Author: Ilan Tochner

Kitely Market is an advanced marketplace for virtual goods. Currently Kitely Market serves all Hypergrid-enabled OpenSim grids, but our ultimate goal is to serve everyone in the Metaverse. We already announced that Kitely Market will support delivery to High Fidelity once that platform matures sufficiently, and we intend to broaden our marketplace’s reach even further as additional virtual reality platforms become available.

The more people use Kitely Market, the better it works: more buyers lead to more sellers and more content, which lead to more buyers, and so on. Therefore, spreading the word about Kitely Market helps everyone. To help promote Kitely Market, we created a short video that shows how it works for both buyers and sellers. Please Like this video; share it in as many places as possible; embed it in your blog; etc. If you’re willing, please go to the video’s YouTube page and write a rave review before you share the link to it. 😉

Kitely Market is the leading metaverse marketplace, serving all Hypergrid-enabled destinations as well as several closed OpenSim grids. However, not everyone knows that, so we’ve decided to start advertising Kitely Market on virtual-world related websites to help spread the word.

Our advertising campaign will showcase the high-quality products that can be found on Kitely Market and delivered to the metaverse. If you’re a Kitely Market merchant and you want to get free exposure for your products then read this post to find out how to get them included in our advertising campaign.

What do the ads look like?

Here are some examples of ads that will be included in our advertising campaign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How does this work?

We created several templates for the different ad sizes that we’ll use. Each template includes an empty area where merchants can insert an image of one or more of their products. Create ads by combining these templates and your products, and then send them to us (the details are explained below). We’ll include in the advertising campaign several dozen of the best ads that are submitted to us.

All the ads will lead to the Kitely Market front page, overlaid with a message that introduces the visitor to Kitely Market and its benefits for buying and selling content on the metaverse.

We don’t guarantee that all the submitted ads will be used in the advertising campaign, because we can only show a limited number of ads. We’ll select which ads to use based on how good the products in them look; uniqueness (we want to highlight a diversity of items); and effectiveness (how often the ads are clicked). We may add or remove ads from the advertising campaign at any time, or change their frequency of rotation. We may also discontinue the campaign.

We promise that any submission that you send to us will be given serious consideration, and that we’ll let you know whether it has been selected for inclusion in the advertising campaign. Note that ads that are selected for inclusion may not appear immediately on the websites that we advertise on, because there’s a rotation of ads and it may take some time before your ad’s turn comes up.

How do I create ads?

1. Select and pose your product

• Select the product that you want to include in the ad. Most ads will show only one product, but you may also choose to display several products in a single ad if you can make them look good together.
• The ad must show the items as they appear in-world, after having been delivered from Kitely Market. You can create a montage of several items, but don’t modify the items to include elements which they don’t come with. An exception is made for elements that are necessary in order to show the item. For example, in order to show a piece of clothing you must show it on an avatar, and the avatar will need to wear other pieces of clothing in order to avoid being naked. If you’re uncertain which additional elements are acceptable then ask us via this forum thread.
• Only products with a General or Moderate maturity rating may be submitted. See our Maturity Rating Guidelines for information about maturity ratings.
• The slogan we’re using in the ad campaign is “We deliver to the Metaverse”, so only products that are sold in Kitely Market with the Export permission may be submitted.

2. Capture and process an image

• The most important criterion for inclusion in the advertising campaign is that the products should look good in the ad. Place your product against a white background; set the viewer to Ultra graphics quality; turn on anti-aliasing; and then capture the image. After the capture, crop the image so that the item appears with no visible cropping artifacts, and its edges are anti-aliased. The image must not appear fuzzy, jagged, or otherwise deformed.
• The image must not include any logo, trademark, or brand name. Only a clean image of the items.

3. Download the ad templates

We’ve created four ad templates, corresponding to the four ad sizes that we’ll use. Download the templates as a ZIP file here. Note that the ad templates are copyrighted and property of Kitely; you may only use them for emailing us proposals as described below.

4. Insert the image into the templates

• Select which ad templates to use. Ideally we would like to get each ad in all four sizes, but if your products don’t fit then you may choose to use only some of the templates.
• The templates are Photoshop files. You can edit them using either Photoshop or Gimp. Insert your image into the layer called “PLACE ITEM HERE”. The item(s) must be centered between the logo and the slogan.
• Don’t change any of the other layers.

