Caveat Emptor - Buying and Selling in Secondlife

Business Musings: The freebee dilemma

2009-07-03T13:40:00.000-07:00

I've been kind of out of SL for a while, or perhaps being rather casual about it thanks to a lot of RL stuff, but I'm trying to get back into it and I stumbled onto a fantastic business blog, virtualworldbusiness.com by Todd Borst. One of the articles I've read while trying to catch up (because seriously, its awesome stuff.) is one regarding the practice of giving away freebees and the troubles associated with it.

I agree with a lot of what he said in the article, but I had a few thoughts of my own.

To summarise it for those who want to go read it in depth later (and I highly recommend it), the article identifies the main reasons why freebees exist, which can be distilled into three primary motivators:
1) Generosity - Creator does not feel content should be paid for and just wants people to enjoy their creation
2) Animosity - Creator does not feel that content should be sold period and tries to usurp a market by providing a free alternative.
3) Marketing - A content creator provides a freebee to promote a new product and get some word of mouth advertising, as well as keep people signed up to groups and so forth.

The problem is mostly with number 3, and it backlashes the creator more so than the other two. Why? For a couple of reasons:

1) It builds a culture of entitlement (particularly if you give away a product you actually intend to sell)
2) People come to have a certain expectation, and if the expectations aren't met, they get cranky.

But freebees can be such a potent selling tool, how do you give away free stuff without creating an expectation that can come back and munch your ass (not to mention cap your IMs with complaints)?

Well I had a few thoughts after reading the article. Getting back into writing, I thought I'd share them here.

Some people give away a product they intend to sell as a freebee release perk to group members. This isn't such a great idea because people will try nine ways to sunday to try to scam into the group or build the expectation that by joining the group, they will get pretty much everything new you make for free. But having an incentive to be part of a group is a really good plan, since with limited group space, sometimes people have to make some serious decisions. Not to mention having other people tout your new product around is good marketing! The thought that immediately came to mind is don't give away 'freebees', give away prizes!

The word 'freebee' really has a lot of negative conotations. It devalues the worth of something, however a prize is usually something that is earned or won that has value. Saying "I won this!" immediately creates certain expectations within people, a certain envy, and a certain interest in keeping up with the joneses. Plus the eventish aspect to it can attract new people to a store over a period of time. Release parties are a good way to get people into your stores and can attract people to join your group. Particularly if you are holding a raffle or something of that nature. Getting people in your store to see your items and other promotional tools such as midnight madness vendors, or lucky chairs or other such things might also encourage them to come back later.

If you do decide to give away a freebee, to either create an attraction to your store, or give something you may want to use as a permanent promotional item, make sure that it meets a few conditions.

The first is that it remains free. No matter what. Its not going to be sold ever or hasn't been sold before. Turning old stuff into freebees pisses off customers who paid good money. Don't retire merchandise as freebees, it just leaves a very bad taste in people's mouths.

The second is that it is very different than any current product. Either a totally different type of product, or so significantly different that its impossible for anyone to mistake it as something you've sold. For example, I've got several freebees that are tattoos. I don't sell tattoos, period. My products are avatars, clothing, and eyes. But it gives people a chance to see the quality of my products, which is mostly what freebees are about. A sample. A taste to whet the appetite. Not a free lunch.

The third is that, if you are going to put out freebees, if you do it regularly, people will come to expect it. This isn't such a bad thing if you can do it. But if you can't, try not to be too regular about it. Keep it irratic enough that people don't expect X freebee to be avaliable at the beginning of the month. If you did, but can't anymore, make sure you make it EXTREMELY clear to the group or store people that you've discontinued your freebee program, but you will still likely get a lot of complaints.

If you have a way of tracking who buys a freebee from either a box or vendor, you can use that information to invite them to a group, which allows you to grow your marketing group base. Some people won't accept the invite of course, but a lot will. Especially if you provide tangible benefits such as prizes or event invitations. If you want to have a regularish release for 'gifts' for your patrons, holidays are also good times of the year to target, particularly holidays.

Giveaways/release giveaways I've seen work without too much trouble:
- Trivia game to the group
- Raffle using all the names of the people who were in the group as of X day.
- Party, if you show up, there is a prize ball and some promotional give away items like prize chairs and the like.

Add your ideas!

Business Musings: The Benefits of Specialization

2008-08-27T16:19:00.000-07:00

As I've gathered more and more experience in business in Secondlife, I've discovered something of an interesting truth about SL business.

There's nothing more difficult to promote/market in secondlife than a 'general store'.

I'm personally a person who likes to make a variety of things. From full avatars, to costumes, to eyes, to prefab buildings, I do it all. However, just because you can do lots of things, doesn't mean you should try to sell them all... at least not all in one package. This goes not only for businesses selling content, but for malls, property rental, and other businesses as well. The more 'general' they are, the more difficult they are to make successful. The most successful businesses in secondlife that I've seen have ALL been, without

Because of the sheer chaos of the mainland and the overwhelming OMG STUFF-ness of the grid, people get very particular about how they shop. They decided they need to buy something, lets call that something X for now. Rather than randomly searching the classifieds for X, generally the first thing people do is ask someone for the name or landmark to a store that specializes in X. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked "I need some new hair, who's your favorite hair designer?" or "I'm looking for a skin, what are some good skin designers." People are looking for specific things and thus are looking for specific shops. I've never once heard someone ask me if SL has something like Walmart, or a general store. Its not how people shop in SL. As a result, specialization is almost a key to success.

Now, you can find a specialization that is more broad than just 'hair'. You could plant your stake on a genre, like say fantasy, horror, sci-fi, anime, etc, but you need to make it really clear. I have a business which is a horror shop, specifically for the 'undead' of SL (zombies, ghosts, ghouls.. etc). It does a pretty brisk business, despite being extremely specialized and niche. Sometimes, finding a niche is a very good thing, since there isn't too much competition and your audience will quickly come to know your products because your target group is small and compact. Chances are, they socialize, and if you make something noteworthy, it will soon be discovered. That was the case with my business. I created several of the items for myself originally when I was playing in a horror RP in SL (now defunct.. bummer). I found that for my character, there really wasn't much out there, so I had to make my own stuff. I kept getting asked for them so often that I decided to see if they would sell. Low and behold, a successful business. Apparently I wasn't the only one who needs these items. But by targeting my advertising specifically at that audience (those looking for zombie/ghost/horror items) I'm able to get my message to them easier, because I can really target my areas, groups, etc, as well as my audience being able to find me very easily by typing undead in the search engine.

When you specialize, its also easier for you to streamline your communications, advertisiments in the classifieds and parcel listings. There is a lot less of the "hmm.. what do I show because I have lots of things" business, and it lessens the need for a zillion keywords which may only kinda sorta relate to your products. You need to really put on your thinking cap and consumer hat and think about how *you* shop, and your friends shop. How do you find stores? Is it word of mouth? Is it in malls? Where does your audience hang out? Where do you hang out when you are looking for X? If you think about it, it will really help you decide where to spend your L$ and how to list your store. These days in SL, its almost a requirement to have a main store, and then use mall outlets to raise your profile. Most people are interested in shopping at the main store, but having outlets in specially chosen locations where your audience might hang out is a good way to get your brand out there and seen. Even if you don't get a lot of sales, make sure you have a landmark giver, because a lot of people will take a landmark and blip to the main store. Its worth it for that, because usually they do buy something. This is particularly true if you can only show part of your inventory.

So what if you've been around a while and made a whole bunch of different things, and now you are reading this article going 'hmm.. well I have all this stuff! How can I specialize now?" Well not to fear, its easy. First, go through your store inventory and catagorize stuff. Start with the really broad stuff (Eg: Buildings, Avatar stuff, scripts, furniture, etc.). Then look at how much you have of each. There is nothing stopping you from splitting your one store into several. For example:

Beth Avatar has a Store called Beth's Bits & Bobs. She sells a lot of different items, but the thing she makes the most of is low prim furniture, followed by hair and some clothing. It would make sense to split the furniture off into their own business, in order to attract more people looking for specific low prim furniture. Her name "bits and bobs" suggests hair and accessories, rather than furniture, so its misleading for people searching for the products. Keeping her Bits and Bobs store and retooling it towards a fashion store, selling hair and clothing, and making a second business called Beth's Low Prim Furniture, is going to attract more people looking for furniture and give her better explosure as a furniture maker, while not completely alienating her current bits and bobs customers, but attracting more people looking for hair and clothing since its now, clearly a fashion store.

With product specialization, you can put the maximum effort into one audience, looking for one type of thing and really get yourself known for a particular item. Its unwise to underestimate the power of this particular type of business, particularly in SL. Its alright to have other items in your store, but pick a specialty, and really capitalize on it. You'll find that it makes it much easier to have a staple product that people come to YOU for, and then discover your other creations, than try to be everything to everyone.

Business Tips: 10 handy creator resources

2008-08-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

This is a bit of a new feature, since this blog seems to be developing a bit towards helping business peeps as well as dealing with scams and talking about business, and we are going to start with what I feel are 10 tools out there that no content creator (particularly one just starting out..) should be without, or at least should know about. Now, these will have different levels of relevance depending on what you want to make, but its worth noting all of them have their uses. These are not ranked in any particular order of usefulness, they are meerly numbered.

Texture Optimizer
This handy little gadget helps you optimize your textures on prims to reduce loading times and reduce lag. Useful if you are setting up shops with a lot of textures to show your wares. Because you want to keep the area as fast loading and lag free as possible, its important to make sure your textures are optimized.
SL Clothing Previewer
Windows Download
Mac Download
This insanely handy ultility is specifically for making clothing. Once you've created some clothing, and need to preview it to make sure things like straps and scenes line up, this tool becomes invaluble. Instead of having to spend 10L to upload to check and see if something lines up, finding it doesn't, and then repeating the process until you spend a small fortune, you can use this little guy. Just load your texture map and rotate the figure to have a look. Supports all the different clothing maps and figures, male and female. Works excellent for skins as well. It runs locally, so no worrying about being online or having to log into SL as you work. Generally speaking, if it works on this previewer, it will work on SL.
CMFF Master Templates
The original, definative templates for creating skins and clothing in SL, now these replace the original linden templates in the downloads section I understand. These comprehensive, layered template files are complete with a color coded map and grid to align those pesky seams and provide an invaluble guide file when working on making textures of any sort that go on the body.
ScupltyPaint
Need a basic, quick, easy to learn method of making simple sculpties? Well this is your solution. This freebee program has several built in shapes as well as very simple tools to make common and simple sculpty shapes. With some practice, one can learn to make more complex shapes in the editor. Handy and relatively easy to learn to use although isn't as robust as say a program like Blender, Maya, or other commercial software, it can do some impressive things, and its free!
QAvimator
Need to make your own animations? Are you sick of Poser's constant screwing up? Need a free alternative? QAvimator could be your answer. I have heard some content creators say that the animations they've exported from this tool are more reliable than poser, although I haven't noticed much of a difference myself. Although, unlike poser, this is free.
The Gimp
Not everyone has the money to buy an expensive program like photoshop to create clothing and skins. This free option, while a bit more complicated interface wise, has most of the features (and a few more in terms of functionality) of photoshop, without the hefty pricetag. With a little tenacity you can create for free.
Puppeteer
This is a super cool tool that 'rescues your creation from static existance', but is essentially a prim animator tool. It has video tutorials as well as a very cool demo video on youtube. A very handy thing to make your creations move, (wings flap, tip jars spin, tails swish, etc.) If you aren't a scripter. This blog links to the free version of this tool.
Particle Wizard
Need to generate particles for your creations? This is a handy little tool that allows you to create a particles without paying and arm and a leg for them, or buying a tool inworld.
SL Scripter
Need some basic scripting done, but not a scripter? This handy little tool generates scripts for you based on menu prompts of what you want the script to do. Still in its basic incarnation, but extremely handy for those of us who are not script savvy, but still want some basic functionality in our creations without paying through the nose.
Avatar Databank
A handy site that has broken down the basic avatar meshes into downloadable objects for import into other programs (like blender, maya, etc) to help you work out sculpties or preview textures onto. A useful resource, particularly if you want to focus on only one particular part or object. Also good for working on non standard body frames and parts.

As content creators we are constantly looking for new and interesting things to do with our creations. Some might require a bit of learning, but some are actually helpful to those of us who lack certain skills (like extensive scripting abilities), having resources is very handy and often less expensive than hiring someone else to do the job.

I do hope these links help some folks out there who are looking for resources, especially if they are just starting out and not sure what to use to create what.

Business Musings: Customer Entitlement & Ignorance

2008-06-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have several friends on SL who have been in the business of creating content for several years now, and a few that are quite large. So large they actually make their real life living making content. We often 'talk shop' and one of the things that repeatedly comes up is the the level of customer ignorance and their sense of entitlement.

One of my friends who ones one of the largest businesses of my circle sees this repeatedly. She is an extremely busy creator with a very large client base, but the bulk of her big customer complaints stems from these problems. She's tried to find ways to educate her customers, but it seems that no matter how many signs or notecards, or even one on one talk she's given, people just don't seem to 'get it'.

As a vendor I can say I've run into this myself, more so in recent times than in the past. The stuff I sell isn't heavily scripted, but it does rely on SL functioning properly when it comes to rendering. For the past several months I've had many complaints about skins being 'blurry' which led me to explaining the rebaking process about a dozen times in the span of two weeks. It was of course, not the textures that were to blame, but their client wasn't baking properly after they put it on, so it appeared 'blurry'. Customers were very quick to ask for 'replacements', but what they didn't understand was that it wasn't the product that was to blame, but SL itself.

In the (latest) instant with my friend, a customer has confused 'features', for 'defects'. In this case, the vendor's product is designed to be customized to a certain degree by the consumer, and her textures are made in order to make this possible. This does create some limitations, and each of her products are packaged in sets according to pre-assembled color schemes. One selects the color set they wish, and then when they buy it, they then have the *option* to modify it as they see fit. She has many signs all over her store that advises customers that she does NOT give refunds because her avatars are all mod/copy, and that staff are present to answer questions and model the products should people want to inspect what they are buying before hand. If there is a legitimate bug/problem, it can be reported to her or staff and they will bust their asses to fix it. The problem is, most 'problems' are opinions, not actual fixable issues.

This is such a case. There are several factors inside the problem. One is a technical issue on the consumer's own computer, namely monitor settings. If someone is using an old monitor the colors will display differently than someone with a new monitor. This is true with CRT vs Flatscreens as well. Flatscreens display much brighter colors with a higher contrast, while CRTs tend to be darker and wash out fine details. This person could not see the detail in the pre-set version. First problem. Second problem is customer ignorance, first of the technical requirements of SL to do certain things, the second is the market demand for customization on this product. In order to make textures that are recolorable by the end user, one has to set their textures up a particular way. They have to be black and white with enough contrast that when a tint is applied, the texture looks correct. This is how it has to be done if you want a pure color to show through. This is what was done, the textures were made correctly. However, this person apparently had a consumer impression that doing black and white textures and then tinting them was 'cheap'. This is not the case, obviously as the product was built to be re-colorable by the end user. It was, in fact, built correctly.

The customer initially complained that the pre-tinted color was 'too dark'. However, being that is a modifiable avatar, and they were informed of this via signs and notecards, they could modify it. However, when given the option to modify the avatar, the consumer then complained that the textures were 'cheap' because they were tintable. The actual product was not 'too dark' but it appears that her monitor was set to dark to see the proper contrast of the original package. However, this doesn't hold too much water as all the products are clearly displayed on the vendors from which they are being sold and the customer did not request a modeling from staff present. This complaint is also coming months after the purchase. The customer at first seemed to want a replacement for the 'deficient' textures, however, was informed that custom textures were not available, which then instigated a lecture from the customer regarding how they felt the creator should build things, with no regard to actual function within SL, clearly displaying ignorance about SL and how things are made, as well as the time and effort it takes to make things and make them user friendly. Ultimately the customer was told the product was functioning properly and after several threats, the customer then left. Of course, this exchange resulted in neither being happy. The vendor/creator suffered many insults and threats, and the customer remained ignorant and had their complaint unresolved.

There are two sides here, the customer and the vendor.

As vendors and creators we don't have the time to take every customer by the hand and educate them. We can do our best to inform them. Having very obvious signs and policies clearly posted at the store or in note cards given out by vendors is a good safety blanket, particularly if you do not give refunds and detailing what you will or will not fix. It may also be good to detail features, in order to justify the value of your products and validate your creation techniques if you find there is misconceptions around them. Having staff trained to answer questions for you can be invaluable to put a barrier between you and them, particularly if you find yourself being overwhelmed by customer complaints/problems/requests. Having a website for your products and a FAQ on that site and in your store might also be helpful. There is going to be instances where you cannot please all your customers all the time, but even if you cannot help them, you can educate them with their misconceptions. Sometimes throwing questions at them can derail their arguments, and so when they start throwing accusations at you, throw questions back at them. Make them get specific, ask how much they know regarding building, ask exactly how the product is malfunctioning, send screenshots, make them justify themselves. Often through the process of simply walking them through a set script of questions can defuse the situation by educating the client without being condescending. This servers two purposes, the client will go away happier when they realize that they did, infact, get a valuable, well made product, and they will also be less likely to be a sucky customer to other vendors. In theory, they may also disseminate the information to other friends, and thereby help to educate them as well. There are always a handful of sucky customers that remain steadfastly adamanet on getting whatever it is they want, but we can't be expected to please everyone, all the time. Make sure you have your policies, stick to them, but if a complaint is clearly based on ignorance, try to use a series of information/qualification questions to educate them and defuse the situation. Complaints are like troubleshooting, you have to walk through the steps. It also makes sure you and your employees treat everyone fairly. Also, if a customer does get the point of threats (writing in blogs for example..) don't balk, stick to your guns. Any publicity is good publicity, particularly if you can still come off smelling like a rose.

As consumers and customers we also have a responsibility to the vendors. That is we must be aware of what we are shopping for and read the materials provided by the vendors regarding permissions, return policies, and pay close attention to what we are actually buying. The vendors are not responsible for our mistakes, and if we buy the wrong item, its not like real life where you can give it back. You have to eat it. If you are very particular about certain qualities of a product, such as how textures are handled, you cannot expect every vendor/creator/artist to use the same techniques. You can and should request modeling, particularly if the product is expensive, such as a skin. If they have a demo, you should try it out. If you know someone who owns a product, get them to show it to you. The vendor IS NOT our babysitters. We have to take responsibility for our purchases. If we make a kneejerk purchase and it isn't *quite* what we expected, but exactly what was advertised, we have no one to blame but ourselves for not putting in that little extra legwork. We also have to consider, that a 1000L might sound like a lot, but its less than a couple of real life dollars we'd spend on pop. If we were as spendthrift in real life as many of us are on SL, we'd probably have a lot more money in the bank and have a lot less debt. But my Starbucks Frappuchino costs more than most of the really good skins/avs/gowns/ etc in SL. Put your purchases in perspective before you run off and make the creator's life miserable. Also, if you have a complaint or inquiry, be polite and refrain from putting your own spin on things, particularly if you are not a builder/creator and understand the logicistics of their marketplace and clientel. Big makers tend to tailor their products to the majority, not the individual, and you can't expect them to pay the same level of attention as a tiny shop might with a very small group of customers. Being difficult, threatening, or constantly bitching will get you precisely nowhere, since these people deal with many of 'you' a day, they will simply lump you into the sucky customer category and ignore your issues. If you want to be heard, you have to use sugar, not vinegar.

