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[Daveypup Nirpaw]

As most people are probably aware by now, the pricing structure for merchants to list items on XstreetSL is about to change. Every item will incur a fee, even if it doesn’t sell. Add to that unreasonable listing costs for “freebies”, and many merchants will simply no longer be able to afford to sell on Xstreet. If you aren't already familiar with this, you can read LL's blog entry about it here:

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2009/11/18/roadmap--managing-freebies-on-xstreet-sl

For the Tinies who have items listed on Xstreet, this really puts a block up since most of our wares are sold in world, but Xstreet is still a very useful way of selling.

So, we are considering moving to an alternative place where we can list things and still get them delivered in world.

The list of alternatives:

http://www.slapt.me/market/index.php?act=market&id_cat=426

http://meta-life.net/user/login

http://www.apez.biz/

http://myslmarket.com/

http://metaverseexchange.com/


Would it be a good idea to move? What are everyone's thoughts on this? If anyone has experience with any of the alternatives then reviews would be helpful, any bad/good experiences, ease of delivery etc...

[Zayn Till]

or we can set up full ecommerce on this site and take our classifieds section to the next level.

[Daveypup Nirpaw]

Yesh, and make sure everyone knows about our classifieds.

[Chaffro]

I pitched the idea of our own, tiny-centric e-commerce site in chat yesterday; Noramyr has stepped up and said that she will look into developing such a site in the early part of the New Year. My suggestion though was that it shouldn't be limited to residents or merchants within Raglan, but to accomodate other tiny designers too; after all, we are all in the same boat with this ridiculous change. This would allow the site the scope to expand and evolve over time, and incorporate other useful building and creation elements, such as textures and sculpties.

I hope it happens! Then we can stick it to the Lab, tiny-style.

On a personal note, I sent Colossus Linden an IM regarding my situation, and he did have the good grace to reply, although I now need to reply back to him. Stills and I also went exploring around a Linden village and spoke with Alexa Linden (who started off as a lioness before transforming into a first a Jellybean Phoenix and then a Wynx Purple bunny to make us feel more at home after we broke into her place, hehe) and she seemed to share our concerns about the policy driving away small business merchants; so I think there is some empathy out there amongst the Lindens. But it's a crazy scenario.


 

[Bo Fiddlesticks]

This is outrageous  
I removed my stuff from XSL when the Lindens aquired it, but I still buy a lot of stuffs there because it's so convenient. Of course it was a matter of time before they found anotter way to milk every drop out of it.

I have some experience with apez.biz (about a year ago), their networked vendors are good. The shop looks quite spartan tho. Metaverse Exchange looks the most user friendly, but if Noramyr can set up something, it will be good I'm sure!
Btw I don't think that we should limit a site to being tiny-centric, there are lots of our friends that also make stuff for biggies - why exclude beforehand? Imo proper categorizing would be better/sufficient. 

[Chaffro]

Yeah, I agree Bo...I just didn't think it would be wise to have lotsa folk load it up early on in case any kind of fault developed; but it still has to happen before even that stage!

 

[Daveypup Nirpaw]

I'm with you Bo about the biggie stuff. 90% of my sales from Xstreet came from biggie purchases even though I had all my Tiny stuff up there too. Maybe once in a blue moon a Tiny would buy something, but most of my Tiny sales were from inworld. Though I do think it would be nice also to have a Tiny-centric outlet.

[Chaffro]

In case anyone doesn't use XStreet, or know what the fuss is about, here's a quick run-down.

Currently it's free to list any number of items of any price. XStreet (Linden Lab) take a maximum of 5% commission off of your sales (this is approximate; there are 3%, 4% and 5% commission levels, but we'll stick with the upper limits); this was always the case before it was owned by LL, which, certainly in my case, I didn't mind paying as I knew that someone somewhere would have to pay to maintain a free service and make a small amount of profit from it.

LL now want to impose a tax/fee of $10L per item listing per month on all items above $1L in price.

So, for example, a merchant who has 20 items will now have to pay $200L per month (or $2400L per annum) just to display wares. So, factor in the commission, a merchant would need to make at least $211L of sales per month before they turn a $1L profit.

In an effort to try and "declutter" XStreet, the Lab wants to charge a $99L per item listing per month of anything sold at $0L. Yes, $99L per month to list a freebie.