5. Send us your ads

Send us the final ad image(s) via email. You may send us multiple submissions if they’re for different items, but please don’t send us multiple submissions for the same item with slight changes; submit only the option that you think looks best. If you do send multiple submissions then send only one ad per email.

Submission emails must include the following information:

To: kitely-market-ad-campaign@kitely.com

Subject: Ad Submission – Your Name – Product Names

For example:

Ad Submission – Ilan Tochner – Beachball, Plastic Bucket

Message Body:

In the message body you give us legal permission to use your submission in our advertising campaign. We also need to verify that the items you included are indeed sold in Kitely Market with the Export permission. Insert the following text into the email, replacing your details in the underlined sections:

I, Your Full Name, hereby grant to Kitely Ltd. the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use any and all parts of the images sent in the attached modified templates for the purpose of promoting Kitely’s services in all formats and on or through any media.

Items included in the ad:

URL to Product 1
URL to Product 2
Etc.

For example:

I, Ilan Tochner, hereby grant to Kitely Ltd. the non-exclusive, unrestricted, unconditional, unlimited, worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, and cost-free right and license to use any and all parts of the images sent in the attached modified templates for the purpose of promoting Kitely’s services in all formats and on or through any media.

Items included in the ad:

https://www.kitely.com/market/product/123456/Beachball

https://www.kitely.com/market/product/123456/Plastic-Bucket

Email Attachments:

Rename each modified template file to Your Name – Product Names (WidthxHeight).psd . Attach these files to the email.

For example (in this example only 3 of the 4 ad sizes were used):

Ilan Tochner – Beachball, Plastic Bucket (728×90).psd
Ilan Tochner – Beachball, Plastic Bucket (160×600).psd
Ilan Tochner – Beachball, Plastic Bucket (300×250).psd

It Takes a Village

Several people from the Kitely community volunteered their time to help develop this campaign. We want to give special thanks to Dot Matrix, who helped modify our company logo to create the Kitely Market logo, and to Tocy Sweet, who helped create the templates’ graphical design and the example ads shown above. We also wish to thank the various other people who participated in the Kitely Community Meetings during which we discussed how to best present Kitely’s benefits to potential merchants and buyers.

Virtual Reality is coming and it’s kickstarting the Metaverse. By the nature of the Metaverse, multiple virtual world platforms will compete for market share. This means that the Metaverse will be based on many technologies, which will make it difficult for content creators to reach and support all of their potential customers. Mass-market end users will need content delivered directly to their avatars on whatever virtual environment they are using, instead of being sold downloadable files that they have to install themselves, as other 3D content marketplaces do.

This is where Kitely Market comes in. Kitely Market is a virtual goods marketplace that is designed to enable content creators to serve avatars from all across the Metaverse from a single online store. Its mission is to create a critical mass of content, merchants and buyers to help the Metaverse evolve from a collection of separate systems to a unified market that can attract more merchants, buyers, money, activity, and interest for everyone.

The following presentation introduces Kitely Market, discusses its many benefits for merchants, consumers and businesses across the Metaverse, and concludes with some insights gained from Kitely Market’s first year in business.

Here is the video:

Here are my slides:

High Fidelity

Kitely Market was designed from the beginning to be a multi-platform marketplace. To that end, a year ago we announced our content liberation front initiative for helping Second Life content creators prepare their content for sale to buyers outside of Second Life. At that time Kitely Market only worked inside the Kitely grid, but a few months later we expanded its scope significantly by allowing sales to avatars on any Hypergrid-enabled OpenSim grid. Today we’re announcing our intention to expand the scope of Kitely Market even further: Kitely Market will support delivery to the next-generation virtual worlds platform High Fidelity, once that system becomes mature enough to accept deliveries.

