No one asked me that actually, I deleted the video for other reasons.

No one has a right to IM a designer and call them a selfish bitch because they don’t have a freebie out at the moment. No one has the right to demand that products be given away for free.

Somewhere along the line the attitude to freebies went from “Wow, thanks for that!” to “You bitch! I hate you! I’m telling all my friends I hate you because you don’t have enough freebies!”.

Adding to that, IHOP had a free day, KFC had a free day…it works. If it didn’t, people/marketers wouldn’t do it. Especially in this challenging economic time, you need to dangle a carrot for people to shop.

Simple. That’s it. You don’t Have to have that 1 customer. And they’ll never know you’ve muted them. You can even play dumb.

Just mute the .01% that are truly harassing you about your quality/style/abundance of freebies, and carry on. You’ll feel much better.

What is the number one item in this list:

http://trendwatching.com/briefing/

@Vivianne – Amen!

- I don’t HAVE to spend money in SL, anything I buy for my avatar with my RL cash is a luxury I choose to buy.

- RL businesses have to advertise. Consider your free gift as advertising, it just costs you a lot less.

- If you give a free item to one person, or one million people, it doesn’t cost you any more. Marvel of SL. All it costs you is your time.

- If you whine and complain about customers, they will go elsewhere.

- There is a LOT of competition for my lindens, this is not 2004 when there were only a handful of good creators. There are a lot of good content creators out there. Why should I give you my lindens any more than the next one?

- In SL you can’t try on most things and you can’t return them, free gifts are a way to let customers try out your product. See what the quality is like, and if your product suits their style.

-in SL I don’t NEED to buy your product. I don’t really have to have another pair of jeans. My clothes don’t wear out and I don’t need them to keep warm. So why not offer some incentive to the SL consumer to part with those hard earned lindens?

- In this economy, it is more important than ever to give consumers some motivation to spend money in your store.

- Many new people will find your store as a result of hunts and your freebie getting blogged somewhere. Some will return to spend. Most will not. Just like in RL

- You have to speculate to accumulate.

- Don’t assume just because you were the hot shizz a few years back that this will always be the case. Just like in RL there will always be new “designers” nipping at your heels. Your product needs to be good and it needs to be seen. And honestly who really looks at SL fashion mags, don’t waste your money there. Bring people to your store. Let them try your product.

- SL design runs the gamut, just like in the real world. Some “designers” are merely copying rl designs, some are just retexturing full perms items, some are really creating their own work. Your work has to be good quality, a fair price, and appeal to at least some segment of the population. And in SL that’s a pretty wide style selection.

- Getting ticked off with customers who think your work is overpriced? If a lot are saying it, maybe it’s true. I have seen a lot of rip offs in SL. Crappy “gowns” with bad textures and smudgy details for thousands.
Those darn thigh high boots being sold as original designs for way too much.

Oh boy I could just keep going forever but RL beckons.

Something to keep in mind. We don’t “need” your product. It’s not rl where we need shelter or clothes to keep warm. The whole SL ecomony is built on people spending some of their disposable income on something purely for entertainment.

No one “needs” another pair of jeans for their av. So as “designers” you need to give us a reason to give you our money.

All you old schoolers feel entitled to make a bunch of money in SL? Well making something in SL or in RL does not guarantee you will make money. You are not “Entitled” to get paid just because you produce something. You are blessed to be doing something you probably really enjoy, and making some money off it. If you can make it into a business that supports your RL, more power to you. But you are not entitled to it, any more than making a dress in your basement at home entitles you to a show at Bryant Park.

Only been in business a week, and would still be unloved and unvisited if it were not for a couple of freebies I’ve had on offer – which have led to real sales, so am going to continue to do what works for me, and suggest others do the same.

Another example.. Tuli and her delicious skins.. She teases us with a skin from her new line once in a while. After I get a taste of what her new pack looks like I end up rushing to her store and buying up yet another bunch of skins from her. It’s called good marketing people.. Go to business school.

Ponder that for a moment all you freebie haters >.<

*Steps up on her soapbox* I say boycott the ones who are boycotting!!! VIVA LA RESISTANCE!!

However, I make rent on my stores on even a slow day. And I make some spending money every good one. And that’s all I’m really in it for. I don’t need to make a living from SL. I understand that some people do, and just as people are panic-stricken in the real world with a shrinking economy and massive decreases in consumer spending, there is panic in SL. I’m not at all sure that a freebie boycott is the answer, but I understand the desire to try and find things that can be fixed. Some designers that I think a lot of are on the list as supporting the boycott. I’ve had to give ithe idea serious consideration because of that.

Ann Otoole: “Oh damn nobody needs their nappyass zebra boots because they already have reptile boots for free from me!”

lol@ nappyass zebra boots

Such is the mentality of a lot of these whiners.

Basically if nobody wants to buy your crappy old tired polished turds then by all means leave and don’t let the door smack your ass on the way out. Go on over to blue balls or whatever it is and discover your mad skillz are nothing compared to what is required for that system rofl.

Nothing like the flock of sheep getting in line. Had the golden child said freebies are good the little girls would be crooning about how good freebies are. It is pathetic. So are attention whores. Especially assholes that don’t even have a stake in a business sector yet try to stick their noses into the business of the business they are not even part of rofl. That is exactly the sort of people that got us to this current farce of an adult content debacle.

