Charging more for Copy/NoTrans over Trans/No Copy animations.

I don't think it makes good business sense at all. Especially not in Second Life where everyone should be here to enjoy themselves - they would leave otherwise.

I sell individual pose balls as mod/transfer and boxed sets as mod/copy. The boxed set is never priced higher than buying all the individual pose balls would be. Buying in bulk should be less expensive than buying individual items because there is less work in bringing the boxed set to market.

It also caters for the indivdual who just wants one single animation and the indivdual who wants to set up a club or a dance studio or a gym etc., and needs multiple copies.

The main disadvantage is not being able to give refunds on copy items - so it is important to try before you buy.

EDIT

Thinking a bit more - assuming this particular business is exclusively mocap animations they will have very high production costs - so their pricing may be a reflection on that and an attempt to recoop on their high overheads.

- Menu driven furniture didn't exist then

- Prim hair didn't exist then, and the prices are about the same from when it did come out

- Script prices have gone up since people now charge real world equivalent

- Skin prices have gone down, the choices have gone up

- Clothing prices have gone up, after all, there are way more options.

So, ya, i have made note. Too bad you cannot accurately do the same thing.

It helps to read the entire thread before responding.

Snoooooooooooore.
It helps to live in the present instead of always falling back on the fact that you were here before other ppl.

in my book,... with your big fat headstart... you should be a millionaire by now..

if i were you, and had only one claim to fame.. and one of coincidence at that.. i wouldnt waste all my time sitting on top of the barnyard post crowing the same old song.

there are a lot of factors involved in pricing.. tiers have gone up.. RL cost of living has gone up.. SL needs better and better hardware .. just for the game.. let alone the animating software .. and the cost of that..

echo echo might be a free thing to do.. but creating costs the creators.

you have every right to not agree with it. my complaint is that youre always so destructive and insulting when disagreeing.. and oh yeah the echo.. kinda like Tinnitus... constant.. irritating.. but not life threatening.

I can see upping the price a bit for copyable stuff, ESPECIALLY stuff that is likely to be used in multiple inworld locations (dances, sure, walks, are you f*ing kidding me?)

but the main buyers aren't businesses... they're average jack/jill customers, who aren't likely to be using them to populate 50 dance clubs.... and really... how many dance balls is even a business likely to populate? double is just way too much, and realistically no copy should be a price drop (how often do you trade dance animations to another av? cause average j/j doesn't often if at all)

double is just a bit ridiculous... and if you sell em no mod, you should be shot... period.

I have alts, and they all like to dance. So, I have one hud with no copy/trans dances that gets sent between them. I only had to buy the dances once, so I guess I saved money on that (and risk losing them all when SL gets hungry). And then they all have a hud with my fave copy/no trans dances from other sellers. So with this average Jack in mind, copy (at a "regular" cost) paid off more for the seller.

My experience and needs are probably not typical, but there's one particular walk I found that I really like which is only available transfer/no mod and costs very little -- something like 50 or 60 linden$.

I also use a lot of AOs -- a Vista one that lives in my MystiTool Hud, which I use most of the time, and the built-in ones that come with my various collars and cuffs and so on, which I switch to in circumstances where the collar/cuff anims are likely to be triggered (so that the AOs don't fight when one of the collar or cuff anims is activated and I stop walking/standing normally).

So every time I get a new toy with its own AO, I go back to the shop to spend another 50 or 60 linden$, buy another copy of my nice walk, and replace the standard walk in the new collar or whatever. Second and First life both are too short for me to waste time transferring the anim from one item to the other, at least at that price.

It would be way more convenient for me if I could buy a copy/no transfer version of the walk (prolly cheaper in the long run, too), and it would completely unreasonable of me -- I think -- to complain about paying a couple of hundred for it.

I've mentioned this to an animator friend of mine -- not the one who makes the walk I like -- and she says that her experience is similar, in that when she started she sold individual copies of her AO walks, sits and stands transfer/no copy and now finds there are two or three of which she sells a lot, while most don't sell at all.

She is considering replacing all her transfer/no copy AO animations with copy/no transfer ones because of this. If she does, what sort of multiple of the present price for the no copy versions do people think reasonable? Or are we thinking in terms of an absolute price that's acceptable/unaccepable?

It makes good "business" sense. You're correct though that it doesn't make good "I'm just here to have fun" sense.

That said... if it weren't for the people who were here to do more than "just have fun" - would there be as many fun things developed in SL to make it as fun as it is?