If you are a Second Life content creator then Kitely Market and the content migration tools that it provides can help you prepare your content for monetization outside of Second Life. You can use Kitely Market today to sell to hundreds of Hypergrid-enabled grids from one online store, and soon you’ll be able to use that same store to sell to users of other virtual world platforms as well. As Kitely Market adds support for more virtual worlds, your items will gain a larger market. To get started, see: The Content Liberation Front

Content Liberation Front update

Kitely Market is one of our main assets and we’ve been working hard to make it into the best multi-platform virtual-goods marketplace. There are many more features that we want to add to Kitely Market, so we need to prioritize what we work on. We’ve therefore decided not to spend time implementing the marketplace listing export functionality that we had described in our Content Liberation Front blog post. To date no merchant has requested to get this data, and we feel that investing our resources to support this functionality doesn’t make business sense. If there are any merchants that were counting on this data then they can send us a request (by email) and we’ll send them their listings’ metadata as a tab-delimited file. Since creating this data requires a time-consuming manual process, and we want to be able to focus our energy on the continued development of our services, we will only accept such requests until November 1, 2014.

Please keep in mind that this change affects only the listings metadata, but it doesn’t affect your ability to backup your actual items (the products themselves). You can backup your items whenever you want, in several ways: first, you can put them in a box in a Kitely world and export that world to an OpenSim Archive (OAR) file that is saved on your computer; second, you can send the items via the Hypergrid to your avatar on another grid.

OSGrid is OpenSim’s official development grid, and its existence is crucial for testing new OpenSim versions. Unfortunately more than a month ago the hard disks that were used to store all of the grid’s data crashed, and OSGrid has been offline ever since.

Recovering from that data loss has cost more than $4800, and the people that manage OSGrid have asked for donations to cover the expense. We’ve therefore decided to step up and donate $250 to OSGrid. If you’d like to support the development of OpenSim then please donate some money as well, by clicking this image:

Hypergrid Business is now holding its fifth annual OpenSim grid survey. Please help us attract additional people to the Kitely community by answering this short multiple choice survey. Last year many of you participated in the survey and, as a result, Kitely came out on top for “How do you rate this grid overall?”.  Your support helped Kitely grow and become the leading commercial provider of hypergrid-enabled regions. It also helped convince content creators to list their items in Kitely Market, which has given people from across the metaverse access to high quality content they couldn’t have easily acquired otherwise.

Thank you!

We’re announcing a change to how Metered Worlds work, and we’re naming this new option Premium Worlds. If you’re a Regular Account user who has Metered Worlds in your account then make sure to read this blog post.

UPDATE, June 19 2014:  due to some misunderstandings, we want to clarify that the changes described below only affect world managers. Users who visit Kitely worlds never have to pay, regardless of their account type, and this hasn’t changed.

Kitely offers two ways for world managers to pay for virtual worlds:

Fixed-Price Worlds – the world manager pays a fixed cost per month (starting at $14.95), and then never has to pay anything more to use the world. In particular, the world manager doesn’t need to pay when users visit the world.

Premium Worlds (formerly called Metered Worlds) – the world manager doesn’t pay a fixed cost per month to use these worlds, but instead pays a small fee for various actions performed on the world. In particular, when Regular Account and Hypergrid users visit the world, the world manager pays 1 KC / minute for each such user. (Premium Account users can visit Premium Worlds without costing the world manager anything.)

The change that we’re announcing today is that from now on only users with a Premium Account will be able to create Premium Worlds. That’s the reason that we renamed them (from “Metered Worlds”): to emphasize that having Premium Worlds is a benefit that is reserved for users with Premium Accounts.

Despite this change, there are still ways that users with a Regular Account can end up with a Premium World. E.g., if they created the world while they had a Premium Account, but later they downgraded to a Regular Account. In such cases we don’t delete the worlds: they remain in the users’ accounts. However, only users with a Premium Account will be able to visit them: Regular Account and Hypergrid users will be prevented from visiting a Premium World that belongs to a user with a Regular Account. Note that this includes the world manager herself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is Kitely making this change?

A: Premium Worlds are an insanely good deal, which no-one but Kitely offers because only a company that automatically provisions cloud computing resources like we do can afford to provide so many virtual worlds for such a low price. However, it turns out that the deal was a little too insane on our part, as our profits on Metered Worlds are measured in cents per active user-hour. This would have been sufficient if we had tens of thousands of active users, but we don’t, and so the clear preference of Regular Account users to use Metered Worlds instead of Fixed-Price Worlds deprived us of the revenue that we need to grow the company. By requiring a Premium Account in order to create Premium Worlds we will receive some recurring revenue from each active Kitely world owner, thus improving our financial standing and long-term viability.

