[Archived - Polystyrene] Drastic drop in sales

Posted by “iClash” on May 12, 2022.

Had a look through my pendings, 50% decrease. And the money I make is via mesh derives - therefore clearly it's an everyone issue. That again is a 50% decrease since April. It is still declining also, it has not recovered at all.

Worried there may be way too many pcredits pumped into the system, as I looked through my top selling meshes through Jan-now and sales haven't actually dropped by a staggering amount, just normal decline across the board.

Posted by “FemmeDraven” on May 12, 2022.

And a lot of the newer "creators" are doing nothing more than filling the catalog with ZCDs and there doesn't seem to be a way to go up the derive chain to see if you're buying nothing more than an up-charged duplicate. Also, people on the mobile app can't see how much their avatar weighs so they show up at events over the limit and have to leave or get booted. Then there are the standardized icons that are laughable at best. The new lighting and shiny factor might be all Ooooh & Ahhhh but that doesn't fix the 10 people in a room limit that you can't override by continuing to invite as you can in Classic. And have you tried to decorate in the new desktop version? Is there a way to put your avi name under you like in Classic so there's not a bunch of names clogging up the screen? I could go on but I have RL stuff to deal with. It's not that we're old and set in our ways, it's that if the new isn't an actual improvement then what's the point of it?

Posted by “FemmeDraven” on May 12, 2022.

And without a web page for the items if there are triggers for the item I would put those on the icon but those won't be there with the standardized icons. I have music box bears I make and I show the trigger words on my animated icons for each bear...not gonna be there on the new icons. Additionally, how does a person even go up the derive chain in the new catalog? If they can't go up the chain they'll be buying ZCDs and paying more than they should for things they buy.

Posted by “Ahndante” on May 12, 2022.

I cannot for the life of me understand the standardized icons. That just makes zero sense. It doesn't do anything to benefit the sale or purchase of a product. The only thing I can figure is that it's some ridiculous way to keep lazy people who make crappy, ugly icons for their products from cluttering the catalogue with... crappy, ugly icons. That's literally the only purpose I can see it serving and it does a terrible job of it because the standardized icons are barely better than a lazy, ugly icon.

Posted by “jazzKat” on May 12, 2022.

There's a possible correlation to the introduction of the new VIP tiers which seem to change the way people interact with IMVU... it's a more gamified experience now rather than in the caty? Rewards for everything, which are spent on what? Gamifying get a certain degree of user retention but then has that resulted in catalogue visits dropping overall?

Posted by “Roy” on May 12, 2022.

I have to disagree in some aspects, but I understand it. It is kind of like New Coke. The shininess maps and enhanced lighting and features are amazing but a lot of older users are accustomed to "Classic".

I think a lot of mobile users using the new shop may not shop the same as we are used to either. Even putting in a creator name like mine...which is just "Roy" will show up people nicknamed Roy or have Roy in part of their username. Some other devs that have common type names could also have this happen to them or maybe even some more nefarious creators might change their nickname to something like "Yalla". Tags have been working the same as they used to either. For example if someone looks up "Roy" they might get things with the keyword "Royal". Thee types of changes may benefit if a customer does not remember a whole creator's name if they have numbers or something but it can affect some of the bigger creators who might feel like their name is being exploited even unintentionally.

Sorry that got into a bigger thing than I initially intended, but TLDR

Shop itself has changed, older creators used to doing or things being a certain way might be affected.

Posted by “Goldilocks” on May 12, 2022.

@FemmeDraven​ My sales, as well as my husband's (LestatDeLioncourt), have always been set to cash only. It is not just a drop in income, it is a drastic drop in overall sales. My husband's experience paints a grimmer picture than mine since he is a mesher, and I believe meshers paint a better overall view of what's going on with creators, on a larger scale (not just personally). Speaking for just myself, yes, I've experienced a drastic drop in sales, too. If my ability to earn any type of income on here is taken away, it will pretty much take away any reason for me to be on this site anymore because new people are just interested in "hooking up," as I've come to witness, firsthand, as a Greeter. New users that I meet are also typically using a phone, which pretty much eliminates any need to buy any rooms or furniture since they have a vast array of public rooms they can visit. Also, the search engines for shopping are TERRIBLE, to put it mildly. In short, I was not surprised to read RigsK's report that the data does show a general decrease in spending. I'd like to know what customers are spending their money on, if not on catalog products.