You've got a very good example here, and I agree, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for more. Again, copy/no-transfer has way more merits than transfer/no-copy has, so it's only logical to make them a bit more expensive. Twice the price seems to be more-or-less standard. Selling animations as no-copy only will be more rewarding in the long run, if the animations are good enough for people to come back and get it more than once, so on the long term, a good animator is cutting his own income by selling animations with copy permissions.

Seriously, do people transfer their no-copy animations a lot? The transfer between alts mentioned before was the only one I could think of. Maybe the occasional custom-animated-object designer has use for them, but that's basically it.

At the same time, people do put copies of the same animations in their intan, their chimera, possibly into yet another chimera for different occasions, more of those items if one of them gets lost from SL borking out. So copy perms is definitely more valuable than transfer perms.

And maybe we look at it the wrong way..
Maybe it's not the copy versions being more expensive, maybe it's the transfer versions being cheaper instead.

I have some item myself, that I currently sell in two versions: modify and no-modify. For the rest, the two are completely identical. The modify version is currently about 130 times as expensive as the no-modify version.
Am I ripping off people who want the modify version? I don't think so. The modify version is simply way more valuable than the no-modify version. Not so people can copy it and make their own to sell, I'm not worried about that, because without the proper scripts it's just a dead item they'd be selling. No, the modify version is more valuable because it allows people to add to it, making it more useful and more valuable. It's comparable to a copy-animation. The no-modify version is as useful as a no-copy animation. Maybe even less than that, but still useful.
So the modify version I sell for a lot of money, the no-modify version I sell considerably cheaper. About 5 bucks, as a limited trial version to be precise. (Though it won't stop working after an X amount of time, it's just limited in that people can't add to it.)
And no, I'm not interrested in giving out that no-modify version for free. 5L$ is still pocket change for someone truly interested in it, but also gives a message not to bother to those who only want freebies and have no idea what the heck this thing is for.

When it's put like that, I guess it doesn't amount to much at all but, honestly, do you use the same dance over and over all night long? I figure a minimum of twenty in a HUD is needed if you really want to strut your stuff. In which case the question of nineteen dollars is enough to raise anyone's hackles.


Let's get real here: how many avatars are we talking about as "a whole sim's worth of people"? The reality is that most clubs in SL are lucky to have more than a handful of clubbers dancing at any given time and the more experienced residents tend to dance on their own HUDs anyway. If, as it happens from time to time, a club is particularly successful and there is in fact "a whole sim's worth of people" then that will be due to the good efforts of the host running that venue. A bunch of dance animations copied around in a few danceballs will not make one whit of a difference - just like copying a suit or a pair of shoes into different outfit folders.


Zackly. It is arguable, in fact, that a good club or even a good dancer will generate sales for dance animators. The object of the OP's ire sold the best part of 100 USD in dance animations to this account and five of my alt accounts early last year thanks to a single club that I used to frequent.

In my opinion, it is good practice to sell alternate versions of a product according to how folk like to manage their inventory and, just as importantly, to sell those alternatives at the same price. It is entirely specious to suggest there is a business advantage in owning copy/no transfer items and it is downright cynical to sell those items at double the price.

The choice of mod/transfer or mod/copy is a courtesy predicated on two very different methods of inventory management. Some folk like mod/transfer so they can give items as gifts, others prefer mod/copy because they like to set up versions of an item around their home or keep a selection of AOs loaded up for different situations. The point is that this is not a business opportunity to be capitalised on. So long as the item is not being transferred or resold, the customer's use of it is his or her own business.


I can't believe that anyone would invest in mo-cap technology just to produce animations for SL. Of course I could be wrong but unless costs have dropped dramatically since the last time I looked over a year ago, I always assumed these products were knocked off during downtime at film production companies.

You didn't see that BBC documentary featuring a LOT of SL 2 weeks ago, did you? It featured Stroker showing off his new MoCap suit.

This. The first time I stumbled into a club that actually had GOOD dances in the dance machine, I was gobsmacked. (Yeah I'm so vain, I flat out refused to touch the freebie dances out there. Yuch.) Not long after, I had a Huddles of my own with dances from the same store the club had used.

I gave up watching television years ago. Now that we have SL, I very much doubt if I will ever go back to watching it.

As for Stroker, given he sold his Amsterdam sim for tens of thousands of dollars a couple of years back and quite a few, myself excluded, are probably still buying his animations, I'm sure he can afford a mo-cap suit.

I wasn't (or maybe weren't) expressing myself very clearly. I was trying to say something more like:- since most potential and actual customers are just here to have fun, it does not make good business sense to scare them off by increasing prices during a recession.

