Allowing sales and promotion in sandboxes

I realise this is probably an old chestnut of a topic, but I wonder about the reasons for, and the effects behind, the ban on sales and promotion in the sandbox regions.

Of several successful new builders I have spoken to, the vast majority of them referred to getting some kind of opportunities as a result of having sold, or left on display, things in sandbox regions. And I think there's numerous problems with banning it:

- There's no reason to hurt these people. They're new people coming into SL who're interested in building good objects, and are doing so. Why throw a big obstacle in their way?

- It's simply much more effective that most other routes. Yes, there's the free malls, but if you're making an object more than 10 prims or so big that means installing a vendor, and that means that customers can't see exactly what the object looks like until after buying it. There's not such a good equivalent of somewhere where you can simply leave something with your name on it and get it seen.

- Policing is difficult because of a "mutual benefit" thing. If I'm a newbie (as I probably am if I'm in the newbie sandbox) and I see another builder has left something there for sale or just left it unattended for people to read the Creator setting, I could AR them, but I'd rather not - hurting them doesn't benefit me much. I'd far rather let them get away with it on the basis that, if they can get away with it, then maybe so can I.

- When it is policed, it's impossible for punishments to be adequate. Say someone leaves an object on sale in a sandbox for L$50. They sell 10 copies. Also, someone is impressed by the object and invites them to join a group with 3 other people, which then gets paid L$2000 for a group building project and splits it evenly. Almost any length of temporary ban will do little to conteract the advantages they've gotten from their sandbox selling; they'll still log back in to L$1000 and a strong rep. Possibly LL could also trace and reclaim the L$500 from the 10 sold copies. But what can they do about the promotion benefits? Trace the seller's chat logs, find out that what happened was a direct consequence of sandbox selling, throw them out of the group and ban them from associating with those people? That'd be ridiculous.

I've spoken now to more than one person who felt that breaking the rules was a necessary step to show their willingnes to stand out, and that any penalty they got was just a necessary sacrifice on the way. That really shouldn't be the case. So is there any reason why we couldn't let non-alt accounts less than a particular age sell stuff in sandboxes? (Doesn't "non-alt" mess it up for hubby/wife/son, etc? Not really, because they can get promotional help from the non-newbie family member.)

It's quite simple: If you allow it, the sandboxes will be filled with it with no room left to build. After every wipe, people will just come and fill them up with things for sale again.

So why not have a display area next to the sandbox, or something similar?

I think they call that "land" or "rental mall space".

There are display areas in local malls and other rental areas near the sandboxes. Or they can buy land. The problem with too many objects left around for sale is the prim cause lag, the new builders would have trouble building in the lagged sandbox.

Can I leave freebie dispensers in the sandbox? Little, flat sing primmed "Click me for a free ____!" signs.

Except a newbie can't afford it. L$50/week doesn't get much rental space, and it certainly doesn't get any land. You might say, "But they ought to subscribe or buy Linden!", but that'll only discourage them. If they want to get into building good things and contributing SL, why put them off?

I think the core problem is that as long as the main justification for banning sandbox sales is "not everyone can do it", that means that the people who do do it will be "special" and "stand out" which is exactly what an aspiring newbie would want to do. This matched some attitudes I saw: some appear to believe that if you aren't prepared to stand around for hours in the sandbox with an object open in edit mode to "legitimise" displaying it there, then you didn't deserve to succeed.

If they are good builders, they need to invest to create a business. Or they can sell the rights to their creations to retailers, who will sell the goods correctly.

It's getting frustrating enough as it is at the moment - with the sandboxes often full of prims left behind by builders that don't clean up after themselves. Imagine what it would be like with vendors

IMO - sandboxes are for building - not for selling.

If there is a need for free vendor space for newbies, I'm sure someone out there is willing to set it up (there are a hell of a lot of rich, noob-freindly residents out there) - but pleeeeze not in the sandboxes.

Why?

If a new builder has the ability to impress someone with something they've built, get invited to join a group and start working on in-game paid projects - why should they be denied that, just because they may feel icky about paying US$ for play money? Just because they know that buying land is kinda pointless because SL is already too big for its population, they'll most likely get ignored, and if it's First Land they'll get to "show off" next to 5 or 6 Fat Slags adcubes? More importantly, why should SL lose out on the content it might lose if they didn't get involved?

You can say "well, if they were really good, they'd be prepared to invest" but look around on the internet at many of the free creative sites. I don't think it can be claimed they'd have anywhere near the amount of content they do if they charged a large sunk cost to begin with, and it wouldn't just be the bad content that they'd lose.