Even after this change Premium Worlds are still by far the cheapest way to get many virtual worlds, since you can get 5 full-size regions with 100,000 prims each for just $19.95 / month (plus a few KC when Regular Account and Hypergrid users visit these worlds).

Q: Does this change affect me?

A: If you only visit other people’s worlds, but don’t own your own worlds, then this change doesn’t affect you at all. The rest of this FAQ is only relevant for world managers.

If you have a Premium Account then this change doesn’t affect you either (even if you do manage your own worlds).

If you have a Regular Account but your worlds are all Fixed-Price Worlds then this change will be barely noticeable. The only change you’ll feel is if you Copy one of your worlds, because the new copy is always a Premium World, and as a Regular Account user you won’t be able to visit it. But the copied world can still serve as a snapshot of the state of your world, and you can Export it, or change it to a Fixed-Price World later.

If you have a Regular Account and you own any Premium Worlds then you will no longer be able to visit your worlds, nor allow other users to visit them (except for users with a Premium Account). See the next question for what you should do.

Q: I have a Regular Account, and I own some Premium Worlds. What are my options?

A: Your first option is to upgrade to a Premium Account ($19.95 / month). This will allow you to create Premium Worlds, and to permit Regular Account and Hypergrid users to visit your Premium Worlds. A Premium Account includes 5 free premium regions, so whatever you’re currently paying for world storage fees (10 KC / region / month) will probably be lower. A Premium Account will also allow you to visit your worlds for free (currently you pay 1 KC / minute for the time you spend in your worlds). And finally, a Premium Account lets you visit virtual worlds that are only open to users with a Premium Account (this is a common access restriction).

Your second option is to change your worlds to be Fixed-Price Worlds. E.g., a Starter World costs $14.95 / month. This will allow both yourself and anyone else to visit the world without costing you anything. If you choose this option then you can remain on the Regular Account.

And finally, you can choose to do nothing. We will not delete your Premium Worlds: they’ll remain in your account (as long as you pay the storage fees of 10 KC / region / month). However, since you have a Regular Account you will not be able to visit them – only users with a Premium Account will be able to visit these worlds.

Q: Does Kitely still provide a free trial period to new users who want to create a world?

A: Yes, if you’re a new user then you still get a free 1-region Premium World that will remain in your account indefinitely. We also give you 6 free hours in-world to try out your world. The free trial period allows you to visit your Premium World even though you have a Regular Account. However, this doesn’t extend to other users, so other users can only visit this world if they have a Premium Account. In addition, once the trial period ends you will not be able to visit your world anymore. If you upgrade to a Premium Account then you’ll be able to continue visiting your world, as well as allowing other users (not just users with a Premium Account) to visit it.

Please note that we don’t require you to give us your billing information in order to get this free trial period.

Q: When does this change take effect?

A: Users with a Regular Account can’t create new Premium Worlds: this change is effective immediately.

However, users with a Regular Account that have existing Premium Worlds in their account have a grace period until July 1, 2014. During this grace period, Regular Account and Hypergrid users will still be allowed to visit these worlds. On July 1 the full rules described above will take effect, so Regular Account and Hypergrid users will no longer be able to visit these worlds.

We’re happy to announce that we rolled out a new and improved version of the Kitely Welcome Center. This updated version of the main entry point to our grid is more visually impressive and includes more interactive elements that help visitors understand our service. Visitors to this virtual world can now find various dynamically-updated objects that will direct them to the content, locations and events that may interest them in Kitely.

It Takes a Village

The Kitely Welcome Center is the result of an ongoing community project that was first launched in 2013. The current round of improvements was made by the following people who generously contributed their time:

• Paislee Myrtle: was responsible for redevelopment of various areas, landscaping, replanting, information and avatar kiosk models, new secret area.
• Dundridge Dreadlow: created information and event board models, event system and scripting, Kitely Portal for featured worlds, continued work on showcase world boards, and other general awesomeness.
• Dot Matrix: is the ongoing project coordinator and also expanded the Community Meeting area.
• Min Tigerpaw: scripted menus for seating areas.
• Chav Paderborn: updated skins for avatar area.
• oopsee joseppe: updated clothes for avatar area.
• Deuce Halsey: contributed a crate of new tee-shirts and tops for the avatar area.
• Marstol Nitely: worked on photography and testing.
• Handy Low and Selby Evans: created a Google calendar for Kitely events.

