At the time of writing this post, 259 content creators participate in the network. The most active channel is “Skins and Hair” with over 5500 subscribers – avatars who actively opted in to receive your commercial samples!

As a content creator, the DSN offers the best marketing instrument currently available. For  one-time investment of 390 L$ you get access to up to 10 channels and subscribers who actively want to receive work samples. You get a fair chance to impress every single subscriber – no other designers get preferential treatment, the playing field is completely levelled.

The DSN visitor counter shows you exactly how effective your samples are. DSN is the only marketing instrument giving you hard numbers on its own effectiveness.

Don’t miss out on this unique chance to present your business – get the DSN Starter Kit for 390 L$ at the Clever Things Shop or from XStreet SL.

The basic principle of DSN is that every subscriber only gets one sample per content creator and channel. In order to guarantee this, a rather large database needs to be maintained with every transaction.  By tapping into this database, the DSN Visitor Counter allows you to measure the effectiveness of the various DSN samples and DSN in general for your shop.

That is right – the Designer Showcase Network is the  only Marketing  and Advertising tool in Second Life that has built in, automatic, self monitoring and success control! No vague promises, no wiggling around effectiveness – hard facts, that you can control anytime.

Let’s take a closer look at the statistics. In the screenshot above you see the web-backend every DSN content creator has access to. This backend shows your data only and is only accessible to you.

In this case, the designers promotional sample has been delivered 5843 times to 4054 avatars. The unmatching numbers explain themselves through the fact that the designer has samples in two channels, and therefore some subscribers have indeed got two deliveries.

The next two lines show the results of the visitor counter since its deployment (in this case 3 days ago). Please note that these are not overall visitors of the shop, but only visitors who have received this designer’s sample before! This means, since the visitor counter was placed in this shop, 32 visitos where to attribute to 22 people who received a sample from this designer before.

It is important to note that only people who have received a sample already get counted. If someone who has not received the sample so far visits this shop, they do not get counted! If they receive the sample tomorrow, and return the day after, they get counted.

You can also use the visitor counter to measure the effectiveness of different samples. The goal is to find a convincing sample, that draws visitors to your shop. In the screenshot above, two samples have been submitted to the network at various points in time. And while the available data is very little (the sensor only got employed a few days ago) you see exatly what sample attracted more visitors to your shop.

The Designer Showcase Network Visitor Counter in a nutshell:

• Addition – not replacement – to current visitor counters
• Only counts visitors who received a sample from you in the past
• Gives you exact, hard numbers how many visitors you got from the DSN
• Gives you exact, hard numbers how effective your DSN samples are
• Allows you to run A-B tests with samples to find the one bringing you the most visitors

The Designer Showcase Network is the only advertising tool in Second Life that gives you instant, direct feedback of how successful it is for you.

Join the DSN today!

We strongly recommend that participating content creators monitor these news!

Please note:

• You can subscribe to the regular channels on any kiosk – adult or not.
• Only the adult kiosk can sign you up to the Adult Channel.

The kiosks detect automatically if they are rezzed on adult land, and only in this case switch themselves into adult mode. If the status of the sim changes back to Mature or PG, the kiosks will lose the ability to sign you up to the Adult Channel. That way, we make sure that only properly age verified avatars can sign up to the Adult Channel, since only those avatars can access an adult enabled kiosk in the first place.

We still seek for Adult Content Creators! There are some amazing talents out there, providing highly sophisticated, resourceful and stylish items of adult nature. Since the DSN makes sure only properly verified avatars that actively opted in to receive adult samples participate, content creators run no risk to get into conflict with the Linden Lab rules.

If you are a creator of adult items, or have a friend or partner who is, please make them contact me or Rika! If you are a designer already participating in the DSN – your standard dropbox is automatically able to handle the adult channel. Just rez a new dropbox and put your adult sample in – ready!

What an amazing month this has been! Yesterday, exactly 4 weeks ago, the Designer Showcase Network went live. Since then 192 content creators joined. Small and new labels as well as established brands like Insolence, Silent Sparrow, MichaMi or Sn@tch. a complete list of designers can be found here. On the opposite side of the network we have well over 4000 subscribed avatars, many of them signed up to more than one channel, so we have 18241 channel subscriptions. This resulted in an exciting 223911 sample deliveries through the network!

The channel getting the most interest is in fact the “Skins and Hair” channel, sporting 3060 subscriptions, closely followed by the “Female Fashion” channel with 3001 subscribers. But even the least subscribed-to channel – “Male Fashion” – has 1042 avatars on its recipient list.

The Designer Showcase Network gets a lot of coverage on SL blogs – the other day we got even a review on a Japanese blog. Some well known fashion bloggers have even started their own categories for DSN samples. Shop owners and subscribers alike report that the DSN made a difference for them. Subscribers finding new and exciting shops, and content creators getting exposure to new potential customers.

Recently we had to move DSN to a new server and are now able to grow the system almost with no limits. The Adult channel is about to launch shortly, allowing the delivery of samples to properly verified susbcribers. Also we have some tools in the making for designers and subscribers to give feedback and receive better statistics.

Join the DSN now! As a shopper simply find one of over 200 kiosks and susbcribe to any of the channles available. As a content creator get the DSN Starter Kit for a one-time-fee of 390 L$ at the shop location inworld or on Xstreet SL.

Find new shops and designers! Get more exposure to potential customers! Join the DSN today!

This is where it starts

In our little example we have two content creators – Rika on the left and yours truly on the right – who have freshly joined the network. Each of us has their dropbox ready and the sample in. And the huge number of subscribers – in this sample the white newbie avatars – wait eagerly for our respective samples.