Second Life already offers land subsidies to encourage new residents. The farm isn't something that can be given away without consequence. Serious business folk will make the effort to start a business. If they aren't serious, they won't, and we're better off that way. This isn't a business game -- no one is entitled to be given all the tools they need to begin a business for free and without consequence. Business is risk, planning and investment. Linden Lab does a few things to help folks out with that, including the below-cost land sales they do for new users.

Opportunities are created or discovered by the clever and the diligent. Handing them out for free creates a class of the helpless and inept.

Yes - on out of the way plots, which no-one will visit, and which are surrounded by Fat Slags adcubes. Fine for building a starter home, just about bearable for a starter business if you don't mind renting landmark dispensers or paying for classifieds - but utterly useless for the "hey, what's that cool thing and who made it?" factor.



What if they don't want to go into business? What if they just want to have the chance to do fun stuff? Linden Dollars don't really become "business" until you're earning extremely large amounts, amounts far larger that the typical newbie would even consider.



That's simply wrong. Many of the builders who got handed "free" opportunities as a result of sandbox promotion were extremely ingenious and highly capable.

Why? Because everyone else has to pay for "play money" to start a business. How would you feel if you did it correctly, paid to advertise etc, and a newbie comes along and breaks all the rules you had to follow. That would give the newbie an unfair advantage over those who stepped up to make it work.

If it's play money, why sell things to get it? Because you can sell the play money for real money.

Now, to get started, use the money given to you by LL to buy land($L512 for first land that can be found in nice areas) Pay the $L30 a week to have the land listed. Put a picture in your "about land" and a description.

Or sell the rights to your first creation for fast cash to buy bigger land near a telehub. Ask some of the people who have already created a steady income for tricks.

Easy: don't put it for sale, just leave it harmlessly in the sandbox without tag price / notecard vendor.

People will often contact builders about their things that they remarked in the sandboxes. I got a number of sales this way when I was just working on improving something, oddly.

I wouldn't feel happy about it, but the reaction to it in reality would be would be exactly the same as anyone who complains that "X other person) shouldn't be allowed to succeed because it would make me feel bad". Let's face it, everyone in SL is going to face someone else with what they might see as an "unfair advantage" at some point, be it RL talent, an earlier start, FIC or whatever.

But, if we want to get rid of this, we can get rid of the rules, the bad feelings, or the success. Why pick the success?



No, because I want to be able to use SL as a graphical social platform and that requires me to earn L$ over the stipend in order to be able to afford the necessary content. Not everyone who wants to make L$ wants to sell them - a good thing, because it's not worth selling them unless you're making tens of thousands. They might just want to be able to hit the malls more than once a year without shelling out US$.



Well, this isn't about me personally - I'm more a scripter than a prim pusher anyway, which means that displaying objects - in the sb or otherwise - isn't such a viable route (since most people aren't going to walk around the sandbox checking every cube to see if it's got a cool script in it), nor the main problem (the main problem for scripters is finding a niche in a market where once a script for something is written, the problem is solved, as opposed to being able to make basically the same thing with a slightly different design).

But when I did ask those with a steady income - many of them said, "sell in the sandbox". Thus this message.

I believe this is also disallowed. Self-promotion is a form of doing business (and logically would have the same problem of "everyone could do it, and then the sandbox would be full"

Wanna make a name for yourself? After you develop your best-thing-since-sliced-bread start giving it away to people as your marginal cost of production is zero.

If it is truly good, people will start contact you asking "where can I get it?". It costs you nothing (except commissions on sales) to sell through the third-party web catalogs and you don't even need land to set that up, just someone who'd be willing to host one prim for you.

You've been given a lot of advice here, all of it sound. But you maintain that the sandboxes should operate as your bazzar. Bizzare.

As I mentioned in the previous message, I wouldn't have any interest in selling (or displaying) in the sandboxes, even if it was allowed, because the type of thing I'm making wouldn't work if sold (or displayed) by that method. I've also made several things and tried to introduce them by other routes, usually by handing them off to established marketers in exchange for a cut.

What I wished to address was nothing to do with me personally, but the issue that at least some people do seem to believe that they have to break the rules in order to succeed.

Because it's just like RL. If someone wants to start a business, they need to make a capital investment. It isn't LL's job to provide everyone with everthing they need to start making money.

I friggin' hate it when people set up show in a sandbox. They're already crowded enough.

First land is far from useless. You get a considerable amount of cash when you flip that land. A few thousand L$ go a long way.



