IMVU Creator Development: Web shop redesign and Paid Advertising.

I've been reading the IMVU forums about the newest 
Creator Development: Web shop redesign and Paid Advertising.

"...The main goal of this form of marketing is to simply get your name and brand out there by purchasing one of five available product spots on Shop’s main page. Each advertising spot will be a product from your catalog that represents that category. For example, if you have a beautiful necklace, you could submit that product to be chosen for the Accessories category. Creators may not have more than 1 product per category."

Rolled out on September 25th, there are gobs of forum pages, and it's clear the users would like IMVU to nail down their policies with a more defined hammer. The shady area being the actual duration of the ads. IMVU states it will be "about" a week.

"...generally speaking, we will advertise products for 7 days, but there might be instances where one phase runs for extra days. For example, if we start a phase on a Friday, we may not be able to update it until the Monday after the next Friday, making that phase 9 days instead of 7. This is to ensure our team has enough time to organize the next phase, including design work."

The cost of the ad: 8K credits or 1K developers tokens.

"...a nice idea , but a bit costly (8k for 1 week per product) i got a message to day saying developers that participated have seen a increase in sales , which is good . but is it worth the out lay of 8k per product and how many do actually go to the web store?"

It's being touted as a "Marketing Opportunity", but many posters are concerned IMVU will show favoritism toward certain creators/developers as they have in the past.

"...I'm very interested to see how this tests out, and how it prices out. The last time there was a 'pay for advert' it seemed priced for wealthy devs only.

I think the layout looks nice. The page is definitely more attractive now. I'm glad to see the web catalog being presented better, but fixing the catalog as a whole would be awesome, too, you know? "

The fall themed areas included in this redesign are:

• Shoes: male and female
• Tops: male and female
• Accessories: male and female
•  Furniture 
•  Rooms 

My thoughts:

IMVU has a thriving economy. At first glance my gut reaction was IMVU wants to pull back some credits into its Credit Federal Reserve. With so many 3rd party (discounted) sellers it would seem IMVU is trying to re-harness credits. And yes, some people do still buy credits from IMVU at Full Price! The kicker for the developers is this: Many people are buying these Advertised items with Promo Credits. The net for the developer =  a Loss.

 "...And if anyone is still interessed:
I submitted a dress and paid 1000 DT's
So far the dress has sold 22 times, 10 of which were promo-sales.
For me the return has been 10 DT's and 2160 credits, if I had paid with real credits I would be at a loss of -5840 credits."

http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=478809&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0