Reel Expression

Is there a point to resellers in SL other than making money off creators work? There has been a lot of buzz about this sort of thing and I’ve recieved an annoyingly high amount IMs from these people. I’m not talking about the people stealing but the “legit” kinds. Where they want to buy (at a discount) in bulk then resell at a mark up.

In RL the point of a reseller is so people who can not get to your area can buy the items you make. They buy in bulk, with a discount, then mark up the items. With that markup they cover the costs of advertising, property, and running the store. RL stores cost a lot more money and time to run then those in SL. They have to hire all sorts of people like managers, cashiers, sales reps, security, customer service, ect depending on how large of a store it is. Running a shop in SL is quite simple. Get some land, build a store, place out your items, possibly hire some customer service people, and then advertise. It is nothing near the commintment of time and resources it takes to run a RL store.

For instance, you make a film. You look for a distributer who gets a cut of the profit. Then they pay for the prints to be made and advertising, sell the prints at a mark up to cinemas who then advertise a bit more and mark up the tickets + sell overly priced snacks and drinks. Then the distrubuters make DvDs and sell them at a mark up to rental stores and shops. The stores then mark it up even further. While there are people making a lot more money off the constant mark ups then I’d personally like, at least it makes sense. In SL it just doesn’t.

In a place where the proximity of location doesn’t matter what’s really the point? When things are working correctly, if I want new hair I just pop over to ETD. There is no need to worry that Elika’s sim and my sim are technically far apart on the grid map.

The problem is and always has been, is that the advertising in SL is shit and more importantly finding anything in SL that is what you are looking for is probably one of the most frustrating experiences ever. Too many stores, too many people making crap, too much to choose from without much direction of where to go. How the bloody hell is resellers helping that?

Logic says that if you have 2 locations, you have 2x the chance for people to find you, but my experience counters it. In my almost 4 years of SL the only additional shop that has done any amount of good is the animation warehouse. Because that place makes bloody sense and works. Laggy for sure but has the largest selection of animators in SL.

But why would Joe Reseller’s location be of any more use than your permanant main store? Advertising in SL is still 90% via word of mouth or blog because of the crap shoot that is the quality of items.

Maybe I’m just jaded and lucky enough to have been noticed by enough people, but this make just no sense. Anyone have an opinion?

Dig it kats n kittens, insomnia has gotton the better of me for over 3 months now. I’ve always had and semi delt with insomnia for as long as I can remember, but it’s never been this bad or lasted this long.

There are many varring degress of insomnia. Some kinds are you can’t stay asleep long enough or wake up constantly all night but my kind is the heady can’t bloody fall asleep type. The sort where I’m falling asleep all day at my desk trying to do anything, but the second my head hits that pillow I’m wide awake and thinking about anything and everything. It’s called “sleep onset insomnia.”

Usually this happens every few nights and only for a couple of hours at most. Since early January it has been a constant. 5-16 hours just lying there wishing I could fall asleep. No matter what time it is or how long I’ve been awake. It’s becoming more and more frustrating after every passing day. Just laying there, not able to do much of anything because I’m so bloody tired but still unable to actually fall alseep.

A constant time shift in your body schedule seems to completly fuck up your system. Think about it, one day you wake up at 3pm, then next at 12am, then perhaps 2:30am and then 5:30am. You wake up confused at what day it is or what part of the day has already passed. Confused at how to fix it. Frustrated. That’s been my weekend in exact times. Not to mention pretty much what the entire year has been thus far.

First the sleep schedule gets all out of wack, then comes the eating schedule and the body gets even more confused. Oh how many times I’ve had dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner? How many times have I’ve just skipped dinner all together? How many times even have I had beer for breakfast due to waking up just before going out with mates? Easter I woke up at 5pm to find out I had to cook dinner for 7 people, 1/2 of which are vegatarians and the house competly stocked with wine for the feast.

3 + months of not eating well really only seems to work up til your mid 20’s I’ve found. At 30, your body seems to respond in very odd and uncomfortable ways. Including stomach flu, standard flu, and annoying allergy attacks.

My perfect sleep schedule is off by “normal” standards. But I don’t have a normal job, and I like working “off” hours. It’s probably why I’m much better suited at not having a normal job. I’m a night owl. I work best (creatively) at night. The tehcnical name for it is called “delayed sleep phase syndrome.” Its a pretty difficult thing to cure as its a syndrome with your body clock where your best sleeping times is after the “normal” times. Most people who do “fix” sleeping times revert back to their own body clock timing within a week. I have found that my best sleeping schedule is from 4am - noon after a long battle of trying to change that with sleep studies in my earlier years. I just wish right now that my body would finally fix itself, as the insomnia is something completly different.

Ok, wishing is all well and good but making my body do my bidding is another story. It’s not like I didn’t try and force myself to get on a schedule. Hell, I’ve actually gotton it to work twice now but it doesn’t seem to last. Everything that has ever worked in the past just doesn’t. Yesterday was my 10th all nighter since the new year. And I’m not talking fun clubbing all nighters, but the boring sit around and watch tv and movies kind. In the past, I’ve tried every type of sleeping pill out there and nothing seems to work except benadryl. But only the US kind as the UK version is non-sleepy. Has that worked at all? Nope. I’ve tried drinking. Heavy drinking seems to make me pass out but only for a few hours and waking up is not fun. Light drinking didn’t do much of anything at all, where usually a beer or 2 or a glass of wine or 2 used to work. Relaxing baths? Nothing. Watching a couple episodes of tv? Nothing.

I went to the doctor last week for stronger allergy pills and to discuss my increasingly frustrating insomnia. Last year you may remember my battle with allergies around this time with my eyes, and I’ve been starting to feel the starting of the same symptoms. I’ve never enjoyed talking to doctors about the insomnia thing. Usually they just prescribe pills which never work or put it off on sadness/stress/anxiety even if that’s never actually the case. Yes I have anxiety over the insomnia now which isn’t helping anything but it actually had to start getting bad before it could stress me out. Duh. I personally have serious issues with the common conceptions of insnomnia. When I’m sad, I have no problems sleeping. I sleep a lot when that happens. For stress/anxiety watching tv, taking baths, imagining “happy & soothing thoughts” (self hypnosis), acupressure, ect usually works.

In the end, he just gave me some pills that don’t help with falling asleep but make me sleep more and I’m even more tired when I’m awake. Fun fun. I’m still working on it and hopefully this will all be fixed so I can get all the many creative things I’ve got zooming around in my head out.

Cheers
Luth