SL is a Virtual Dollar Store

A great deal of SL's content for sale under $USD 1. Does this mean that shopper's have the same attitudes as when shopping at physical $1 stores? Does it increase the shopping as recreation factor? Are customer's expectations in line with how much they pay?

Discuss (while you still can)

I charge less than a dollar because... *shrug* I guess because it suits me. I like being paid for my work, but I'd also like the prices to be low enough that the newer players can get them without going broke.

Do I notice a lot more sales? Can't say, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing and I think that's what counts most

Me too, Raudf. To me there's a visceral enjoyment from just having other people enjoy something I created. I won't be getting rich in SL, and I'm not out to - it's for fun.

As for Surreal's original question regarding shoppers' attitudes, I think some SLers take it very seriously. They pay $1000L for a skin (roughly $3.85) and are willing to scream bloody murder if it has a problem -- spend the same $3.85 at a real store for something, and if it breaks we throw it away without a second thought.

Principles of honest merchantilism (which don't have a dollar value) aside, sometimes I think we lose sight of the fact that the $L is only worth 31 cents. It's monopoly money until you can accumulate a huge pile.

Trees from Fate Gardens in Taber cost around sixty cents and they're copyable. I estimate each rezzed one costs less than a penny. BTW, the new flexible Forest Tree is only available at Depoz Ink. It's freely copyable ~ does that mean SL is more like an open air flea market?

You know, it's weird. I almost NEVER think of the exchange rate. When I see a price I see it in Lindens not the USD equivalent.

Do most people think in USD?

Our L$900 per avatar (which honestly includes pretty much every aspect of SL: prim builds, textures, skins, shapes, scripts) - has been described as 'terrorism'. People have acted outright shocked when they see what amounts to a $3.20 pricetag.

I think the reason is: there are two economies here. Those who rely solely on stipends who would NEVER consider spending a real cent on a virtual good, and those who do buy or sell on Lindex.

Those who adamantly would never put a cent into SL, comparatively and relatively, anything that's "over a portion of stipend" is unreasonable. For them the average item, they feel it seems, should cost no more than L$200.

For those who do exchange, that amount is around L$1000-L$1500, before things get "expensive".

I don't think that any of the folks who 'believe in free, only' will ever change their opinions on the matter. To some people, virtual goods have no value.

Then, though, there is the section of folks who believe that if they have spent -any- money on your stuff, a covenant has been struck and you, as receiver of their money, owe them the world. This happens in RL too, though, not just here. When I was a teenager and worked in a department store, some guy bought a $9.95 Chinese Checkers game. He came back with it, outraged, screaming at the staff, that it was "not authentic enough." The manager made a remark about how it was "a ten dollar game for kids", and the guy threw the box at the back wall behind the register with so much force that it shattered into hundreds of pieces.

Now, that guy was probably unbalanced. But to some folks it really doesnt matter how much it is --- I'm sure you all have a story or two of a relative or friend who drove 50 miles back to a store because they got short-changed a quarter.

Sometimes, to some folks, its the "principle of the thing", not the amount.

I'm not saying its right or wrong, but as a merchant it's just something you're going to run into. I'd advise against saying things like, "it's cheap, why are you complaining." -- to some folks its a matter of ideals and principles.

A large part of the pricing is also a matter of what the market will bear. Absolutely NOTHING in SL is sold at anything close to what would pay a decent hourly wage for the person who creates it. The only things that pay close to an hourly wage are products that get re-sold thousands of times, or major work like building a whole sim.

But then again, we're talking about completely intangible assets here. You can't take the L$300 dress that you buy in SL and wear it to school in RL. For a lot of people, if they can't touch it, then it has no value at all.

Compare SL to a computer game like Baldur's Gate. The characters in the game accumulate things, sell them, amass money and other forms of wealth. But at the end of the game, no matter how successfully you play it, what you have accumulated is worth precisely zero. And everything that exists IN that game is part of the purchase price. You never have to pay extra to get new armor, or a horse, or whatever. A lot of people come to SL with that mindset. They 'paid for the game' already, by paying for a basic or Premium account, or they consider the game to be freeware, since they can download the client and create at least one account for free. So they expect everything IN the game to be 'free' as well, just like in every other game they ever played.

