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

What if I want to give the animation I paid for to a friend? I seldom buy anything if it isn't transfer.

Umpteen objects which only YOU own and cannot give away. It really isn't much different from copying the same clothing items umpteen times to make different "sets" to wear, and yet clothing designers don't charge extra for copyable clothing.

I understand that club owners could theoretically create and rez multiple dance balls for their guests - but, honestly, how does this significantly benefit the club owner? Will there be some people out there who would abuse their copy permissions? Definitely; however, does this justify doubling the price on *everyone* who might want to create their own personal Chimera sets.

From a business point of view, is it really worth extracting extra money from people to cover potential losses from a tiny percentage of customers who may abuse the copy permission at the risk of alienating the rest of your customer base?

Actually, as a home-builder, I have a more apt comparison: This would be like me charging double my normal selling prices for "copyable" versions of my houses on the off-chance some estate owner might rez a hundred copies of the same house on his rental properties. I believe the theoretical loss I'd take from someone doing this is well worth not pissing off the rest of my customer base.

ok my take....

Ummm take it as you will lol

But my take I like 2 choices
copy/no trans
or trans

Sure, willing to pay a bit more. But then that is me. Call me a sucker or what ever I dont care but that is how it is. I like the choices to give to friends or what not and yes I refuse to do the the one thing where the seller sends to the person I am buying for, to me that is well just not right. Too cold.

As for dances yup same thing have a choice I do it. No choice I can ask myself do I or dont I and in the end that is my choice again.

As I say this is my opinion take it as you will or not.

But in the end it is up to choices you CHOOSE to do this or you Choose to do that.

Dont like it go else where

good day /good nite

I don't know what the big deal since the vendors in sl have been doing this for the longest and on just about everything they sell. It's not like they need to make everything from scratch. Once it's made all they need to do is copy it and presto.

As far as they're being greedy, ha! This is even older news.

Tell me something new.

I keep waiting for skin makers to make the right choice and use a vendor scripted to record a skin buyers name and product purchased to a database somewhere at the time of purchase. Then have the vendor use that name to discount the purchase of additional makeup or facial hair option skins for people who already own that whole skin. Like that'll happen... it's in their "best" (read.. greedy) business sense to charge everyone full price for every single slight variation of what they already own. I'm not holding my breathe either...

If I was selling the skins that I've made, you better believe I'd be using a vendor like I describe. L$1000 for the same exact thing but with a different lip color or beard option is flat out robbery IMO.

Thread Summary as I see it:

* Eku is not fooling anyone with the snores, is actually interested enough to start a discussion over on SLU as well - not about the perms but mainly about Briana and 2003.

* Eku appears to be still pissed and holding a grudge (by the fact she mentions it) against Briana for saying (incorrectly) that Eku's shoes were violating someones copyright.

* For some reason at least a few people that I have read posts from appear to be taking:

"It really is a community thing. That is how i always think when i do business in SL - but i am a sucker that way, a product of my rez-date."

To really mean:

"Only my opinion matters because I rezzed in 2003"

I can only assume because they think this because Briana talks about 2003 a lot and that is what they are expecting to read instead of actually what is there.

* Popular opinion seems to be that people agree paying double for copy perms vs. trans perms is fleecing people and unnecessary.

No.

Actually, she talks a lot, period.

Sorry but I am missing the point here - so do a lot of forum people. That is inherently bad because...?

Outside of drama whoring, I don't get the point of the thread.

If my perceived value of something is close to or more than the price asked, I pay it.

If it isn't, I don't.

If someone wants to price themselves out of the market, the market will take care of them; there's no real need to grandstand in a public forum, campaigning against those "evil, greedy people".

I see the same thing all the time in MMOGs. Someone offers to buy / sell something for a little bit less / more than what others are asking; then there is the inevitable "DON'T BUY IT! IT'S A RIP OFF!!!" people who crawl out of the woodwork, as if other players can't think/decide for themselves if something is over/underpriced or not. Even worse, all too often, the price is more than fair for the item, but the "price hawks" still emit their shrill whines that people are getting ripped off. Yeah, I can really see where the "greedy" ones actually are.

