I posted links to the event on twitter/flickr/koinup/sl forums/in world events and linked to a flickr pic with the slurl to the store.
I got 62 views on the Flickr pic and my in world land traffic went from the mid forties up to just over 200.
12 people bought items 40 items from the store over the week (normally valued at around 4000 lindens) and 2 of them payed towards the plants a total of 110 lindens, so I made 2.75 lindens on average per item.
It was just an experiment and so nothing to cry over but it was a little disheartening to see people come in and take every item they could get their hands on for free and then just leave, no thanks, not even a token payment, nothing.
It might also be worth noting that the two payments I did receive were when I was on the land myself or just above working.
Lessons learnt:
1. Get it right, first time. I'm the first to admit the whole thing was a bit of a rush job, I layed out the land as quick as I could just to get it up and running, a better flow and some more developed items could have helped.
2. The system needs changing. As visitors arrived they were handed a notecard explaining the offer and as we all know one of the first things people do when arriving somewhere is decline any offered items. Perhaps a script on each object so that someone would have to pay something before receiving the item could have helped.
3. Size matters. thinking back, my store is way too small for this type of experiment, would be interesting to see what would happen if some of the larger clothes stores did this for example.
4. Where am I going with this? I guess it's made me think about why i'm doing this in the first place, I make just enough to pay the rent each month and realize it's just a hobby, but is it fun? When it comes down to it I think I would still be just as happy to give my works away for free if I had rent free land to build on. Also all this selling and store building really detracts from what I love to do..CREATE.
Well, I have a similar starting point to you, Snowy, I could give my stuff away if I didn't have tier to pay. There is an imbalance in the system at the moment, and it may last a while, viz....Linden pay is just peanuts whereas our outgoings are real hard cash.
ReplyDeleteThere is, of course, the possibility of moving to Open sims where the prim costs 10% of a Linden prim, but there is more or less no traffic and no earnings. That's a tricky call.... I could reduce by outgoings by 90%, but my sales would decrease by 100%.... not easy..:))
I made a large contribution to FourYips similar voluntary scheme, but I expected at the time that I was in the minority.
Yeah, it's certainly worked for me on opensim and the more i've thought about it, wondering why i'm arsing around with a few pennies on here when I should be letting rip on the sim. Using flickr/koinup/twitter/facebook and countless other sites might be a good way to get it out to a wider audience...
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