Business Musings - Declining Sales?

2008-03-13T11:07:00.000-07:00

Perusing the SL forums, I've noticed several posts regarding declining sales. These range from advice on how to get your sales back up, to inquiring to other merchants if their sales have been slumping.

Now, if most merchants are anything like myself, while I do keep sales records, I don't keep particularly *accurate* sales records. I don't do spreadsheets to keep track of what sold when, or how many sales I did per month, etc. So its actually hard for me to say, except for in very general terms how I'm doing in a particular time period. I can anecdotally say I do so any sales per day, but that's a very general figure. We all have good days and bad days, and as long as I make tier by the end of the month, I'm good. I don't make oodles of cash, but I do make enough to pay for my own in world expenses, which is enough for me.

However, I know there are many other merchants out there for whom this is a lot more serious issue than just making tier once a month and having some extra money to spoil your friends and yourself with a new outfit or hair. And missing sales can amount to missing bill payments IRL for those who depend on the income. So if you suddenly seem to be doing a lot less business, what can you do to get it back?

The first thing is to eliminate any technical reasons you can that might be deterring customers from your store. Have you recently remodeled? changed vendors? Did LL release a new client? Did you recently move your store? Did someone new move into your sim? Are all the textures in your area optimized? There can be many factors that can prevent a customer from completing a transaction with you, and depending on the cause, there is a different solution for each.
If you've recently redecorated or changed your vendor set up, customers might have some trouble either dealing with the new set up, or they just don't want to deal with the type of setup you have. A lot of customers get impatient having to scroll through hundreds of products, even if there are category buttons and such. Also, the less visuals you have around, the less people see your selection, and showing your products is very important to tempting people to buy them. The less they see, the less they are inclined to buy. If you think this might be the key, try putting out some of your old displays and see if your sales pick back up. If they do, you know that the customers didn't respond well to however you were redesigning your shop's look.

SL has a bit of a history that after a new client release, sales often take a short nosedive as people work out all the new and lovely bugs that come with each update. So if its just been after a new client release, don't panic and just wait a bit. People will come back.

One thing that really deters customers is lag. If someone has to wait twenty minutes to load the huge textures you have in your store, or there are too many scripts running in the area (such as in a mall situation), or some one has moved into the plot next to you and is running scripts and high textures it could cause a lot of lag in your sim. Try to keep your sources of lag to a minimum by keeping your textures to 256x256 at 72 dpi and find a balance to displaying your products and how many textures a person has to wait to load. If you find lag is an issue, check the scripts you are running, and other scripts in the area. You can try using single prim venting if you find that running scripts is just too much for your area to handle, and see if it helps. Otherwise, you might want to look for another location. When you move, you might find your sales drop off as well for a bit because people can't find you right away and might think your store has closed. This is why it is very important to have a group for your store, so you can keep your customers informed about such things.

If you have ruled out technical problems, you can then turn your attention to your actual store and your offerings. If you had a unique offering, perhaps someone has duplicated and is selling it for less. Maybe competition has moved in up the way. Maybe you just need some fresh items to bring people back to your door step. Even if you have competition, there is nothing saying you can't do a better job of making a given product or service available. This is especially true if you tend to have more expensive prices for items ( things over 500L) if people can get a similar item for less. You may have to make it more clear to the casual consumer why they should consider buying your product over others. Having an event or sale can help, but its a temporary solution. It won't help you build long term customer loyalty to your store unless you can keep in contact with the new people you meet, give incentives to join your store group, such as special offers and exclusive freebees. That way, you can keep in contact with them and continue to promote your products to an audience that is already proven buyers.

If you haven't put out something new in a while, interest can wane on your products. Also if you don't have very many products, your store isn't particularly large and your products are either very common or somewhat niche-ish, you may find that what you need to do is do some new things. The larger your selection, the more people will come to do a one shop shop for your particular product. This is also why specialty stores tend to be easier to get a steady flow of traffic to, since people make your store a destination for X. It could be hair, jewelry, shoes, glasses, party dresses, Cosplay, skin, whatever it is you sell. Selling a little of everything is nice, but it makes it hard to make you stand out and get people to come for a specific reason. If you like to do different things, a theme such as goth, Elizabethan, victorian, egyptian, horror, fantasy, etc, can help get you in with an audience looking for your products. You might consider branching off ill fitting products (in your main product line type/theme) into their own store. So if you primarily do hair for example, but also sell prefab skyboxes, consider having them with two different identities. People looking for skyboxes probably aren't going to think immediately of going to a hair store.

We all know that SL is notoriously glitchy. It can be hard with many of the teleporting issues, lag issues, rezing issues, connectivity issues, etc. To actually GET to a store. Recently I was noob-makeovering two friends of mine. Since a couple of updates ago, I have been unable to teleport with the main client. It disconnects me everytime I try. I have to log into the sim I want to be in from the get go. This made shopping, quite literally, hellish. Going to people's stores, particularly on private islands was infuriating. Disconnect, reconnect, disconnect, reconnect. And with all the stuff you have to do to craft a look, it became unbearable. So where did I turn to? SLexchange. A quick search, some surfing and an easy delivery to my friend. It was instant and didn't involve me teleporting. So its important, if you don't have your products on one of web based shopping pages (SLexchange, OnRez, etc), that you probably should. Not only does it make you more visible, which is a good thing, it prevents technical problems from getting in the way of people accessing your shop. Even if your sales are coming from something other than your shop, your products are getting out there. Make sure your product boxes have landmarks to your main shop at the very least in them. That way, even if they bought it from an out of world source, they know where they can go INworld for more.

If you have been struggling for some time with low sales, you might have a larger problem than just a bit of a slow down in people visiting your store. There can be many reasons for low sales, including:
- Poor images/look
- Prices too high for product
- Insufficient marketing
- Wrong target audience/area

If you aren't particularly good with photoshop or Gimp, or graphics in general, you might want to hire someone to create your look and feel who is. Your graphics in your store is what make you look professional and if your pictures do not showcase your product well, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Looking professional is as important as being professional. Remember that first impressions, such as when a person walks into your store, is very important. If you don't look like you put much work into your look and feel, people are going to probably assume you don't put much effort into your products either.

If you are new and starting out, its pretty hard to charge huge prices for what is most likely substandard work, compared to what else is out there. If you are relatively new to product making, your stuff generally won't be as good as the stuff made by people who've been at it for a while. Or even if it is, most people aren't going to risk shelling out big bucks to find out. You have to price your products reasonably within your market for both their quality and what the 'median' price of the market is. Most people don't want to pay more than 50L for a t-shirt, so charging 200L will probably mean not many people are going to buy when they can get a potentially BETTER shirt for 50L somewhere else. Also, most transactions these days are fairly low. People don't get stipends like they used to and so money for a good bulk of the active population is tight. If you want casual sales, you have to have a good selection of casual shopper priced items (75L or lower). Once people get familiar with your good work on the cheap, they might consider shelling out for the more expensive pieces.

You do have to make some effort to put your name out there by way of a bit of marketing. Classified, having your store in your picks, also having your items searchable are very important. If people can't find you, they can't shop for you. consider having a weekly classified at 50L on selected products. Host events at your store to draw people in. Giving seminars and such is a very good way to get people to take you seriously. ( and SL is always hurting for quality event content) You may also want to visit and identify groups that would have an interest in your product and hang out in them wearing your stuff (if its wearable) or see if you can locate an outlet store in an area where they hang out. (goth clubwear in a goth club mall for example..) Getting a few satalite stores is a good way to raise your visibility even if you don't make a lot of sales there. people get familiar with your brand and begin to build a relationship with it. They might like your stuff, but not have the money at the time. But later when they do, they will recognize your store and probably buy something.

Another common mistake is putting your store in the wrong place or trying to cater to the wrong audience with your product. No one is going to be able to attract *everyone* to their products, so to save yourself time, L$, and frustration, make sure that you are putting stores only in the malls, sims or areas that specifically will attract the kind of people who will buy your products. Having a stand alone 'main' store is good, but make sure the decor fits. Make sure your keywords are words that people in that particular clique would be looking for. Sponsor events that are aimed at the same audiences you are targeting, and generally become a part of their community. People are more willing to buy stuff from people they know, like and trust personally than a stranger. Many malls or venues promise 'traffic' to merchants, but a smart merchant knows to check it out first and see if the clientelle matches their product lines. If traffic doesn't translate into sales, it won't be worth the price of the rental, especially since the more traffic the landowner claims to have, the more they tend to charge for the rental.

SL is just like any other business in the sense that there are good days, and there are bad days. You can only do as much as you can, but if you are doing everything here, you should see more good than bad days. Try to look over longer periods for trends, I suggest monthly targets. Days are too short, even weeks are too short to really get a good pulse on whats going on. But don't panic, just because your stuff isn't selling today, doesn't mean it won't sell tomorrow.

Business Musings - Newbie business

2008-03-10T14:44:00.000-07:00

Seeing as I rarely get new reports of scams, (and so forget to post here) I think I'll just be using this blog as primarily a vessel for my business musings and rants regarding doing business as a vendor in secondlife. It seems people get the most use out of it.

So, my topic today is newbie businesses, and I don't mean new businesses, I mean business for the newbie. I get a lot of questions about starting businesses by new residents, and I thought writing down what that advice might be helpful for everyone who might be afraid to ask. This article is primarily aimed at those new to secondlife and wish to start their own businesses to earn some Lindens.

Many new residents ask me 'how do I get money in secondlife?'. While there are several options (money trees, jobs, camping, go premium...) The only way one can generate a steady 'income' in the game is to start a business. This can be a rather daunting task for someone who's still in the process of learning the interface. I honestly suggest that a newbie take some time to explore and get used to the actual world and tools before trying to start a business. Your ability to manipulate the tools inside and outside of secondlife is going to greatly influence WHAT you are going to be able to do for your business.

There are many options for a business in SL in both service and retail. Service type businesses would be things such as running:
- Clubs
- Consulting business
- Event Planning
- Sim Design
- Custom scripting, building, design
- Land management

Where as Retail would be content creation and sales. Some example of 'products' sold by SL retailers are:
- Textures
- Hair Styles
- Pre-made buildings
- Clothing
- Shoes
- Skins
- Eyes
- Animations
- Scripts
-Vehicles
- Furniture
- Poses & Gestures
- Sounds
- Pre-built avatars
... and the list goes on.

Each business has their own varying degrees of complexity and audience. Those who lack artistic skill or the inclination to learn the tools in SL to build sometimes turn to their RL job training, offering RL services such as fitness consulting, financial advice, photography, wedding planning, and so on through SL. Some people become facilitators for other groups, such as putting together Sim design teams of skilled individuals to do private sim development, handling the hard business of getting customers and accounting, letting the creative teams do what they do best. Obviously this has varying degrees of success. There are some 'businesses' that rarely make any money, clubs being one of them. I've heard of very few successful clubs since the gambling ban. Service jobs do require a lot more time from you, since you have to actually meet with clients, deliver the service, and its a new 'job' every time. Great if you have a lot of time and enjoy it. But you will have to definitely develop your connections and market yourself well.

The most consistently successful type of business I hear the most about is the retail side of things. Content creation is a fairly reliable way to generate a regular source of income on SL. The upside is that your 'store' is never closed and doesn't need sales people. You can keep selling things even if you aren't online. The trade off with this sort of business is that it actually does require you to learn some programs outside of SL as well as the quirkiness that is SL itself. Even experienced content creators find times where building is very very frustrating. However, if you are already familiar with some of these programs, you may find that its the easiest track to getting some regular L$ without having to purchase them yourself. Obviously original content sells the best, however, if you lack the time and skill there are such things as 'business in a box' of content you can sell, as well as 'affiliate' programs from some of the big retailers offering you a percentage of the sales from the vendors you put out. However, I'll elaborate on these a little later, lets assume you are interested in making your own unique creations.

The Retail Business

Most content can be broken down into a few categories ( or some combination there of):

Textures - This includes clothing, skins, eyes, as well as original textures for things like buildings. Textures are basically a picture that is specifically designed to wrap onto a prim or mesh (such as clothing or skin) to give it a particular look and feel. Most textures are either .tga files (targa), or jpgs. These are generated with a graphics program, such as theGIMP or Photoshop.

Animations - This includes poses and gestures. Basically these files make an avatar move in a particular way. Walking, standing, sitting, all controlled via poses and animations. SL uses .bvm files which can be generated out of commercial software such as Poser, or there are some free tools floating around like QAvimator ( there is a full listing in the forums here.)

Sounds - Sounds as in audio recordings. There aren't many people that specialize in this, but it involves recording sounds and processing them for use in SL.

Building - The actual creation of objects using primitive objects IN secondlife itself. Many things are built from 'prims', from clothing to hair to buildings. Currently there is no way to import complex creations from other 3D applications into SL, there are however, 'scuplty' prims, uniquely shaped prims, which are created from UV maps which can be generated from several commercial and open source 3D apps. The basics of building in SL are very simple, and almost anyone can learn this skill.

Scripting - The creation of scripts that allow interaction with objects using SL own scripting language, called LSL. Scripting can be done right inside SL using 'notecards', and requires nothing but the investment to learn the language. A good way to go if you are more logically and less creatively inclined.

You should consider your own strengths and interests when you decide what you'd like to get your feet wet doing first. Its often best to start in one place and branch out from there. For example many people start into clothing by making T-shirts. Making furniture is a popular way to start building. There are many free textures to help you with your beginning builds so you don't have to make your own.

There are a lot of tutorials out there, templates, and examples. Many of them are mentioned on the SL forums, in where there are several forums dedicated to content creators. Many of them have stickies to useful resources including links to templates, programs, and tutorials.

There is one _small_ issue you will run into as a pennyless newbie. To upload anything to SL that's external costs 10L, and if you are just getting started making textures or clothing, you are going to screw up several times before you get something saleable. There are some external applications that help you preview things before you upload, but sometimes there is just NO accounting for how SL is going to take something.

So how do you get around this new challenge? Well, if you are new enough, you can raid moneytrees for starting capital, work a 'job' to get started for a little while while you get enough cash to upload stuff, or you can invest a little in yourself and buy some L$. However, if you are old enough (as an avatar), you can avoid all that and use something called the 'test server'. This nifty thing is very useful because you get free L$, about 1000L$ worth when you login. You don't get to keep it or transfer it to the REAL grid, but you CAN use it to upload your textures, animations, or sounds and try them out without spending your hard earned L$ on your real account. Once you are satisfied with what you've got on the test server, you can upload it onto the real grid and save yourself hundreds of L$ of trial and error.

Another note that will probably help you, particularly in the beginning is that specialty stores (stores that specialize in one particular type or flavor of product) are much easier to establish and get known than ones that are very general. People go to a hair store, a shoe store, a clothing store. When you get more known, starting new lines of items might be what you want to do, but in the beginning, its easiest to specialize in a particular thing. Its easiest for you to learn and become good at, and finding good target markets and customers and such is much easier. Make sure you capitalize on your personal interests and communities you are a part of, having connections already in that community will help spread the word about your store faster.

Now, as I said earlier, if you are not the artistically inclined sort, or perhaps you want to start with something to earn the cash to do your own stuff, you can purchase what are often called 'businesses in a box', which are basically a set of pre-made stuff of varying quality that you can sell without restriction. HOWEVER, the caveat here is that ANYONE can sell this stuff, so you don't have any edge in the market place. Sometimes such packages are nothing but poorly crafted freebees stuck in a box (or sometimes nothing at all!), which makes it a poor choice to invest in. Most Box businesses require you buy them upfront, so there might be a large initial investment, not to mention the cost of setting up a store. If you are interested in going the business in a box way, you should research what you are buying. Its easy to get ripped off with these. Some people who aren't interested in being in SL anymore sell their businesses, sometimes you can buy these guy's inventory. If you are lucky, you'll be the only one selling it. But make sure you check your permissions on stuff before you start selling it!

The other option is affiliate programs. Some of the larger retailers have programs where you can join and sell their products. In exchange for you basically running a 'branch' of their store, you get a percentage of the sales from your location(s). You will be required to locate a place to have your store, a mall or similar set up is a popular choice. You won't make a lot of money doing this, as the percentage is generally less than you would make if you were selling your own unique merchandise, but on the other hand you have the power of the brand of products you are selling which is established and already has a reputation among consumers. Most affiliate programs don't have any upfront fees. Its usually a "you make money, I make money" situation, which makes it good for a penniless noob, but you will still have the cost of the rental to front, unless you can find an area that will allow you to sell stuff for free. There are some of these areas, usually 'markets' of some kind. Otherwise a rental will range from as little as 25L a week to hundreds of L$ a week.

No matter what sort of retail business you are starting, you are going to need a place to sell stuff in. You have a choice to either bite the bullet and get some land of your own, or you are going to have to rent some from someone else. When you are starting out, its important to try and get a space as cheap as possible. When I was first starting out, I sold t-shirts and eyeballs. I was lucky to have a friend who had land and let me squat in a little cart in front of her established store for nothing. Mooching a bit of space off a friend is a good way to go if you can, if that friend happens to have a busy store, even better, but be respectful of them and try to get your own space as soon as you can. You will want to establish a place where you can actively drive people to your store. Malls are a good place to find a cheap place to set up shop, and most already have traffic going to them, so it saves you having to start from ground zero to find some customers. A good thing to do is create a group for your business and actively invite people who purchase your products to it. This will give you a mailing list of established customers that you can market new products too and share special promotions with. Building customer loyalty will help you in the long run, no matter what, just be careful not to spam your group. It also lets you inform them if you move, or open a new store. Eventually you will probably want to establish a 'main store', which is usually your largest location with a complete catalogue of your products, but that can wait until you outgrow your small location, either through product numbers ( you just have too many to fit in a small mall stall), or you want a showcase (frequently the case with furniture or interactive objects.). The use of a 'vendor' or scripted object that holds your products in it, showing a texture of the product, can help you maximize the amount of product you can get in the space you have, both in terms of physical space and 'prim usage'. There are many free systems out there to choose from.

Once you've got some products and space to sell them in, you'll probably need a logo and some basic photography of your products to put in vendors or on boxes. Having theGIMP or photoshop is very helpful for making the most of your product photos. After you are all set up, it becomes a matter of getting your name out there.

There are many ways to do this. Posting products to the SL forums is a good start, getting an account and selling items on SLexchange or Onrez or other services is also helpful. Making sure your objects are indexable on the new search is very important. Placing classifies and making sure that your locations are in your picks in your profile is very helpful for people looking for your stuff or the type of thing you sell. You may want to go to some nightclubs or events and sponsor them with your products, or simply go and show them off in sandboxes, clubs, or other social gatherings, having the landmark handy to pass out to people. If you are into the fashion scene, sending items to some of the fashion review folks who have blogs can give you a boost if you've got something good for them.