It isn't actually possible to recover the true cost of running an animation business in SL - you would have to charge in the order of 25-50 pounds sterling per animation - a price that is out of the market parameters. So you have to do it for fun, or for the challenge, or whatever - and also see it in a little SL bubble and view profitablity in SL terms.

Mocap producers are (IMO) feeling the pinch. Their start-up costs are extremely high and their production costs are also very high. They will be very sensitive to falling sales volumes. I would guess that they are looking for ways to increase revenue. That said - does it make good business sense to raise prices as much as they have? Time will tell.

Right. It's 19 dollars to go from no copy to copy.

But, if I have 5 clubs in SL (or maybe I just buy copyable dances and have a business renting dance balls to people and I have 5 customers)....

I can set up an unlimited number of clubs/dance balls if I have copyable animations. The potential profits I make from the dance balls go up for each one I have out someplace. There is no way to say (nor enforce) a "You can only use this animation in your own personal things" - so you really have limited choices as an animation creator in order to make sure you are being compensated fairly.

1) Do not offer copyable animations, period.
2) Offer copyable animations only for club owners who are going to make profits with them - and charge a really really high price based upon your labor to create it and the potential profit that club owner is going to make. (This would make a standard copyable animation worth at least L$2K - maybe even more - in fact, in real business sense, probably 10 times that).
3) Or, you can come somewhere in the middle and make a copyable version of your animation that is affordable to people who are just going to use it for themselves, but also tacks on a bit of money for those who will make money. Bottom line ends up being close because it's affordable for the average joe (who couldn't afford option 2) so you will make the same amount of money on that animation.

Another way to look at is is let's say you have three objects or huds that you want an animation in. If the animation shop doesn't offer copyable animations at all, and you pay 100 each, then it costs you 300 for each animation that you want to go into your three things.

If you go to a place that charges twice as much for a copyable animation as a no copy, it costs you LESS - because you only have to pay 200 for three (plus an unlimited number more in case you get something else some day) rather than the 300 you wanted.

----

FINALLY - Let's get a little BLUNT here folks. You don't need to respond to this, but just ask yourself...

If a yes-copy animation has no more value than a no-copy animation, then why don't you just buy the cheaper no-copy one and be happy?

Hmmm?

oh its the 2003 offence again
the lack of oldbies rushing to back up the noobs is not unnoticed.
to believe that there has not been a cultural change on the grid in the past 6 years is beyond naive, but perhaps expected considering some dont have the benefit of actually having been here to witness it hey.

i reckon the number of ppl that lose nocopy anis is far greater than the number of club barons profiting off a dance.
personally, its a non issue for me. when i see no copy anis i tp out without spending a single L$.

sigh... Please leave the thread.

You have contributed nothing but personal attacks, and yourself have been nothing but insulting when disagreeing.

You came into the thread with the express intent of personally attacking me. Mission successful. All 3 of you.

Thankfully the rest of the participants are talking about the merits of the issue i raised and I am glad for that.

Maybe something productive can come from it in the future when pople consider how to sell and price their items.

I believe that a few of the larger animations suppliers in SL have invested in mocap technology specifically to produce in SL. A very large up-front investment, indeed.

It is also very expensive production wise, because you have to find dancers/actors - and they will expect to be paid RL rates.

It is not necessarilly any quicker either - an experienced animator with the right software can do the job faster - so I can understand that mocap producers have profitability concerns.

I wouldn't argue with that at all. It's just over two years and a few days since I first rezzed and a hell of a lot of things have changed in that short space of time. Some for the better - SL is itself way ahead in terms of performance - but the mores of business and socialising have definitely seen a general change for the worse as far as I'm concerned.

I know someone in SL that bought a complete MoCap system a few months back and paid $35,000 USD. I told him he was crazy. But he thinks there is profit to be made in SL with it still.

As you said, time will tell.

A countryman of mine once defined a cynic as "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

If you don't appreciate that distinction, you won't see the blatant hole in your rhetoric. Personally, I'll take customer satisfaction over cynical exploitation any day and the breadheads may go f@ck themselves.

Absolutely! I wouldn't worry about the club barons either - they are providing a certain amount of product exposure, free advertising and economic stimulus.

With that logic, then there should over 300 millionaires from SL - All from 2003. Right?

One time claim to fame? I do not know what you are talking about. Maybe you should try reading the SL Wikia.

Obviously you must devalue my contribution to SL in order to make yourself and inability to do the same, feel better. It is an age old thing to do and most often done by people who feel less about themselves and feel the need to bring others down to their level. Misery loves company and all that.

Oh my - I'd like to see his Business Plan and when he expects to re-coop the start-up cost!