I find that...incomprehensible. How can someone be so unaware of value?

I guess my perspective is based on real world dollar values, and to me $3 is cheap enough that I can consider it a "throw away" expenditure. It's less than I'd spend on a magazine, and not much more than I'd spend on a good cup of coffee.

In real life I make a healthy salary, and my time in Second Life is akin to time spent on any hobby- I spend on it because I enjoy it. If I start spending too much, I cut back on the hobby.

I guess for the people who enter the world expecting to *make* money, or for people who have preconceptions based on other MMOGs or the like...that could lead to distorted view of value. But if the person complaining about price had ever tried to build something even moderately complex, they'd have some idea of where the cost comes from.

I could see a decent avatar easily taking 30 hours of work to create, not really accounting for the learning time to get to the point where you have the skills to create it. Pay yourself a decent salary, and that's probably close to $500 worth of effort. Selling it for $3 a copy means you have to sell over 100 of them to break even on your time. Anyone who complains at that price obviously has no sense of the real effort it takes to produce the item, or they have a broken understanding of the value of the Linden.

If I encountered someone complaining about the price of something I made, I'd encourage them to go about creating their own goods. Either they'd soon realize that the cost is in keeping with the effort involved, or they'd become a valuable content creator themselves. Regardless, the world becomes a better place as a result.

hehe here's a lesson in why I can't work retail in the RW..

I try to be as helpful as I can - and be reasonable.

When a person crosses that line to being unreasonable - I give them back the 'cost of a gumball' and tell them to go fuck themselves.

I also make it really really easy for them to never make the mistake of buying stuff from me again by banning them from my place.

Harsh - maybe - but it happens rarely.... so the flipside I guess is 'don't be a blue veined throbbing dick over the price of a stick of gum'

Also its usefull to keep in mind the 'worth' in USD - because it makes 'legal threats' in SL very comical if you translate the L$ value to USD value in the text.

The problem is that the average "games" consumer is used to the games market - where a game that probably took hundreds of people hundreds of hours to make, and took probably millions of dollars worth of effort, can sell for US$20 because they can count on selling thousands or tens of thousands of copies, or they can subsidise them from the games that do.

Yes, people think in "game money" or SL money, even if they started out converting it into their own currency. I'm one of them, I guess, at first I converted everything into dollar amounts. But once I got my stipend and started spending time here, I just naturally began to think of things in terms of their Linden Dollar Value, heh. To someone on a stipend, it can become a budget, that is what they pay to "play SL", the ten dollars they pay LL every month, and they aren't spending any more than that on a "game". So, $1000 linden is half their "budget", not 3 or 4 bucks.

And yes, the fact anything you buy here is useless outside of SL plays a part in this. They really aren't thinking about how much time you spent creating what you sell or that you are working for virtual pennies. That is their allotted "play money" and that is that. Now, if they aren't even getting a stipend and have to either buy the Lindens or earn them some other way, they are going to be even more stingy.

I think I'll also add that there may be people like me who at first said, "eh, it's a couple of dollars", bought a lot of Lindens, which starts to add up eventually, and then started to feel "I have to stop just buying more money, this is getting out of hand, it's not like I can take this stuff with me", heh.

The perception of "value" vs the amount of disposable income a person has directly affect their purchases in rl and in SL. It is the juxaposition between value and cash that will allow or not allow, someone to make a purchase in SL or rl. This concept is not only true in both rl and SL but it interacts directly between the 2 worlds.

I bought 2000L my second day in SL just for a shopping spree. I have the means in rl to do this regardless of the level of value I may percieve (to a point of course). OTOH, I have many friends that have never made it to SL because they couldn't afford (or did not percieve the value) the upgrades they're computer required to run SL would cost. I also have friends inworld here that "can't afford" to pay a monthly tier fee or spare the $$ to buy lindens for skin or other large (relatively) SL expenditures.