But it is important, through all this, to be realistic about your expectations. People are not going to beat down your virtual store door simply because you are open. You will have to do a lot of work promoting yourself and your products to build your customer base. You may only have a few sales a month to start. Don't lose heart, but keep at it. Keep building, keep adding to your products, keep promoting. The more you do, the better you will get, the more people will seek your products.

Next time, I'll talk about a service based business.

Scam Alert! - "Prize say yes"

2007-05-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

Affects: Anyone

Modus Operandi: The scammer gives you an objectcalled "prize say yes". If you rez or accept the object it will take money from your account.

How it goes down: The scammer give you the object "prize say yes". The unwitting recipient accepts the object, says "yes" and the object proceeds to drain their account. This object continues to drain your account until you do a full delete of it from your trash.

Seeing through the Scam: If you get this object from anyone DO NOT ACCEPT OR SAY YES to anything. Delete it IMMEDIATELY, and empty the trash on top of it. While its nice to get things from people, remember that accepting objects with sketchy names, such as encouraging you to say yes without any explination or being dodgy about it, its probably something that is up to no good.

This is quite new to my knowlege, and thus far has been reported to have been used at the House of Blade Mall on Samurai Island, but could very well start cropping up in other popular places! Keep your eyes out and make sure you don't get nailed by this thing!

Myst's Soapbox: Your battle is not my battle

2007-04-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Myst's Soapboxes are my personal rantings. You may find them interesting, or not. They are my personal thoughts, so they are highly opinionated. You've been warned.

____________________________________________________

Today's subject is personal vendettas and involving people who really have nothing to do with them.

I have several groups I run. Some are for Rping, some are for sales notices. One of the largest is a joint group which encompases several things and is a primary vessel for sales and product notices. It is an open group, most people who join it are customers who want to know whats new and hot. Its not a very active group, and I'm sure people come and go all the time.

So I get this message today in my inbox because I'm offline, at a place where I cannot get on SL, but the handy dandy offline messaging lets me deal with most stuff offline if I have to. It reads:

" There is a Griefer in your Group by the name of *nameremoved*. He just griefed me and my 2 sisters. I am reporting him to the Lindens"

I blink. First off, I run many groups. So this tells me nothing. If you are going to report someone to a group owner, have the decency to include the name of the group you want them to look at.

I ask him which group, he replies with:

"Yours. He is in your group."

Once again TOTALLY UNHELPFUL. That wasn't what I asked. I had to explain to him I have many groups and finally I got the name of the group. It happens to be one of the largest groups I'm a part of as an admin, its also primarily used for product notices.

So just so everyone is clear, this guy wants to get this fellow who's wronged him kicked out of a group that's sole purpose is product notices. Most people want to sign people up for for this sort of stuff when they are mad, not get them kicked off.

....

Okay, so moving along, I ask him where the attacks happened. Obviously if they happened in somewhere that realmscapes controls such as our stores, mall, etc, we would definately take a serious look at action to stop whatever griefing is going on on our lands, but no, it appears that the action, which has passed now happened in Limbo. A region that has NOTHING to do with us.
Once again, I pause, and then I reply as follows:

Ah. Well unless it happens on land that is controlled by the
Realmscapes group there isn't much we can do. Your best course of
action is to report him to the lindens, which you've done.They will
take appropriate action.

So I told him where to go and what to do. In these instances, it is a Linden matter, it doesn't have anything to do with the group owners that a user might be a part of if it does not happen on that groups lands or have anything to do with the group in question. We didn't see what happened. All we are getting is one side of the story. Its his word against the other guy. There is no proof we can get that gives us any definative evidence to look at to determine what action is appropriate. Obviously if the dude gets banned from the Lindens, your problem is solved! Why must you drag in other people? So I get this lovely gem back:

Well, it should be discouraged everywhere. Sorry to hear that you advocate this kind of behavior by letting him slide.

Excuse me? where does "Report him to the lindens" translate into "I advocate griefing!"? I have no evidence that THIS GUY didn't do something to start this in the first place. They could be equally at fault. This is NOT my battle, and yet this dude is trying to draw me into something I am trying very hard not to get involved with. Its pretty clear in the general community standards that unless you are directly involved, third party vigilante-ism is rather frowned upon. As fair group owners, we are going to have to look at things before we do something drastic. I can't even log on, we haven't even talked to the guy. Besides, really, because it didn't happen on my land or really involve my group, it kneejerk to just kick the guy out without some investigation time. Now if the guy said, "Hey, just so you know, there is a guy in your group who was griefing in Limbo, you might want to keep an eye on him." Thats fair. But requiring us to take action on your behalf when we have no way to verify you are even telling the truth? Uh no.

The conversation went on for a bit, but its not worth posting here. Suffice to say, I was very polite, but I refused to be a part of his little crusade. I'll look into this on my own time, but I'm not going to be pressured into a kneejerk reaction.

I know people get frusterated with griefers. It sucks, I've delt with them before. But you have to realize that going on little vendettas trying to get them banned and kicked out of all their groups is just as asshole-ish as the griefer's behavior in the first place. Not only that, its really annoying to us who never had anything to do with anything because suddenly we are being dragged into people's personal squabbles, forced into a lot more workand trouble than is probably nessessary for a situation which was never really any of our business.

Please, if you run into trouble with a griefer, do what is right and report him to the people who can actually DO something about it. If it was on my land I would have been more than happy to deal with it, but it wasn't. Report them to the people who own the land and the lindens. Remember, if you harrass other people, they can report you too.

Business Musings: A picture is worth 1000 sales

2007-03-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

This is likely to be the first in a series of articles (with perhaps a hint of semi rants) regarding the visual presentation of stores, logos, and product photography in Secondlife. Today we are going to talk about product photography, and I'm going to follow up with visual store presentation and then finally logos and branding. So, here we go.

One of the things I notice, particularly about new vendors is a serious lack of attention to 'product photography'. This is, a presentation image of your product in its best light that will entice the viewer to buy it. Many new vendors I meet are more concerned with the simple act of setting up shop than presentation of any kind. This of course results in some serious eyesores of shops, and the cold, hard reality is that it really doesn't matter how good your product is, if it looks like crap, people are going to assume its crap. What many new vendors fail to realize is that a poor presentation may infact be hurting your sales MORE than the actual location or products you offer. You have to remember, that in the giant clutter of eyesores in SL, if you want to stick out, you have to NOT be an eyesore. People are attracted to good design and thoughtful, slick presentation. The more refined your presentation is, the more people are going to be inclined to not only check out your stuff, but believe in the quality of the merchandice, and trust that you know what you are doing as a vendor.

So what makes for a good presentation?
Well, there are several factors, three that are major.
1) Vendor textures
2) Space usage/store setup
3) Signage

The most important I find is the vendor textures. While the other two are also important, the vendor texture is often times the main visual presented, especially in small spaces with limited prim allocations. There are four major peices of information that should be present on a vendor texture aside from the actual picture of the product itself:

1) The name of the product
This is important, especially if you have products that might be similar with only slight differences. For example a mod vs a no mod version of a product. Or one that is a dusky red vs one that is a true red. People have a very poor color memory and memory for detail in general. They may not realize, without a definative marker like a name, that two similar products may be significantly different. It also makes clear what you are selling, especially if you are using a model that has been decked out with products from other stores. A common example of this is in clothing. The vendor is selling the clothing, but not the shape, hair, skin, shoes, eyes, etc of the model in the picture. By giving it a clear name, it helps to eliminate any misunderstandings or misrepresentations of your product.

2) The price of the product
People want to know clearly and quickly how much something is. They don't want to have to mouse over it or go looking through fields of hovertext, and both of those aren't present if you intend to use the texture as an add for the web/blog later. Its good to be clear also incase there is a vendor malfunction that the product was a particular price if there is any discrepencies in the records.

3) The permissions of the product
This can be a make-it-or-break-it for some people. Most people who've been in secondlife for more than a few months get a strong sense of the types of permissions they want on the things they buy. Some won't by anything that isn't transferable. For other people the ability to mod or copy is the most important, so its important to make it clear what sort of permissions are on your products.

4) Key features of note/product list
Because there isn't always a demo and no sales people in SL, your graphics have to basically do the job of a sales person themselves. Part of selling is telling a potential customer what is cool about a product and what sorts of features it has. Some products may have more features than can be listed on a vendor texture (in which case you put "Click for notecard!" on the vendor texture.), but most its simply listing key features that would help a potential consumer understand the strengths of your product. Some products its not as practical for, such as clothing since we all know what clothing is and does, but in that case, its good to list what the customer actually gets when they buy the product. So if its a summer bikini you are selling you would put :
Includes:
1 bikini top
1 bikini bottom

This again makes very clear exactly what is included in the purchase price. Shoppers are always looking for value for their L$ and providing a product list is a good way of showing value.

One peice of information that should be on a vendor texture primarily if there is no other signage around it permitted is your logo. Its optional though.

Aside from the information, there should be a compelling, clear, visually appealing picture (or collage of pictures) of whatever it is you are promoting. Aside from appauling typography and heinous gaudy builds, this is probably one of my biggest pet peeves of shopping. Ugly photography is a definate turn off when shopping. If I can't see clearly what you are selling or it looks crappy or too small or hard to see or blurry or just plain looks like you didn't care at ALL, unless its something that I'm in desperate need of, I'm probably not going to buy it from you, even if it rocks my socks. ( that is unless someone hunts me down and gives me a demo or something, but your vendor still failed to make me buy.)

I can hear some voices already going "But Myst, its impossible to get good photography in SL!". To that I say 'not so!', however, much like in real life, it does require some post processing to get the most out of it. Most 'raw' photography isn't really good enough or complete enough to be used as a vendor texture alone. Just taking a picture and uploading it to your inventory to use as a texture usually isn't a good idea. Not only is there usually a LOT of wasted space in casual snapshots in SL, but it hasn't got any of the information on it that it needs. Also, most people don't consider key factors such as lighting, composition, background, etc. If you have the land to put it, creating a 'photography studio is nice. There are several out there for sale if you don't have the means or want to create your own, but they are very handy. Backdrops, lighting, and model pose is all controlable and you can take your time to compose your shots. If you like to roam around, location photography can also be quite effective, showing your product 'in use' as it were.

Some of the more effective uses of photography i've seen for products are in instances where there are several models or a single model shown from a couple of different angles with a definitive focus on the product. A few examples I can think of off the top of my head for clothing designers is Pixeldolls, who generally have several shots of the product in a single picture with variations of the outfit on a single model (generally). The shots are clean, the product is obvious, and all the information is presented cleanly and clearly. For a different style, but again, multiple presentation, BareRose puts several models sometimes of totally different sorts (humans with furries, males with females) for their products to show how the product might be worn on different avatars. The photos are generally taken from different angles with poses and then assembled onto the texture. There is also a consistant, clear presentation. You can instantly recognize a BareRose product box even if you aren't in a store. In the forums, its instantly recognizable. There are many other designers with excellent presentations, but those are a few I could name off the top of my head. I'll try to find some other samples, as seeing is often much better than trying to explain. Although I will note that sometimes there is too much of a good thing. I've seen people try to cram 12 or more product shots onto a single 512 x 512 texture and it looks equally horrid.

The last thing I'll mention is to really watch the size of your textures. They should be no more than 512 x512, preferably less if possible. The smaller your vendor textures the quicker they rez and the less lag they cause when someone gets into the area. This is particularly true with prim vendors because there are a BILLION textures to load, all in one go. The computer basically never stops chugging. So make sure you optimize your textures before you upload them. Other ways people do it is to put several vendor panels on a single texture and just move it around on the prim. This is very economical for you because you can get several textures for the upload price of one, and the person only has to load one texture as opposed to many. So its a thought. The faster people can see how great your stuff is, the faster they are probably going to be willing to buy it.

Scam Alert: Return of the Invisiprims

2007-03-09T13:39:00.000-08:00

Just a heads up that lately there has been a rash of the Invisiprim scam cropping up again lately. If you don't know what the Invisiprim scam is, this is the original scam description. The most recent victim of the scam that I am personally aware of was the Furnation Skymall, but other malls may be being targeted.

It is advised that if you have a mall, you may want to keep an eye out for this scam since its seeing a bit of a comeback (like it ever really went away..).

A quick way of protecting your mall is to set things up so you can enable auto-return on the land. But its a good idea just to keep an eye out anyway incase someone decides to get tricky.

Business Musings: The Zen of Pricing

2007-03-07T12:12:00.000-08:00

Uhg, its been a while hasn't it? *brushes the dust off her blog and dredges out the spam* There we go.

So where was I? Oh yes, the zen of pricing.

So I run a small mall where the rent is fairly cheap and the prim alotment reasonable, and mostly I tend to attract small or new businesses as a result. This is fine, I have no problem helping people with their businesses, especially people who are new to business in SL in general. I actively monitor my mall daily, trying to greet as many as my renters as possible. I like to be on good relations with them, and they with me hopefully. I always check out their products to make sure they are in line with the mall's policies as well as their vendor systems and whatnot.

One thing I notice, particularly about new businesses is a lack of thought regarding pricing. Pricing is a pretty big consideration. Actually, its probably one of the biggest, because a good price is going to dictate how people shop for your stuff and what sort of people are going to buy it. Also, I find a lot of new businesses are all glamored with the notion of 'secondlife can make you rich!" and think that people will pay 500L for a t-shirt. Sorry, probably not going to happen.

Let's put things into perspective, and particularly to new business owners, really think about this when deciding on the prices of your items.

There are re-occuring themes in the kinds of products I see people begin selling. The most common I see are T-shirts and furniture. As a result there are a LOT of people selling T-shirts and furnature. Most of it is obviously made by beginners, and its not exactly designer quality. But that's not a bad thing, some are reasonably cute and perhaps witty, or maybe just interesting. But there are a LOT of the same out there, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay 150L-500L for a t-shirt. I can get an entire outfit by a much better designer for that price.

Your customers are not idiots, nor are the majority of them rich. If you look at the Economic Statistics that are provided by Linden Labs, you will find that the vast majority of the transactions that go on in today's SL economy are below 100L. The decrease in transactions when you get above that starts getting pretty significant. You also have to keep in mind that most people, unless they are paid members, don't get a stipidend anymore. They have to camp/dance/gamble/beg/work/pay real money to get money in the game. Their money is precious to them, and they don't want to spend it in big amounts on a whim. When you are first starting out, people don't know you or your products and likely your products won't be as good as established vendors, so you can't realistically charge the prices of established vendors and expect people to come beating down your virtual doors to pay huge prices for a silly t-shirt or poorly textured bit of furnature. Remember, unlike in real life, you have a virtually unlimited inventory. After you've made back your upload costs and paid for your retail space, everything is profit.

Another very important aspect of pricing is what your competition is doing. Because you are new and your products are probably not as polished as people who've been in the business, your biggest advantage is your pricing. You are also asking customers to take a risk on an unknown. They don't want to spend a lot of money to find themselves scammed or with a crappy product. You need to spend some time in the shoes of your perspective shoppers and see what the median value is for the product you are offering by different vendors. People like a good value for their money, a bargan is even better. If people feel your product is a good value for the price, they will likely give you a try. People are also lazy. If they can use or buy your product for less time and effort than it would take them to make it themselves, they probably will.

Prices generally are not arbitrarily set IRL, they shouldn't be set that way in SL either. They take into account the costs of the business and manufacturing with various 'markups' between the manufacturer, the distributer and the retailer. Sometimes there is as much as a 200% markup on the product by the time it gets to shelves in a store. While you shouldn't have that much markup on a product, it is a good way to factor a minimum price for an item. Lets go with our T-shirt example.

What's a fair minimum price?
Assuming you are using a template and a previewer, lets say you only have to upload the texture for the shirt once. That costs 10L. Lets say you've rented a storefront in a mall for 50L a week, which is about 7L a day. So lets say the cost of the shirt to you is 17L, cost of upload+cost of rental. Lets add a 50% markup. 50% of 17 is about 8.5, which makes the price 25.5L. Lets round down to make than an even 25L.

You can sell one shirt and make back the cost of your upload and your day's rent plus an additional 8L which is your profit.

But here's the kicker. The next shirt you sell is still 25L, but you've already made back your 10L for upload, so you are only making up your daily rental cost which is 7L. So now, with every t-shirt you sell, you are making 18L of profit. You are now making well over your 50% margin on each shirt. The price is firmly within the 'most often purchased' price bracket, and we can assume that you probably have more than one shirt for sale. With a price of 25L, most people are comfortable purchasing a couple of items from a shop, even a new one. The likelyhood of sales is very good as it is cheap enough to be in the 'impusle buy' category, where people just see it and buy it, without having to save up for it or come back later with a friend to buy it for them. If people have to go and come back, your likelyhood of sales as a new vendor go down fairly drastically.

Some items, like skins or avatars might take a lot more than one texture to upload or many hours of labor, and possibly outside fees to scripters or other artists. While some of these can be delt with by profit sharing, the entire cost of the avatar or skin should be factored into the price. This is why entire avatars and skins tend to be fairly expensive. I've spend well over 300L on uploads alone for a few I've done. But people tend to be willing to pay more for full avatars or skins because they are expensive in general, but are not so willing to pay the same kind of money for a T-shirt or a table and chair they could make themselves.

Pricing Levels
This is of course not to say that everything you make should be 'cheap' so to speak. If you want to have some expensive items in your store, that's fine. The more affordable items will bring shoppers around to look at the more expensive ones. Vendors often use freebees or 1L items to bring shoppers into a store or as a 'free sample' to build trust with customers that their products are quality products that they want to buy.
However, even with 'expensive' items, you have to keep in mind the market pricing for such things, keeping yourself inline or below what your competition is offering is important for you when building a clientbase. Remember, you can always increase your prices on new offerings as you go along and improve your skills and niche in the market you are tapping.
Other pricing tricks with expensive items is putting it a few L below an even number, so for example, offering something at 799 looks more attractive than 800, or 99 looks better than 100, although I'm personally a fan of even numbers.

Everyone loves a deal
Another way to offer your products at a higher price for a single purchase is to group your items into sets and offer them at a slightly lower price than if you bought them individually. For example, lets say you have 5 elemental t-shirts. (Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Metal). You sell them each individually for 25L (as noted above.). People like to buy things in groups and get a deal. This is how bulk sales work in the real world. Buy in quantity, get a better price. So say we create the 'Elemental Pack', which is all 5 t-shirts in one purchase. Normally it would cost 125L to buy all the shirts individually, so, we sell the package for 110L. This way it becomes a better value to buy them as a bundle for a higher price than individually. This creates further value for the customer to buy in 'sets' from your store, increases your 'big sales' while still creating value for your customers and profit for you.

Can you make profit with lower prices?
Yes, yes you can. Why? Because you sell more. Case in point: Walmart. It also works in secondlife. I can attest to it as I sell eyes for 25L. I sell a LOT of eyes for 25L. I make more than enough to pay for my land, my premium membership, and I have leftovers. Could I make a living? Probably, if I offered more products more frequently. I just don't have time to be as serious about my SL business as I'd like. As you sell more, people show your stuff around. They ask people where they got it, people pass along landmarks or names of shops and other people find your stuff. If you are good maybe even some of the fashion bloggers will stop by and see some of your wares. Its not going to happen overnight, and its also not going to happen without work promoting, writing classifieds, creating mailing groups to track customers, making lots of new and cool products, refining your skills, and doing some personal marketing, but its a good start and greatly increases the chance of people actually buying your stuff when they visit your store.

