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

“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

LL just keeps annoying people.

Q: Are they stupid or are they just trying to lose brownie points every week??

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.

“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.

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..

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?

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