IMVU Developer Newsletter 03

Here is a copy of the newsletter;


Will you be my Valentine?



Valentine's
Day is February 14, so find an IMVU user you love and shoot them in the
heart with an arrow. Hey, if Cupid can do it so can you! Much like
the recent increase in holiday themed product sales (woohoo - yay Devs!
You guys rock and got paid for rocking!! So cool.), this year, we
anticipate an equally large volume of sales for Valentine's Day.




As always, we want you to be successful this Valentine's Day and have
some recommendations to help you maximize your holiday profits.




To increase your sales, do the following steps:







1. CREATE your products NOW!





There is no better time to get your Valentine's Day products out the door. Hearts, cupids, chocolates, candy, cards, flowers, hugs, KISSES !
Once again, all product types can be made in this theme and, if the
recent success of your holiday themed products is any indication, all
product types in a given theme sell well so have some fun..










2. TAG your products



We will once again be sending out email promotions asking IMVU users to
search for Valentine's Day products. Several promotions will even have
big buttons that lead people directly to the valentine's search page.



We encourage you to tag your Valentine's Day products with Valentine
themed words. More importantly, though, we encourage you to include the
word"Valentine" in your product tags.






To change the tags on a product, browse to your product's information page and choose Edit Settings.
At the bottom of the submission page that follows, there is a section
for entering tags. Type in words that will make your products more
likely to appear in Valentine's Day searches. Here are some examples of
tags you could include:

• Valentine
  
• Valentine's
  
• "Valentine's Day"
  
• Love
  

Of course, there are
those who would love to tell Cupid where to shove that little arrow of
his. For products with an "Anti-Valentine's Day" or anti-love theme,
use tags like these:

• Anti-Valentine
  
• Anti-Valentine's
  
• "Anti-Valentine's Day"
  

3. ADVERTISE




Shoutouts
Hundreds of thousands of potential customers use
IMVU all day long. Shoutouts are a great way to advertise your
Valentine's Day products.





Forums signatures
As many of you know, the image in your
forum signature can be a powerful advertising tool. Why not change your
siggy to promote your Valentine's Day products?





Avatar picture
Your avatar picture shows up all over the IMVU
website. Use this advertising tool to show off your latest Valentine's
Day products.







Furniture launch - aw yeah!



That's right, in mid January, we are officially launching Rooms and
Furniture. Although several of you already use this feature, with the
next big release of bug fixes, Rooms and Furniture will be ready for
use by the masses.


IMVU has big plans for Rooms and Furniture. In 2007, Rooms
will replace 3D Scenes as the standard chat location. Just as the
avatar and IMVU homepages are highly customizable, Rooms and Furniture
offer tools for expression that static scenes will never be able to
provide. What's more, we will be giving every IMVU user a free Room and
making it part of the first time user experience.



Make Furniture products
So, although many of you have already
gotten started building terrific furniture and wonderful rooms, we want
to officially open the gates on development in these areas. This really
is the beginning of a whole new phase of what it means to use IMVU and
so is an exciting time for you Developers as you are in a wonderful
position to create lasting brands.



Catalog changes
Since IMVU is really doubling down on Rooms
and Furniture, and since many IMVU users have complained about the
current catalog/inventory arrangement, some changes to the catalog will
be occurring shortly:


The 'Scenes' top level category is going to be renamed to 'Rooms and Furniture'



The current 'Furniture' top level category will be deleted


The current Rooms and Furniture categories will be moved to the new 'Rooms and Furniture' top level categories


The Backdrop Rooms category will no longer be visible


'3d Scenes' will be renamed to 'Old Rooms'


Over the next few months, IMVU will be converting many of its current
3D Scenes to Rooms and Furniture. You do not have to do this but we
recommend it as this will make sales more likely.

i have to say i don't mind this catalog change, it might be helpful.

i have to agree it seems they are converting to the point where you will no longer need the '3d rooms' all you will need to do is purchase your own furniture kind of like the Sims lol

yeah, it means not everyone has the same room, it can be a lot more individual now.

I can totally agree with you there.. becoming more personalized is always a good idea.