Money tree question

I have a money tree at my shopping centre to both help with the traffic numbers and to help out the new members in SL. At this time I allow new members with no payment info on file to pick from my tree. My question is for those of you who also use money trees. Do you also allow new members to pick from your trees if they do not have payment info on file? Is this a good practice or a really bad idea? I appreciate your input on this.
~Dawn

When I had my money tree, I let anyone pick it. If they had payment info on file, then they could have bought lindens

But then, after two months of it NOT improving my traffic and the little grubbers just draining the tree dry, I took it down.

From someone who recently introduced my mom to SL and money trees -- she was not ready, in her first month, to give SL any payment data, and I can see a lot of people wanting to try it out for 30-60 days before making that decision. Therefore, I firmly believe that the money trees are one of the things that should not have the 'payment info' stipulation. I really don't think there is that much scamming done.

As a newbie, I hammered money trees to get cash. Only a few places really stuck out in my mind as places I would want to return to to buy stuff/explore. I actually bought some shoes from one of the stores near a money tree, and when shopping with a friend for shapes I went to a place I knew of because it was near a money tree and I thought they were decent. One shop with silks and jewelry had a tree right in the middle and several lucky chairs. I did buy something from them, even though I bled those chairs dry.

Many if not most trees are not placed strategically enough to make the newbie work to find them and force them to pay attention to where they are going and what's around them.

My money tree pays to people with no payment info on file.

When you create an SL account you get choices to file payment details using credit cards or Paypal accounts that many Europeans don't have.

For Europeans it is also possible to get payment info on file, but you'll find out when you register that you need to make arrangements.
And these arrangements take time.

So what if you don't want to wait for that? You'll create a basic account

I realize that many Americans are not even aware of this, but I am Dutch, so I know the European situation. This is my main reason to always keep my money tree ready for all account types


As for what Honeybear said: it does not improve your traffic, for all the hunters do is tp in - grab money, and tp to the next tree. An avatar needs to stay for at least 5 minutes to count towards the traffic.

I sometimes think about taking the tree down because there are many impolite or even rude newbies picking the tree.
But, I just ban the really bad ones from the tree payout, and let the impolite and unfrienndly ones be, together with the nice people that come to get money.


The good side of money trees (for the owner) is, that people get to know your place. If the tree is in an interesting location they may come back later, when they are not new anymore.

This is what I did when I started.
TP from tree to tree. When I got too old for trees, I went to all the places I'd thought interesting during my hunts.

Now, with my own land and tree I notice the same. Many of my regular visitors are the tree hunters from before

We don't? We ae not so backward that we don't have credit cards yet And PayPal is open for anyone, and is greatly used by Europeans.

I tried one a long time ago and it did not work for me.I really don't think it improved traffic at all for me, also takes up valuable prims.I ditched it and still think of it as old hat.Money is best spent in other ways

hehehee yeah I heard of those funny thingies called credit cards too and paypal always wondered what they were lol, sorry couldn't resist. but money trees are a good idea as long as you got some cheap shops nearby. The L$ will hopefully get spent back on the land and keep people there a little longer, the longer they are there the more chance of them returning when they are a little older.

I've got 2 money trees at my place, one that requires payment info and one that doesn't. Money tree pickers usually don't stay long enough to affect the traffic numbers, so dump them if traffic is all you care about. I keep mine up because money trees were a great help to me when I was starting out, and I like giving back to the next generation of SLers. I'm sure that most of the pickers are automated bots, but there are still several real people that use them, and their the ones I keep the trees for. I also have the newbie kit boxes available by the trees, and I notice several of those get picked up, so I know the trees are helping real people get started.

Fifteen years ago when I travelled around Eastern Europe a lot, only those in the leisure industry, hotels and such knew what credit cards were. But now they are, like in the West, common practice.

When I first started SL I did not know about the money trees or the new member deals for hair and skins and such, but I really wish I had. I think it would have made things much easier on me. I also did not have my payment info on file for the sole reason that I was not sure if I would stay anyway. It took me a while to learn about all of this, and by the time I did, my account was too old to take advantage of most of the offers.

Now that I can get the proverbial box off my head, I do want to help out at least a little bit where I can. Since opening my first shop, I have always offered the newb starter kit, but now I think I will steal your idea Argos and place the kits beside the tree. As for the payment info on file settings, I will leave them as is. It seems to be much more likely to be used by a true newb then an older member taking advantage. Thank you all for your responses and input, it is much appreciated.

~Dawn

I didn't say we don't.

I am European myself, and had already been using both credit card and Paypal for years when I joined SL, also paying for things I bought from the US over the net.

But, when I joined I got a message that my type of credit card could not be verified. And my Paypal was not verified because I never needed that before. So, I joined first, while the verification of the Paypal account was in process, hence had a no payment info account at start.

