A bit of a rant

I know that times are hard in this economy and it's beginning to affect business and profits and the like in SL. I get that a lot of people make their living from content creation and that something like this is a serious blow to real incomes, especially with the summer slump. People are looking or someone to blame and instead of blaming the economy, or the practices that helped start us off on the road to recession, in SL they blame two things. Freebie and low priced content.

I am one of these people who loves to create these two things. I started creating in SL because as far as jewellery was concerned I always ended up looking for things that just...didn't exist. So I set out to create them and in time people noticed my creations and asked if I was selling them. Because of them, I started doing just that. But from the start this has always been a hobby and I never intended to make a huge income from it - hell, even if I sold one item a day for the next ten years I probably wouldn't cover the cost of textures, sculpties, tools, scripts, animations and all that associated stuff.

So why do I do it?

Low priced stuff - Everything in my shop is 10L. Furniture, jewellery, accessories and someday, shoes. All 10L. Apparently I am the devil for doing this because I create everything to the best of my ability and put it up for cheap. As I've stated, I do this as a hobby, I don't want or need to make an income from this. But we were all newbs once too and a lot of freebie jewellery (at least when I started) was badly made, badly textured and badly adjusted. But most of all it contained one of my pet peeves - bling. I hate bling with a passion but that's a rant for another day. I set out to create a line of cheap but classy jewellery that a new person or even an alt can just come along and buy without the fear that it's resell/business in a box stuff, blinging or just horrible. And it's something I've always believed that people should not have to pay thousands just to get a necklace that doesn't bling.

Freebies - I'm a generous person by my nature and I love to give people things. That's all that needs to be said really. My free stuff is full versions of things or functional, decorative demos. For example, my Sari inspired table. The full version for 10L is scripted to change textures. The free version is not. It's still functional and works just like a regular table would. It doesn't have a giant flashing texture that says DEMO on it and it's basically just a less shiny and fancy version of the full version. People like that.

I actually find it a little funny that people blame cheap content creators for their declining sales. Mine aren't exactly great either. In fact I am very lucky if I get one sale a week. My one sale gets me 10L. Your one sale gets you 100-10,000, depending on what your business is. It might only be one sale but if money is what you care about then I'm the one losing out here. But I don't care. I will do this and continue to do it because it's fun and for no other reason. Nothing anyone can say will change the reasons why I started, and the reasons I will continue, regardless of the barriers in my way.