I have been watching the web side e-commerce application developments for Second Life members ever since I became a member. Â Last week I finally decided to give the Marketplace a trial run and opened up a shop with my Jewle Rae Coiffure avatar hairstyles on Monday evening. Â After spending over 100 hours getting goods ready to sell, I still didn’t have all the inventory ready to go live in the shop. Preparing products for sale was a lot more work than I thought it would be!
I am striving to load the product descriptions with keywords and have added more than one photo, a PDF file and video slideshow to most of the entries. Â I decided not to make any big announcements or buy any advertising until I had my virtual shelves stocked with more goods. I really wasn’t expecting much traffic after reading posts from other merchants who were frustrated by the inadequacy of the Marketplace search feature. Â I Â was really surprised to find I had made my first sale early in the morning on Thanksgiving Day! What was most interesting is that the product sold was not listed among the “Top searched products” at all and the highest number for the “Times appeared in search” was only 183. Â I’m just intrigued enough to continue stocking the shop for now.