Scam Alert: New Pyramid scam (literally!)

2006-11-23T00:37:00.000-08:00

Affects: Anyone

Modus Operandi: The scammer places a 'how to make money' pyramid on someone's land in a high (or even moderate traffic place) and scams money out of of the gullible or niaeve, thereby perpetuating the scam.

How it goes down: The scammer places a pyramid object, as seen in this screenshot, on the ground somewhere in a trafficed location. The pyramid is designed to give out a notecard, that says as follows:

Pyramid Instructions
Description: How to get rich
Dear Moneymaker,

So, you want to make money, and lots of it.

You have come to the right place.

It is really simple :

1) Right click on the pryamid and choose "pay".
2) Pyramid will appear in your inventory.
IMPORTANT: The Pyramidt you get has not been validated, and will not work yet!!!

3) Drag and drop the Pyramid on the ground near the original and touch your copy .
4) Click yes to the money question which will activate the Pyamid. (If you do not press yes, the object will not work,
this is needed to distribute the money that will be payed to the object).

5) If everything has been done correctly, the following text will apear above your object:

"How to make money (touch me)."

This means you now have a working version of The Pyramid.

6) Delete the copy of the Pyramid in your inventory while the actual Pyramid is on the ground. (not nescecary, but the one in your inventory is useless, unless you validate it).

Take the validated Pyramid with you and place is somewhere where a lot of people will come.

Here is how it works:

After you have validated it, people can pay your pyramid L$20.
Everytime someone does that, YOU get L$5 and they get a copy of the pyramid and have to go through the same steps as you have.

If that person also places their pyramid somewhere and another person pays L$20, he/she gets L$5 and YOU get L$10.

Just sit back, relax and make money.

DisQ Hern

Seeing through the Scam: Again we have the basics of a pyramid scam. Pay an initial investment for an object, perpetuate the scam, get a small return. Recruit more people to perpetuate the scam.. well you get the idea. Although its slightly more clever as it isn't quite exactly a pyramid but functions in basically the same way. If you are a merchant with a high traffic store, watch for these buggers around. Same with mall owners and anyone with trafficed land, including clubs and casinos. It says specifcally in the instructions to put it in highly trafficed areas, so if you are responsible, watch for them. This sort of thing is bad juju all around. As a side note, I noticed that the object is locked and not copyable. This suggests to me that if you lose your copy of the pyramid if you are a user and you followed the instructions of deleting the original from your inventory (if it actually works this way), you have to 'reinvest' to get a new one, since owners can delete stuff off their land. So these people can continue to rip YOU off and others. Don't fall for it. There are better ways of making money in game that doesn't involve scamming people for it.

Damage control: I do not know if this item actually works as billed. I didn't risk taking one myself, and if it steals your money or not once you grant it debit permission ( according to the note, you do.) Generally speaking, though, these sort of things can't be trusted. To even create one in the first place puts a person's moral character into serious question. These types of money making schemes are SCAMS, pure and simple. Paying money for nothing really, just for the chance to rip someone else off. To even make back you initial investment you'd have to dupe at least 4 other people. Thats not good karma folks.

Avatars implicated in this scam:
These were the avatars listed as the owner and creator of the item on my land.

Owner: Milton Chestnut
Creator: DisQ Hern

Scam Alert: "Linden Hack" Phishing Scam

2006-11-07T00:54:00.000-08:00

If you don't know what "Phishing" is, click this.

This was taken from the linden blog, but I thought it should be posted to as many places as possible. To see the original, click here.

Affects: Everyone with a secondlife account

Modus Operandi: The scammer spams chat with the following message:
Hot new LINDEN HACK/CHEAT!! Will give anyone 1 month or older to the game 10,000 L$ FOR EVERY 30 MINUTES SPENT OFFLINE!!! hteeteepee:\\LindenHack.citymax.com\! Limited time hack! Register and start recieveing now! ( URL munged)

THIS IS AN ATTEMPT TO GET YOUR PASSWORD! Read on!

How it goes down: The scammer gets you to go to the above website and enter your SL information into the form, promising you information on how to get free L$ through an exploit. The truth is, they take the L$ in your account and then turn your account into a spam bot to perpetuate the scam.

Seeing through the Scam: This should be common sense, but unfortunately people are greedy and gullable. DO NOT GIVE YOUR SL INFORMATION, ESPECIALLY YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE! Anyone asking you for your password is likely up to no good. No one should know your password but you, period. I don't care how much you 'trust' that person. Even LL employees shouldn't ask, or need to ask for your password. You also should rotate and change your password regularly and never use the same password for all your accounts ( such as messageboards, chats, email, banking, etc.) No legit organization would ask you for the account information and password you use on another service to give you something. If you encounter a site that asks for that sort of information, you should be immediately suspicious and just walk away. The most common forms of phishing tend to be sites that pose as banks, paypal, or ebay sites, but if you pay attention, the URLs are normally wrong. You should never click a link that looks fishy like that, and remember, if its too good to be true, it probably is.

Damage control: If you have fallen victim to this, it is recommended you change your password right away, provided you still have access to your account. You should also contact support@lindenlab.com immediately so they can run damage control as well.

Scam Alert: Group Pyramid scheme

2006-10-13T00:55:00.000-07:00

Affects: Anyone who might be invited to join a group ( so pretty much everyone)

Modus Operandi: Scammer creates a group and requires a fee to join. They promise easy money to people who recruit other people to join the group and pay the fee by paying them a cut of the fee. However, this is practically the definition of a pyramid scheme. I'll get to that in a bit.

How it goes down: The group or people in the group send out random invites or spam to "people to get them to join the group and pay the 10L fee. In doing this they get the other people to recruit people and so on down the line. Nothing is really gained, only money changes hands.

Seeing through the Scam: First thing is first, to define a pyramid scheme, I'm going to just quote the wikipedia:

The essential idea behind each (pyramid) scam is that the individual makes only one payment, but are promised to somehow receive exponential benefits from other people as a reward. A common example might be an offer that, for a fee, allows the victim to sell the same offer to other people. Each sale includes a fee to the original seller.

Clearly, the fundamental flaw is that there is no end benefit; the money simply travels up the chain, and only the originator (or at best a very few) wins in swindling his followers. Of course, the people in the worst situation are the ones at the bottom of the pyramid: those who subscribed to the plan, but were not able to recruit any followers themselves.

Damage control: Of course in this instance, the best way to prevent it is to be aware of it and not get involved. Politely decline the invitation to such groups. Be sure to have a look at the groups mandate before joining. Chances are if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The only person who really benefits from this sort of thing is the one person at the top.

An example of such a group(yes this is a real group):

Share Investments inc

Mandate:
"Want to Make Money? Pay 10 Linden and Join this group, then Invite 5 More people to Join it, The More people that Join the More $$ WE will make. All Proceeds made from Joining is Split Equally to US, So hop on board the MONEY TRAIN, and HELP SPREAD THE WORD!. Its Easy to Join and Only 10L. Think 10000 People Join SL daily, This Can EXPAND Greatly. and, WE get a cut of that 50000L daily if they all joined this. So Join and invite ALL of your friends lets all get this money together....... Have fun...."

As you can see, its pretty clearly a pyramid type scheme. Pay money for the promise of money IF you swindle your friends out of their 10L. As the group grows the payments would be small anyway, if they actually go to the members at all.

These sort of scams have been around in one form or another for a long time, its best that we don't waste our L$ on scams like this.

If you'd like more information on Pyramid schemes, check out the entire wikipedia article.

Scam Alert: Fake SLExchange terminals

2006-10-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

Affects: Anyone who uses SLExchange terminals to deposit funds or who has one on their land

Modus Operandi: A scammer creates a fake SLExchange terminal and places it ever so slightly over the real one. This is a variation of the old 'invisiprim over vendor' scam, but specifically targetting SLExchange terminals.

How it goes down: The fake terminal is placed over the actual SLExchange terminal by the scammer. The unsuspecting victim comes along and attempts to deposit money into the terminal. The money is deposited, but not in their SLExchange account, but rather into the scammer's wallet. Victim becomes aware of the scam after their money never shows up in their SLExchange account.

Seeing through the Scam: Its very important to careful to take a moment to check objects before using them. Hovering your mouse over an object for a moment just to verify that it is actually owned by the right person can save you a world of trouble later. In this particular instance you should verify that the terminal is owned by either Exchange Street or SLXTerminal Bigwig, or it is NOT an SLExchange terminal. The name could be similar, but if it is not one of the above, do not pay it.

Damage control: For people with SLexchange terminals on their land, they should probably have a look and make sure that their terminal isn't affected and keep an eye out on their land's prim usage for names they don't recognize. Obviously if you have everything set to groups and have autoreturn enabled, that helps a lot. But some of us can't or don't want to use the autoreturn, so you just have to be vigilant. For users of SLexchange terminals, don't take it for granted that the terminal is legit. Always hover your mouse for a moment and check the owner before paying the terminal. A little caution will save you losing your hard earned linden.

Further information on this scam can be found here:
http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=5810

Business Musings: Theivery in SL

2006-09-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

I've noticed the topic of intellectual property theft, in particular, textures used for clothings and skins, has been quite hot lately. Between older instances, and newer ones that have turned quite nasty in recent times. While in secondlife it seems that a lot of designers are suprised and outraged, the truth is, "art theft" is quite old, and is just as much a problem in the world outside of secondlife as inside it. While it doesn't excuse what the theives are doing, it just highlights how an old problem has gotten a new twist.

As an artist IRL, I've had an interest in copyright and art theft/fraud for some time. Its not like forgeries and ripoffs are anything new. However, in previous eras, one actually had to have some kind of talent to make reproductions. With the digital era, its as easy as clicking a button and uploading it to a service provider. For artists who provide their work online for others to view, this has become an ever increasing problem. Some of the more popular artists around the web deal with daily reports from fans of ripped work. Deviantart has a whole section devoted to alerting artists to rips. I, myself had to deal with a really severe instance only weeks ago where a person from the UK was using my artwork to solicit commissions. She had taken my work from various galleries and posted it to deviant art after removing my signature and copyright information, then claimed it was hers. The sad part is she did sucker some people into actually paying her for work that she would never be able to do. I did my best to run damage control, contacting each of the people on her list personally to let them know that the work she was claiming she had done, she never had and that she never would. Unfortunately, some people had paid money upfront. It was quite a mess, and this is not the only instance I've cleaned up in the many years I've been showing my artwork online. So I am no stranger to having my work violated and it is the general consensus is that its only getting worse. This has lead to a search for ways for artists of all kinds to keep their work out of the hands of theives. Not only this, but also how to mark it for identification later to prove that it is their work, and get it removed.

It is notoriously difficult to enforce copyrights on the web and electronically. Most ISPs are fairly good about removing offensive or copyrighted materials if the original creator or viewers complain. However, you have to prove you are the original owner, and even then, the theif can just move. That doesn't mean they will stop. Sometimes, artists even have to resort to lawyers to protect their properties.

So how does this apply to secondlife?

The first thing I think anyone who creates content should ask themselves, " Can I handle being ripped off?" Because its going to happen. Artists online either have to develop an iron shell and plan of attack all of their own, or they end up stopping putting up their work because they can't handle the stress. Its the reality of the digital era.

The second thing is to be aware that Linden Labs is not a babysitter. We have to deal with a lot of this on our own. The other thing is that if we want Linden Labs to intervene we have to do more than just yell at them to do something. We must use the ToS to back us up, we must have proof, and we must come up with good propositions and ideas to help make stealing textures more difficult. We must also be patient and realistic. Any change will take time to impliment. They aren't going to tell us everything they are doing, and if they rush, they might bork the job. I'd think I'd rather see something that is tested and works than a half ass solution.

Currently, Linden Labs operates under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If you have a copyright issue, you have to file a notice that is, infact a legal document outside of Secondlife. They state very specifically on this page that:

Your copyright in an item is determined in the real world, by real-world processes including the DMCA. The DMCA process allows users of an online service to resolve copyright disputes using the adjudication systems available in the real world.

Once again, we see where SL ends and RL overlap. The next thing the artist must realize is that legal processes are slow. It can take months to get something delt with. Because Linden labs doesn't have a policy similar to say, webcontent hosts that basically says "if someone complains, we will remove it, no questions asked", dealing with this sort of thing can become very taxing to the artistic creature. This only adds to the frusteration when false claims and reports are filed, adding to the ever increasing workload. You must make sure that if you do file a complaint you have a stack of paper to back you up in terms of documentation.

There is also the question of intention to consider. This has been a forefront of recent drama. Copyright law generally is in the business of protecting artists and creators from having their work ripped off and used commercially without the artists permission or compensation. This is so that your artwork doesn't end up on shoes in Australia or something without you being compensated. (this actually happened to a popular webcomic artists I know of). But it also includes the DISPLAY of a work out in public without appropriate permission. There is a 'fair use' clause in copyright, but it is very specific as to what it exempts. Many theives try to hide behind it, usually failing dismally, however, it is in this clause that we look at intention of the reproduction, modification, or use of a work. The intention is generally where things get fuzzy. Generally if you are using a picture of something for a review or educational purposes, its okay. For written works, you cannot reproduce more than 30% of the original work even for those reasons. There are other instances where exerpted or partial works may be used to support other works, such as to replace a portion of a damaged copy you own, or use something to illustrate a point in a lesson. ( the full list is here.)

However, in the most recent drama, the focus has been on can you modify something you paid for, but the creator has not explicitly given you permission to do so. Now, I'm not going to get involved here on the personal level between parties. I'm looking at the overview of the whole situation, because it is the kind of thing that will probably ripple effect. If this goes over, will this send a message to other people that they can engage in modifying something they bought by using a graphics exploit as long as it is for personal use only? But what about displaying it publically when you go to a club? I don't believe there was ever a malicious intention in the current situation. But, that doesn't mean that someone else might be so benevolent. Infact, it happens all the time, which is probably why creators are so uptight. So now that the milk has been spilt, how do we deal with it? Preferably without the drama. (if you don't want it that is. I'll explain this in a minute.)

The first thing I suggest to anyone who's experiencing theft is CALM DOWN. The intial reaction to theft is usually to get angry, vindictive, or downright furious. People do not act rationally when they are angry. People do not thing rationally when they are upset. DO NOT ACT UNTIL YOU HAVE CALMED DOWN. You MUST take the time to examine all the factors involved. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and to really nail a thief to the wall, you have have to have all your facilities there, cold, calculated, and right. Walk away from the screen, go find a friend, go vent to your friends/roomie/significant other, just don't do anything until you've gotten a chance to deal with your emotions. Don't tell anyone online, at least not until you've gotten at least past step two.

Second thing to do is to gather intelligence and facts. You have to consider intention, usage, and money involved. Is there money involved at all? If there is no money involved then its pretty useless to push things further unless it is a type of theft such as identity theft. ( as in stealing your textures and presenting them as their own on their products, which are the same sort of thing as yours.) or direct rips/copies of your prim work. I know a few instances of prim by prim copies being made and put out to devalue a certain creators work because someone was personally unhappy with that creator. Generally speaking, going after someone for personal use is sketchy, unless they might be a constant public show of the work in question, which again gets highly circumstantial. If you do decide the problem is worth pursuing, you need to gather as much intelligence as you can before you move on to step three. Take screenshots, document who, when, where, what, and how. Make sure everything is dated and backed up with screenshots, times, dates, places, etc. You will want to do all of this personally before you confront the thief or tell anyone else about it. If you can drop a stack of documentation that will stand up in court on someone's desk, they are much more likely to do something about your problem.

The third step is once you've gathered enough intel, created a book on the transgression, and determined that their intentions in taking your work was malicious and ment to hurt your business, life ( in the case of identity theft/impersonation), or professional image, then you can confront the thief. It is very important that when you do so you remain polite, professional, and cold. Remember, if you are still angry, you shouldn't be at this step yet. You need to keep your head. You should tell the theif who you are, why you are contacting them, and what you want them to do. You should never swear at, or call the thief names. It makes you look unprofessional and if you get beligerent it can be verbal assault and just makes you look bad. Key to this is to make sure you are 100% right, that includes on how you handle it. Do not be accusary, this causes people to immediately get defensive. Simply tell them that the textures they are using are stolen, and request they are removed immediately. Don't actually say " Hey you stole my stuff!" because thats making an accusation without the fact of knowing exactly where they got the textures. Just state what you know, which is that they are using stolen textures. Thieves are cowardly by nature, many, when given some wiggle room to get out of trouble, will comply with your demand. No problem, no drama. If they become difficult or rude and refuse to do what you ask, then move on to the next step.

The next step is to file a report inworld about it, and supply that stack of evidence you gathered earlier. This is the step where your ability to defend your work is going to be tested. You must generally supply side by side comparisons where it is DEAD obvious that they are copied or derivative works of your textures. For this reason, I suggest to all who make their own textures to imbed key imperfections and 'security markings' into textures. This can be type, particular signature watermarks, even a slight watermark. If you stretch a texture ( like hair ) this mark will not be seen on the hair, but it sure will by anyone who tries to rip the texture! It will then also be clear when they remove it. For clothing textures, incorporate copyright type or signature marks into the clothing in clever locations. Buttons, cuffs, trims, ruffs, lace, belt buckles, etc. These will provide benchmarks for comparison, since clarity is required for such marks, bad rips and 'photoshop' jobs to try and remove these signature marks will make it obvious the texture is stolen. For skins, birthmarks, moles, freckle patterns, even slight small type in a inconspicuous spot such as the scalp will provide a signature to identify your work from others who may have simply photosourced similarly. Remember, since you are doing the accusing, the burden of proof is on you. You have to proove the thief is guilty. Innocent till PROVEN guilty, so make sure you can prove your work is your work.

At this point, if you provide enough evidence, you may have to do some additional paperwork, and go on to actually filing a copyright violation report as per Secondlife's way of dealing with this. But as with anything legal, don't count on results right away.

Now, remember I did mention the drama, with or without clause here. Depending on your tolerance for it, it can become a powerful attention tactic and thus essentially a publicity stunt. People flock to drama, and its a good way to get your name out there. Stratigically used you can humiliate the thief ( assuming you've gone through the above process and waited a reasonable period of time and nothing has happened.), and gain some recognition, making people aware of the problem. However, be aware that this also has negative implications on you because it can be seen as attention whoring, drama whoring, and generally a bad sport thing. How you handle it becomes key. It is a very delicate thing, and you have to personally be able to handle the backlash, because backlash there will be.

My personal thoughts on the situation where someone modifies something for personal use is annoying, inconsiderate of a creators work, and personally don't support the idea, but I think I'd be curious to see what they did regardless. If they did something interesting, it might be a viable business opportunity, possibly teaming up to create a special edition or new line of something. But then, I've had my work referenced and brutalized so many times that I've gotten largely used to the idea and realized that trying to ice skate uphill is pointless. If someone buys a black car, and then decides after they pay cash and drive it off the lot to paint their car red, it becomes a question of does it really matter, or should we be selling red cars in the first place? The people who are the most successful in the world tend to turn a problem into an opportunity. Be it getting publicity out of the event, or finding a new business partner. Sometimes it pays to think a little sideways and not just let our artistic ego's bull us out into unseemly behavior, particularly when we are dealing with other creators. A certain degree of professionalism and respect, even when dealing with a problem can go a really long way into solving it before you have one, and that goes just as much for creators as it does for the customers and bystanders. If it doesn't concern you and you don't have anything useful to say, it would be wise to simply let those involved deal with it and dont' make things any more complicated or messy than it has to be.

