Big Sale--90% Off Everything

Well, the first-one-free has not worked, even with the signs on location, the place available, the L$500 weekly placement for advertisement, the event announcements, and the Xstreet and Onrez placement of all items. I can do more of this kind, which is advertise on billboards around SL. But, I have come to believe that there are two major problems. ONe of which is that there is a very small niche for paintings in SL. Paintings are for hanging on a wall, which not many people have. And secondly, for paintings, skin, and clothing, Pikake and I are out of style. Our taste is not that of most.

So, we are putting everything on sale--paintings, skins, clothes--90% off. That is a great deal, and will see if shoppers think so also.

WARNING: A NO BUY BUSINESSMAN AND BUSINESS

When a business man refuses to send you what you bought, what can you do? There is no SL Better Business agency to warn, no SL court to which to take the business, no general way of getting your money back. The only thing we can do is expose the business by word of mouth and through groups to which you belong. This I will now do for Digital Kaos. I bought an AO from him at Sexy Jesse's Animation and Pose Shop(see his profile and picks). I paid for it and did not receive it. I sent three IM and a notecard to him asking for the item, or my money back, with proof from my SL transaction list that I had bought it. I was ignored, received nothing, and so this warning.

Onward to XstreetSL

All items for sale in my House of Skin and Gallery are also now on XstreetSL (search by MarkMonet Thor). The virtue of this outlet is that one does not have to rent a store, can add a useful description to the items, and they are well organized to find what you want.

As to the House of Skin and Gallery, I went through three ways of generating visitors and sales. First, I announced through events that the first buy is free—just buy, and I would reimburse them. That got a lot of visitors, but no IM’s for a free item. So, I surveyed almost all the visitors (I have Super Greeter there, which records and sends me the names of all visitors) asking why the didn’t ask for a free item. Major reason was that it required too much trust that I would repay them.

So, changed this through the events list to IM me and I would send the item free. Got about as many visitors, and only 2-3 requests. Again I surveyed the visitors as to why so few, and got answers like it was too difficult, or nothing interesting. I guess the problem really was that visitors were spoiled by getting freebies laying around for the taking, and what I was doing was new.

Then, I stopped using events to get my message out, and left it to first-one- free signs. Left the advertising to the find places tab, and the classified advertising of all my items for 500L. I am getting about 2-3 visitors a day, and occasional requests for a free item. Now, will see how well we do through XstreetSL, with no first one free. The next step maybe to sharply reduce all prices—a big sale.

One step at a time.

A Men's Waterfall Outfit and Painting

A lot has been going on with my House of Skin and Gallery (link in sidebar). Will get to the details when I finish including all skins, clothes, and paintings/photos on X-Street SL

Have just put up for sale at $L200 in the House of Skin. It also is for sale in X-street SL also here


The outfit's is shown to the right , the picture of the waterfall painting to the left. It is also sold in both places at $L250. 

On matching color in Photoshop for SL

As you know, if you do skins and clothing for SL using Photoshop, there are three parts to match. One is the face down to the neck, the bottom of the neck to the stomach, and the stomach to the toes. This is especially difficult for skins, since skin color for all thee parts must match, and one must be careful that what ever lightness or darkness introduced (as by the dodge and burn tools) take account of these divisions. Regarding color, when I first started doing skins, I had a hard time matching colors.

I would use the eyedropper tool to get the color of one, and then the paint bucket tool to apply that color to the others. But, the colors were too often off a little, which only showed up when I uploaded to parts to SL (at a cost of L10 each upload). It took awhile for the simple solution to appear to me. All I needed to do was to drag and drop the color layer in one part into the two other two parts, and make sure that I selected it over the color that was there. So simple.

Pikake And New Skin Misty

I want to introduce Pikake Wylie. the "P" in M&P Designs, my SL partner, and my RW wife. I made a poster with her picture below. She makes the female skins while I do the male. She is also our landscaper, and layout artist. I do the paintings, posters, building, and clothes. Her latest is Misty, shown below, now for sale in our House of Skin.

We have tried to improve our skins two ways. One is to make them darker, or provide a darker alternative. The other, at Pikake's urging, is to show them with good hair that we bought for the poster, but not included in the sale. We had been using freebie hair that we did include. Pikake argued that the freebie hair cheapened the look of the skins.

On The SL Democide Museum

This museum is the most important aspect of my life in SL (link in sidebar). It is the only such museum in the world, not to mention SL. It chronicles through photographs, charts, and plots 20th century world democide (genocide and mass murder) and the solution to it, which is democratic freedom. The more democratic freedom a people have, the less likely they will be murdered by their government. Democracies do not kill their own people, whereas non-democracies have murdered well over 200 million people--many times more that died in combat in all the foreign and domestic wars during the same period.

This story and solution must be told, and the non-profit museum is my way of doing it. The problem has been how to get those in SL to visit and be informed by the museum. When I first set it up, I divided the informative material and major democide into alcoves and a second floor, with seminar table and chairs in the middle of the first floor. I tried then scheduling regular discussion meetings, but few people came, although well advertised. So, then I tried to hold a seminar, and again few attended. This is SL after all and a place of fun and enjoyment, which the museum sort of puts a damper on. But the museum is there, and word gets around about it, and I get about 4-5 visitors a day.

In building the museum I went well over my maximum prims, since there seemed enough empty offices in the non-profit sim to allow this. But they filled and I had to cut back on the prims I used. So the table, chairs, display board, and unnecessary decorations are gone. The museum is now as stark as the subject.

Anyway, I am always available for talks on democide, or to answer any questions people may have.

Photoshop Troubles

In my art work and making clothes and skins, I generally use Adobe Photoshop CS2 and 3. I used to make good use of painter, but found its layers very frustrating.

As to Photoshop. Adobe's treatment of customers is awful. Early this year I had to reload my system (Mac 4.11 at the time) because of the damage caused by viruse, and then had to have the computer repaired. And therefore I had to reload CS3, but then I could not activate it. I was informed by the program that I had reactivated too many photoshops already. (Adobe allows three activations,--I had two). There was no way to email Adobe for help and must have spent a day trying to find a way. Could not call them since I am partly deaf and my cellphone is not too clear. But, either give up CS3 or call, which I finally did. I managed to convince the technician on the other end to talk slowly and clearly. Then Adobe activated the program once I explained the problem.

Now, I have bought CS4. Of course, it won't install (I have a Mac with system 10.5.5 now). I have spent already a day trying all Adobe's recommendations found on its website for solving this problem. Nothing works. And I cannot contact them by email as with CS3. Customer service is only by phone or letter. Because of this, after many years of dealing with companies selling programs, I find Adobe is by far the worst.

And I did try the phone. I was put on hold with raucous music in the background, and I also tried to call very early and very late, which was recommended by the operator, but I was given the wrong times. So now I can only keep trying the phone in the middle of the day,since I already paid for Photoshop before finding out about this problem, and CS4 is a very good upgrade.