Small Quibble: $1 is not free!

I have a very small quibble that I wish to vent.

Why do people sell things for a dollar but call them free?

"Free" means "doesn't cost anything". It's like being pregnant, in that you can't be a BIT free.

Something that costs a dollar is NOT FREE.

Thank you.

1 Linden is simply symbolic price, it is not even worth half a penny and therefore it is virtually free. And really this is probably the last thing one should quibble about, you should be grateful that people actually go into trouble to share their items for 1 linden.

$1L isn't a dollar, it's less than a half a penny. Most people won't stop to pick up a penny or even a dime. So if something is less than half a penny most people say it's "as good as free".

In my store, I use it to track the popularity of items I give away (nearly) free, so I know how well they're moving. I suppose if it was really irksome, I could refund the dollar upon request. It sure isn't about the money. *grin*

Another point is that sometimes Buy for $L 0, and Take Free Copy permissions sometimes don't set right, or function correctly.

I gave up wrestling with those options and just set stuff for $1.

I have a few items for sale around SL for $1 or $5 depending on the trouble I went to assemble them.

The trick, of course, is finding them on places with 0-Return.

Actually, if you want to refund the money, it's easy to write a "refund" script that, when purchased and rezzed for the first time, automatically emails a central server and tells it to pay $1 to the new owner. (This is much easier than it sounds.)

You can do this by using the changed event, which can also be used to detect when someone buys a copy of the object, even for $0. This could be used to track freebie sales, without it being necessary to charge any money.

My demo skins boxes say "try this skin on for free." I made the signs and then realized that actually making them free didn't allow me to track them in any way. So now they're $1.

And, of course, in the case of places liek Yadni's, he tells you straight out - "land isn't free, the time it takes to assemble this isn't free, you're getting a lot for your L$1, deal or leave."

It seems in bad taste, to me, to complain about any "freebies" that cost L$1. If they're textures or textured objects in particular, the nominal fee defrays any costs incurred in uploading.

Maybe I'll refund people the 1$ for the free script and charge them 10$ for coding the refund system

Also, until (semi) recently you couldn't sell things for 0L... It was added about 8 months or so ago, offhand, but it hasn't always been that way. A lot of things, particularly at some of the better "freebie" marts, are relics from those days.

Hmm... I think some of you missed her point:



While I do not know Jezebel, I am sure she is eternally grateful that some people give things away for less than a rl penny I have often wondered why stuff that costs 1L is advertised as *free* as well. If you're paying for it, no matter how little, it's not free. Now thanks to some posters here I understand why.

... but it's still not *free*

I'm not sure if this meets the requirements for tracking, but...

I wrote a script for a freebie box that does the following:
- when someone touches it, it offers them a folder containing a copy of the box content
- it records who has touched it, and how many times each person has touched it
- at a <specified> interval, it sends an email to a <specified> email address, with the records for that period.

It's not an absolute tracker, it doesn't know wether the person accepted the folder <grin>

It this script would be of any use, I can clean it up, spell check the comments and post it up.

Catherine, do you ever stop being cool? Do you take breaks? Winner!



Yeah, that does sound pretty helpful. It does double time for helping sellers like me and addressing Jezebel's pet peeve. Awesome.

I have the same policy as Yadni.

I plan to few "Free Temporary FreakCycle" stations around SL. People can rez a freakbike (60 delay on making another one), fly it around, and after a couple hours it self-terminates (hopefully). They don't actually get to own it, just ride it around. It doesn't have any other features besides basic flight.

It's free for them to ride, just not keep.

"BUTT D00D, IT'S A1N'7 FR33 IF I HAV 2 PAY. Y0U R CH3471NG ME 0U7 OV ME MONIES11!1!11!1!11!1111"

Oh, shut up. Did you just call me Butt Dude?

"PWN3d!!!!111!!LOLXXORS!!!!"

*sighs, blasts noob into next protocol code.*

Actually, I did some testing and figured out which conditions it would and would not occur in prior to posting. The wiki's good, but it's based on the official docs, and this isn't in them.

I can confirm that Catherine is continuously cool. Particularly in her ability to telepathically bond with my mind. Like some sort of psychic bluetooth. :0

Damn there are so many freaking whiners, it makes no sense.


I sell for $0, but you have to pay $1L. to the vendor and the vendor refunds it. Most vendors won't let you sell for $0L. Also it is a nice way to track.


Everyone on the internet feels so freaking entitled! This is 2005, not the 1998. The internet isn't free anymore, get over it.

Open perms = free as in speech, not as in beer.

That was how I let my stuff out.....

Depends how you look at it... then again it was 'small quibbles' like these that helped me decide that maybe people were better off paying $100 -$500 for stuff.

See dick, see jane, see the gift horse...

Siggy.

See, the way the system works is this:

If you get $1L from a money tree, don't ever bother to thank the owner - even if you hover at the tree daily taking as much as it can give you.

If you have to pay $1L for something, then by all means, please complain that it is not free.

People just love this system! It makes me want to give away money and create things to give away for free or $1, how about you?

well, yes, it bugs me that i can't sell something for $0 and get notification that it was "bought".

So yes, I do label a few things as free and then charge $1 for them, such as my building tutorial, because it's nice to be able to see if anyone is picking it up and getting any use out of it.

I don't know if cat's script would help me since i'm scriptatorially incompetant and because people don't just buy the $1 version from my land, they freely give out copies amongst themselves (which i can't track).

Why the label? So people realize it's not priced as a for-sale product given that it's next to my stores in bragg. I suppose I could label it "ALMOST FREE!" but that seems pretty lame too, and not the point. "Almost free" to me sounds like $20 or $30... cheap but not totally free.

I think until LL allows me to see in my account history that someone bought a $0 object, I'm going to leave it the way it is.

I debated on whether to chage L$0 or L$1 (or even L$1-L$5) on stuff at my free University of SL libray, and even tried charging a small amount of money and none at all and looked at the results.

I concluded that charging even a very tiny amount of L$ created a hardship for the people the library was intended for: newbies and trial accounts. When you first start in SL, you are always low on money. If your intention is to provide free stuff to get people started on their way in SL, then charge L$0. If you charge even a minimal amount, someone with L$25 to their name will have to make choices on what they want and may end up bypassing your free stuff because they can't afford it.

A bigger concern to me that was found during my testing was that even charging L$1 made a substantial amount of L$ over a week (since my free libary was quite popular) resulted in a nice profit. I didn't feel it was right for me to give away free stuff (about half was from my own creations, the rest was free stuff posted or given away for free) and make a profit off of it.

Just my L$2.

Bah! You price-gouger!

Usually, I set my objects to both "Allow Anyone to Take a Copy" and L$1 to buy a copy. Seems to work well enough, and I've yet to have any real complaints.

There are also multiple ways to have a script message you when an object is purchased, other than the L$1 notification. Though I have to admit, it's a lot easier to do it with cash.