First samples sent out

The next DSN cycle at 5am UTC the next time randomly selects a number of subscribers to receive our samples. Then Rika’s dropbox sends the sample to the red recipients, and my dropbox sends the sample to the blue recipients. Please note: since every recipient only gets a maximum of one sample per channel a day, none of the subscribers get both Rika and my sample (from the same channel). One fraction gets Rika’s, the other fraction gets my sample.

Now some avatars have a sample already

Next day, next cycle. The grey avatars have received a sample the previous day already, so new recipients will be chosen.

Important to note:

• An avatar who has received the sample of a specific designer already will never receive a sample from that designer again!
• For the sake of the tutorial completely new avatars have been chosen. In reality avatars who have received Rika’s sample the day before could very well receive my sample today.

Even more samples sent

This cycle repeast daily. New recipients get chosen among the ones who have not yet received a gift. That way, a content creator gets daily and continuous exposure to potential new clients, and subscribers will meet a whole variety of content creators.

Questions and answers

Question: Will this ever run out?

Answer: In the hypothetical case that no new subscribers and no new content creators sign up, then eventually all subscribers will have received all samples from all content creators. As soon as one single new subscriber joins the network, they will start to receive daily samples. As soon as one new content creator joins the network, existing subscribers will receive items again.

Question: I saw that gorgeous skin on that freebie blog, but I did not receive it. What went wrong?

Answer: If you did not receive it today, you might receive it tomorrow, or next Tuesday, or Friday in three months. There is no way to tell when you will receive the item.

Question: The freebie blog said I should use the redelivery terminal if I did not get it?

Answer: We are sorry to say, but this advice stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the system works. Requesting a redelivery will only attribute to the samples you got that very day. If the skin designer was not among them, you will not be able te get a redelivery of the sample.

Question: So nothing I can do about this skin?

Answer: Why don’t you visit the shop where the sample came from? We encourage content creators to submit regular items to the DSN – chances are good the skin is for sale in the shop.

Question: But this does sound a lot like the subscribe-o-matic system?

Answer: Not at all. The only similarity is that objects are sent in an automated way. A subscribe-o-matic is owned by a specific desgner, and once this designer decides to send something out, it is sent to all subscribers at once.  In most cases subscribers can also access a past history of deliveries from any of the subscribe-o-matic kiosks.  And finally designers can specifically remove recipients from the system With the DSN, a participating designer has no influence on who gets a sample and the date someone gets a sample. While a designer can see each day who got a delivery, there is no way a designer can determine or even influence who will get one next – or when. Also a designer can not remove any recipients by themselves.

The impending changes for adult content in Second Life have been part of Rika’s and my considerations for DSN from the beginning on. The Linden Scripting Language (LSL) offers almost no way to reliably verify if the recipient of a DSN item has the right classification. For the time being we saw no other way than to explicitly deny adult samples in the DSN. But not only did creators of adult content kept asking us for ways to participate in DSN, also both Rika and I are agreeing that adult activity is a natural part of SL and should be left to each resident’s own decision.

So we kept looking for a way to offer an adul channel to DSN. I am a bit proud that the final impulse on how to do it came from me, since Rika is a damn sharp knife in the drawer, so finally we found a foolproof method to make sure that a subscriber of the adult channel has in fact all the necessary verifications to make them eligible to receive adult samples. And what better place to test the first prototype of the new adult kiosk than the Adult Verification Test Sims of “Oatmeal”, whose visual were subject to a lot of controversies lately.

How does the new Adult Channel work:

• You need to have full verification status to subscribe to the channel. What exactly are the necessary credentials is still a bit unclear (there are all sorts of info around, some claiming hving “Payment Info Used” is enough), however if you can teleport to Oatmeal 15, SL thinks you are adult enough :-)
• Only kiosks placed on Adult land can sign you up for the Adult channels. Those kiosks will be visually different from the regular DSN kiosks.
• Content creators can continue to use their regular dropboxes – once we throw the switch a new channel will be available to them.
• Old kiosks will continue to work
• A new set of kiosks will be needed to offer signup to the Adult channel. Those kiosks will also function as regular kiosks when rezzed on non-Adult-land

We expect to have the system roll out on Monday, when the Adult changes in SL become official.

• Magazines and books focused on a single topic can go in the category associated to that topic. A magazine focused on fashion can go into one of the fashion categories. A magazine focused on art can go into the Home & Garden category. Magazines focused primarily on business in Second Life should go into the Tools category.
• Magazines and books covering multiple topics should until further notice go into the Gadget category. While this is not ideal, it is the best we can do right now.

Why should a magazine use the Designer Showcase Network at all? Just like a content creator, a magazine wants new customers – in this case new readers. Magazine editors should always put the most recent issue into their dropbox. It would also be a good idea to include a notecard saying ‘This is a sample of our magazine, if you want to get new releases automatically please subscribe to us at[landmark]‘.

Right now the first reactions from residents and bloggers come in. Gabby Panacek of Couture Conundrum made a wonderful blogpost explaining the DSn concept in probably easier words than we did ourselves:

Remember, it takes all of us, working together to imagine, design, build and live our Second Lives…Designer Showcase Network gives us a tool to reach out to each other in a new way. Enjoy!

Isadora Graves of Izzy Chic claimes no less than witnessing SL History being made:

It is about time that something like DSN came out, and the concept is fairly yet brilliantly simple. A subscription-type system allows content creators to offer a particular item to residents who have chosen to sign up.

Read her full post here.