My simple response to it is: If the price isn't what you want to pay/take, then don't. Move along. It's what the rest of us do in the Real World(tm).

As for the specific case mentioned, I can see value in paying more for some kinds of copy/notrans over no-copy/trans animations. 100% more isn't out of the question, if the animations are good quality. 1000% more, well, that gets back to that perceived value vs price thingy again. If it is, I'll still pay it.

I've seen builders charging more for a copy version, I don't see the problem with that either.

I think the lesson to be learned in all of this is that if you fail to offer your customers options, you'll end up with a much smaller customer base then you could have potentially, and if you charge a extremely high difference for differening permission (full perms excepted) then you will also alienate a portion of your customer base.

@Qie:
actually I'd take that as a devaluation of the -copy+trans permissions set, especially from a business perspective if you have to buy multiples of each one to put in each product made for transfer, because each animation now adds to the cost of your product and at typical pricing for qualit anims that adds up fast with little or no room for overhead

the topic.. yes it fascinates me .. and it would have been great to be able to discuss it without all the same old innuendo.
but Briana has a very bad habit of trashing ppl just for the drama effect. plus the fact that she brings up her rez date like it makes everyone else's opinion irrelivant. like it affords her some kind of automatic respect.

she could just as easily have just stated that she doesnt like to pay extra for animations, doesnt see the point and asked ppl what they think, without going on to trash the creator, calling it


Quote:
PURE GREED .... most unfriendliest rip offs of the community...squeezing the community for every penny they can get...Once people get a taste of money, their greed mutates into something that knows no boundaries and becomes insatiable.

It has been removed now but she actually named them.. with a bit of a pun.. but she named them... then she goes on to state that


Quote:
But these days, someone 3-4 years old knows better.

and then it starts with the same old 2003 mantra.

I think we all know that a lot of things rise and fall in SL based on rumour and innuendo... and even if things are cleared up further along in the thread, there will be someone who reads partially and then proceeds to pass on X-shop is EVIL AND GREEDY... and before you know it, they lose a great percentage of their sales.. because as the rumour spreads, it is embellished.

Some of the bigger places can handle it, but something like that can wipe out a smaller creator relatively easily.

What i didnt like and yes bear a grudge, is that my creation was featured in a thread called

Are these all Stolen/Copy Botted items on this Xstreet search page?
/327/6d/314550/1.html

and when it was pointed out to her that the things were legit.. then she just blithely says


Quote:
Thanks Nimue - i guess that answers my question!

Though i do wonder about the origins of the full perm kit.

based on what?

It is not the first time i have seen this kind of posting by Briana , and usually i just avoided her because she can often be less than pleasant with ppl... and i am sure that i am not the only one thinks that way.

About the 2003 mantra.. i do think she means "Only my opinion matters because I rezzed in 2003"
she trots it out enough .. especially when ppl disagree with her..
and when used in that context.. how else should it be read?

But... the vendor IS offering their customers an option. This isn't about failing to offer options.

What is "extremely high difference"? That's totally subjective. What may be extremely high for some customers might be tolerably high for others.

I mean, just about anything you do as a businessperson is going to alienate a portion of your customer base. I seem to recall that "you can't please all the people all of the time" truism.

In this case, I don't think the lesson to be learned has much to do with the vendor in question, but how we, as customers, should deal with vendors under various circumstances.

As a vendor, you make your stuff, and do the best you can to service and please your customers. If you aren't doing it right, then it will show in your sales figures. You can then either adjust your pricing and policies, or just accept what sales you get. There are people who will pay a bit more for a different set of perms on an item. There are other people who will pay a lot more for a different set of perms on an item. There's no magic formula for coming up with a "fair" price for everyone right from the start, because such a thing doesn't exist, nor should it.

