Archive for the ‘economy’ Category

Today, an email went out to those registered at IMVUSale.com to the tune of this…

Our apologies, as much as we are working on sales we still have over 70 million credits stacked up, even higher than last month.

Imvu’s printing too much money again, giving away free credits for quizzes, contests and running sales with lower prices than us resellers do. Yet they still fail to shut down at least 12 fraud websites that are currently SELLING stolen credits at 30-38 per 100k. We really can’t do much about it until they stop this none-sense. Buying price is lowered to $39 per 100k, hope you understand the difficulty we are facing, hopefully the holiday season will bring some light.

Resellers are teaming up on protesting imvu’s recent financial decisions already, it should take some effect.

Sadly, I fear that a lot of resellers will soon face the same problems. Actually, my own credit partner DevCredits.com has already felt some pinching in the last six months or so as we frantically try to sell credits to whomever we possible can so that Tidy can continue to purchase credits from us at the rate of $46/100k. It’s been hard.

IMVU has been really pushing sales on their credits thus undercutting the resellers with ease. After all, IMVU can produce all the credits they want and sell them at whatever price they choose. And the more they do this, the less developers are paid. Need I direct you back to my post about the decline of IMVU and potential earnings?

I don’t need to say much more than what the email from IMVUSale has covered. Sad, sad day for developers.

Looks like the real world economy is starting to grossly effect our virtual economy. It was expected, but for lack of better words – it still really sucks.

Seems every week (if not more often) the big topic in the CCGen Forums is “Who’s Buying Credits?” With each passing day, it’s becoming more difficult to sell one’s credits to a registered reseller. Why? Because with no customers to buy the credits already in circulation, resellers can’t afford to take on any more.

There are the lucky few who are partnered with the larger reselling companies that so far are guaranteed their credits will be purchased. But for the rest of the content creating community, they are stuck with large amounts of credits and nothing to do with them but sit and stare at the growing number.

It won’t be long before the price of credits drops drastically. That isn’t as good as it sounds. Right now, the average resell rate is $46 per 100k. That’s not a lot of money. The lower the demand, the less value the credits hold – which means the less value developers hold.

What can we do as a community to help fix the economy? For starters, we can all get together and do our best to advertise for the credit resellers. Even if you aren’t partnered with a particular company, it’s a good idea to support your favorites – run some shout outs, tell your friends, etc. Every little bit helps! Additionally, it’s a good idea to help support the entire community by advertising IMVU. More new faces means an opportunity for us all! More people to buy more credits!

It’s no surprise that we are in an economic recession – no matter where you live in the world it seems. But seeing as IMVU is an American based company, we’ll just focus on that.

Times are hard here. We’re literally seeing one of the worst recessions since the Depression Era. Countless people are without jobs. Some people are losing their homes because they can’t afford their mortgage and property taxes this year. Companies are downsizing due to their inability to pay all of their workers and countless businesses will shut down this year. With everyone tightening their belts, there is little (if any) extra money in budget for luxuries like buying credits to spend on virtual products.

What does this mean for members of the community (like myself) who create content in our virtual world in order to pay the bills? It means either finding a “real” job or expanding our horizons in any direction we can – including migrating to other worlds such as Second Life. In fact, you’ll find many of your favorite developers now – some have moved there permanently while others are working hard to create content in both worlds.

But for those of us sticking it out here on IMVU, it means a lot of hard work – not all of which seems to pay off. Big name developers like Lollirot once claimed to make 100k in a day. We know those numbers are possible. We’ve seen many developers achieve such numbers in the “glory days” and the old Pro requirements dictated such numbers. But what about now?

Once upon a time, I myself made 60k daily and despite a much larger catalog with better products and more marketing, those numbers don’t seem to be possible any more. On average, a “big” developer like myself is looking at 25-30k per 24 hours on average from catalog sales. That’s not a lot of money considering the resell value of 100k is only $46. Meaning – despite how many hours I work, I wouldn’t make enough for a part time job these days. In order to make ends meet, I have had to start selling my graphic services in the form of File Sales in the Product & Content Request forum.

And what about Credit Resellers? Tidy of DevCredits.com has reported a significant drop in credit sales – a whopping 15% down from just last month. Credit Resellers are the lifeline of Content Creators who are looking to turn their hard work into cash. If they cannot find customers to sell our earned credits to, then the cycle comes to a screeching hault and Creators will go unpaid.

We’re in an interesting place right now. Only time will tell which way the door will swing. Let’s hope that in months to come, the recession will pass and IMVU will be returned to its glory days once again.

If interested, here is a list of some of the developers you can find on Second Life. Not all listed here are active and not all of them develop in SL.
►Pop
►Lassarina
►Lollirot
►Keef
►Mercuria
►MsOrgasmic
►Ewe
►Miranda
►Cindypoo
►Bitter
►CaptainLust
►Scarling
►Mechadollie