XStreet: LL Fail
Posted on 19. Nov, 2009 by Tenshi Vielle in Linden Lab News, News, Platform News
Early morning lulz brought to you in illustration by Ina Centaur on Flickr. Flickr as of yet is not paying a percentage to Linden Lab for serving Second Life residents.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Linden Lab decide or attempt to put through new policies with such swiftness. 90 days? HOLD ONTO YOU HAT MABEL IT’S GOING TO BE A BUMPY RIDE!
Anyway, this is the new plan for Xstreet:
The Xstreet SL Experience:
The Xstreet SL Marketplace is not meant to provide a replacement or even identical experience to that of shopping in-world. Instead, it serves as a specialized shopping experience which makes shopping & selling easier and different in many ways. All of our research and your feedback demonstrates that. Since it is clear that the increasing quantities of free, cheap and stale goods are hindering that experience for shoppers and merchants alike, we will take action to counteract and balance them within the marketplace, for the benefit of all. To be clear: we believe in a free marketplace and will not implement price controls on what merchants can charge for their goods.Our goals are as follows:
- Enable shoppers to quickly find the type of item they want, at the quality they want, and at the price that makes sense to them.
- Enable merchants to find these customers and put their products in front of them.
The Roadmap:
We will enact the following new controls for the Xstreet SL Marketplace within 90 days, with at least two weeks’ notice, in order to improve the shopping experience:
Monthly Listing Fee for Freebies of L$99:
- Listings for free items will now be treated as a marketing/promotional tool and thus will have a price.
- L$99 is the price of our least expensive listing enhancement and so we will start there.
- Depending upon desire for this marketing opportunity and perceived value given such demand, we will adjust the price as necessary to maximize this value and keep the freebie listings from becoming bloated again.
- Expected Delivery: 30 – 60 days
Minimum Commission of L$3 on all items priced L$1 or greater:
- We will enact a minimum commission of L$3 on all sales of non-freebie listings.
- Since Freebie listings are now considered marketing and are charged as such, they will not incur this fee.
- A L$3 commission will raise the commission on all listings under L$50. This was a range suggested by residents, but it turns out that this is the price range where there is a very high transaction volume and low commission income which combine to cover the costs of those transactions.
- We may adjust this minimum commission as we see its effects on the marketplace. L$3 does not cover the full cost of a transaction, but the goal here is first to manage freebie growth first.
- Expected Delivery: 30 – 60 days
Monthly Listing Fee of L$10 for all items L$1 or greater:
- All non-freebie listings will now be charged L$10 per month to remain listed in the Xstreet SL Marketplace
- Currently, less than 20% of Xstreet SL listings make at least one sale per month. This displays just how much clutter of unsold items exists on Xstreet SL.
- Doing this will provide an incentive for merchants to remove listings which are not selling, while keeping this fee low enough to have a minimal effect on listings which are selling and are desired by shoppers.
- By reducing the overall number of listings on Xstreet SL, the shopping experience will drastically improve which will please our shoppers and be a boon to the business of all of our merchants.
- Expected Delivery: 60 – 90 days
Separate freebies into their own category:
- There is already a freebie section on Xstreet SL. This section will become the place to browse for new freebies.
- We will remove free listings from the browsable categories and keyword search results on Xstreet SL.
- Expected Delivery: 60 – 90 days
Timeline:
- We will provide at least 2 weeks notice before releasing any of these changes.
- We expect to enact these controls within the time window 30 – 90 days following this roadmap announcement.
Questions and tempers are flying. “Is this the reason LL broke the ||GiveInventory script command, which has worked without fault for a long time?” “It’s such a pain in the ass to list on XStreet – shouldn’t LL be paying US to list?” Many people have already begun de-listing their items. There *are* XStreet alternatives, but some of them just look 1997-pathetic.
There are also rumors flying around that because it appears LL will indeed begin making a profit off of items sold, they will lose the DMCA Safe Harbor status they’ve been hiding behind.
Colossus Linden: “If products are good, they should be able to be sold for enough value to cover the minor fees we’ve introduced. Additionally, by introducing these fees and removing products that aren’t selling, this will make it easier for shoppers to find new great products which may have been lost in the clutter before. This is our hope and goal.”