Business Musings: Advertising?

2006-09-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

With the annoncement SLforums going the way of the dinosaurs, the host of private blogs, forums and sites cropping up for product information and discussion, and the general dubious nature of searching classifieds listings and places in game, I've been pondering. The question I've been pondering is in regards to advertising. I know the classifieds section is staying open, which is awesome, but still, what about the people who don't read the forums?

I work in an marketing department IRL. I'm a graphics monkey doing ads, posters, fliers, brochures, bus ads, airport ads, etc, etc ad nausium. ( side note: Very cool blog post on making ads for SL or for anything really.)I know how advertising works in the real world, but I've always been a little mystified by it in SL. Where is the best place to get my info as a consumer, or worse yet how do I get eyeballs to see my new products?

In the past I've seen ads in SL. Normally I cruise about on the mainland or a few private islands. I've seen big floating billboards on other wise empty expanses. I've seen 'advertising networks' that claim to get your name out there. Again, roadside billboards on those infamously overpriced 16 sq/m of land of a roadside somewhere. Occasionally I saw a billboard in a mall. This was actually the way I stumbled onto Pixeldolls when I was a noob. The billboard gave me a freebee ( pants and a top I think..) as well as a landmark. One of the better advertising I've seen done. Why? Because I actually WENT there and I've been a customer of PixelDolls ever since. Thus, that ad worked, and its placement worked. Another thing I've heard more about and seems semi popular (rather than seen, I'm not a club goer so much.) is sponsorship type advertising. Donations of money or products for events at clubs, with of course the DJ and hosts plugging the store, sometimes a big graphic in the background, although its not particularly frequent it seems.

When dwell was removed, the situation for traffic vs money has been pretty dire for things like clubs since they don't make a lot generally and typically have a higher overhead for staff, prizes, and so forth. Many of the perks of having items such as camping chairs, money trees, prize chairs, dance pads were lost with dwell. Some people will laud this as a good thing. I can sort of agree in terms of abuse of those items, but in a world where noobs don't get a stipidend anymore and jobs in SL are sparce as hen's teeth, not everyone is able to build something worth selling nore are they interested in doing so. These items provide value to newbies, as well as older residents who then use that money in turn to support merchants, casinos, and other activities. Its a great circle of life. Mostly. But what happens when the free money stops? With no Dwell a lot of places that relied on it have vanished in a virtual poof of smoke.

So this is the situation, and I've been pondering and pondering. And then a digital apple hit me on the head.

I've been pondering some more attraction type stuff at my own mall to get more butts in seats as it were, and I found a moneytree that works off donation amounts rather than suffering having your wallet permadrained. It's the Wolfhaven MoneyTree if you are curious.
I put it in a fairly obscure location, which does force people to walk through the stores a bit to find it ( i have a teleport point set which is purposefully away from it). I also put out some freebees & cheapies with a landmark so that hopefully the people picking from the tree would also take a freebee or cheapie with the landmark so they would sample my stuff and get the landmark, hopefully coming back later or bringing friends. Of course, this didn't quite work as I had thought, most people ignore the samples and go strait for the cash. I'm quite sure I'm going to have to plug the meter already as it were, which also poses a dilemma in terms of getting donations into the tree. What value, aside from philanthropy, of helping out newbies does the tree provide. Well, the obvious answer is traffic. Eyeballs. Then it dawned on me. Eyeballs have value! Some of the best value in the world, as a matter of fact.

Even if the person picking from the tree is only there for 5 minutes trying to figure out how the thing works, or maybe less if they know what to do, they are going to stare at it for at least 30 seconds. Thats 30 seconds to give them a message about your business, product, or service. Most people camera around the tree to see if there is more money hiding somewhere, or to be able to click the money in it. Thats 360 degrees of advertising space! There is also the process of getting to the tree which could also support advertising. If people paid for the advertising, it would easily pay for the tree. Newbies get money, business get eyeballs. Its win win. Value for both.

This got me thinking about other similar situations. Camping chairs/mats/dance pads, etc. You've got people coming in, why isn't there a big fat ad in the middle of the huddle? properly priced it would pay for what comes out of the chairs and the advertiser gets a captive audience. Even AFK a lot of camping locations have people popping in because of traffic numbers. Those are potential eyeballs to capture.

I'm kind of surprised there isn't MORE sponsorship for clubs and the like, seeing as if the club did it right it would probably be very lucrative. Although i'm sure most clubs don't have an advertising/marketting manager on their staff for anything aside from their own needs, they don't go out and actively solicit stores for advertising inside the club.

But the bottom line is, why be an advertising 'agency' or network in SL with just big signs in the middle of nowhere with no quantifyable traffic save perhaps flybys when you can have guarunteed eyeballs on a daily basis if you plunk your ad on a moneytree or in front of some chairs. And with all the clubs, casinos and other venue's screaming for money, why didn't they think of it? And why pay money for advertising unless you are getting guarunteed eyes for your L$?

My little moneytree is going to serve as my personal advertising experiment, of which I'll post the results. If you own a business, and want to be a part of it, let me know. Otherwise I'm going to present the offer to people I know in game and see what they think.

Scam Alert: Newbie Slot Tester Scam

2006-09-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

This is an alert in that it is happening, although the scam itself is pretty old. I had first hand experience with this one as I ran around with a new alt. ( Will update with details when I get home and review my log)

Affects: Newbies & Junkyard/freebee place owners
Modus Operandi: The scammer approches a newbie who is picking through the junkyard or freebee area and asks if they will help them test a slots game. They then place the slots down near them and tell them to pay the machine.
How it goes down: This is simply a variation on the standard Game tester scam targetted specifically at newbies, who, of course don't know better. The scammer picks out someone very new, asks them to help them test a slot machine. They put the slot machine down, sometimes with several newbies present and several slot machines in the same place. The scammer tells the newbie to make a bet. The noob, not knowing about the game tester scam, pays the slot machine. The slot machine dings, makes noise, says things, and then claims the newbie won whatever amount they pumped into the machine, however, it never pays the newbie back. If asked about the money, the scammer will claim they never recieved it ( which is bull because you get the little blue box that says " paid scammy mcscammer 2L ") If pressed the scammer will give the newbie some freebee gestures claiming that they are worth a lot of money as 'compensation'.
Seeing through the Scam: Unfortunately, because this is targetted at newbies who do not know SL, or read this blog or even know about the Caveat Emptor group, they have no way to know whats going on. If you happen to be an oldbie strutting around in a shiny new alt and catch this sort of business, try to warn the people around you quietly and file an abuse report.
Damage control: The freebee yard owners should try to keep an eye and ear to the ground about this and either ban troublemakers or use autoreturn to prevent the scammers from putting their objects out. One could also disable rezzing on their land, but in the spirit of keeping newbies from getting frusterated, I could see how this would be problematic. Best to try to patrol your freebee zone as much as possible or hire some newbies to do it for you. :)

In this particular case, the slotmachine used was the Fairy Tale slot machine by Ryan Linden which I assume had been modified to prevent payout. The area where the incident I experienced occured was in YadNi's Junkyard, but it may be occuring at other freebee hubs or sandboxes. When I fetch my logs, I will name the perp so that he may be banned from newbie zones.

Business Musings: "I'm not happy, and I'm telling!"

2006-09-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

One of the fun (or not so fun) parts of being a merchant is dealing with customers. Most of them are pretty cool. They are interesting to talk to, fun, positive people who are enjoying your hardwork. And then there are those that are not so cool, and they happen to be rather loud.

If you haven't worked in customer service before your secondlife shop, it can come as a bit of a shock. Even a seasoned worker might find them difficult to deal with from time to time. But the specific sort of 'sucky customer' I'm talking about today is the " I'm not happy, I'm telling!" kind of customer.

This particular sort is the kind that buys something, then complains to you that they are dissatisfied with your product, and threatens to tell all their friends not to buy from you. They do not give you any additional information aside from that they are unhappy. They do not give you a chance to help them, or give you any sort of useful information as to how you could make your product better. They may have several reasons for disliking your product. This can include price vs precieved value, expectations from your advertising falling short, a bad permission peice, something missing, etc, but this sort of customer doesn't tell you specifically why they feel the 'buyers remorse' and feel the need to threaten your business.

Of course, when threatened the first instinct is to get defensive. But lets look at this from a slightly different perspective. While yes, the individual may have a circle of friends, they are not the be-all end-all of clients in secondlife. You have to remember for each client that objects, you've satisified a fair number more. So obviously, whatever the problem is, its likely fairly specific to that client. And their threat is actually not so big of a deal. They may tell someone not to shop from you, but people have a morbid curiousity. Sometimes controversy can be your friend in the advertising world. People when told NOT to go somewhere, almost always will, if nothing else to simply check it out for themselves. They might not buy that specific product they were warned against, but they might well find something else they like. Either way, there are fresh faces in your store without you do any of the work.

The 'boycott' threat of these sorts of customers tends to get under the skin of newer, younger retailers than older, established ones. A younger retailer, especially one that doesn't have a lot of established customers might feel that this person can actually hamper their business. However, it is my experience that most of these people are not sufficiently well connected or credable enough to do anything other than spread your name around.

In terms of customer service, you should probably see if the disgrundled individual can elaborate on why they are dissatisfied, however, do not feel obligated to meet all of his demands. Like anything else, this is about bargaining. If its simple, such as a missed part or bad permission, it might be easy to fix. If the person is difficult or non-communcative, it might be more difficult to actually deal with the problem or figure out if it is actually a problem. If it is one person out of many, it's probably not pressing.

The bottom line? Don't worry about it. You can't please everyone all the time. If you've got 50 happy customers and only 1 unhappy one, you are actually doing pretty awesome.

Inworld Group update

2006-09-01T14:29:00.000-07:00

With the new groups system, I've set up specific roles and titles in the group for people can more clearly identify themselves. I've also created a position within the group called "Watchdog". Obviously I'm but one body and I can't be everywhere at all times, so I need some help to keep an eye out for scams and such. Watchdogs are people who are willing to help in this task. You obviously don't have to spend every day all day doing this, but basically keeping your ear to the ground in forums, blogs, and in world for fraud and scam activity and then reporting it back to me so I can look into it or report on it.

The other titles in the group identify the savvy shoppers and the Ethical merchants within the group. If you are in the group and have a preference, please let me know via IM inworld and I'll move you to the appropriate role & title.

Scam Alert: Capped 'Sploders'

2006-09-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

Affects: people who use 'sploders', which are sort of like lotto balls commonly used at events or clubs. People put money in the pot and its distributed to the people at the event with one person winning a lion share of the money.
Modus Operandi: The scammer places an invisible cylendar or other prim over top of the 'sploder' to collect all the money the participants at the event attempt to put into the ball.
How it goes down: In order to use a sploder, the patrons at the event ( or casino/club) have to put money into the ball. Its like paying for a lotto ticket. The scammer puts a transparent object over the ball so that the patrons can't see that they aren't actually paying the ball. The money is then funnelled to the scammer through the invisible object.
Seeing through the Scam: Like the invisible prim over vendor scam, this one can be fairly easily seen through if you are careful before you pay. If you use Alt-Control T, you can see transparent objects, use the same command to toggle 'highlight transparent' off again. If there is a strange object overtop of the 'sploder', alert the management immediately.
Damage control: Event managers with these sort of promotional items should try to keep an eye on them, or have staff keep an eye on them for people doing suspicious things near them. Disabling rezing on the land for non staff can be helpful too, provided they can't just drag it over from an ajoining parcel. Enabling auto-return is also a good idea, as it is with the other scam. However, that doesn't protect you against internal scammers. Be sure you have trust worthy staff and make sure to check your sploders frequently durring events. I would also suggest you put them away when not in use and move them about the event area from event to event.

Scam Alert: Group Exploit - Snipers in the midst

2006-08-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

I'm aware people do know about this exploit and this problem, but apparently it is still causing some problems.
Affects: Groups
Modus Operandi: The perps previously used a known exploit to get themselves into a group as an officer, and then proceed to eject all other members of the group.
How it goes down: Seems the implications of this particular scam that forced Linden Labs to shut down group invites is long lasting. It seems that some people who used this exploit have bided their time in their ill gotten groups. They've waited until now to do the dirty deed of ejecting everyone from a group and changing it for their reasons. For the most part, its a form of griefing, rather than a scam, but something to be aware of.
Seeing through the Scam: If you own groups, make sure you check your officer lists and make sure no one odd is on them! if there is, remove that person. Since invites are back on, if you make a mistake, you can invite them back later.
Damage control: Best to be proactive and make sure that your officer lists are as they should be!

This happened to the NCI group on the 17th of August as reported by Rowan Carroll. They invite their members to rejoin the group.

I would encourage all people who recieve sudden ejections from groups to check on it, especially if it seems to be happening en masse.

Scam Alert: 'Hit' Scam

2006-07-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

Affects: Noobies mostly
Modus Operandi: The scammers follow around and pester new avatars claiming that someone has taken out a 'hit' on them. They offer to 'cancel the hit' if the new avatar pays them.
How it goes down: Apparently there is a group of these individuals posing as 'hit men'. I'm not sure if this is some kind of roleplay, but regardless, they are attempting to use a scare tactic to extort money from new avatars. These 'hitmen' follow around and harrass new avatars, threating them and stalking them until they are paid to leave them alone. These 'hitmen' also carry around weapons and disregard sim rules regarding weapons. The reporter did not indicate how and if these weapons were used.
Seeing through the Scam: This is a scam that obviously doesn't work on older avatars because even with a little experiece you realize that such things can't exist and that these 'hitmen' are not only scamming, but griefing by way of harassment and to report them. Apparently they are a group called "Hired Hitman".
Damage control: The best thing you can really do is teleport away from these people and if they continue to harass you, report them or ignore them. They might shoot you once, but ignore them long enough, and they will get bored of you.

Business Musing: Mall rentals 101

2006-07-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

After all this negativity lately, I thought it would be nice to do something a little more positive, and the idea was suggested to me by Jakkal Dingo to do a peice on getting the most bang for your buck out of a mall rental, especially if you are new to selling in secondlife.

It can be a bit of a daunting task to set up your first vendor or first store. There are a lot of questions and not a lot of people easily accessable or knowledgeable around to answer them. Where is the best location? How will I get seen? Do I need a vendor? Where can I find customers? etc, etc. A lot of newbies look to malls or other rentals to get them started, especially if they are on a basic account and don't have land to set their own store up on. Malls and rentals aren't a bad idea. They have some good things going for them in that having several vendors in one location is bound to attract more shoppers than just one unknown shop in the middle of Backsim Nowhere, but there is also a lot more competition for eyeballs. There is also the potential problems of lag, overwhelmingness of ubermalls, and the expense of renting.

So the big question becomes, how do you get the most bang for your L$ out of a mall rental.

This requires a bit of savvy on your part as a vendor to know your product and have an idea of what sort of audience would be looking for your products. Then you want to find out where those people shop. Obviously if you are selling furry items, trying getting a vendor space in a gorean sim is a bit silly. You have to find the right place for the right stuff. If you are a furry product vendor, do a bit of looking around on the larger furry sims and malls to find places where furries shop. If you sell BDSM/goth items, find out where those people shop, if you sell trendy clothing, find out where the hip fashion scenes are at. There is also the option of looking for a 'partnership' type business. If you sell shoes, find a clothing store that doesn't and see if you can set up near them. If you sell animations of fighting, find a good weapon store to set up next to. Half of marketing involves product placement. Do a little research and it will help you a lot.

Some malls are themed as well. Its a great thing to get into a good themed mall if your products fit that theme because likely the people that show up are going to be predisposed to buy things from you because they like that sort of style.

Aside however from appropraite surrounding businesses and themes, what else should one look for in a mall rental? Well the technical details are a good place to start. How many prims for how much a week, vs how much traffic does the mall have, and how much is that legit shopping traffic and how much of that is from other forms of traffic.

Whats the difference you might ask? Well a lot of malls also have clubs, casinos, or camping chairs attached or around them. This generally is used to drive up traffic numbers ( you can check an area's traffic by looking at 'about land'). However, in a lot of these cases the people who show up aren't generally there for the shopping. Yes, people will see your stuff, but unless you are catering to the crowd scene ( skins, hair, clothes, jewelry with lots-o-bling), you might not get the best value for your money here. For example, if you sell building textures, a club based mall might not be the best place for your store. Also, huge malls are not always the best and only solution. The larger a mall is, the more laggy and often ugly they are. I've also personally found the larger 'club mall' to be a bit on the expensive side. They have eyeballs and they know it, so they charge for it. For the right type of vendor it CAN be lucrative, but not all businesses will get the same bang for the buck. Sometimes smaller malls, themed builds, or tight partnerships are a better way to go, especially if your business is particularly unique or not easily defined.

You should also consider prim limits and how you sell when you are renting a space. Malls typically have one of two ways of limiting prims. Either you pay per the prim, which make things very cheap if you don't have more than a few, or you pay a flat fee for a number of prims, which is generally better if you have a lot. You can save on prim space if you use a vendor. There are lots of free ones out there. (Kayla Stonecutter has a particularly nice freebee, low lag vendor that I give out at the Realmscapes Mall that I run.) But there are lots out there. However, you do not need a vendor, you can set a prim to sell its contents, and clothing creators in particular tend to choose this method. However, this can add up to a LOT of prims and become very expensive if you have more than just a couple outfits to sell. Not to mention all that texture rezing takes a REALLY long time in a laggy mall. Both have their pros and cons, and its best to figure out what works best for your business. Once you've decided that, you can get an idea of what sort of prim limits you'll need to be working within. If you need a lot of prims, I'd suggest looking for a flat fee mall, while if you only need a few, a pay-by-prim model might be cheapest for you.

When it come to actual prices of rentals, it varies pretty widely. You might pay as little as 1L$ per prim, or you might pay as much as 1000L$ a week for 20 prims in a high traffic location, or you might not pay anything at all and sell at a commission location (this is where the mall owners take a small percentage of whatever you sell. They only make money if you make money.). Most malls rent on a weekly basis, however some rent by the month, and some even rent only in USD. (the ElvenMyst market is one such 'mall' if you want to call it a 'mall'.) So it varies. If you are starting in a new mall, especially one that hasn't been around too long, I suggest you rent week to week, for a little while to be sure that you aren't having any trouble with the mall management, and that you are selling enough to justify your existance at the mall. Also, some malls can just vanish, or management may be difficult to deal with for you. Its wise to be a little careful at first to ensure you are comfortable with your choice of location and method of payment. After you've gotten over that inital period you can start paying for longer stints to be at the mall. If you aren't making enough sales to cover your rent in a month or so you may want to consider looking for a better location. There is no point in paying a lot of money to rent a high traffic spot if that traffic isn't benefiting you!

