lab content creation roadmap. It's the epitome of simple -- it's a prim cube with textures applied to it. But there are some people out there who don't know how to, or don't have time to learn, or simply have no interest in knowing how to put textures on prims. So we're back to the concept of seeing a need and fulfilling it.

It did take time for me to make it. I had to visualize it, find a white tablecloth, photograph it, manipulate the image in Photoshop, and play with the texture settings on the cube to get the proportions right.

For that, I charge 60L. I chose that price because I'd shopped around to find something equivalent before I made the table myself. There are a lot of high profile merchants who do the same exact thing, but charge at least twice what I do. I've seen one prim furniture pieces for 125L or more. I don't know if they sell at that price, but since they are made by some of SL's most successful furniture makers, I assume they do.

I don't know why this kind of thing gets to me, but it did. So here I am, venting. Thanks for reading... :)

The sky is falling! (again)

After reading dozens of posts across the web regarding Linden Labs' announcement of major changes to the XStreet shopping portal, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to broach the subject here.

Initially I was gobstopped; the idea of being charge 10L per month, per listing, on top of the commission LL collects on sales, seemed heavy handed. Charging 99L a month for listing freebie items was even more stunning.

The outcry has been considerable, and in protest many merchants have been removing their entire inventories from XStreet, even though the policy is not set to go into effect until 30-90 from now (leave it to LL to offer a vague time line for implementation... though they "promise" they'll give 2 weeks notice before they begin charging merchants).

Already this policy is having an effect on the shopping experience, both good and bad. As a shopper, I certainly would like to be able to wade through the junk and find quality items more easily. But of much greater priority to me would be having a search function that actually worked -- both in XStreet AND SL itself.

As a merchant, I have more than 200 items on XStreet at the moment, and I don't relish the idea of slicing an additional 2000L a month from my profit margin at a time when my RL household budget needs every penny of the supplemental income I make on SL. I am in the process of examining my inventory to determine which items have become "stale" and need to go... but this is actually something I have already been doing in world.

So far I've managed to deactivate about 1/3 of the more than 200 items I have in inventory. I haven't outright deleted them -- I'm still trying to decide what kind of sales record actually qualifies an item as "stale," considering I am a merchant in a "niche" market.

I guess I took for granted the idea that XStreet could serve a complete catalogue of my merchandise -- my philosophy was that if everything gets a sale sooner or later, slower selling items could be parked there indefinitely. Every sale counts, right, even if some items only sell about every other month?

I'm not sure if that was an unreasonable expectation, since LL was getting commission on every sale... my expectation now is that I should regard XStreet as a marketing tool, and fine tune my listings and descriptions to drive customers to the in world store.

When I made my first freebie about a year and a half ago, the SL marketplace was a much different place, At that time I could track that the majority of people who took my freebie clothing item also purchased clothing from me.

That has changed dramatically in the last several months.

Most of the shoppers who "buy" my freebies now? Never buy anything else from me.

There is a sense of entitlement that has become prevalent among newer residents that they shouldn't have to "pay to play" -- which is why I think we've also seen a sharp rise in content theft. This entitlement attitude baffles me, because there are few other places, both in online worlds and in RL, where you can "live" without spending a dime.

I'm not sure which came first, but the SL marketplace has experienced a drastic drop in prices in the time I've been a merchant. The economic recession has also added to this downward spiral. But many merchants are pricing quality items for ridiculously low prices both in SL and on XStreet, when many, many of them could charge more for their work.

It distresses me when I hear people say they don't care about making money on their work. I wish they would understand that if you make a quality item, you are selling yourself short by not selling it for market value. You are essentially devaluing the work you do. A consequence of that is that you also devalue the work of other community members. If we are all here in SL to live in a community, that means supporting each other and valuing the contributions of other members.

The distressing part of this new policy is that it puts "niche" merchants such as myself in a difficult position. My items serve a specific (Victorian/Steampunk/Western/historical) audience, even if that audience is not a large one. Because of that I'll likely never be a high volume seller, unless I consider diversifying my business.

So as I review my sale inventory in XStreet, how exactly do I gauge if an item is "stale"? An item that I would regard as "popular" in my niche might likely be viewed as a slow mover in a mainstream market. At some point will LL decide that niche items like mine don't meet their criteria for inclusion in the SL economy anymore?

This also raises another issue: How will niche communities maintain a presence in SL if the content creators for them can't afford to, or are no longer allowed to, sell their items? Or are specialized, thematic sims also on the endangered list too?

Finally, however, the biggest lesson in these changes is that, as in RL, the SL marketplace is also in a state of constant flux. You cannot rest on your laurels. You have to be constantly reinventing your "brand" -- even if you are just a "hobbyist" merchant.

That doesn't mean that all the joy is going to be sucked out of your experience, it merely means you need to think on your feet and adapt when market conditions change. While I'm not thrilled about the direction LL has decided to take XStreet, and where SL itself looks like it's going, I see it as a chance to challenge myself both as a content creator and a business person.

If indeed the landscape of SL is changing, and an influx of new corporate residents (presumably) with deeper pockets is on the horizon, perhaps this is the opportunity for many of us smaller merchants to start thinking bigger.

As they say, life gives you lemons, make lemonade.