So, a short form of the 6 services:
Metaverse Exchange:
My top choice, as the services are currently, semi tied with apez. Beats out meta-life because that excluded itself from being useful to me. Beats out apez (somewhat) because it has somewhat better bulk listing. Listing itself is weird and takes a lot of getting used to, may in fact be harder to list individual items than any other service, so it's not super awesome.
apez.biz:
Semi ties with MVX, in fact I'm still waffling as to which of these two I prefer. MVX has easier and more interesting bulk listings (which I like...but also kinda don't like, because you can't SEE everything at once easily), but apez has some semi decent bulk listing features, so long as you never, ever, EVER change your mind. I would say it's easier set up than MVX for singles, LOVE the collections way of grouping items.
meta-life:
Mostly a pretty damn great service. Pretty damn near totally useless for me because of the image thing. Wish it would have website image uploads, and apez's collections- with a few very minor interface tweaks on top of that meta would quite possibly be my perfect service.
slapt.me:
Of the four I could get up and running, slapt was the most lackluster. No bulk features, just about as clunky listing wise as xstreet (and if I have to choose something else, I'm choosing something with BETTER features), and interface problems that make it almost unusable for me because I have problems figuring out what things say at all.
vitty:
Suffers from the "if I need to move, I should move to something that makes my life easier" problem- listing looks similarly clunky, about on par with xstreet. Geared towards the Japanese market, _and_ has a deal on commissions for low priced items, so, as a consumer, this is quite possibly a hidden gem full of holy crap that's amazing and I need it right now. It's just not something I'd use for selling on, currently.
Cariama:
Not yet open (the website itself only launched at all the beginning of last month), so out of the running.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
This is awesome thank you for taking the time to look into all of the different options. I do plan to talk with the creators of them and see what their plans for the future are as well as if they would be willing to work with us, the sellers, on some of our ideas.
i would imagine that Linden Lab shuts these down in due time =(
c'mon, they sent a take down notice to Jokay who has 4 sims and is THE biggest education isl person out there
so she is now on Reaction Grid and so are we
As it stands, other grids have their own host of problems with it comes to commercial issues, so truly viable alternatives for the people who make an actual living in SL don't currently exist- damned if you do, damned if you don't. LL's doing their best to drive people out, although they are very good at the frog in boiling water method: just slowly dial up the heat so you don't notice just how bad it really is and get out.
They have very successfully spent years dampening my enthusiasm in the platform as a whole, and one of these days I probably will just walk off and never return. But I'm most likely to make a clean break, and leave all worlds based on LL's code behind at the same time.
Thank you for the post. I have been studying the sales options for Second Life for some time and I believe that Metavendo.com, a Second Life marketplace which I am opening next month, will address many of the needs that have been unmet so far.
Since it has not yet opened, I would encourage anyone to send me an email at support@slpulse.com with their wish-list for a new marketplace. Odds are that I've already addressed it, but if not, I'll be happy to make my best attempt to incorporate it in Metavendo.
-PK Otoole
I'll try to write up a "the way I'd love to see it done" email for you. Although if you listen to me, you might get bogged down in feature creep! I'd love to see things for multiple brands, cooperative ventures, and more than one way to display your own items for clarity of organization.
I'm sure you already have, but you'd benefit from poking around the other systems and trying out test listings to see how they're doing it too- there are a lot of "oh...yeah, I see what you're doing there but that's a pain in the ass"es in all the systems that could bear improvement, as well as a lot of things that many of them do _right_, in a variety of different ways. None of the current systems are entirely ideal, but most of them have good features that are quite useful.
I am ditching Xstreet completely. Just on principle. I hate being lied to and charged for the privilege. After a week of checking out Alternatives (congrats on your No.1 Google listing on Xstreet Alternatives BTW) I am leaning towards Apez. The single listing vendor solution is nice. (I am looking to dump jevn in-world vendors as well.) Something about Slapt bothers me SO I am in the process of moving my stuff to Apez. Tracking my success of this move on my blog.(http://boondoggle.squarespace.com/) Thanks for your great reviews.
I'm going with MVX as my place to list right now entirely because I get messed up editing my apez listings. I haven't reeeeeally figured out exactly how I want my listings to look, so the lack of a batch edit _after_ having set things up is a detriment to me- MVX's ability to group a mass in one place is a boon for that (as is meta-life's batch edit, if meta-life didn't have other problems for me), so I've been starting getting up and running there, once I've got everything the way I want it, I'll probably be mirroring a bunch on apez as well. (And I do a _lot_ of batch listings as I do clothes a fair bit, hence the need for colour alts for most listings.)
I doubt I'll really have the time/energy/discipline to keep up more than one service, but I'd kind of like to, really. Having a backup and all that =p
As soon as I get Apez settled (I do single products so its pretty easy) I will test out MVX with m most popular items and see how it feels. I agree I do not have a lot of time (or inclination) to keep up multiple sales outlets -- but a back up would be nice. I love the collections aspect of Apez. Works great with their vendors as well. The nice thing about Xstreet was the large built-in community and being able to advertise to that community. This idea of community has been attacked by LL from the start. They hobbled the navigation, ignored the search issue, drove a stake into the heart of the forums and now this. After all of that ... what is the incentive to stay and shop? /me sighs.
Hi - I don't know if you've seen - Eloise Pasteur did a review for each of the alternatives plus a summary review here: http://eloisepasteur.net/blog/index.php?/archives/381-Overall-review-of-alternatives-to-XStreetSL.html
Post a Comment