Confused

Actually the listing fees would be L$30,000 a month

I currently have an in world store and have around 1500 items listed on Xstreet

would happily pay if the damn colour options were avaliable to us

Right now i cannot afford L$15,000 a month on Xstreet... im nto sure what i will do... but that is far mroe than Xstreet makes me a month

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http://slurl.com/secondlife/Marsco/76/85/344

Yuo

so, thinking along the lines of ebay, will we see 1L adverts saying "1x1x1 Wood Box for sale - Do not buy" and then a list of freebie, general advertising or whatever on slurls and not anything to buy in XS ... that way a lister can pay 10L a month for a page full of stuff that will point people inworld (isnt that what LL want?) but never pay LL any 99L fees or commission for anything advertised?

(well, not unless some idiot buys the box...theres always one )

Darkness

I suspect if this becomes a trend LL will come out with a rule against it. Hopefully giving people time to change their listing before nailing folks for doing it.

DanielRavenNest

UPDATE: I am changing my position to "It's unclear at this time"

Based on this morning's data, it is not clear what is going on. Some categories are giving accurate counts, some are off.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now that it might be a glitch, or reporting lag, and keep an eye on it.

SL Shopping Sites Tracking

Sometime around midnight last night SL time they did something so the reported numbers of items does not match the actuals any more. I guess the exodus from XStreet has gotten too embarrassing.

I sampled a few categories, but anyone can verify it by setting it to show three columns, which means 30 items per page, then going to the last page and do ((last page number -1)x30 items per page)+ residual items on last page to get a total and compare it to the claimed number of items for that category.

This only works for categories with less than 5000 items, since apparently the item display caps at that number.

I don't know how they think they can hide this for long, all it took was one person to notice (credit to Jacquelin Seisenbacher for noticing it), and one obsesive stats monger (me) to track down the cause, and all you nice folks to verify it and spread the word.

(Hamlet and Tateru have been notified LOL)

Jacquelin Seisenbacher

just doin' me duty govnah

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"Be yourself, everyone else is already taken" Oscar Wilde

Ann Otoole

Pretty sure that is already disallowed under the current rules. Basically if you blatantly try to come at LL they can make you go away with a simple button click.

I am all for free market economy but the indications are LL has one group saying one thing while Kingdon has the people he brought in going in a totally different direction. Only time will tell.

I see an opportunity for a search spider that people enter a search term and it goes out to all the marketplaces and returns a single result set with urls to the products wherever they are. I made one of these once. Shouldn't take someone into the current web programming languages to come up with something. Only requires maybe a little disk scratch space. Sell ads to support it.

Yuo

Well i've read the chat and that doesn't quite add up.

1) Why arent paypal fees paid by the buyer? If LL do really shoulder 100% of the cost then we have the solution. Charge them already. Why should people giving freebies to the community have to subsidise the people that buy goods for themselves with paypal?

1a) What didnt LL know about that when they bought SLX? A paypal fee means someone paid real cash for something. They dont work things out on a ciggy packet when they buy companies, no, teams of accountants go over it and produce reports that would clog a roman toilet.

spot the massive duckage




Hmmm, could they be people used to using it for free clothing, free gadgets, or sending themselves demos to their dressing rooms direct and are (rightfully) pissed off about having to go out hunting for all this now? SL takes time and with what, a 1.9 hour average login (if thats current still) then there is only so much you can achieve in a day. These people wont have listings but are still customers and residents with a voice.

Ok, so lets count the number of items listed and divide that by total expenses making an artificial average of what an item 'costs' to list. That way we can fanfare this less than meaningful (in the real world) figure about how much cash we lose being so kind to everyone. That way we can completely ignore lop sided commission fees that bring exponentially larger profit vs cost, which co-incidentally are the parts that keep the whole thing in profit overall.

All they are doing by introducing bottom up fees is growing that larger, at the cost of the lower end.


Hold on here. So 4 months ago (since they bought it) suddenly freebies have overwhelmed their finely drawn up plans. But, arent we talking free freebies here? Isnt that the point of them buying SLX? Delivering free items to someone for free, from their existing database out of our magic boxes on tier paid land via a completely automated LL web system.

Do they need a candle for the boiler or something? The infrastructure is paid for, one more click is such a tiny additional real cost.

And whats an external payment provider doing involved with that? Free is free isnt it? Theres no payment going on with freebies. Thats the point.


Whoa wait, so its not doing so badly after all? You old devil Pink, you had us going with all that 99L stuff hahaha...oh you mean its not a joke?



And for the rest of the time they talked about fluffy rabbits and snowball fights and which shiney...urm, essential features might come at some future time, when they hire the people, sometime..hard to hire in a recession so i hear.

Siggy

True dat - my bad - but the point remains:

If I have 3000 items on Xstreet and I'm not generating enough to cover 10L (that is the price of the upload of a single texture - for most things simply developing an item will cost more than that) for each one of them each month - there is something RADICALLY wrong with what I'm doing.

I'm creating a glut of items that aren't selling for some reason.