I'm sure there are many people in SL in the same position as those friends of mine that just can't afford the $3USD or $4USD it takes to buy an avie or $10USD to $15USD it takes to buy one of the more expensive skins. They're certianly not going to buy those items with stipend unless they save for a very long time. There are probably just as many (or maybe more) that do not percieve the value in owning virtual goods regardless of what they may provide them inworld.

I remember when I started, thinking, "it's only ten bucks for some more L$". The problem comes when you do that several times a week.

I think people do have a distorted sense of what's expensive in SL, but I put that down to the number of 0s on the end of the number.

Yeah, I didn't think of that, $1000L just sounds like a lot of money, even when you "know" it isn't.

I blew more money buying lindens at first than I care to admit. It really is the accumulation of these impulse purchases that makes you start to put the brakes on. Especially when you spend it on something like a skin that you decide isn't really what you wanted a week later. And all of this is SL use only, and much of it cannot be resold, either. At first you are all excited and want to buy everything you see, then you calm down and tell yourself this is real money at the end of the day, and $10 a week is $40 dollars a month etc.

In fact, getting the stipend was my way of limiting my impulse purchases of Lindens and putting myself on a budget, I'm afraid. :/

yeah the big divide is lindex or no lindex... its almost comical sometimes.. people who make $50 an hour RL, will come on 'how do i make money' and end up absolutely REFUSING to use lindex, settling instead on spending their time in RL $0.17 an hour camping chairs... its just kinda like this 'thought' divide thats out there...

it will break down over time though... while ok in 2006 buying a 'virtual' car for 60 cents rl may seem like highway robbery, and the notion of *living* in real life, of a virtual business seems ludicruous to most people..., its tough to believe that people would have just as much a problem with it in 2060... its just really a matter of where that division is, where more people will begin to see real value in goods that are not 'present' in the real world.. i think the tide will turn probably sooner than later, already we get fewer 'terrorism' kind of comments and more people just kind of shrugging when we mention lindex conversions...

especially as 'stipends' get slowly weaned out, % wise in the overall SL population, and the broader population base is going to need to purchase their money...

also rl micropayment systems are getting more and more mainstream... i think the broad notion of spending 20 cents here or $1.36 there for *HOURS* of entertainment is going to be powerful, and hopefully, not going to be too too long, in coming.

If I like something enough, I will buy it, whether it costs 30 L, 300 L, or 3000 L. Some of the higher end purchases I've made include the Dominus, the HyperFlute Composer, Damani Hot Rod, and the Damani Weather Machine (my latest)..... all of them worth every L$. If I want it, and the L$ is available to me, I'll purchase it.

For the products I sell, I don't find they sell any better or worse when the price is high or low. They tend to sell at the same rate. Most of my products, I sell for less than 300 L. A few for 400, and one or two for much higher..... it depends on (a) how much work was put into building it, and (b) whether or not it will be considered a "niche" item. Niche items that I don't expect a lot of sales on to start with get a higher price.

I *always* make back in L$ the amount of time I've spent on an object. I don't do it on a single sale, of course, but like someone else said, I get it back in the number of sales.

Producing in Second Life is comparable to producing in the real world. A company don't get back the money they made in producing a single chocolate bar or a single shirt, they make it back in sales volume.

It's really fascinating to learn about all of this ... that people really do buy Lindens. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, but it's just that I'm somehow managed to get away with never buying even a single L$1. Nor have I sold one. To me, L$ and $ have remained totally separate from the very beginning ... at least, so far they have.

I bought them while deciding whether I was going to stay in SL. When I made that decision I went to premium. But there was no way I could wander around SL without buying stuff, lol. Especially at first, with my newbie skin and hair and clothing.... and there was all this... stuff. I'm not like this in RL, in that sense the "dollar store" analogy fits, it's so cheap, why not buy it? Or the "big sale" that you wind up spending so much at because... it's on sale!