Who makes this vendor you say they should choose to use? It's not one I'm familiar with.

When i go shopping i hold onto one simple principle

NO COPY ?
NO CASH

Far to often i lost stuff due to a server bug, where i wasnt able to rezz the item again.
A few times out of sheer idiocy from my side
And a few more time from a pure miracle. ( Im still boggled about some of those cases )

So everything i buy, and i mean everything, gets as a copy into a backup folder first, before i unpack and rezz / wear it.

I cant count the times where this helped me a lot and the creator too, cause i diddnt had to IM him for help and waste our time.

Sorry, I guess I'm not following that, Void. For resale, one pretty much needs to buy +copy+trans, right?

With -copy+trans, it's at least *possible* to use the anim in products for resale, albeit a tremendous pain the the butt.

I actually used to sell an item with somebody else's -copy+trans anim--try as I might, I just couldn't charm the animator into selling me full perm at any price. Using the lesser perm was expensive, yeah, but nothing compared to the aggravation of assembling each product individually and stuffing the whole mess into vendors that kept track of when supply was running low, etc.

With copy-only, one couldn't resell at all, right?

(Or am I missing the point?)

That's correct - with copy only, you cannot re-sale. You could buy a number of individual transfer/no-copy animations and sell each one in your products - sort of a "limited edition", as you described - or you need copy/transfer permissions.

Please could you tell me what is the advantage of having a full perm animation over a copy/transfer one to a SL product developer?

You cannot modify an animation, other than change its name and description - so modify rights do not really give you anything.

From the animators point of view, it can be very confusing if someone changes the name. I have customers asking me about an animation and I have to answer, "I've not made an animation called that, are you sure it is mine? What does it look like?" This can take some time to sort out - time which I would prefer to spend on other things.

What is it about having modify permissions on an animation that makes it easier for you? (You wrote "a tremendous pain in the butt".) It makes things harder for me. If it is just a matter of setting the name and description to something that suits you, you could ask the animator to do this for you.

EDIT - Perhaps Void misstyped and meant mod/trans?

Oh, sorry. Hmmm, wonder what I mistyped to give the impression of really valuing that Modify perm; I wasn't intentionally making a distinction between full-perm and +copy+trans. To me it's all the same (given the current state of animation properties, anyway).

I have heard other folks complain about not being able to rename animations for use in scripted items that can use the name as a label in dialog buttons. Most such scripts also use a notecard to specify different label text as an alias for a fixed animation name, so I don't see this as a big deal.

On the other hand, I'd really very much prefer that Modify permission animations be able to change all the settings that are established at upload: looping, facial expression, hand position, ease-in and -out, and especially priority. For that matter, I'd like to be able to tinker with specifics of the .bvh itself, notably the root offset coordinates. The likelihood of that happening, however, is vanishingly close to nil.

Thanks Qui - I think it was the bit about your selling with a copy/trans animation and not being able to buy a full perm one. It sounded like this caused you a lot of additional work.

I honestly feel that if someone wants a full perm animation from me, they should pay me the RL rate for the job. This isn't realistic where most SL producers are concerned - so I will supply some animations copy/trans (no-mod) at a moderate price - strictly for use by other content creators in their products within SL. If it was full perm it would be very easy to download it from SL, re-upload in SL (or elsewhere) and re-sell - a comparatively easy method of content theft.

I think it would be nice if the upload parameters could be modified - but I think this would be a major change as these are embedded in the animation asset file at the time of upload. I imagine a big system design change would be needed to make it work effectively.

Taking notes on proper business tactics here.

1) You price your items according to what a few vocal veteran community members want to dictate, regardless of how much time and effort went into the production, and regardless of what the resulting consequences of practically "giving away" a copy version will involve.