What I'd be doing is taking a very long and hard look at what I'm making and why folks don't want it. I'd be looking at what DOES sell as an indication of what I'm doing right - and try and head more down that path.

I had several older items in my store that I hadn't sold for some time and was going to can - instead I retextured them, dropped the price and changed the permissions - now its a well selling item. Part of being running a business is re-evaluation and adjusting things. Another part is innovation. What your product offers that others don't.

It's very safe to say that in SL when it comes to content creation there are many followers but very few leaders.. I've always said the bigger the risk - the higher the reward.

Who Dares Wins.

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And as it was in the beginning, so too shall it be in the end. That bullshit is bullshit, it just goes by different names.

Siggy

What I do on most of my products is have a slurl that says 'or come to WaterWorks to try this out' as I have everything demo'd on my island.

What I would do *IF* I were doing freebies or demos is a spin on the brilliant bit of work Eloh did: make a legitimate listing selling it for a high price - and in my description drop the lines 'Or just email HERE with your SL name in the subject line for it!'

of course the email link hits a box in SL, which takes the name and passes it through a name to key lookup (there are many out there for you to script up to) and PRESTO! delivers the item to them in world.

so long as that prim isn't removed - you're golden - and if it is, drop a new one and change your the addy in the listing.


For those playing safe - I would just do what I do 'come to my store HERE to demo it' - I bet your traffic goes up.

Katheryne Helendale

I'm sorry.... That just made me laugh so hard that I woke up my family!
Wait... What? There's an external payment processor involved in moving Lindens between SLX and the grid? Just how much of SLX did LL actually buy???

The only way I can see an external payment provider being in any way involved with this is in the case of purchases via PayPal. This is easy! This is Business 101! If it is costing you more to process a payment than the payment is worth, then you either drop the provider, or pass the fee on as a surcharge. This is common practice where low-amount purchases are made with a credit or debit card. Why can't LL do this?

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Kitty Kat Construction - Quality, Traditional-styled Prefab Homes for your Second Life.

Eloh

You missed my fine-print shout-outs.

P.S. I could be persuaded by either a small fee or other equivalent favors to include a reference to Port Orbello's fantastic supply of fine swashbuckling goods in the "shout-out" section of my fine-print.

Money talks; bullshit answers "Questions (and general all-caps outrage)" posed by residents about the Managing Freebies in Xstreet Roadmap.

Eloh

Don't get me wrong. I've been ripping the commerce team new ones since Thursday. But in all honesty and fairness, the latest Commerce Group chatlogs have, so far, provided the most informative and candid look into the how and why of the Lab's motivations in implementing this Xstreet Freebie Roadmap.

Pink actually provides details regarding the Lab's inability to roll out improved features—e.g., search, sorting, related, etc...—to Xstreet due to hiring and staffing issues (line 259) and expenses from PayPal (line 67, onward).

I'd wager that this is akin to your local "mom & pop" deli—that all credit card purchases must be over $8.00 (or the like). The buyer never pays payment processing fees—that'd be un-American.

Regarding freebies—yes, I'm still very suspicious.

This is only my hypothesis—but the process of buying out both Xstreet and OnRez looked great on paper: instant monopoly for the Lab on web-based SL ecommerce. What actually happened through a series of missteps (one gigantic one being the killing of OnRez in favor of Xstreet) was that the Lab actually realized that Xstreet was maybe not such a great acquisition after all—it's like that pair of jeans that looked great in the dressing room, but really wasn't all that when you wore them to the nightclub.

Yes, I'm still extremely suspicious about the Lab's true motives for killing freebies—mostly because even in light of all this new information about the Lab's hiring woes and payment processing expenses, none of it has anything to do with them levying a L$99/mo surcharge on Xstreet freebies.

And until I see compelling evidence otherwise, I still stand by my original argument about why the Lab is targeting freebies.

Ann Otoole

Plenty of ways to distribute freebies and if you are giving the assemblies and scripts away full permissions why not export them and put the packages out on web sites and torrents for download to totally eliminate the LL transaction system from the picture. In fact if everything moved to full permissions marketing outside of LL transaction system then it would completely eliminate any LL knowledge of any transactions at all other than people adding to inventory and since they can't really tell when it is an import then all they would know is everyone is making their own stuff and there is no longer a need for their attempts to control free trade.

Nothing stops anyone from taking stuff to full permissions anyway. People need to begin rethinking how business will be done in the future when movement between grids is a simple teleport. In the future the entire "xstreet" business model will be obsolete. All LL is doing is speeding things up in this direction.

Couldbe Yue

Freebies started to rise around 4 months ago because every bit of advertsing LL did had links that pointed to the freebie marketplace. So who wouldn't put out a freebie if they could get it on the first page and be the first item that people saw? It's LLs fault all the way. They wanted people to buy freebies - it was part of their plan to attract and retain new users. They can't blame us if sellers responded to the market conditions LL created.

Paypal is where the money is for LL. I had a paypal purchase once and what happens is that the Linden price is converted into us dollars and paid (but not at the going rate, it was a fixed rate that was well below the current exchange rate then the usd amount is left in your account. If you then want to convert it into Lindens you have to pay the associated fees. I lost something like 15% of the sales price in that deal thanks to all the conversions. After that I switched the ability for people to buy via paypal off.