Most merchants end up with a few key locations outside their 'main store' these days. Ever since P2P teleporting was instituted, having a main store has become a nesessity. Most merchants sell more from their main stores than malls because they can control keywords, classifieds, and other such variables from their own land parcel. If you are serious about your business, you probably will end up renting or owning land to set your main store up on. But while you are working up to that, you will need to do some work to promote your mall location. Its not unheard of to set up a 'main store' in a mall rental, but if you intend to make it big, you may have to negotiate with the owner to get sufficient space and prims to do so, as well as having the parcel description and keywords modified to help customers find you.

Just because you are in a mall with other vendors doesn't mean the traffic will flock to you, you will have to do some work to get people to your store. Also, having an attractive, easy to navigate display is important. If you can, show your products around. Get them into reviewer/blogger hands, and make sure you've got a classified set for your stores ( or at least in your picks) on your profile. Sponsoring events is also a good way to get some exposure, aside from just wandering around secondlife and talking to people. You can also buy advertising on places like SLxechange, SLboutique, the Metaverse Messanger, inworld, etc, etc. Posting your products in the forums and adding your store locations to your signature in the forums is also helpful.

For established vendors, malls can be a good place to get a bit of exposure. If you have a large product catalogue, you can often make a bit of bang for your buck by finding a good smaller spot and putting a selection of products that appeal to that audience with landmarks to your main store for more. It gets you out there, and provides just as much (if not more) presence than an advertisment on a billboard. Think of it like an 'outlet'.

One of the biggest complaints of malls has to do with the management and the lag. Many experienced or seasoned shoppers will avoid malls for the lag alone. There are several reasons for lag. The biggest culprit tends to be scripts. Its important for malls to keep scripts, especially ones with listens and triggers to a minimum. Poor building with extreme textures, lighting, or particles is another. There is also the problem of too many vendors in one place. A frequent problem with malls is what I call the 'filing cabinet' effect. A land owner will try to cram as many stores as they can in a particular area, but don't really build in sufficient buffer space. Some sims are also just inherantly laggy due to other people's builds in the sim. This can cause lag in a sim that isn't even related to the mall. Its important to check this out before you plunk down your L$.

The management can make or break a mall. Before you rent, its often a good idea to just talk to the mall owner and see what they are like. Ask how long the mall's been in business, what sort of traffic they have, ask about themes, and just see how they are. Like any business, Mall owners should be professional, courteous and helpful towards inquiries. Its also a good idea to ask for mall policies before renting. Most malls have a 'rental agreement' or something like it, which you agree to when you rent from the individual. A lot of them include clauses regarding 'no refunds', which you really should be aware of before you rent. Also be aware that malls can come and go with the tide. Not all malls do, but the transient nature of secondlife is a factor. One day, you might go to check your store and it is just gone, along with the whole mall. So make sure you check your mall store frequently, and keep an ear to the ground either via the mall's group or by chatting with the owner from time to time.

If anyone has any more 'Mall tips' or experiences to pass on feel free to post them as comments. :)

Jumped the gun

2006-07-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Erf, it seems I'm not immune to being zealous and overshooting things sometimes.

My previous scam report, while the body of the report is sound, i was a bit hasty in my finger pointing and thusly have had my hand slapped and found time for an abrupt egg facial. I want to respond in a timely manner to scam reports, and seeing as people generally don't report them directly to me, I have to actively keep an eye out for when people mention them. Also, like so many others, I work durring the day and don't have the time nessisarily to verify each claim right away. I usually do work on verifying them, but sometimes by the time I get to them, things have changed again, not to mention I am but one person.

I'm not infalable. I'm still a human behind the screen and I can get wrong information. I'm not present obviously when I'm hearing reports from other people. Generally I'm a little more cautious than I was this time around, but zeal got the better of me here.

However, that being said, if someone has issue with a scam I've posted or persons named in the scam, PLEASE do feel free to contact me or leave a comment of your own. The one thing I ask however is that you please do so politely without cussing me (or anyone else out) out, and that you please use proper english. I abhor AOL speak or 'speak' of any kind. It is likely that I was meerly misinformed. I'm more than willing to hear the other side of the story, and if I am wrong, I will change, and I will appologize.

From now on however, I will structure a few rules for myself before naming specific people which should prevent future zealotic mishaps. My general purpose is to inform and educate, not engage in witchhunting per se. I will structure these rules around that goal.

Scam Alert: Re-Box Sellers

2006-07-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

Affects: Merchants & Designers
Modus Operandi: The theif buys or aquires an item with a designer's box which has copy/transfer permissions. They then aquire other items, rip the textures, and then apply the new, ripped textures to full permission clothing they've aquired in their inventory to cover their tracks regarding what they are doing.
How it goes down: The scammer goes around collecting freebees or aquiring clothing in boxes from top designers, either buying or aquiring them through yardsales, friends, yada. They then take the outfits out of the box and replicate the boxes. After this, they take the clothing they aquired, rip the textures, and reapply them to full permission clothing they have in their inventory (renaming it is optional). After which they put the newly minted forgery clothing into the designer's box and proceed to sell it in a store or yardsale enviroment. The scammers name remains out of the creation field, so it becomes nearly impossible to track them unless you are in the scammer's store looking at the OWNER rather than the creator.
Seeing through the Scam: This scam is kind of nefarious as it implicates innocent parties by way of the very permission scheme that is supposed to help prevent this sort of abuse. By using other people's items, the scammer effectively makes those people appear to be the culprits, thereby having innocent designers banned from larger stores for no reason. I do urge that designers and store owners, while angry, don't jump the gun. Make sure you have the facts before taking drastic measures or you may ban an innocent person and let the actual perp get away, or in this case, remain free to continue to rip you off!
Damage control: It is sad that these sort of things continue to press designers into selling non transferable, non copyable objects, but in this case, it is the box/bag/packaging that your outfits come in that you are going to have to protect. Designers, make sure if you sell clothing in a box/package that the box is set to no modify. This will prevent the scammer from using your boxes as they can't put anything in them.

**Updated x2**
Avatars implicated in this scam:
Joane Diller owner of PIECE OF HEAVEN

Originally Candace Sullivan was also implicated in this scam, however, this has come into question and as a result is no longer believed to be directly involved. Appologies to Candace.

Innocent Avatars who's boxes have been used in this scam:
Ashlin Leandros of Mixers

As usual, if anyone has more information on this, please leave it here as a comment.

Buyer Beware: Interview with a con artist

2006-07-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Most of us who have been in SL even a short while are aware of the scams that involve people leaving an object somewhere to catch us unaware into paying into it. From invisible prims over vendors, to objects promising big returns, to rigged casino or camping equipment the MO is always basically the same. Make an object, wait for some sap to use it, cash in.

But what about the old fashioned strait up con? When its not a passive object, but an avatar actively soliciting with a silver tongue?

In more recent times we've seen a little more of this sort of activity. The latest being the 'store management' scam where an avatar was actively in a well known designer's store and soliciting that they had 'deals' on the afore mentioned designers stuff. These guys were pretty braisen, but were reasonably easily caught. However, the fellow I met the other night, was a bit of an eye opener even to me.

I was exploring the new sim, Nakama, which has this funky anime neo-tokyo kind of vibe ( and I'm a sucker for it). It happened that I ran into this fellow. He was in a tux with a red carnation, and a pair of nerdy glasses. His overall appearance screamed 'geek at a wedding'. But thats neither here nor there. He complimented me on my avatar and quite unexpectedly got into a conversation. I'd actually seen this guy before in the Crimson Falls sim, but didn't really talk to him then. It was through the course of this coversation I learned he was a conman. And not only that, he was a genuinely intelligent, silvertongued one too. It was clear to me, this guy knew what he was doing.

He spoke of his victims as 'marks'. His prey was newbies. He knew well that oldbies, despite having more money are a lot harder to fool. By preying on newbies, he is relying on their naieve newness to avoid getting caught. He himself has been around on SL, doing this for quite some time, over a year if memory serves. But with alts, naming names in this case is useless. He would simply change. Its the con thats important here.

He performed his con several times while I was present, although he would always go out of earshot for the actual act itself. But it would always start with " want to make some money?" or something along those lines, and the avatar approched was always less than a few weeks old. When I asked later what he said, he told me it was a "trade secret" and suggested that he was a con man IRL as well as SL. When I asked him what he got out of it, he said that generally he might get 10-50L, but he's gotten some people to pony up as much as 600L for 'male enhansement' if you will, or had his marks buy him other things. Exactly how or what he said is still unknown to me at this time. But given that he seems to get around, I'm sure that some of his 'marks' might be able to shed some light on this if they read this blog.

I think its safe advice to give in this case, that if someone is promising you easy/free money, that the 'scam-o-dar' in your brain should start ringing pretty loudly. Promising big returns for even a small investment, anything which gets you to put out money first, is suspicious activity. This fellow, unlike some others was EXTEMELY smooth. He seems very nice, very polite. But make no mistake, if he can he'll seperate you from your cash in a heartbeat.

Remember: Everyone is out to get your Lindens.

Scam Alert: Skin Stealers

2006-07-18T01:16:00.000-07:00

This scam alert is a little different in that it deals with more 'theft' than it does an active scam. However, there is still a scam in that they have stolen someone's hard work and are attempting to profit from it by passing it off as an original, and its quite obvious looking at the evidence that was provided to me. Other skin dealers, or other merchants may wish to check these individuals out incase they've ripped off anyone else.

Affects: So far, 2 skin dealers, Ambyance2 Anubis & Lost Thereian
Modus Operandi: The theives have apparently ripped Ambyance2 Anubis & Lost Thereian's skin textures and set them for sale at their own store
How it goes down: The exact nature of how they got the skin is unknown to me at this time. It could have been through careful screenshots, but I've also heard of a texture exploit in SL that lets you steal textures. At any rate, it appears they get the textures, alter them very slightly ( more blurry, slightly washed out details.) and then set it for resale at their store.
Seeing through the Scam: This sort of scam is very hard to see through. To a new person, unfamiliar with the original designer's work, they probably won't be able to tell the difference. However if someone is a fan of a particular designer, or in this case, skin maker, they may well recognize the product for sale as being a direct rippoff/knockoff. Its best to notify the creators in such cases to let them decide how they want to resolve the problem. In this case, the skin makers have made it very clear that the products in the vendors don't belong to the avatars in question.
Damage control: This is more something the retailers have to deal with than the general consumer. However, if you do see a designer's items for sale in a retail setting by someone other than the creator, it might be good to drop them a note and a landmark so they can check it out.

Avatars involved in this theft: bad Plasma and Meshell Jezebel
Offending Store: Bad Boys in Amydria 86, 95, 32
Wronged party: Ambyance2 Anubis & Lost Thereian of Naughty Designs

Notecard with evidence will be posted on the Caveat Emptor Association messageboard at our office in Bruin. ( Bruin 84, 215, 23)

Business Musings: Alt-itis or "I-bought-this-give-one-to-my-alt"

2006-07-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Since Linden Labs opened up the floodgates of 'no verification' free registration, its been a rather bumpy ride. Not only is there a lot of new, wonderful people, but we've also got a lot of twinks, greifers, and of course, the infamous Alts arriving onto the grid in droves. While the not so cool of the new crop deserve their own topic, the one I'm going to muse about today is the alt. For those unfamiliar with the term, it means "Alternate" as in name or account.

With the new free registration a lot of long time residents have been making them. There are a multitude of reasons. Wanting to change names, escaping stalkers, getting around bans, as banks or vaults for L$, controls for business ventures, roleplaying, privacy, and the list goes on. But as this "alt-itis" has spread through the general populace, there has been an increasing number of instances of folk demanding businesses to provide free copies of previously purchased items to alt accounts for free.

This poses some interesting questions to retailers, and especially affects those that sell no transfer items. Are we selling to the avatar? or are we selling to the person behind the screen? Should one purchase from one 'user' cover all their accounts? The universal answer seems to be largely a resounding 'NO'.

One of the biggest reasons for this is the potential for scamming. There is currently no way for a merchant to verify if an alt, is in fact, the alt of a past customer. Also, if that past customer was more than a month ago, it might be that the merchant doesn't keep records from that long ago. The alt, may not be an alt, but a friend, or perhaps someone who's never bought an item from that merchant before ever. These scammers exist, and their numbers are on the rise. (I'll probably do a scam report on them once I have sufficient information, but thats neither here nor there.)

In real life, if we want two shirts, we have to buy two shirts. Walmart will not furnish us with extra shirts because we bought a single shirt from them in the past. This principle applies with alts. Just because you bought it once with your main account, doesn't mean the retailer now has some unspoken duty or obligation to furnish your alt with all the same products. Some might be incredibly sweet and will provide such things, but it should NOT be expected.

I think its fair to assume for retailers that each account is a unique and individual identity. Just because they 'bought something on their main', does not mean that they are entitled to free product, which is basically what this boils down to. The alt is a seperate person. Retailers should also not let customers make them feel bad for this policy, as it is the only way to prevent alt scamming.

As consumers and alt owners, we must realize that if we want to have something twice, we should reasonably expect to pay for it twice, especially if it is an item of value. If you don't think you should have to pay for the same thing twice, then find something else. An alt is a good excuse to find something new and unique for that alt. You don't have to be stuck to the same things your main had. If you are very attached to those items, then you should reasonably expect to have to pay again. If the product is *that* good that you'd want it twice and priced reasonably, there is no reason to begrudge the creator their tiny fee. Realistically you are only paying something like sixty cents to the creator, although for some very expensive things this can range up to about 5$. I pay more for my lunch on a daily basis.

For retailers, this becomes a policy issue. It would be a good idea to revise your policies to include this senario as it is becoming more and more common. 'sucky' customers in these instances are also becoming more common, and can get very angry if one doesn't do what they want. However, you shouldn't feel obliged to bow to this abuse. Whatever you decide, make sure that it is clearly visible and avaliable for your customers to see and know about. Then when they show up asking for alt handouts, you can hit them over the head with the policy that was clearly displayed and avaliable.

Business Musings: Customer Service pt 2

2006-07-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I worked IRL as a sales associate for a number of years. The company I worked for was a large one and had a very high focus on customer service. In the world of business, it can be a maker and breaker for a small struggling business. Customers DO appreciate good customer service. If you impress your customers with professionalism, responsiviness, courtesy, and individual satisfaction, you'll have customers till the day you close your doors. People LIKE when other people make them happy, and they will come back. This is especially relevant to new businesses that are just building a clientelle. They will come back to you again and again. This works IRL and it works in SL too.

Customer service is just as much about protecting the customer as it is about protecting the retailer. Retailers generally want to make sure their customers are going to continue to be served by their establishment. But an abusive minority can make an otherwise excellent and kind retailer's life a living hell.

Viewpoint 2: The Retailer
Unlike the viewpoint of the Consumer, the Retailer has a lot more work than to just be polite and sensible. Especially as your business grows, the issue of customer service will become more and more complicated. The retailer has many issues to deal that relate to customer service, but don't nessisarily come to mind when one thinks about it who's never had to deal with it. It is vitally important to plan for these issues and have policies and strategies in place for when the problems arise. Some practices from real life can help provide some much needed guidelines that will help you structure your customer service plans.

Fraud Threat & Policies
One very real, and very scary prospect for many retailers is getting ripped off. IRL this stems from everything from shopplifting, to register scams, to embezzlement, and anything inbetween. In secondlife, some of these threats do exist and they are real worries. This makes it vitally important that retailers establish their policies on various issues early in their business lives and make it CRYSTAL CLEAR to their consumers what their stance is on these issues. Not only does this help the customer make an informed decision about shopping with you, it gives you a consistant guideline when dealing with complaints and issues that is well known and well publicised. Lets examine some of the most common ones, and look at how this relates to customer service issues.

1) Return fraud & Return Policy
This is exceedingly common IRL. Especially in stores that have return guarantees. People will bring items back without a receipt and demand a refund. They also bring back highly used, obviously damaged IN use, extremely dirty (or downright disgusting) items and demand a refund. While at least one doesn't have to deal with the horror of dealing with actual merchandise that is.. uh.. sticky or something, but as secondlife retailers we still end up having to deal with the dreaded 'return policy'. Where this gets complicated is permissionsissues in secondlife.
While permissions are designed to help protect our intellectual property and creations in secondlife, they are, in a word, clunky. They sort of work, but there are work arounds that many retailers have pulled their hair out in frusteration over. A lot of retailers sell 'no transfer' items to avoid people buying their stuff and reselling it for cheap or more expensive depending on the item. But this poses a problem when it comes to the issue of returns.

The problem is that the customer cannot actually return the item in question. Ever. No transfer is no transfer. The retailer has no way beyond honor system that the customer will delete the inventory if they issue a refund or exchange. This makes a lot of retailers very sour or at the very least leery of exchange or refunds period. To make matters worse, there is the same sort of fraud that goes on IRL to some degree going on in SL. People trying to return things they never bought, or get a 'replacement' when they never even purchased one in the first place. I cannot tell you how _EXTEMELY_ common this is. It gets worse the more popular and widespread your products become, so it is best to get solid on your return policies from DAY ONE.

One of the things that you can do that is extremely helpful in preventing this sort of fraud is record keeping. I know that we, as the artistic sorts we generally are that are running these businesses tend to LOATHE paperwork with a passion, it will save your butt if one of these rather unsavory sorts comes begging you for a refund or for product they never bought. Secondlife does keep track of all your transactions for about the last 30 days, including names of who bought something, what they paid and what vendor or object they bought it from. However, what if someone comes wanting something replaced from 3-6 months ago? Hard to verify if you haven't been keeping records.

How I do this is I have a vendor that sends me an email with the details of who bought what, when, from where. I have a filter on my Gmail account that tags them all and goes into the archive. When I get a free moment, I input it into an excel type spreadsheet. ( this is also a great way to track sales data!). This way, I can easily check if someone has bought something from me, when they bought it, where they bought it from, and how much they paid. If you don't want to get a vendor that has that feature, be sure to simply download your transactions on a monthly basis and store the information for later reference.

So if the customer can't return the item, what do you do? You can't discriminate based on what you think of an individual's honesty. Its very important that whatever it is you decide is to your level of comfort is set down clearly and followed consistantly. You have a few options.

A) No refunds or exchanges. Period. You don't give them. If you choose this route, make sure that this is ALL OVER YOUR STORE and in a notecard inside the item and in the vendors when people click on them. Make it ABUNDANTLY clear and then stick to it.

B) Refunds or exchanges within a period of time with 'reciept'. A common policy is refund within 14 days, exchanges only after that time for up to say, 30 days. Once that time is up, you are not obligated to do a refund or exchange of any sort. Although you can stipulate any timeframe you wish as the retailer. Again, write this all over your store and put it in notecards. Make it clear to customers. The 'reciept' is your record of the transaction. Make sure you keep very tight records if you do this. People will try to take advantage of you. Sad, but true.

C) Refunds or exchanges done with a 'reciept'. This means you are willing to exchange or refund at any time for any sale which you have record of, regardless of if the customer will or won't delete the inventory. The reason I say this is because even if the customer says they will, doesn't always mean they will. So you as a retailer have to be willing to accept this fact. As long as you are willing to do this, its fine to have this policy. Again, make it clear that you do refunds and exchanges so people know what to expect from you.