If you want to read more comments on this from the Lindens, check the discussion thread over at the Official Website.
The new Linden vendors (also on the Roadmap proposal) will automatically list you at XStreet, apparently, so you basically have no choice about this if you choose to continue selling with Linden Lab. I suppose it won’t be long before they implement a policy regarding third-party selling websites like the one above as well.
laurenneutron
Nov 19th, 2009
Now items that aren’t making regular sales are CLUTTER.
Great, LL.
kesseret
Nov 19th, 2009
Tell me again what was this ‘Pattern of Non-Listening’ that Pink was discussing just last Freaking week????
admin
Nov 19th, 2009
I don’t know why she called it “Pattern of Non-Listening”. I would hope she’s read Orwell’s 1984 and how much that sounds like something that would come out of there. The English phrasing is awkward and makes me cringe.
admin
Nov 19th, 2009
Can I get my tin hat now? Who called that LL was going to make things more rough for the little creator in order to retain the big creators and the corporations?
MissySL
Nov 19th, 2009
Well I hope all those people that whinged and moaned about freebies killing the SL economy are happy now because its complaining like so that puts these stupid new plans into motion.
Boogers
Nov 19th, 2009
Yeah, i’m taking all my shit down from xstreet this weekend.
LL gets my teir, they get all my upload costs, they were getting commission from my xstreet sales.. Now they want 10L a month per item AND commission? Greedy fuckers.
They can suck it.
Creamy Cooljoke
Nov 19th, 2009
If you have any original/random and quality freebies or 1L items on Xstreet which you are removing and do not want to have in your store (or you have no store in world), you are welcome to place them at one or more of my Free*Style stores.
This will cost you nothing, so if you are interested, please contact me in world on my avatar Freestyle Adamski and I’ll give you more info
Sileny
Nov 19th, 2009
Yay! That’s a good idea Creamy! “Creamy’s Home For Wayward Freebs”
Rosie Barthelmess
Nov 19th, 2009
I basically will have no choice but to remove all my Xstreet merchandise or 95% of it and seek out the competiting services.
This is insanity as pretty much insane as I’ve ever seen it. Awesome.
Krissy Muggleston
Nov 19th, 2009
Removing the “clutter” may make your items stand out better.
Krissy Muggleston
Nov 19th, 2009
Searching xstreetsl for anything results in 30+ pages of junk. Finding the quality is like searching the laundry for a missing sock. (I’m only one consumer’s opinion. I realize the next person doesn’t consider these 30 pages ‘junk’.) I personally like this part of the roadmap.
-It’s a shame they want to charge for freebie listings though. Guess LL wants a piece of that pie.
Lizzie Lexington
Nov 19th, 2009
I’m kind of on the same page as Krissy here. Xstreet has so much crap it makes it difficult to shop there. In my opinion, all of these fees and surcharges should have been assessed from day one. And to me these price increases seem like good business sense. LL wants Second Life to be a profitable business so to me the route they are going makes sense if that’s the time of company they want to be.
On the other hand I definitely see why creators would be upset and its unfortunate that LL didn’t come up with a roadmap similar to this in its early days. Not the best business planning in my opinion.
Lizzie Lexington
Nov 19th, 2009
LOL type of company not time.
NachoMom
Nov 20th, 2009
Fucking your customers over is never good business sense. Ever.
Someone
Nov 20th, 2009
“On the other hand I definitely see why creators would be upset and its unfortunate that LL didn’t come up with a roadmap similar to this in its early days. Not the best business planning in my opinion.”
It’s because LL didn’t even create xstreet, they just bought it out and this is really the only big change they’re making to it. Money hungry much?
Lizzie Lexington
Nov 21st, 2009
And you don’t think they had Xstreet on their radar when M took over?
Ann Otoole
Nov 19th, 2009
Yet people consistently find and buy my clutter.
How much is LL paying you? I bet not as much as that “lady” that sells that Japanese stuff and oh btw I think I now know wtf that eye bleach secret from a couple weeks ago is all about now.
Krissy Muggleston
Nov 19th, 2009
Lol!
Mimika Oh
Nov 20th, 2009
That’s because the SEARCH is bad, not because of “clutter”.
Ann Otoole
Nov 19th, 2009
“Is this the reason LL broke the ||GiveInventory script command, which has worked without fault for a long time?”