The refreshed landscaping includes new items that were bought in Kitely Market from the following stores: 21strom, Worlds End Landscaping & Roleplay, Heart Botanicals and Brayla Sana Gallery. It also includes plants by Selea Core from the Hypergrid.

We want to give special thanks, yet again, to Dot Matrix who has been organizing this community project for many months now. She’s been doing a phenomenal job of getting everything and everyone in order and there would not have been a Kitely Welcome Center without her ongoing dedication and coordinating skills.

Thank you all past and current contributors who’ve helped build this wonderful virtual world. We welcome everyone to come and visit!

In the beginning of 2014 we’ll be making several significant changes to our offering, in order to simplify using Kitely and to provide even more affordable options for having your own virtual world. As part of these changes our existing plans (the Bronze, Silver and Gold Plans) will no longer be available. However, users who are Silver Plan or Gold Plan members at the beginning of the year will be able to keep their plans, and we’ll even upgrade them with significant benefits that will not be available to people who join Kitely later. If you aren’t already on one of these plans then order one before the end of the year so you don’t miss out on this limited-time offer.

The New Premium Account

On January 1 we’ll eliminate the Bronze, Silver and Gold Plans, and replace them with just one plan called the “Premium Account”. A Premium Account will cost $19.95/month, and will include 5 free time-based regions and the ability to visit any time-based world (your own or anyone else’s) for free. This last part means that groups of Premium users will be able to visit each other’s time-based worlds without anyone paying extra for these visits.

Bronze Plan Canceled

The Bronze Plan has been discontinued effective immediately, and is no longer available for order. Current Bronze Plan users will remain on the plan until the end of the month, at which time they will be automatically downgraded to a Regular Account (this is the account type that will replace the existing Free Plan). You don’t need to do anything to make this happen: shortly after this blog post is published we’ll automatically cancel the subscriptions of existing Bronze Plan users. If you’re paying us via PayPal then your PayPal subscription for our services will be canceled.

Silver and Gold Plans Grandfathered In, With Extra Benefits

The Silver and Gold Plans are also being discontinued. However, unlike the Bronze Plan, existing Silver and Gold Plan subscribers will be able to keep using their plan if they wish. So if you are a Silver or Gold Plan subscriber, and you do nothing, you will remain on your plan even after Jan 1. The plan will continue at the same price as before, for as long as you continue to pay for it on time. As an extra benefit we’ll even upgrade your plan, as follows:

If you are a Silver Plan holder then you’ll continue to pay $20/month for 10 free time-based regions, and we’ll also give you unlimited free visits to time-based worlds (instead of the 120 hours/month that you currently get).

If you are a Gold Plan holder then you’ll continue to pay $35/month for unlimited free visits to time-based worlds, and your plan will now include 30 free time-based regions (instead of the 20 regions that you currently get).

New Fixed-Price World Options

We’ll be replacing the current Unlimited Free Access world options with several new yet-to-be-announced fixed-price options. All existing Unlimited Free Access world users will be grandfathered in, so you’ll be able to choose whether to keep your existing world option or switch to one of the new options.

Some people are on the Bronze Plan and also have Unlimited Free Access worlds. If you are one of these people then we will send you an email regarding how you can keep your Unlimited Free Access worlds even after we’ve canceled your existing subscription.

Act Now! (Excuse the Cliche…)

We encourage you to take advantage of our limited-time offer to upgrade to the Silver Plan or Gold Plan before the end of the year and get the extra long-term benefits that will be provided exclusively to those plan holders. This offer will not be available after Dec. 31, so if you want these exclusive benefits you should order now.

Hypergrid Business is now holding its fourth annual OpenSim grid survey.  Last year many of you participated in the survey, and your support helped Kitely grow and become the biggest commercial provider of OpenSim regions. Please help us continue to expand the Kitely community by answering this short multiple choice survey. Thank you!