Whatever refund/exchange policy you decide to adopt ( or variation thereof) I suggest putting signs up or at least having a notecard avaliable with all your store's policies for customers to take.

Obviously if you have transferable merchandice that is no copy/mod/transfer, it is easy for the customer to give you back the merchandise and get a refund or exchange almost normally, just like in a store. However, it is still important to have a refund policy in place, as someone might have bought the item from someone else and is now coming to YOU for a refund. Remember, if it is transferable, its resellable. So they could have bought it from a yardsale for half of what its worth, and are now coming to you to return it and get the full value back. RECIEPTS ARE IMPORTANT to prevent this sort of fraud. Also, people can replicate the look and feel of retailers boxes and contents, so its important to check items before you refund for fraud.

2)Replacement & Support
We all know from experience that SL is extremely flakey. With each update there are new bugs and old ones that rear their ugly heads. This frequently causes inventory glitches, scripting bugs, and all sorts of unexpected weirdness. Add to this that customers may be new, or unfamiliar with building and in making a modification or addition to their new whatever-it-is-you-sell, they may accidentally break it. This means they will be coming to you for support.

While you are writing up your policy notecard, one section should be definately be on your policies regarding replacements and upgrades. Many designers provide upgraded products for free to existing customers, while others might have them avaliable for a discounted price, or some don't offer upgrades at all. Its important to say where you stand from the outset. Replacements 'with reciept' is the norm, generally speaking. If the guy payed for something, its courteous and professional that if he asks for a replacement (of the SAME product, provided there has been no upgrades or version changes), give it to him. We've all had stuff disappear from our inventory or become corrupted. Just make sure you've got a record of his or her purchase.

Support in and of itself can become a full time job if you aren't careful. As your business grows, you'll probably find more and more of your time is eaten by supporting your products. If this becomes a problem, I'd suggest hiring some trustworthy people to help handle inquiries, but if you can't or don't want to, you'll definately want to set your boundries regarding what you will and won't support. If someone gets a faulty product, finds a bug in your product, or has a legitimate problem, it should be something that you at least take the time to investigate. You, the retailer, are still human and make mistakes. Something could have the wrong permissions, be packed in the wrong box, be misnamed in a vendor. Its important to make sure that YOU haven't made a mistake because if you did, you are going to want to fix it ASAP before you get more people coming to you with the same problem. However, that being said, once you establish it isn't your fault and its not a technical problem with your product, then it becomes another issue entirely.

As a retailer you are only responsible for supporting your own products. You are not responsible for compatability or 3rd party modifications UNLESS you specifically advertise that you support a particular 3rd party product. If you do support a 3rd party product and find that you are getting reports that it isn't working, you should do your best to investigate the problem. Most customers are pretty good about waiting if you are investigating a problem or at least they know you are 'working on it'. A lot of times, they just want you to acknowledge there might be something wrong. In these cases, be polite and calmly thank them for telling you, you'll look into it. If they get at all pissy, remain calm, be as polite and professional as possible explaining to them how it will take some time to fix it and if It is legit, you'll be issuing a fix, or notice or something. Most should be happy with that. Some, of course, won't, but always try to be professional even with the thick headed customers.

Professional Conduct
When it comes time to actually enforce and use your policy remember the #1 rule of customer service: Be polite, courteous, and professional. There is no need to cuss out a customer. In fact I suggest NEVER swearing at a customer no matter how profane they are with you. When faced with an irate customer, policy is your saving grace and your sheild. Use it, stick to it. Just make sure whatever policies you have, they are fair, consistent, and readily avaliable to all.

Another handy tool is a FAQ notecard, especially if you tend to deal with the same questions over and over again. This helps customers help themselves before they have to come to you for help. Also, it might answer many questions they may be about to ask, even after the first.

Its not easy to resist the urge to become angry and beligerent with a customer that is being angry and beligerent to you. Most of us are artists. We don't deal with this sort of thing too well being sensitive, emotional, and often moody creatures. If our businesses are large, we may end up dealing with several of these sorts a night. It gets tiresome and sapping. But remaining professional will make you and your business stand above the others that can't. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for or against you. Good customer service will get you noticed and recommended.

How far is too far?
A big question remains is how far is too far to satisfy a customer? This really depends on your comfort level. For a legitimate customer, I will go as far as I reasonably can to satisfy them.
As an example, in a case I had within recent memory, I had a customer purchase an avatar I made of one gender the day before I came out with same avatar but the other gender (they were quite different despite being the same race). He asked me if he could have the other one, because he had misunderstood my vendor and bought it on a risk that I had mismatched it with the picture in the vendor. An honest mistake, if perhaps a little risky. But I had the records of his purchase, and he had bought it only the day before. It cost me nothing to give him the one he wanted, and being new, I figured it would be good exposure for the new avatar. So, I gave it to him, and thanked him for supporting my shop. He was so pleased that he even put up a sign for my place at his land as an advertisment for me. It was a win-win situation.

However, not is all peaches and cream, such as in this example, where my 'reciept' policy saved me from ( someone I later learned was) a scammer. A girl messages me while i'm offline asking me to message her. I respond via email/IM that I'm at work and won't be in world for a while and what her inquiry was regarding. She replies that she needs an avatar replaced. I ask her what it was and when she bought it. The reply ( this is all offline ) comes back specifying the avatar she wanted, which happened to be one of the most expensive that I sell. I ask her when she bought it and she gives me a month. I check the records I have and have no receipt. I have a strict 'receipt required' policy. I ask again to confirm and tell her I have no record of a purchase. There is a slight argument where she repeatedly asks to have the avatar replaced. I remind her I'm not in world, but without a reciept I won't do it. Eventually I simply say that I'll be in world later in the evening if she wants to take it up with me in person, she never replies. I later learned from another retailer in my area that this is a common ploy for the girl trying to get something for nothing. So my policy has saved me without compromising my customer service.

While this is how I do business, I know other retailers have other comfort levels. I know a retailer who absolutely does not do refunds or replacements. This retailer is very strict about it and it does meet with a great deal of resistance. But I also know this particular retailer has had more scammers, beggers, and irate, angry customers than you can shake a stick at at their door. I helped this retailer in question develop policies to help them deal with some of these problems, and while they may not be the most popular, they are consistant. And I know they will bend over backwards to help legitimate customers who are polite and willing to comply with their policies.

But it is a source of a constant reminder that no matter how good at customer service you are, there are people who will NEVER be satisfied. This is when you must brace for impact and dig in with your policy manual firmly in hand. You cannot satisfy everyone all the time. Its a fundamental rule of reality. You should only feel obligated to do as much as you have said you will do and nothing more. Do not let customers bully you into doing things that YOU are not comfortable with. Your policies are a reminder, not only to your customers, but to yourself as to what your obligations are. They are your golden rules. If a customer is extremely rude and will not listen to you or your rules of business, you have a right to say " No, I will not serve you. Please leave".

This is known as 'Denial of Service'. People can be banned from stores, malls, and other business places for rude and disruptive conduct in real life. It can also be done in Secondlife. There is a mute button, feel free to use it if someone can't stop swearing at you and being a general ass because they won't take 'no' for an answer. You can ban the individual from your land and store. This may insight attacks against you, but they will be in the wrong. Save the conversation in a notecard and file Abuse Reports freely if the individual feels the need to grief you because he can't have his way.

But you should try to use this as a last resort. Hopefully this helps. Please feel free to post any questions or ask me inworld.

Business Musings: Customer service pt 1

2006-07-05T10:52:00.001-07:00

Before my current RL employment, I worked in customer service for a number of years as a sales associate. As a result, I'm fairly knowlegeable when it comes to what sorts of things you can reasonably expect from both a retailer and a consumer perspective, and what you can't. Its no secret that the success of a business can hinge on this thread, particularly in a highly compeditive business enviroment like the one we have in Secondlife. Fortunately, Secondlife gives us a chance to run a business without the real life worries and overheads, and we get to experience things from both sides of the table. We are both the consumers and the business owners if we want to be. Although, many people who run businesses in Secondlife don't have business management training, hell most don't even have staff. So the issue of customer service in a virtual business becomes very interesting.

View Point 1: The Consumer
Obviously the most familiar point of view for most people is going to be on the consumer end. In the real world, if a product is broken or wrong when we buy it we can take it back to the store and have it refunded. If we are dissatisfied with service, we can complain bitterly and make store managers bend and fall all over themselves to make us happy. If we get bad service or bad food at a restaurant, we can get a free meal. Its commonly accepted in our society that if we aren't pleased with the product, service, or consumable we've paid for, we will make damn sure the establishment takes it back or refunds our money. This same behavior translates over to Secondlife business. I've heard of many 'customer service' horror stories through various mediums including first hand. Sometimes, these are genuinely bad, and sometimes I'm sensing something that as a seasoned customer service person like to call a 'sucky customer'.

Its fine to expect reasonable customer service from even a virtual business, but the key word here is reasonable. When you endevor as a consumer to get the best in customer service, you want to be a 'savvy client' and not a 'sucky customer'. Dollars to nickels the savvy client will have the store owner happy to bend over backwards to satisfy their client. So what is the savvy client vs the sucky customer? Glad you asked!

The savvy client is, in a word, smart. They are careful with their shopping and also careful to read the policies of the store they are in before making large purchases. They try demos, get people to model potential purchases for them. They KNOW what they are buying. They might ask around if anyone has bought from a particular designer if its a very large purchase. Many store owners have policy notecards avaliable at their stores, and if they don't, ask!
The savvy client knows the following about secondlife business:

1) Permissions sometimes make it impossible to 'return' an item purchased. ( no transfer). Many retailers do not give refunds on no transfer items. No transfer also makes it impossible to exchange. Be sure that you can live with a retailers return policy before buying!

2) In secondlife, 9 out of 10 times you are going to be dealing directly with the designer, of which there is only one, with potentially hundreds of customers. So that designer is a very busy person. If you have to talk with them, be polite but direct. Sending a 'hi' message likely will get ignored. Its best to be brief. eg: " Hi there, I just bought your (blank) at your store in (blank) sim, It said it was a modable, but the permissions appear to be wrong. Can you help?"

3) You get more flies with honey. Being polite and courteous will get you a lot further than threats or swearing. That sort of behavior turns the conversation off right there. Many designers are more than willing to make compromises or fixes to help a customer, but if the customer starts getting angry and mean, they are going to be a lot less inclined to help you. If the designer is not willing to accomidate your immediate request, then try to find a compromise. Many designers are not willing to refund money, but might be willing to assist you with product.

4) Deal with problems right away. Don't want for a month before going back to a designer and asking for a change or refund. Try your product right away and make sure it works the way you intended it to. In real life, refunds and exchanges are limited to 30 -90 days. In secondlife, a lot of retailers only keep records for a month, so if they go to verify your purchase after a month, its going to be hard. Some retailers might keep longer records, but its really best to deal with things immediately.

5)Make sure you are talking to the right person for the right problem. Some retailers are groups of people, each one having a different responsibility. If you are having trouble with a script in a product, make sure you are talking to the scripter and not the texture artist.

6) Retailers are not responsible for your after the fact modifications. While most retailers will happily replace products that disappear from inventories or are accidentally lost or damaged, they are NOT responsible for your meddling after the purchase. They are also not responsible for making other people's products work with their products. Being that there are hundreds of thousands of different products out there, there is no way to make them all compatable 100%. It is highly unreasonable to assume otherwise. After that point of you modifying something, it becomes asking for help. Its not even support, because its not the same as when you bought it. You are asking for help, be respectful. Some retailers don't have time to provide that sort of help, but they might be able to recommend you to someone who can.

7) Be very careful about your purchases. Make sure you aren't lagging, no one is clicking the same vendor as you, and the vendor has fully rezed before you buy anything. Lag is a huge cause of bad buys, especially in highly lagged areas like malls. Be aware, buy with care.

The rules of thumb: Ask nicely. Be polite. Say please and thank you. Read all notecards carefully before buying. This will make sure you are prepared to know who you are dealing with and what their rules are.

The 'sucky customer' is almost the complete opposite of the savvy client. They are rude, demanding, badgering, belligerant, angry, swearing, ignorant, and often vindictive. They tend to be the ones that sour tempermental designers against even the savvy consumer. Artsy people don't usually have the temperments to be bitched at by a hundred people in one day, and anyone tends to reflect the emotional noise they get bombarded with. So if they are having a bad day, chances are, the designer is going to be crabby. Its best to assume designers have had a bad day.

Okay, so what happens when you've been a good consumer and been polite and the designer still isn't helping you. Okay, there is a few options. First one is to look at what exactly you are asking for and try some variations. Can't get a cash refund? Okay, well what about a exchange? Is there only one part of the purchase you don't like? ( color, feature, style) and can you get or purchase just that part? The next thing is to check the designer's policies. Many designers will hit you over the head with them. Is there a way to work within the policies to make you happy with your purchase? Try that.

Still not able to work something out? Well this might well be into a case of Sucktacular Service then. Most times if the customer is polite and flexible, the retailer and customer will be able to work out some kind of compromise. But the retailer does have the right to put his or her foot down and refuse service to someone who is beligerent. You may not agree, but they have the right. Retailers IRL have this too. Its usually called " Denial of Service" and its a punishment usually reserved for shoplifters, problem customers, or particularly beligerent or obnoxous individuals. So if you are a sucky customer, they can, and will ignore you. Its best to be a savvy customer and you are much more likely to get what you want.

Scam Alert: Moneyball Scam

2006-07-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

Affects: Small Casino operators, small games operators, anyone who might use a money ball.

Modus Operandi: The scammer distributes a copy of the offending object called "VGI Money Ball" en masse. Once the victim rezes the moneyball and gives it debit permissions, the scam is underway. Please note that this is NOT a VGI product. It is just pretending to be one.

How it goes down: The victim is given the object free from the scammer or an associate. When the victim rezes the object "VGI Money Ball", it asks for debit permissions. Once the victim has given debit permissions, the moneyball begins to syphon off the person's account in intervals until there is nothing left and gives the money to the scammer.

Seeing through the Scam: Once again, I cannot stress enough that you should NOT give debit permissions to ANYTHING that you don't know explicitly where it came from or are savvy enough to look at the code (if its permittable!) to know if the thing isn't going to rip you off.

Damage control: If you have rezed this object and notice it taking money from you GET RID OF IT ASAP. That will stop it from robbing you. Its not a good idea to just leave something like that out there without testing it first for a good deal of time while online to make sure it ISN'T going to rob you blind. Even if it wasn't a scam, a bug or other glitch could cause severe losses.

If you recieve something with the VGI name, it is advisable to check VGI's website to ensure that it is legitimately one of their products before you use it.

Moneyball affected:
VGI Money Ball

Avatars under suspicion of being involved this scam:
MoeMonnie Bao

Scam Alert: Another Free Slot Machine Scam

2006-07-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

This scam is much like the previous scam I posted on, with the exception that this slot is handed out as a freebee and not as a prize to a game. It was originally avaliable on SLexchange.com as "Adriana Lima Slot Machine" but has since been removed.
Affects: Small Casino operators, small games operators
Modus Operandi: The slots machine is avaliable as a free or low cost vending slot machine from a freebee source or marketplace, in this case, SLexchange.
How it goes down: The victim takes a copy of the slot machine and sets it down on their land for visitors to play. Within a short time, a particular avatar shows up and begins to win large jackpots consecutively until the owner of the casino is drained. This is because the casino game notifies its creator that it is in operation, and the operator is none the wiser. When the owner of the game shows up he can win every time, larger jackpots while only betting 1$.
Seeing through the Scam: This is a case of buyer beware. In the case of slot machines its generally a good idea to do some research and buy from a reputable dealer or get some second hand from someone you can trust. If you have a scriptor friend thats trustworthy, you can get something custom. Generally, if you've got something thats got to have free reign in your pocketbook should be a little paranoid that you are getting something thats not going to rob you blind.
Damage control: If you aren't sure of the machine, its a good idea to test it within the boundries of land you can set to group access only, so that the scammer can't get at the game when he shows up. Look for him. A resident describes how to do this here

Slots known to use this scam:
FREE Adriana Lima Slot Machine v1.4 TRANSFER/COPY Non-Comission
Avatar which shows up to collect: Games Fan

Scam Alert: 'Game Tester' Scam

2006-06-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

Scam Alert!

'Game Tester' Scam
Affects: A target resident, someone either trying to help, or wanting to earn money.
Modus Operandi: Scammer makes an offer to the victim of making some cash ( reports suggest a fair number from 1500L to 2500L or more.) to help them 'test' a new casino game (or games). In some cases this may occur at a sandbox or in a casino. To make the scam look more legit they may have the victim fill out a survey notecard. Once the victim agrees, the scam begins.
How it goes down: The victim is TPed to the scammers location, or if the scammer is already at that location. At this point they give the victim an object. Presumably the game to be tested and request that the victim rez the object to begin testing. As the object is rezed it asks for debit permission from the victim. Once permission is granted, the 'testing' begins. The actually events after this point vary from the victim losing all of their L$ at once, or having it progressively drained by higher and higher betting from the scammer, who always wins at the rigged game. Once they have completely drained the victim they leave, and refuse to refund the money. Recent reports suggest that the scammers may use an alt as an 'innocent bystander' to add an air of further legitimacy to the scam.
Seeing through the Scam: This is actually quite an old scam, but it crops up from time to time. The rule of thumb here is DO NOT give debit permissions to any object that you don't implicitly trust the creator of. Especially not to something someone just gave you. Programmers can test their own stuff out with alts, they don't need you.
Damage control: If you do still want to 'help' as it were, there is a few tricks you can use to minimize damage. First, get your testing money up front. Second after that, put ALL your L$ for sale using the lindex at 1L:1$ USD. This removes it from your av's account and locks it safely away. You can also transfer it to an alt, or put it in a 'bank' of some kind. Just make sure your av is dead broke, having only maybe a few L for the 'testing' purposes. That way the scammer cannot take more than a couple of L, and since he already paid you, you'll walk away a richer av. However, more than likely the scammer will refuse upfront payment. INSIST. Do not do ANYTHING without getting at least half in advance. THEN transfer it out so he can't win it back. Once you are done with the scammer leaving in a frusterated huff, you can delete the object he gave you ( do so right away!) and any rezed copy of it, and then (and only then) transfer your money back or cancel your sell order to retrieve your L$.

Avatars known to use this scam
(( no info yet.))

Scam Alert: Slot prize scam

2006-06-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

Scam Alert!

Slot Prize Scam
as reported by Tiberious Neruda

Affects: Small casino owners, casino patrons
Modus Operandi: Scammer makes a free 'Wheel of SPIN' available to small casino owners. A player who wins a prize, instead of losing or winning money, is given a slot machine. this passes the 'blame' to the Casino Owner
How it goes down: The 'winner' sees an opportunity to make some money, and places the machine on their own land or other location. Machine then messages creator, who can come by and win at will, potentially draining the victim's account.
Seeing through the Scam: This one, thankfully, is limited to one occurrence that I know of, but is pretty nefarious. It uses a script that wasn't CREATED by the scam artist, but rather modified by him. Thus, he isn't immediately messaged about it; the original creator is. Using a different script to get a name from the key used, however, reveals the true scammer.
( Note from Myst: There are other scams like this involving the use of tip jars, and other free casino games, even other 'free' objects that scammers ask unsuspecting victims to 'help them test'. If someone asks you to 'test a game' for them, HIDE YOUR CASH. Either shift it to an alt account, or place a Sell order on the Lindex for 1L:1$ USD, do the testing, then cancel the order and get your money back.)
Damage control: This one has been reported to the Lindens, and is under investigation. However, if you have a 'Furture Slot (prize)' (not confirmed spelling) object, DO NOT rez it. If you have one in-world, remove it immediately.