I give away over 20,000 gifts a month. (Average for the past year) I think I need to find a way to double that.

I don’t believe that a ban on freebies would be something many designers would sign up for, and it certainly wouldn’t be effective, but for designers who are really sick of the problems releasing freebies has created for them, it may be the way to go on an individual level. If it causes you enough stress that you don’t want to log on or make stuff, absolutely you should stop doing it. To those of you saying that designers are whinging, you really don’t need to look far to find examples of the crap some of them have had to put up with as a result of sharing gifts. This is an ongoing issue, and it’s been discussed many times in the past.

In terms of the impact of the high availability of quality freebies on designers’ sales, I can only speak from my experience as a customer. I spend much less money in world now that so much stuff is available for free (there were bugger all freebies when I started). I shop primarily for fun, to pass the time, and often it’s just as much fun to go shopping for freebies as it is to shop for items I need to pay for. Now that’s just me, but if a lot of other people are also spending less in world because they can get a lot of items for free, ultimately this will have an impact on sales for designers.

Apparently we need a financial manager because I have never made enough to make it worth cashing out my lindens. I’d really love to know how it’s done.

instead of pointing fingers at people “hunting” for freebies, maby they should try to look real hard at their stuff and ask them self, is my stuff really worth buying ? in many cases the answear is NO. so many really have to upgrade their skills… i want quality

i see a freebie like a buisness card.. i rush in, get the freebie leave again to avoid the crowd and i might not even look at it right away it might take days or weeks even months (yeah my inventory is a complete mess but i know the ins and outs ).
When i find the time to look at it i will be judging you by what i see, if i do not like it or it is poor quality, i will not even bother to go to your store and it will be deleted (you did not loose a thing, you might even gained 1 L$. If i like what i see and the quality is good i will come back that is for sure

But if you’re going to give me grief for being a content provider, for working hard and wanting to make money doing it, you can kiss my ass.

Entitlement attitudes are the worst. Oh boo hoo hoo, you can’t afford lindens because you’re not making money in the game. You know what? Go make your own things then and quit trying to make everyone feel they owe you something.

Oh and you can’t have it both ways. Either we’re all lying about how much we make and we certainly can’t be making 1-2K a month or we’re all rolling in the dough and should be handing out things out for free now.

I think there are a couple of things that were overlooked by these designers. First and foremost, the RL economy is in a huge downturn right now and that for certain will be echoed in SL. I know there are customers out there who are going to gripe, but that is the same in RL business. People exist who will try and take advantage or just are never satisfied, but its is essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater when you let those few people ruin the whole idea.

I think we also need to recognize how freebies are a walking advert for stores. I wouldn’t have known about a lot of the stores I shop at without freebies leading the way. So because of freebies, stores now have my business. And lets just pretend for a second we lived in a freebieless SL. Basically we would be in a world where we have opened the flood gates for promoting even more content theft, because there are people on here who just won’t/can’t spend money.

Just because someone has a computer and downloads a *free* game, does not necessarily mean that they have extra cash to spend on dressing an avatar. By eliminating free or dollarbie clothes, it would essentially create a world where only the ones who have enough money would be able to make their avatar look decent. The rest would be relegated to freebie island goods. This seems to go against the purpose of SL in creating a community where you can be/do/look like anything you want. We should be bringing people together and helping those to learn instead of creating a separation between those who have money and those who don’t.

So if we make less than that we don’t have to give out free stuff?”

The article is a couple of years old I think. While I know some that make a full time living, I really don’t know that many who do. In defense of designers…there is a lot of time, effort, and expense involved in being a reasonably successful store owner. Are some greedy? Sure. But that doesn’t mean we all are. Some of us are just trying to cover our costs and have a little extra so we can feed OUR shopping addiction.

Freebies are just like any other marketing technique — it becomes less effective when it oversaturates the market. And, it seems to have. This is not unlike the complaints made about gridwide hunts.

Having said that, banning freebies/dollarbies is silly. It’s reactive, not proactive. If you don’t like what they are doing to the industry, find a new way to promote your business. Get people excited about buying your product. Just my opinion.

When FreeStyle posted things about my freebies, I made upwards of 2 to 3k a day in just 1L sales.

And for every person who buys a freebie, they usually tp several other friends in, who, in turn, click the subscribo or buy stuff themselves.

Designers shouldn’t spoil it just because one person thinks that they can get by on just freebies. Because I guarantee they WILL be a repeat customer. And just think how many potential customers they’re losing just because they think it’s a horrible idea?

PFFT.
I buy freebies to test the quality of a designer before I put my L’s into their store.

Yeah, i’m done ranting.
In the end: I will not be joining this grid-wide freebie ban.
I am anti-freebie-ban.

So if we make less than that we don’t have to give out free stuff?

The last freebie I gave out, I did actually notice a hike in sales figures.

I dunno, I just think it’s a personal choice that creators should be making quietly for themselves, because there is no wrong answer and there is no right answer. Pissing and whinging about customers entitlement doesn’t really accomplish much except make you look butthurt.