I know that LL has been changing the verification method later, to make it easier for non Americans. To what extent I don't know.

You can stick your head in the sand, but I still meet lots of Europeans by my money tree thanking me for paying to basic accounts, because they do not have a Linden approved payment method and can't get payment info on file yet.

So, I keep my tree that way.

In two years I haven't run into even a single person who could not put payment info on file when it really came down to it. And that includes the ones insisting they couldn't for months on end but magically found a way when they wanted to cash out or go premium.

People who say they can't verify are just finding excuses; it's unwillingness, not inability.

---

"Basic accounts" is the wrong term to use btw. Basic can either be payment info or no payment info; you can't tell someone's account type from their payment info field.

When I signed up, LL would accept neither my Visa card nor my Mastercard. Thankfully I had a verified Paypal account, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to put payment info on file at all.

After some realy bad and nasty experiences, I decided to configure my MT only for AVs with payment info. Was a hard descission to make, anyway I had no choice.

It´s sad to say, but charity does not work in SL as it does in RL. Most I was ripped of my money by professionals pickers and even rude ones.

Even if AVs with payment info have the ability to get their own money, I still believe that many of them can´t effort that. So I go on dreaming helping some newbs getting on the road, allthough it maybe wishfull thinking of me.

I myself was picking some Lindans in the very start and I still think, it´s a good idea with the MT in SL.

The traffic issue, well I don´t care about that. I hope, that some of the pickers might remember and come back. Still dreaming? Well, SL is a dream!

i had a lot of land area and moved my money tree around randomly each day.
also modified the way it looked, the lower half with a texture indicating the tree would be moved daily and planted the same trees all around to make it more difficult to find as users would set their landmark to the tree, pop in, get the money and pop out.

I am European, and while I've never attempted to make a paypal account, I have used 3 different credit & debit cards on SL without any problems whatsoever.

What I haven't been able to do however, is age-verify. Apparently my passport number and social security number are not loose on the web for that web "security" company to find. I was advised by Linden Labs that I could age-verify by sending documents by snail mail to their office but I weighed the risk and expense of sending them securely, them getting lost and having to pay to replace them, and decided not to bother age-verifying.

Try making something up instead and try again; it wouldn't accept my information either but it accepted a local variation of "Jane Doe @ 123 Fake Street" just fine .

If they have payment info on file, they have access to at least some money. You don't have that assurance with the NPIOFs. My tree's open to anyone. Some people use NPIOF alts to shake money trees and use other free money offers. They're easy to spot if you keep an eye on things. Just deal with them on a case-by-case basis.

Also, Money Trees don't influence traffic, which is actually one of the reasons I have one. I wanted a way to give newbies money, but didn't want to inflate my traffic from people who were ONLY visiting the sim to get money.

Newsflash. I joined, gave payment info immediately because I joined as a premium member.

For many months, I filed support tickets, PHONED linden labs, live chat, you name it.. every possible way to get them to fix the glitch on my profile which proclaimed my account as NO PAYMENT INFO ON FILE. I even put info in my bio letting folks know there was a problem which wasn't being addressed by Linden Labs with regards to my profile.

Oh Linden Labs reassured me in their database it said that my payment info was used, however I kept telling them that I couldn't go to places that didn't allow "no payment info on file" accounts. Gee, it took them about six months to finally rectify the issue, but I got right fed up paying money for a premium membership that I wasn't getting full benefit from and cancelled it after 2 months.

Not cool to be running your mouth like an authority when you dont know all the facts.

While they are available, us Europeans usually have Direct Debit Cards, which don't work well for payments over the internet. Credit Cards are becoming more and more common though, but many Europeans are still very careful, if not reluctant, to use them.

I would far rather use a credit card online (which offers me cover if it's stolen or misused) than my debit card (which, if stolen or misused would give someone complete access to my bank account).

I used money trees in my days when i was just born. It did occur to me however that traffic didnt profit from it because the trees were ready to be picked. I never stayed longer then a few seconds.

So.....I made my own. It drops silver and gold coins from a tree in the middle of my place. The silver ones arent worth a thing but the gold ones pay Linden! A gold one drops down every 10 mins on average.... so people have to hang around If no one clicks it... it goes poof after 60 seconds.

Its fun to watch newbies click on them!

I suppose I was a strange one... I never really used money trees all that often when I was a newb. Probably because I had, from my first half hour, a look that I knew I was going to use for awhile (thanks to the friend that introduced me to SL), and really didn't feel I needed to buy much else. I'd only even HEARD about money tree towards the end of my first month, and by then, I was nearly out of the applicable age.

Later on, I'd learned of things that were available that made money trees seem like picking up pennies. Sadly, things like these don't really exist anymore, since L$ don't move as freely as they did before the gambling ban.

Of course, my 'newbie days' were when you could get a free L$100 in your Ginko account for signing up, and people were singing its praises. My, how the grid has changed....