Black Moon - Vanilla Sola Design

Last year I decided to leave SL for a while for several reasons. The main reason has been the death of a very close friend, the second reason was that I didn't want to go on with the stressful business I was keeping up at SL. My shop is not a small one and I had between 20 and 40 models working for me several months while I was in each day designing 12-16 hours and taking care of the models. Even though I dedicated so much of my time to SL I rarely had time to take care of anything else than designing itself. Apart from that I tried to design quality clothing, to do more than one skirt for each dress, not only different designed ones to vary the look but also several sizes to fit most avatars. My opinion was if anyone pays this customer has to be absolutely happy with the design he gets, so I often even made the clothes fit to the customers bodies if needed, of course without charging any extra fees. The customers have been astonished because they didn't find that service before.

I have had some really cute and lovely models and it was a part of my business to ask them to only model for our shop because they have had been representing my design and like real life designers got their top models I had mine. But some of the models did of course cheat and lie to me. Unfortunately for them I always knew it and though I didn't mention it for a while to see if they would go on abusing my patience, I never judge by one lapse. But if someone continuously tried to deceive me I threw that person finally out. Fortunately it had been very few who did really try to use me and those do now work at a designer who tried to do some drama on my blog last year, how could I complain. The stunning thing happened as I came back to SL last december, when most of my nice models suddenly came back to my shop and pushed up my traffic within a few weeks. I didn't expect anyone of them to come back, because I had to ask already a year before for ridiculous workinghours, 60hours minimum a week AFK modelling during the nights to keep my shop and traffic up.

You can be a brilliant designer at SL, if your place is at search at a very low place no one will find you except any friend leads him to that shop. By this LL forced the designers to have either models, or to have a club running on the same land their shop is located on. Another common method is to put in bots that do the traffic you needed not to drown totally. Well and you know best, if you design yourself that it is meanwhile not easy to pay your fee and earn enough because that economy crisis really forced some shops to close already. In earlier days I was worried about people stealing my ideas and redesigning my dresses, but meanwhile I came to realize that most of them have already disappeared from SL because they were not successful. They really didn't understand that you can steal the Eiffel Tower and rebuild it anywhere else, but the people will still love Paris and prefer going there. That's with most copies like that, they are simply not new enough or just not the same quality like the original, so nowadays I don't worry about designers who build their business on low quality copies. But what still concerns me are my models because they are really sweeties, the ones who came back didn't have to do that many hours anymore. Meanwhile I was forced to put bots into my shop to not have that much work anymore myself and because I didn't want to keep asking for so much. I was more than amazed that my Black Moon ladies did put in a lot of hours again just because they love the design, felt so comfy at my shop and we had such fun in there. After a few weeks I had an email by LL that I would have been caught that I would use bots and that this wouldn't be allowed anymore.

You need to know that I had submitted a ticket a year ago and asked the support if bots would be allowed. I never had any answer, work in progress for a year??? My husband went then to the life chat at the support to ask and had the answer that it would be allowed, otherwise we wouldn't have placed any bots at my shop at all. For the time I was not at SL the bots were great to just keep a bit of traffic up. You can imagine how dumb I looked reading now this email that they changed the terms of service but till then I was still quite happy about this news. But then my husband went again to the support life chat and what he had to read then was just unbelievable. The support told him no model may stay at my shop, because all of them cheat on traffic and so they'd need all to register as bots so that LL doesn't count their traffic. HAHA! Best is yet to come: They even asked us, the two of us, the landowners to register as bots, because we stay for a longer time on our property to do our work! We both pay a premium account, we additionally pay the land we have the shop and our working space on and we should register ourselves as bots just to not be counted against traffic on the property we pay for! Are they serious? It seems they are! We ain't no bots and we can resist to register as such, if they suspend us from SL because of that then bye bye LL and SL, then we will let them simply remove us but we won't play, work and pay to be treated as bots! You just need to think about that whole traffic nonsense, LL has created the search traffic list and forced the designers to fight for any bit of traffic they can get. Believe me I’d be glad if I didn’t have to participate in that race for numbers. But put yourself in a designers shoes and consider that land fees in SL are not exactly cheap, and offering SL residents a nice shopping ambience costs its fair share. On top of these investments there is the huge amount of time I have put into my work.

In today’s both RL and SL economic situation running a business is a hard job. Becoming a serious designer in SL means to make SL a RL full time job. But that is not possible if you’re barely able to pay the fees charged for virtual land from your income. The only choice you have in order to pay your bills is to make yourself recognized by staying among the top places in search. If now all designers and places would be treated equally I’d welcome the most recent change to prohibit measures to increase your traffic. Though there are many places heavily gambling traffic but being ignored by LL obviously on purpose. If you don’t believe me look at the top places in search. And ask yourself how you can get 50k and more traffic if you, your whole staff (including models, DJs, hosts) are registered as bots and not counted against traffic? The answer is simple – you can’t!

The unfair thing is that there are still bots that they can't detect, those run through a place to do the traffic, they don't stay. Those are and will still be used and if you look into search you'll see who uses them. They do make those who can't pay them leave SL. Is this the intention of LL to make only the rich ones stay? I have no problem to leave SL because I don't need it, neither finacially, nor in any other way. But I like the platform and I see potential in it unfortunately this potential will be stifled by LLs business manners. Still we are their customers and paying THEIR wages to provide a service. Nowadays they rather like to play god and seem to forget that the users are what keeps SL alive. So how could I ask any friend who wishes to stay and talk with me for some hours to register as a bot because he is on my land and does traffic? Bots aren't human being to my understanding and if LL doesn't want the humans to do traffic they might risk that there won't be any humans doing anywhere anymore any traffic soon.

I call on LL to rethink their actions and start treating users equally or SL might become a lifeless digital desert very soon.

And another time we added some dresses at our shop. A black satin dress with flowers at it's skirt and black lace.
A Peach Salsa Dress, that is designed in the typical mix and match tradition of Black Moon designs. One dress but several possibilities to vary your look.
An awesome white lace dress called lacepassion with lots of pieces, that's too beautiful to only use it for a wedding.

And a black evening gown called After Midnight, it has a corset, diamonds on its skirt and an elegant collar. To take a closer look click on the pictures please. A golden shimmering gown with sequine trims and brocade fabric.
And finally another white evening dress with lace
and tulle and roses ar