This would be racketeering and needs to be reported to the FTC at https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
Mimika Oh
Nov 20th, 2009
Is providing themselves with “reliable delivery” while excluding the competition from using it also racketeering?
Breaking News: Second Life Mentor Groups Closing in december. WHOA! « My collection of thoughs and whispers from everywhere
Nov 19th, 2009
[...] http://shoppingcartdisco.com/?p=5769 [...]
Ajax Manatiso
Nov 19th, 2009
More insanity. Now freebies will become 3L to cover the 50L and under fee. Should we call them threebees ? It seems counter productive to growth as newbies without cash accounts and without Lindens can’t get any clothes — and they can’t camp for money,now, either. It seems as though LL has given up on growth and just wants to gouge all the current members until they all get fed up and go away.
Echo Kinsella
Nov 19th, 2009
Takes my clutter back to my sandbox and refuses to play nicely with LL again!
Xstreet Boys Continue to Annoy
Nov 19th, 2009
[...] loved one will die if you don’t do as told. In this case she wants you to hear a quick shank in the prison shower to Linden’s chest that minus the Mabel line is on target. Her [...]
Chip Kips
Nov 19th, 2009
I would like tio suggest an alternative of my own. My thoughts are to provide a site which is non-profit making and is controlled by the residents of SL and in particular the merchants selling goods on it, not Linden Labs or any other company. To do this I have come up with (so far) 2 clear ideas on the way this will work.
Fees
Fees will be set at a rate that covers the cost of hosting the site (not administration). Any profit will be put back in to improving the system (upgraded servers, increased Bandwidth allowance etc) and a financial statement will be made available to all Merchants (maybe quarterly?). My initial figures are:
A fee of L$500 per year per Merchant. This will cover the cost of the server, it will be a set fee regardless of how many items you list.
A commission charge of 2% per sale. This will cover the cost of bandwidth required for the server. Obviously this varies depending on the amount of traffic, but I’m hoping the ratio of traffic to sales will remain fairly solid.
I think this structure will work out cheaper for most merchants than the 5% commission charge at most other sites. PLEASE NOTE. I am not asking for these fess upfront. I am stating these are the fees I would expect to charge once the site is up and running and it can start being used. All I am currently looking for is feedback on the idea as a whole
Decisions
All major decisions regarding changes, improvements etc to the site will be done via a voting system on the site. Every member will be allowed to vote, Merchants and Customers alike, unless it’s a decision that solely affects one side (for example fee changes only affects Merchants).
The results of the vote will be clearly published, and decisions always taken on a majority rules basis.
_______________________________________________
What I want from you
Initially I’m looking for feedback on the idea; there is no point me putting in a lot of work to get this off the ground if no one is interested. I’m particularly interested in feedback in 2 areas:
Merchants
My initial figures are based on around 100 merchants signing up once the site is up and running. Obviously the site is not going to have thousands of hits from day 1, so I realise many Merchants will think they’re better off waiting to see how it goes before committing their L$500. Unfortunately I can only fund the server fee myself for so long, so this kind of thinking will not benefit the site.
I am looking for feedback on how many merchants would be willing to take the risk and sign up early on, in return I would offer a guaranteed fixed fees for life for the first 100.
Help!
This is a fairly big project and ideally I would be looking to put together a small team to help get it off the ground and keep it running. Keep in mind this would be on a volunteer basis, as there is no profit. I would be looking for help in 2 key areas:
Developers/Programmers/Scripter’s
People who have skills in the areas of website design and development as well as LSL. It’s not essential you have skills in all areas, as the project will be split into sections.
Marketing
This project can only succeed if we get both Merchants selling and buyers buying. If you have clear ideas on the best way to achieve this, and the skills to help realise those ideas your input would be greatly appreciated.
If you fit in to any of these categories and this project interests you, please drop me a notecard and let me know you’re interested, along with any feedback you may have. For example:
“I would be interested as a Merchant and I would be willing to pay twice as much” I can but hope!
Please contact me inworld if you have any comments on this.