On a side note... Whose "brilliant" idea was it to standardize catalog icons?! Store fronts in real life AND online are all diverse and reflect the uniqueness of each shop owner. The standardized icons look terrible and take away, in my opinion, from the whole shopping experience. SMH

Posted by “FemmeDraven” on May 12, 2022.

I personally wouldn't trust that enough to test it out. First off, who can afford to avoid cashing out for several months if this is how they earn a living and second, if you don't cash out for several months what happens if that wasn't true and now you've not only missed out on several months of income but you can't get everything owed to you?

Posted by “Ahndante” on May 12, 2022.

Mhm, when the MASA was first introduced we were promised that if you went without cashing out for several months at a time you'd still be able to collect all of that income despite it exceeding your current MASA cap. I've never met anyone brave enough to test that out.

Posted by “FemmeDraven” on May 12, 2022.

And this begs the question, are those with their settings to earn cash or a higher percentage of cash to credits having their items pushed to the back of the catalog to slow down their sales so IMVU doesn't have to pay out as much real money? I mean, they already limit the amount a person can get of their own money through MASA caps. I've said this before...I personally know one creator who's got over 100K in their account and as sales drop their MASA will go lower so they'll never be able to get everything owed to them.

Posted by “Ahndante” on May 12, 2022.

There is a HUGE confirmed correlation between changing your cash/credits percentage earning to earnings. I have tested this multiple times in the past six months to a year. If I switch to 100% cash my sales skyrocket for a couple days and then slowly dip back down to low sales. If I switch to 100% credits my sales stay consistently high for weeks, but I'm only earning credits so it's basically useless to me.

Every. Single. Time.

Every time I change my ratio my earnings go up for a bit, almost back to how high they were a year or two ago, and then slowly return to the pitiful levels they've been for the last year or so over the course of about a week.

Posted by “FemmeDraven” on May 12, 2022.

I feel awful for the folks who depend on IMVU for an actual income. I'm currently watching my friends jump ship and head to that other virtual world

Posted by “Yalla” on May 12, 2022.

I definitely think something is wrong with the system, along with some other background things. Having a drop of 70-80% is super alarming and is not normal to me.

This could be due to internal system error that doesn't register certain sales, shop not working for certain systems (I remember IMVU said creator ads couldn't be shown to Android users for the moment), or maybe people seem to be not as interested in the shop anymore and it has to do with the products shown on first pages.

I urge IMVU to please figure out what is going on with our sales. @RigsK​ 

Like many others, IMVU is my day job and my living, this is really scary times.

Posted by “Ahndante” on May 12, 2022.

My sales have been a disaster for about a year now. When I put out new things they bump, especially if I promote the new stuff on the Next Feed, but it only lasts a couple days and then they drop again. Sometimes they drop so low I'm making under 10$ a day, which isn't enough to do this full time. I've had to find other avenues to make money the past year, which has dramatically affected my ability to create products, which in turn just throttles the sales even more. No idea what's causing it, but I imagine a big part of why rooms and furniture don't sell anymore is because new accounts don't get free room slots to decorate/host anymore. It seems pointless to spend credits on rooms and furniture if you have to buy a room slot every time you want to publish your newest room and furniture set to hang out in. Not to mention the new client has a forced text character limit inside chat rooms that's something like 200 characters, which makes roleplaying almost obsolete, so everyone who used to buy rooms to host roleplaying campaigns has moved off platform to places like discord so they can continue to roleplay - if I'm not mistaken the roleplaying community was one of the biggest contributors to mass credit purchasing and spending in the shop and IMVU has pretty much made it impossible for them to move to their new platform, so they've abandoned us altogether. We really should be catering to the roleplayer community more, in my opinion.

Posted by “FemmeDraven” on May 12, 2022.

Oh, and @RoyMeshes​, overall sales are down but on top of that promo sales increased.