If they don't want to go into business then they don't need to worry about selling things, now do they? Making fun stuff doesn't require the Lindens give land handouts or allow the cluttering of the sandboxes.



Uh, I'm not sure how that has anything to do with my comment. Creating opportunities through chance meetings of cool people happens all the time. My point is that creating a welfare class of land for anyone and everyone to sell anything they want at no charge, as you seem to be supporting, will create a glut of non-viable business models and a bunch of folks dependent on Linden generosity instead of their own skill. It's also completely non-sustainable as the population grows.

I skipped through most of this thread so forgive me if I repeat someone else. I recall someone making an attachment that you can display what you have for sale, kind of like a traveling vendor. Can't remember who or what the name was but there is also slboutique.com and slexchange.com that can be used to sell your stuff.

MJ

As I've said - perhaps they want to use the game effectively as a graphical social platform. That means they're going to want to consume the content made by others. To do that, they need L$, and they have the choice to either sell stuff for it or pay real money for it. Because they only want it to be able to do what they want in the game (or "within the platform", errf), it's "play money" for them, and because it could be only a few thousand L$ (ie, about $10, or if they're very lucky $10 a month), they're not going to be thinking about "going into business" or making an "investment" to get "return" on.

("If it's so little money why don't they want to pay RL money for it?" Answer, because the difference between US$0 and US$5 is far bigger than the difference between US$5 and US$10.)

This rigid split, of "if you want to sell anything then you must want to go into business", just doesn't apply. Haven't you ever sold one or two second-hand games or something to buy a new one? Do you think that wanting to do so means you want to start a second-hand games business?



It doesn't happen to everyone. And as I said, I was told that sandbox selling or at least sandbox displaying was an essential step in making it happen more often.



Actually, they will be dependant on their skill at making things - instead of their skill at doing business.

And again - all of this ranting doesn't change the fact that the ban is apparantly unenforcable anyway. Unless you are going to permaban any account found sandbox displaying (which would be ridiculous), that person will have gained permanent social advantages that can't be undone by force and will always be "worth" a 1-2 day ban.

The point isn't to put a pole in the rectum of everyone who ever sells anything in the sandbox. I'm really not sure I understand why you're taking it to such extremes or lamenting that it can't be rigorously enforced. The point is to make it okay for Lindens to clear things out of the sandbox when the sandbox gets turned into a store for a single person's product. To warn people against chronic exploitation of the sandbox for personal gain. If you happen to be building and someone walks by and decides they want to buy whatever you're making, I don't think anyone is going to come and ban your ass. Big difference between that and setting up an enormous, ugly store that monopolizes the sandbox and whose proprietor demands you build at least 5m away from the store's ugly walls (which I have seen happen before).

Should we get rid of speeding laws because if I'm not going to be directly observed by a police officer, I'm going to go 10 MPH faster than legal and get to work sooner? Hey, I derived an advantage from violating that law, it must be useless! Bullshit. The law lets an officer put a stop to exceptional and obvious cases that threaten the public good, like idiots who zoom their Mustangs at 60 MPH in a residential zone. The no sales in the sandbox rule exists for the same purpose.

First up, a sandbox is a sandbox. A place for builders to build and scripters to script. I personally do not want to see them become free advertising space for every Joe and Sue who wants to sell their latest creations. Sandboxes are already abused daily as gun fight arenas. Letting anyone advertise there willingly means these sims could be filled to capacity every 12 hours (on the hour) with skyscrapers, signs, kiosks and bickering people fighting for every square meter of available space. The moment you give people free reign in capitalism, they'll push the boundaries to the limits the law allows.

So, forgetting sandboxes for a moment, what you would like to see?

1) A place where non-business owners can promote their items
2) It should be free
3) It should be in a high-traffic area
4) It could be temporary

I suppose someone could always build an island devoted to giving non-landowners a place to promote their goods. It could be a scheduling nightmare. Imagine all the people who would want to reserve space every 12 hours! How much do they get? Oh the drama. Furthermore, where would the money come from to pay for the island? I suppose LL could set something like this up, but then that would be a snub to people who bought land to set up shops. Not to mention that'd be less income for LL since it would circumvent the need to even rent land!

You see, your suggestion is about much more than just "allowing items to be sold in sandboxes". It's about how the economy of SL works and supports itself.

In fact, we already have that. Busy Ben's Vehicle Lot and the Linden Galleria in wherever it is, both of which are given by lottery on a quarterly basis. We also have the telehubs, which offer free advertising to anyone who wants it, which also satisfies those requirements.