Chip Kips
Grace Winnfield
Nov 19th, 2009
Wow! This will kill demos… although i would prefer for people to find me in world and try them…. I have bunches of stuff that sits simply because LL search criteria on xstreet sucks so bad. If they would just improve their search engine this would not be a problem. I never will understand why when i search i find the highest priced stuff… then the lowest .. then more high priced and etc… in a wave. Problem is I think most people are actually shopping Xstreet first rather than brave the lag. This will be bummer bummer bummer. Why not just charge a flat rate to creators monthly to list unlimited items?
Monolock
Nov 19th, 2009
“Searching xstreetsl for anything results in 30+ pages of junk.” THEY SHOULD FREAKING IMPROVE THEIR SEARCH ENGINE !!! One cannot even search for two connected words “abc hij” without it spitting all results out for “abc” and “hij”.
I quickly did my math with last months data:
I have on XStreet
31 items = 310L$ listing fee / month
my freebies got taken
324 times a 3 L$ = 972 L$ commission
= 1282 L$ / month for fees
i earned 1056 L$
so i would have to pay 226 L$ to be on XStreet???? Are they KIDDING ME????
I will have to leave …
Monolock
Nov 19th, 2009
or does the one who picks up the freebie has to pay 3L$?
Vessus
Nov 19th, 2009
Monolock – Does it honestly matter? We now have to pay for everything – regardless of what it’s listed price is, and despite that nice little profit they are already skimming.
Jozie Fhang
Nov 19th, 2009
Maybe we can put our freebies into a fatpack so we can can charge 50L and sell 50 freebies at once. This would avoid the 99L per freebie charge
Genezix
Nov 19th, 2009
LL has got some pure bullshit going with this one. I knew it was trouble when LL took over this market.
artoo
Nov 20th, 2009
i would prefer a faster webserver and better search too, but i also appreciate the fees.
it might wash out all the stuff from people who left sl allready anyway.
stuff that otherwise would stay there for ever.
btw, didnt they want to remove ALL the illegal copyright violations of products using RL brand names ?
just did a quick search for “louis vuitton” and found 58 pages (not items but pages) of results..
Krissy Muggleston
Nov 20th, 2009
Exactly.
Luisa
Nov 20th, 2009
wrong! if there are some 1001 L$ left inside some such account, the next year will not bring any change to these listings.
and nobody can plan in regards of SL economy any further.
crossing thumbs here we will see 2011 alive
Krissy Muggleston
Nov 20th, 2009
Didn’t I read somewhere that Pink Linden came from eBay? I wonder how this new fee structure compares to that of eBay…
Lizzie Lexington
Nov 21st, 2009
Interesting point Ms. Muggleston. From the ebay website.
“When you list an item on eBay, you’re charged an insertion fee. If the item sells, you are also charged a final value fee. The total cost of selling an item is the insertion fee plus the final value fee.
The basic fee structure depends on the type of listing you use.
All fees are in U.S. Dollars.”
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html
plurabelle laszlo
Nov 29th, 2009
True that. But Ebay commission and fee don’t sum up to 30 % of your sales – that’s what I will have to pay to xstreet now, in slow months even more. And that’s after removing my freebies and dollarbies – if I would keep them, the percentage would be even higher. that’s ridiculous.
For big merchants the monthly fees might be no problem – but it’s highly unfair for small and medium designers.
And as a consumer I will miss all those awesome niche-products I have bought on Xstreet – which i would never have found in world.
Skinkie
Nov 20th, 2009
And another nail goes into the coffin…
elysium
Nov 20th, 2009
Did anyone else pick up on this in the freebie details:
“we will adjust the price as necessary to maximize this value and keep the freebie listings from becoming bloated again.”
Which means they are already telling us that the 99L freebie listing fee may go higher.
Sioxie Legend
Nov 20th, 2009
The whole fee and commission take is BS. I think that the Lindens are hurting overall and to make XStreet more profitable they have instituted fees to compensate for poor planning at the beginning. Freebies do constitute a strain on resources BUT they also bring more traffic/awareness. How much that translates into sales is anyone’s guess. Sticking fees and “Taxes” on the merchant really doesn’t help the consumer – as a result merchants will have to charge more or go elsewhere.
What really irks me is the whole mess could have been taken care of if LL had done due diligence and actually had a review policy in place – like Renderosity or Content Paradise. No charge to list but the items you list HAVE to meet certain criteria. Or they could put a time limit on items – like after the first 30 days you then get charged to list those items… Or even have a limit as to how many active items you have unless you want a “Premium Merchant” account.