They are also looking to impose a minimum $3L commission fee on EVERY sale. So if you have items listed for $1L, you will have to pay $3L commission on each item sold.

Let's say you're a merchant who has 500 items listed; 450 items at more than $1L and 50 freebies. To list them all each month will cost you $9450L per month. If you manage to sell $10,000L of stuff, you will come out with a (approximately) $50L profit (after commission).

I make, maybe $400L on a good month on XStreet if I'm lucky. I can't afford to take the risk, so if this $10L fee happens, I'll have to pull all of my stuff off there too.

Sad.

[Daveypup Nirpaw]

And it's sad because if they actually listen to their residents, they'll see that all they need to do is fix and improve the search function on xstreet in order to make searching better and seem less cluttered. Not drive people away.

Of course LL and the merchants who do sell overpriced stuff only care about one thing, right? Getting even more money. (generalising here)

[Chaffro]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind if they told us "the extra money that will go to us will be used to offset the cost of sims" or "will go back to residents by this method", but it won't - it will go straight into a Linden's wallet.

[Daveypup Nirpaw]

Yeah, and I'm still reading through all the comments on the blog and there's this one merchant who is supporting the change and saying that people should learn to price their things at their market value and anything below that is degrading them as merchants. Well, people come on SL to have FUN, first and foremost. Wasn't that the whole idea of SL in the beginning? To have fun? Making money was an added extra that meant you could start breaking even with your land rental and shop rental, and hey, if you earnt a bit more, then woot for you. Now it's all just about making money and if you're not making money for LL then you're clearly not welcome anymore, by LL and merchants who think they're business-savvy alike.

[Copper Mistral]

I may be the odd ferret out here, but I don't think I've ever bought anything off XLstreet, either before or after LL took it over.  (I may have and just don't remember it, but it certainly wasn't recent.)  The way I use XLstreet, is to find stuff that I can't easily find in-world.  Once I've found whatever I'm after, I go to the in-world vendor, so I can maybe a demo, get a better idea of the creators styles, maybe even meet them.  And I usually end up buying more than what I went after.
  So, charging for content on XLstreet is going to end up pushing me out of the buying market, because there's nothing I like more than scouring 50 gazillion listings on the in-world search to find the one item that actually fits the bill.  As a result, I'll probably end up buying less (outside of Raglan) and building more of my own stuff.

--Cu & Sp

[Zayn Till]

You know we already have eveything in place on our classifieds but the actual delivery of items on the raglan web site thanks to bo's hard work. Think we'll look Into this.

[Caleb Kit]

Howdy,
I just wanted to say that I am like Copper and use xstreet for recon purposes. I wasn't really a consumer until I became a tiny and I shop in The Raglan Shire sims.  But I have discovered other tiny places using xstreet. Also I found that sometimes people put things on xstreet that they don't have in their shops and vice versa.  I have listened to a couple of people(biggies) that I know that have been in SL longer than I have and they have stores and xstreet etc. They came up with some things that sounded reasonable for some of the changes but were not happy in how the Lindens handled this at all. They were removing freebies from their xstreet ads and were rewriting their ads to point people to their stores.  They also said this was about land sales as much as anything else. I wasn't angry until I read Colossus Linden's remarks on the SL blog.  Whatever the merchants of Raglan do I will support. **Nose Beep**

[Raymond Nightfire]

LL's new plan for Xstreet will ruin all small, specialty, and start up shops.
They already killed a third of businesses by killing On_Rez, and by jacking up the price for listing items on Xstreet, it would be cheaper to lose business by pulling out instead of paying for the over priced listings. Seems like only the people who over price their junk will have the privilege to list things on Xstreet (which might soon be renamed eXpensiveSL).

It was bad enough LL killed On_Rez when everyone said to keep it, that killed 1/3 of my customers, and with the new Xstreet price hike, I will lose 1/2 of what is left since I won't be able to afford it.
Basically Xstreet will become just like 90% of the inworld malls, very few people selling things and all of it overpriced junk!

As for using the Raglan classifieds to replace Xstreet, we should also open the door to anyone who sells tiny related items not just vendors in the cluster since LL is closing the door on them.  We should start collaborating with all the other tiny groups to make it easier to find stuff for us.  Once you have the replacement system ready, I will join up.