If you look at the paypal amount it's actually higher than a linden conversion at even the standard market rate. It looks like they put a minimum purchase price for paypal.

I can see why they're moving to paypal, that one really is a gold mine for them.. the buyer gets overcharged and the seller gets slugged.. they really are crafty lol

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Satiated Desires: Toys for Grown Ups
~Inworld~ ~Product Catalogue~ ~Xstreet SL~ ~SLShopper~

Couldbe Yue

that link should have taken you to the support pages.

If you log into the secondlife.com website and use the submit a ticket link it will get you to the right place. Then just find the ticket and submit the request.

Ann Otoole

Where is that option?

Couldbe Yue

I just checked and it's gone! I use templates so I just assumed it was automatically applying it still.

Interestingly..
Despite the paypal amount being on my ads I can't select to buy it via paypal.. but that could be because I don't have paypal registered there.

under the $L pricing dropdown you'll see a link that says more (this actually says "advanced pricing more - i took it from the website and it's not showing up properly) if you select that you can set your pricing.. I just tried it and what it does is add another 5usd onto the price of the item. It tells me the price is set at 10.92 yet on the webpage it says 15.20 - so I upped it to 15.00 and it set the webpage price to 20.73 and changed the linden amount.

A few figures:
3500L = $15.20 USD on XSL but a 15.20 purchase of Lindens on secondlife.com with a basic account paying the worst rate = 3936L

4800L = $20.73 on XSL but that same purchase on the website would bring 5321L (this is the amount it calculated when I put in keeping it at 15usd)

I do know I didn't get anything like those overpriced amounts. I did whine about it in the old merchants forum around the time it happened as I got less than satisfactory results from contacting their support service. I might go digging to see if I can find it and work out just how much of the paypal amount is actually paid. All I can remember is after the fees/charges I ended up with 15% less than if it had been bought with lindens.

It looks like the only way to stop people being screwed over paypal now is to put everything in adult.

Isablan Neva

I still disagree, it seems perfectly obvious to me. They've looked at the numbers. While, they aren't giving out the numbers, it would be a fair guess that a pretty significant number of transactions involve freebies. For argument, let's say that number is 50% of XStreet transactions.

So, if you are The Company and you notice that 50% of your transactions net you no gain and cost you money in terms of processing time - you probably reconsider why you are hosting, marketing and delivering said items that make you money. I know that's exactly the conclusion I would come to.

Secondly, the only reason freebies haven't impacted actual content sales before now was because they were scattered across the grid in various locations and you couldn't search for a free version of what you wanted without making a career out of it and spending far more of your actual time in cost than you saved by getting the item for free. Having all the freebies easily searchable means that just about anyone can find a free version of what they are shopping for. This, quite frankly, is a disaster for content creators because there is a freebie version of just about every product out there on the grid - those freebies may not be as full featured, but you get enough features to usually meet your needs.

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SLU: I came for the community. I stayed for the derails.

Ann Otoole

Good way to make it invisible you mean.

That last staged & controlled OH series was on adult content. Kind of makes you wonder exactly what LL is going to do next. My guess is simply state they no longer support adult content on xstreet. This is why I kept pressing the paypal matter at the OH's I attended. It makes zero sense to me for LL to have any interest in having any adult content on their web site. Add to this the faux concern expressed for adult content and you can figure out the rest.

It is looking like their future OH need to be attended by people with this accessory:
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.ph...ItemID=1933610

Anya Ristow

Huh?

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Vengeance Studio

Couldbe Yue

tell me about it.

That one I'm not too sure about. I actually believe that Pink is more concerned with making money for XSL than any notions of prudery.

One thing that was apparent is they no longer care about reaching the workplace (which is reasonable since secondlife.com is pretty well banned at all workplaces) and their definition of pg is at odds with the current inworld policy, whether that continues or not is another matter.

Beebo Brink

Someone up-thread mentioned that de-listed XStreet items could still be reached through links and bookmarks. I'm curious as to whether you can buy a de-listed item reached in this way?

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Aki Shichiroji

They can be reached by link or bookmark, but the button to buy usually says something like 'not available'.

DanielRavenNest

UPDATE: I am changing my position to "It's unclear at this time"

Based on this morning's data, it is not clear what is going on. Some categories are giving accurate counts, some are off.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now that it might be a glitch, or reporting lag, and keep an eye on it.

Jacquelin Seisenbacher

no, it will give you and the purchaser a delivery failure due to transaction time out.


I would like to point out though that the transactions themselves only cost LL bandwidth. According to my husband (a computer coder and programmer) the process is a database query usually with a 64 character string. In contrast, consider how many instant message conversations that use the same amount of characters and consequently cost LL the same amount of bandwidth. Are they going to start charging us by the character to PM someone? Probably not. So, it can't really be an issue from that standpoint. What they would have to spend money on is the server cost. However, I can hardly see how the number of free items available would hardly put a dent in enough server space to warrant the whining about costs that LL is doing. So, I think it's all BS.