2) It's perfectly acceptable for the vocal veteran to inform you of this by trashing you in a public venue and calling you a

"greedy MotherF"er",

labeling your pricing structure as "PURE GREED"

and suggest that your business practice "mutates into something that knows no boundaries and becomes insatiable"

and that you are "squeezing the community for every penny they can get."

3) And perfectly acceptable for the vocal veteran to trash a rather large group of other business owners.... in order to achieve #2,
mentioning in a public venue that they:

"care nothing about the community"

regardless of how they price their products or conduct business.....but based solely on what date they entered SL.

In a nutshell, for a business owner to meet community approval, your conduct toward other business owners means nothing, but your pricing structure means everything.

(maybe "trash" is a harsh word) - sorry, but my thesaurus is in another room.

Just want to get that squared away before I unlock the store doors for the day.

I had missed the above rules when studying in a few business classes here. Maybe I was covered up in IM's during that lesson. Always Learning.

well one rule you should surely learn is that people unhappy with your business practices just might say something about it, and there is really no reason they shouldnt. if your skin is so thin that you cannot bear to see a multisim retailer catching flack over their pricing, how will you react when people question your own business?

jesus even a private heads up regarding the fact you had a freebie out for sale seems to be a major insult hey.

I don't know who you're aiming that at, but the original poster has already said that she was going to go away and rethink her opinion.

That's very rare in rl and particularly in internet forums.

As for the greed factor, yes it certainly can be on the other foot. the majority of content creators work for pennies and end up having to pay ll at the end of each month just for the responsibility of running a business in here. Certainly over 90% of people with a cash flow in are earning less than 200usd per month before tier/ads etc. I think over half of the creators earn less than 50usd per month before expenses - don't quote me on that as I need to check the economic stats again.

So people in here are literally working for pennies in best case and are subsidising the consumers in worst case.

In a way I do think consumers here have become accustomed to having everything. They expect cheap and they expect to have multiple copies for them to modify, reuse, have stashed in multiple folders for ease of use. All for a once only price.

So for me I prefer being able to pay for each copy I want. Part of my reason is because I want content creators to be rewarded for their imagination and skill. I want them to be able to expand and afford the extra tier or new software to make better things. Call me dewey eyed but there you go. The whole second life economy is based on the equivalent of a developing world sweatshop - except in theory we do it for love.

The day will come when my shop no longer covers my costs. When that day happens I'll pull the plug, I'm not paying LL for the dubious privilege of struggling with their poor quality platform to make things. It won't be the end of the world but it will mean just a little less diversity on the grid.

I don't want it to happen to me and I don't want it to happen to others.

Depends on the nature of the animation, I suppose. If you are making stuff for an item of furniture that's likely to use MLPV2, then yes. Hower, good scripted collars, for example, just read the animation names from the prim's inventory and build the menu on the fly. They also often allow you optionally to hide animations from the main animation menu (you might not, for example, want the walks and stands used by the collar's AO to appear anywhere but the AO menu) by giving them an appropriate prefix.

I certainly know at least one person who spent a fair bit of money on no-mod animations for her collar, only to discover that the eccentric naming system adopted by the creator (lots of non-alpha-numeric characters and similar nonsense) made them completely unusable in either Dari's or Amethyst's products. They were nice anims, too, and you would have thought the creator would have researched the market a bit better, but it seems not.

I agree with this - and I think the OP was raising significant points and stimulating a worthwhile discussion - that is, in between the off-topic posts. It has been often said here that if you run a business in SL, you must expect to work long hours at less than minimum wage - so you better enjoy what you are doing. I know I cannot recover the full economic cost of my work in SL - so I have to be pragmatic as well as have a sense of community, or give up.

I shall review my pricing policy in due course - but I won't be making any changes in the near future. I shall continue to price mod/trans the same as mod/copy and give discounts for bulk purchases. I am not convinced that there is this strong market perception that mod/copy is worth more than mod/trans - because for every customer that wants mod/copy there is another that wants mod/trans - and each of them for perfectly good reasons.