I do agree with the freebie listings – there were quite a few that were “nefarious” to say the least – I imagine that this is one way to purge the system. However – that hinders true developers or artists from sharing their items via the web on XStreet – oh well, they’ll just have to use regular old prims in-world for now.
I have personally reduced my active items on XStreet to 1/10th of what was there. I’m currently looking into APEZ – but the system there is a little confusing and managing images on both the SL and Client side is a little dizzying.
In times where money is being pinched on all sides – charging more for the service and basically taking a “lazze faire” attitude toward merchants who are voicing their opinion is rather odd.
Kitty O'Toole
Nov 20th, 2009
I’m hacked off enough as it is right now without LL adding fuel to the fire and f*cking my mood even further, but come on…Do they actually LISTEN TO US? Profit profit profit- forget the bloody vision of this beautiful virtual world, let’s f*ck all our residents in the ass, YET AGAIN, and spoil something else that is working fine without any necessity for us to intervene..Oh, hang on, we’re not making enough money…Is there any wonder that SL is being viewed with derision in some high echelons when it’s so good at trying to wilfully destroy itself from within? Right, that’s it. I’m going to bed..apologies for venom but I am so pissed off right now:(
Kitty O’ Angry-Need-To-Take-My-Meds-Before-Breakdown
=^..^=
StellaWasTaken
Nov 20th, 2009
I remember when everything was so simple….
Destiny
Nov 21st, 2009
Bring on the revolt!
LL just keeps annoying people.
Q: Are they stupid or are they just trying to lose brownie points every week??
Cat
Nov 21st, 2009
Scary move, if they’re doing this to Xstreet and Xstreet is only 1% of all sales in Secondlife…Think of it as a test for things to come….
Lizzie Lexington
Nov 21st, 2009
I wouldn’t be surprised for a long time that
SL didn’t have an Xstreet or Onrez on their internal product roadmap. But a la EMC they saw another entity doing what they wanted to do anyway and bought them out. It happens all the time: Compaq did it in buying out Tandem back in the day, HP eventually bought out Compaq. Dell bought Alienware and now is in the process of buying Perot’s EDS. And the partnerships that exist also – Intel is partnering with my RL employer instead of trying to develop their own Theft Recovery Software. Why not just buy or partner something that works that you planned to implement anyway? It may be cheaper in the long run to do that.
Lizzie Lexington
Nov 21st, 2009
oops sorry Dell is buying Perot systems not EDS (HP bought them out, LOL)
Snap
Nov 21st, 2009
hi,
check out Apez,as Sioxie did,the layout is of course different,but they have more options than Xstreets did(banking,vendor system,affiliate vendors,profit sharing,lease systems with profit sharing options,linden dollar exchange service,ATM’s to put on your land,FREE LISTINGS,no % on webshop sales,no % on full version vendor sales,2.5% on free vendor and free lease sales/payments,and 2.5% on intervendor sales)and more i have forgotten
Nocturne Fashion Feed » Blog Archive » LL Xstreet Changes
Nov 21st, 2009
[...] sites, and recommend everyone read up on these changes. The site with the most information was on Shopping Cart Disco, and another article even was posted on [...]
Arcana Ceawlin
Nov 22nd, 2009
Whats pissing me off here is that LL totaly forgets about ppl like hair or skin designers. I have two hairstore myself with lots of styles, of course for every style a Demo and every style in 10 color packs.
OF COURSE
Arcana Ceawlin
Nov 22nd, 2009
..sorry wrong button XD
OF COURSE i dont sell every color pack in every style all the time. Plus i would have a HUGE cost for the demos alone.
So i´ll move most my stuff to Metaverse exchange, it might look a bit plain now, but the layout is cool and i can list all color packs in one listing (what would be a good idea for Xstreet to get rid of the “clutter”).
just my two cents.
Lord Sullivan
Jan 3rd, 2010
http://www.slapt.me is fast growing also with new features being added constantly and is investing in SL this year heavily with sponsored events etc. starting with the Relay for Life in March. IMHO merchants should list at all the available sites to increase their own exposure for their product lines.