Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

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strannik zipper
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Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by strannik zipper »

So I have jumped on the bandwagon and switched from Podex to Gloebits on my grid. This is the first real working hypergrid currency, where I can pay tipjars or buy stuff in other grids. I also get Gloebits paid to me, some of which I would like to spend on Kitely market, but the cost (both in time and in fees) make this impractical. Is there any chance that Gloebits could be added as a currency to Kitely Market, besides the Kitely currency (useless to me) and PayPal? I would consider shopping and selling more on the market if so.

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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Starnnik,

The short answer is no, we will not be accepting Gloebits in Kitely Market.

To understand why, consider the math. Gloebits create a very high total transaction cost in the form of fees that are charged between the time a person buys them and the time the merchant sells them back for real money:

1) 2% transaction fee on each transaction made in Gloebits, even user-to-user.

2) 1 USD payout fee when selling Gloebits for USD.

3) 20% margin between how much a user buys Gloebits for (200 Gloebits per 1 USD) and how much the merchant gets when selling those Gloebits to turn them back to USD (250 Gloebits per 1 USD).

Here's an example:

Let's say you buy 50 USD worth of Gloebits. You'll get 10000 Gloebits in return. If you then used those 10000 Gloebits to pay a merchant then the merchant would only get 9800 Gloebits (200 Gloebits would be charged by Gloebits as the 2% transaction fee). If the merchant then wants to convert those Gloebits back to USD they'll get 38.20 USD sent to their PayPal account (9800 / 250 = 39.20 USD and then they'll be charged Gloebits' 1 USD payout fee). In other words, even when a merchant only chooses to pay out to real money after selling 50 USD worth of goods the merchant will only be sent 76.4 cents per dollar that was spent buying from them (a total of 23.6% in fees would have been paid to Gloebit).

This is already higher than Kitely's maximum charge of 20% on PayPal transactions, even without taking into consideration how much we would have needed to charge for accepting Gloebits as a payment option. Our current sales commission for anything not paid for in Kitely Credits is 20% of the USD value of what the buyer pays. Due to the 2% transaction fee and 20% margin that Gloebit charges this means we would need to charge a 25.51% sales commission on sales made using Gloebits for us to get 20% of what the buyer paid in USD.

This would leave the merchant in the previous example with just 56 cents per dollar that was spent buying from them in Gloebits, compared to 80 cents per dollar that Kitely Market gives them when they list their items for sale in USD. There is no reason merchants should accept such fees and we're not going to hurt Kitely Market merchants just because there are people who prefer paying with Gloebits (which they mostly acquire using PayPal) rather than paying directly using PayPal on Kitely Market.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Brayla Sana »

Sell in USD. It's what I do. I also have a few items that sell for KC's as well - so I have a stash of KC's in my account for Kitely worlds.

While there is a part of me that would like Gloebits to be accepted in Kitely due to their convenience - there are also down-sides to having a traded currency inworld instead of a game currency. One benefit to having a "game currency" like KC instead of a traded currency like Gloebits is that you can have games of chance on your sim without worrying about banking or gambling regulations.

Check here https://www.kitely.com/market?wt=os&q=paypal for some inworld paypal options sold on the Kitely Market.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Chris Namaste »

thx for this info,ilan,its sooo interesting to know!:)
yes, i do same as Brayla does (first phrase), lots of kitely citisens love to buy in kc's as well,and when i sell for kc's its always a smaller price then for usd export 'cos its export',
as many merchants still do.
after reading all this info, im sooo relieved kitely wont accept gloebits -cos if we, artists, merchants etc,- could choose,i wldnt sell in gloebits, never did & never (plan to) do :)
chris

ps to starnik : aftera ll its always usd - eur, i donno why many pple love to pay in gloebits (its often unstable in value as well), isnt it the same to just buy what u like in that currency :)
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Luna Lunaria »