Tiberious' anti-scam tip of the day:
Always examine objects that request debit permissions, and if possible, view the scripts, and try to get an understanding of where money will go. If you see a suspicious llGiveMoney call, or if you can't view the script, someone has something to hide, and you shouldn't use it.

Buyer Beware: Yard sales

2006-06-22T20:38:00.000-07:00

It happens. We collect junk we don't want or don't need in our inventory and the stuff we can transfer, we figure hey, we'll sell it at a yard sale! And from a newbie or overall consumer mind set the Yardsale concept is one that invokes the idea of bargans, cheap goods, and possible deals.

And while all of this is well and good, the problem is that in Secondlife, a yardsale isn't always a yardsale, and a yardsale isn't always a deal. And as innocent as it may sound on the initial outset, Yardsales can be quickly overwhelming. What seems like a good deal, may, infact, be a total ripoff.

The forums have been abuzz with the dangers and shady nature of yardsales for some time. I myself don't generally go to yard sales, as I tend to prefer to go to the source of an item, namely a designer I know and trust. Failing that, I tend to make things myself. But yardsales can be a source of discontinued items, items from designers long gone from secondlife, or nifty tidbits from designers in world you never knew about. Also, if you are on a severely limited budget, you can find some cheap stuff. HOWEVER, that being said, its still a major case of "Buyer beware".

Since I decided to write this article, I decided to go on a bit of a yardsale shopping spree, armed with the knowlege of a year plus in secondlife and no stranger to its many features or the dangers of being ripped off. I pulled up the find menu and looked up events. As usual, there was a nice plethora of yardsales being listed. I picked the first one and popped into it.

I was swiftly overwhelmed with a veritable junkyard in the sky.. and some guy landing on my head. Moving along, I proceeded to browse the offerings.

At this particular yardsale there was no host despite being listed as an event, but it was quite busy. There were many boxes of freebees ( they said free hair, free shirts, free eyes, etc over them) that were there for 1L. I disagree with calling 'freebees' freebees if you charge ANYTHING for them, but I also know its common practice to charge 1L for a box for the effort of boxing them up and hosting them. Okay, so fair deal. I even lent another fellow shopper a dollar to get one of these boxes. One thing to note would be to check the box's contents BEFORE you pay for it. I then started examining all the boxes. Hmm. Some of the freebees were listed for 10L. I found an object that was originally Linden made for 50L. Hmm. I'm pretty sure that those Linden objects were free from info/telehubs at one point. My ripoff sense is tingling. At this particular yardsale there was a rather cool looking motorcycle for 300L, so I decide to check up on the designer. I got the name and looked the resident up. Said he had a shop in his Picks in his profile. So, like any good, red blooded consumer, I decided to do a price comparison. I teleported to his shop to find... It wasn't there!

Well crud. This means one of two things. Either the designer is no longer selling in SL and this motorcycle could be a collectors item, or the guy moved and failed to update his profile. Hmm. Well it looks like if I want the bike, the yardsale would be a good place to get it since the store no longer exists. But if I hadn't checked, I wouldn't have known. A good shopper is a smart shopper! Do your homework before you pay your money!

Okay after this point I started visiting some other yard sales. Discovered this first yard sale had several listings. Annoying to be always popping back at the same yardsale. Finally I manged to get to another one, where I appeared in the air, fell for several feet and landed on a shack. I looked around, a bit confused. In the distance a short ways was an obvious retail store. But someone said their was a yard sale here! I look around some more and then I realize.. the STORE is the yardsale. Okay, what gives?

So I truck over to the shop in question and check it out. Yep. They are a store. Yep, this is a retail establishment. But they have a section with a bunch of feebees in boxes on a blanket. Hmm. this smells a bit fishy. The freebees in this case are actual freebees. They cost nothing, 0L for the box. But of course, the source is infinate and I suspect this was a ploy to get yardsalers into the retail establishment. Although, despite my being duped, I found a SWEET electric chair. But I didn't buy it on the principle of being duped to a store with false advertising. Bad business people! Don't dupe your customers.

Next yardsale I visit is on a private island. I appear in the middle of a beachlike paradise. I look around. No yardsale. Notice a direction marker in the distance. Truck over. Once again, I've been duped. Its looks kind of like ikea, but on a beach and super disorganized. But its obviously, once again, a retail senario. I'm sensing a theme here.

I pop by a fourth one. This one appears to actually be a yardsale. The items are not retail, and they are obviously from different designers. Some are freebees, some aren't. Most are very reasonably priced. I find some clothing by a designer I've never heard of, but his clothes are pretty cool. I decide to check his store before I buy the clothing. When I arrive, I find his store. He's got some cool stuff, but none of the clothing I saw previously. Looks like he doesn't sell it anymore. So there was a potentially good deal there. I also saw he had some freebees for 1L and helped myself to samples.

So there you have it in a nutshell, so lets review what we learned.

1) Yardsales may have deals, but they also have ripoffs.
To avoid the ripoffs, make sure you check who the original creator was. You can do this by using the 'rating' trick. Right click on the item to bring up the pie menu. Select More..., from the More.. menu select Rate. From the Rate menu select 'Creator'. This will tell you who the creator is. You can then use the Find to look up that individual.

2) Do not pay more than 1L for a pack of freebees.
Freebees are called 'free' for a reason. Namely, you shouldn't have to pay for them. 1L$ is considered acceptable, but IMO, they should be called 'cheapies' not 'freebees'. Another thing to note is that anything created by a Linden, is *usually* free and you shouldn't pay for it. Go to info hubs, you can probably pick it or something like it up for nothing.

3) If you find something you like, you should comparison shop.
After you discover a cool item, landmark the yardsale, find out who the designer was, and go pay the designer's store a visit. Check for the same item and compare the price of the original designer to the yardsale. You might be surprised to learn that the original designer is often cheaper, and then you have the guaruntee of the original creator for the product. If you buy it at a yardsale the original creator owes you nothing if its broken, out of date, or missing something.
If a designer is no longer in game, or not selling that item any more, you can either message them ( if they are still in game) or you can assume the item at the yardsale is a deal. However, always check to make sure that the item wasn't released as freebee from the designer if possible and the person is reselling it.

4) The 'yardsale' is often a marketting ploy from the find menu. While the merchant may offer some freebees or deals, it is not really a yardsale at all. Be aware of this. Also, people can't seem to landmark their yardsales well, and sometimes you have to hunt a bit to find it.

As to what LL could do to help with this problem, well, I think there are a few things.

1) Improve the events listing so that the times cycle off as the event is completed. This prevents several alts from listing the same yard sale for several hours in a row. I also feel Yardsales should have their own category.

2) The ability to more easily view the original creator, as opposed to just the owner in the hover text. This would quickly and easily allow new people to identify actual yardsale items.

3) Better policing/control of the events listing.

Please share your yardsale experiences and tips with this post.

Scam Alert: Magic Money Scam

2006-06-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

Scam Alert!

'Magic Money' Scam
( this is an older scam, but is seeing renewed activity.)
Affects: Newbies and the unwary, merchants, moneytree owners
Modus Operandi: The scammer rezes an object that looks like a $ sign near a known money tree, or in a store (or anywhere really, usually a popular loction) that has the following text above it (or something like it):
" Make up to L$900 or more! Passive Income! Its fast easy and fun! Was L$1000! Now only L$100! Right click and chose "pay..." To get started right away!"
There is a photo of the object here They then leave it there to collect money of the unwary.
How it goes down: A newbie or broke individual visits the moneytree or location in question. Seeing the promise of easy money they click and pay the $ shaped object. They are then releaved of whatever money they do have and get nothing in return.
Seeing through the Scam: This is a pretty cut and dried pyramid type scam, tricking the unwary into paying money for nothing. There are some sayings in RL that apply to SL as well, and one of them is "Beware of free money, especially if you have to pay for it up front." The logic of course being, that if you have to pay for it, it wasn't really free now was it? The best thing to do is avoid paying into items that promise 'easy money'. They are preying on greed and desperation for an income without work.
Damage control: There is a product on the market in SL to help with this problem. It is called "The Magic Money Glove" by Adriana Caligari. Land owners can use this to 'glove' or cover the magic money object as soon as it is rezed on their land. It also garbles the text that floats above it.
You can have a look at it at it on SLexchange.

People with moneytrees and other newbie aids should be the most wary of this particular scam as it seems to affect those type of areas the most. I believe this is generally because only the new or really unwary would fall for this particular scam.

Remember, if you have to pay for it, its not a free ride.

New group in SL - Join it!

2006-06-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

I've created a new group for those of you who are merchants or shoppers who support this initiative to educate, infoshare, teach, and promote better business practices. The name is Caveat Emptor Association, and its free to join, just look it up in the find, or if you can't find it, IM Myst Panther in world for an invite.

The group will be primarily used to facilitate discussion groups, pass out warnings about scams, as well as provide a knowlegeable group of individuals to help support new business people by answering questions and providing some basic knowlege and direction that a new business person may not otherwise get.

Scam Alert: Invisible prim over vendor (now with fastpay!)

2006-06-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Scam Alert!

Invisible Prim over Vendor (Now with Fastpay!)
Affects: Consumer and Merchants
Modus Operandi: Scammer places invisible prims overtop of legitimate vendors. When customer clicks on vendor to pay, they actually be clicking the invisible prim and paying THAT not the vendor. Customer pays their money, but doesn't get their item and is now out money and often can't figure out why. They may end up paying the invisible prim trying to pay the vendor a few times thinking it didn't work. Then when the designer gets an angry message demanding the product the customer payed for and a refund for the extra cash, they won't even know what happened because they never got paid. And the scammer laughs all the way to the bank.
How it goes down: The scammer shows up at a larger location, typically a mall or large main store. They place invisible scripted prims over top of the screen or main part of the vendor. The casual shopper obviously cannot see the invisible prim covering the vendor, and thus is generally unaware of its existance. They then leave and let the prims do the dirty deed of collecting transactions. This is an old scam, but has been updated to include a 'fastpay' function and has seen some renewed activity.
Seeing through the Scam (Consumer):
In the Secondlife Menu, there is an option to 'Highlight Transparent'. Before you decide to pay a vendor, click that on for a second and make sure there is nothing transparent sitting overtop of the vendor you want to pay. Also, if you've got the mouse tips on, you can 'hover' your mouse point over an object and it will tell you the object's name and owner. Make sure when you hover it over the middle panel of the vendor ( where the picture is) that the owner corresponds to the name of the designer. I do both. Remember, its good to be paranoid.
Damage control: If you pay a vendor and nothing comes out. DON'T pay it again. Especially for expensive purchases like Skins. Mail the creator and let him or her know that the vendor isn't working properly and ask if they received the payment you made.

Seeing through the Scam (Merchant):
Mall owners especially should be vigilant for this one. If you do not know every single vendor in your mall ( I make a point to meet each new vendor and speak with them.) make sure you've got your group for land and vendors properly set up and enable auto return to make sure that any prims that aren't supposed to be there get taken out of there, pronto. This also keeps your prim count down and can keep some forms of greifing lower. For merchants with individual stores, be sure to check your land regularly for stray prims or enable auto return to prevent the unwanted prims from being there. You can also set your land to no rez, but that can annoy customers who want to try stuff on/out right away. Since this is a passive scam, its a little easier to combat, but make sure you, or someone you trust checks your land regularly for stray prims and get rid of them.

Avatars known to use this scam:
(( No information yet, if you have some, leave a comment!))

Scam Alert : Management Scam

2006-06-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

Here is my first scam report. What is a scam report? good question.

Basically its a sort of 'heads up' for all merchants and buyers to let you know of people, practices, or particular techniques that unscrupulous people are using to seperate you from your hard earned L$ or scam you out of L$ that are rightfully deserved. By being aware of these scams and how to avoid them/prevent them/be vigilant against them, you can take action to protect yourself against them. Also, unlike LL, we can name names here, thus, we will post lists of known scammers who use a particular scam.

Scam Alert!

'Special Sale' or 'Management' Scam
Affects: Consumer and Merchants
Modus Operandi: A scammer poses as an employee, manager, or representative of a reputable or popular designer/store and is offering a 'special sale' or 'special discount' of the designer's products. They are usually actually in one of the stores being targetted and talk to the customers in the store (the victims).
How it goes down: The scammer will try to act on people's want for a sale or discount, usually preying on new residents, or even some of the more ignorant or careless older ones. They will generally leave the store or teleport the victim to another location to perpetuate the scam. They will rez a box, or other item often carefully constructed with ripped textures to make it seem legit. Inside the box will be nothing, or crap, sometimes even carefully renamed to resemble the naming schemes of the emulated designer. They will either request payment directly to them through their profile, or sometimes they will use a vendor.
Seeing through the Scam (Consumer): The creative ones are harder to see through than the halfass ones,but there are a few ways to see through this one.

1) The technical way: check the properties on an object before you pay it. If you look on the object's properties (left click the object, select edit, look at the first tab, look for creator), you'll see that there is a field that says "Creator". This is the person that made the object. Even if a person owns an object made by another resident, the creator never changes. Thus, if an object is legit, it will have the creator set as the designer you want to buy from. In this scam, the object presented will mostly likely have the scammer's name as the creator despite how it looks. Remember, anyone can take a snapshot. Forgeries have been around since the beginning of time. As a buyer, you have to make sure you check for legitimacy BEFORE you hand over the cash. If the product is genuinely from the designer, it will ALWAYS have the designer's name as the creator.

2) The intuitive way: Most shoppers need to develop a sort of 'spider sense' of shopping. Mainly, observing behavior that seems 'odd'. As a rule, MOST stores don't have staff. There is only one owner, and that is the Designer themselves. If there is legitimate staff, they will NOT offer sales or deals themselves. They will answer questions, point you to the products you are looking for, or model merchandise so you can see it on someone. They DO NOT offer discounts on behalf of the designer. If you see someone doing this, the little bells of "WRONG" should go off in your shopper's brain. Do not pay these people directly, no matter how legit they sound. All the reputable designers have vendors and stores for a reason. They do not get their money from a third party resident. Whenever in doubt to the legitimacy of a representative, message the designer directly and wait until they reply before opening your wallet. Remember, YOU are in control here. Be very suspicious of people bearing 'deals'.

3) The paranoid way: Its good to be paranoid. In this case, make sure you understand who the business owner/designer is. Pay only objects that you have verified belongs (is owned under the creative field) to that individual, and never pay a third party directly through profile for something made by someone else.

Preventing the Scam (Merchants): Being that most of us have real lives and can't be online all the time, there isn't a lot of options that are practical. If you are a larger retailer, it might make sense to 'hire' a legit staff of trusted friends that can mind the store and keep an eye out for any suspicious characters. If you feel comfortable, you can even give them the power to eject these individuals from your stores. However, remember, if they are targetting one location, they are probably targetting more of your locations, not just your main store. If you have a lot, this can become a costly option to pay so much staff. The second thing you can do is raise awareness and your profile of who you are, and that you have no staff. A good practice is to create a group for customers of your business to subscribe to for updates and new product announcements, but you can also notify your customers if scammers are targetting your store. Remind your customers that you do not have representatives and tell them how to recognize your official sales. You can also put a large sign in your store to this effect, and perhaps link them back here, or let it give a notecard about the scams when you touch the sign. Education of customers is important. They will thank you in the long run.

Avatars known to use this scam:
Rain Riel
Batista Plasma
Graffiti Dye

Possible affiliates of this scam:
Twilight Takakura
creamy raine
CandieRaine Paperdoll

If your store has been affected by this scam, please post here to let people know to watch for them in your store, and inform you or other customers about the scam. If we watch out for each other, we can help deter this behavior.

2006-06-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

Lets get the who, what, when, where and why out of the way first.

Who am I?
I am a resident, shopper, and merchant of Secondlife. If you don't know what secondlife is, check out www.secondlife.com and tell them Myst Panther sent ya. If you do know about secondlife, here's some info about me.
I've been on Secondlife for a little over a year now. I own a small shop and mall, but I am friends with some people who own larger businesses and we colaborate from time to time. As a mall owner, I am also a land owner. I am a shopper who loves to explore the creativity of others. Like any good shopper, I love a good deal. Its taken me a fair amount of time to determine what a good deal is, and each market has its own sort of ebb and flow.

What is this?
This is a blog that will discuss a number of topics relating to business in secondlife, from shopping to selling, covering both perspectives from the buyer and the seller. I'm interested in informing people of both the good, and the bad of doing business in SL and the realities of business in this virtual world. The title of this journal is Latin, meaning " Let the buyer beware". Particularly in instances where there is a limited control or limited to no warrenties on the purchase. This describes the 'market' of secondlife very accurately.

When will I be posting?
Whenever I get the chance and have something reasonably intelligent to say. Also, I hope that people will eventually help me out by writing me with their experiences (good and bad), scam alerts, tips, tricks, experiences, etc.

Where?
Here of course. I'm not sure If I will post this anywhere else, but hopefully I'll be able to condense this information into some kind of handout for noobs.

Why are you doing this?
The main reason? There seems to be a need for a calm, impartial voice that can explain simply and easily, without bias some of the issues surrounding buying and selling in secondlife. I also think that through some of my real world experiences in the world of retail, customer service, marketing, branding, copyright, etc, that I can provide insights that others who haven't had my experience may lack. There is also a rising threat of scams, ripoff artists, copycats, and other unpleasentness that is difficult to find information on and get information on. Hopefully I can collect this information in one, easy to read place. That way, both merchants and buyers can check out this blog to check for information on new scams and prevent these people from taking away their hard work and rightful sales. Secondlife is a virtual wildwest in terms of business, and we, as business owners cannot take it for granted that Linden Labs is going to babysit us. We are (supposed to be) all adults here. We need to act like adults. The first step to that is to stand up and take responsibility for the community, both the merchants and shoppers.

What do I hope to accomplish?
Mostly, raising awareness and brining merchants and shoppers together on the same page. I've seen the aspects of both big and small businesses, new and older businesses, and the frusteration of when the two sides are clashing because neither really knows what to expect from the other. SL creates a unique sort of experience in which we can pretend to be that which we are not IRL, and perhaps wouldn't do IRL as a living. Merchants who create in SL, many do not have years in customer services, know how to make retail policy or have any business management or business communications training. Yet the consumer, who's expectations in the game are built on what they have known IRL in terms of customer service, still assume individual merchants are going to behave like Walmart. This is not the case. Also I hope this will serve as a resource for merchants and consumers alike to keep abreast of the latest and most common scams, so that both can protect themselves from being ripped off.

In the world of Secondlife, Caveat Emptor should be your shopping motto. Everyone is out to get your L$.

Let's talk about it.