As some of you know, I have been offline a bit recently due to a RL injury to my wrist that has made it nigh on impossible for me to use a computer comfortably…

I finally made it back to my digital life today only to discover this announcement from Linden Labs regarding items set for sale on Xstreet SL!

I have been a loyal merchant on Xstreet SL even from back in the days when it was humble little Secondlfe Exchange, so was shocked to see that they are now going to cream what little profit I make from my  items as my ethos has always been high level quaility for minimum expenditure to help those that don’t have a lot of L$ sloshing around. I have many items, most under 50L$ on Xstreet SL which they are now planning on charging me 10L$ a month (per item) for me to list them – I have over 300 items, and do not make anything like the 3000L$ a month needed to list them.

I refuse to put up my prices to “absorb” this cost – mainly coz this wouldn’t help anyhow – I just don’t sell the volume of items needed to cover the new costs.  I am simply going to be pulling  most of my items from Xstreet SL.  It wouldn’t seem so unfair for little fish like me if the charge was a one off “listing activation” fee, and they continued charging a commission on items sold (which I have no issue with) but for now, I will be looking at moving all my items over to other SL online marketplaces. I will add links for you all once I have found and set up a suitable replacement to Xstreet SL.

I urge all you other merchants that use this “service” to do the same, maybe if enough of us bail out they will see the error in their thinking and come up with a fairer solution for those of us that don’t like to charge the earth for our goods!!!!

I intend, at least for now, to leave a few of my best sellers up as an advert, but I am not looking at keeping many on there, and I will re-assess this in a few months. I do understand that they need to make money, they are a business, but also, we, the content creators, are an important source of income for them too, if they drive out the little guys like me, who will become the next big players?