I have been on the SL Marketplace for many years and it does brisk sales. And for the last 6 weeks my gloebits store on my region has been open and it is outperforming even SL Marketplace (that was a total surprise). However, my Kitely store, that sells many of the same items as my gloebits store, all exportable, barely limps along, even though it has been open for 2 years. So in my case, even though my Kitely store does well with Kitely residents, there is a disconnect between my Kitely store and the hypergrid, and I have yet to identify why that is. As a customer, I have an aversion to using Paypal as a virtual payment option, since it exposes my RL identity to multiple entities that may or may not be secure, so for that reason I do not offer it as a payment option at my region store. As a Kitely merchant I appreciate having some kind of exchange option for real currency, but then it can take up to 2 months for Kitely to send payouts. KC are are not exchangeable for anything except items on their market, in their region stores, or as payment for Kitely in world fees. Gloebits are exchangeable for real currency and the payouts to paypal are immediate, so yes, I am willing to pay an extra fee for that kind of flexibility. Those fees are nothing compared to what I pay in the SL Marketplace. Gloebits are very convenient for customers as well, since they can be used on multiple grids, and making things convenient and affordable for my customers matters more to me than anything else. That's the reason I offer both KC and Paypal as payment options on the Kitely Market, even though the KC do not benefit me at all.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Hi Luna,

Kitely acts as a middleman in all Kitely Market transaction so that neither the buyer nor the seller get each other's PayPal information. The only party that sees that PayPal information is Kitely and we don't transfer it to any third party. It's exactly the same as when you use PayPal to buy or use Gloebits, in both cases you trust a single company to act as a middleman in transactions between your avatar and other avatars.

There is a minimum payout amount and payouts are made only for sales revenue that has cleared. It doesn't take two months to get money from Kitely Market when you have frequent enough sales and when you do you get a weekly payout from Kitely. See: https://kitely.atlassian.net/wiki/space ... arket+Fees

Regarding your sales volume, 78% of Kitely Market sales are made to other grids and the great majority of sales to other grids are done by people using PayPal directly. If you have decent sales to Kitely users but low ones to other grids then it's likely that you're missing out on the majority of sales you could be making in Kitely Market. The most likely reason being that people from other grids are less aware of your products in Kitely Market. I'd therefore recommend you advertise your Kitely Market products in locations where your non-Kitely customers hang out. You can do that in the various Google+ groups, on Hypergrid business, and on other social networks. You can also grab their attention when they are browsing Kitely Market by using our built-in advertising system to advertise in Kitely Market itself.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Luna Lunaria »

Hi Ilan,

I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll invest in some advertising on Kitely and do some Kitely market ads on social media (Google+ is now defunct for all practical purposes). At the end of a couple of months I'll share my results with you here in general, and pass my spreadsheet on to you privately.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Ilan Tochner »

Great, I'll look forward to your report.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Luna Lunaria »

Here's my report:

So after eight months of trying any and every form of advertising for the Kitely store, the only place that worked was my store region listing on Opensimworld.com, and only because my physical store is listed there as a Gloebit shopping destination. I included the link to my store on the Kitely Market in all of my posts for that region listing, and saw a significant increase in both Kitely sales and Kitely page views after solely concentrating there. I've had several customers who came to my physical store on Ourgrid Life after searching Opensimworld, who then bought that product from my Kitely Market store online. I think it would be mutually beneficial for both of us to be able to add my Opensimworld link to my Kitely listings, but your TOS currently prevents that.

MeWe was a complete bust, and no amount of ad-spamming there produced any quantifiable results. I had the same results on Facebook and on multiple Discord channels. Hypergrid Business was useful for their page of Gloebit shopping areas that I am now listed on, otherwise the ads there generated no additional traffic.
Last edited by Luna Lunaria on Sun Sep 08, 2019 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Will Gloebits be supported in Kitely Market?

Post by Luna Lunaria »

Addendum:

I took out several Kitely Market ads over a few months. I saw a slight bump in page views, but nothing significant justified the 10,000+ KC I used to pay for them. But what else was I going to do with all that KC just lying around except donate it to some worthy causes inside Kitely. That's what I was doing with the KC before, and that's worth more than the ads.
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