Who pays?

Two threads sparked my curiosity on this topic, the "What Value does Virtual Land have?" and the "Top 10 Sims" threads...

Thinking of places like Bora Bora, Bedrock, Greenies, all those great surfing sims, Costa Rica, etc.. I'm sure the sim owner collects a little from rentals and maybe some product or amenity sales, but who is covering their entire $195/month to keep up their region? I can totally justify $10-$50 when going off the 'compare-to-website' approach, for something like an art gallery or music venue/radio station.. But for private estates, hangouts, places where people enjoy for free, I always think of the golden child on the other end who paid to set up that region and keep up the tiers so I can come surf, skydive, browse, dance, or whatever we do in those places... and I think of how I can tip them or thank them in some monetary way.

I also wonder after looking at a club/mall for sale today.. I tried asking the owner for some numbers, such as NOI and gross incomes, rental stats and traffic, etc... and he seemed dumfounded by the question. It's just that if I spent a few hundred on something, and another C-note each month, it would bring comfort to know that at least a good portion of that would be coming back in revenue.

/babble OFF



maybe I'm just curious, how many of you region owners or large chunk of land owners are making any of the tier back from your biz or visitors.

I can only speak for myself, but 'who pays' is a mix for my estate; it is (veery roughly) 50-50 commercial/residential, with most residents participating in both.

Generally you have a spectrum.

Many very busy people fund the grid from their first life as residents (don't belittle this, it is *the* most efficient $L/effort for most)...

...to people with shops that offset some or all land tier...

...to digital content barons that have large shops, even larger estates and still manage to cash out significant amounts of USD after all that.


So who is paying for the 36 current regions of Caledon? About half is paid by residents and the other half by shoppers doing business with Caledon's mercantile class. I pay the tier bill to the Company directly myself, but no way could I handle it for more than a few days, without a vibrant resident-enjoyable area and a decent economy therein.

Overall we are quite in the black; shopkeepers range from 'not quite breaking even' to 'over 1000 USD/mo cashed out' - I won't get more specific unless a few residents choose to speak up about their own businesses.

No point getting any more particular, because it's simply not right to data-scrape the residents of Caledon - but definitely, there is a functional business model underlying it all.

* * * * *

A number of ways to do it:

a) residential/commercial like Caledon

b) pure native business residential (some places do this)

c) pure native business commercial (some places do this)
- mall region of many businesses or,
- 'main store' region of one primary biz

d) 'game' region, where people pay for guns and ammo, or that sort of thing, and play a game there

e) 'real life' business commercial (5000 USD for a region for a year is nothing to a corporate ad budget for instance)


There are other ways, but those are the primaries.

Also, there are a lot of people with significant disposable incomes, and 300 USD/mo isn't that big a deal to them. Sometimes they knock that down a bit by sharing the costs with friends, so it comes out to maybe 50/mo and everyone does okay for ages like that.

How to make 200US$ in a month?

200US$ = 53 000L$

= 1710 L$ per day
= 71.25 L$ per hour

The question is not how to make 53 000L$ BUT but how to make 1000x53L$ per month.
How to find 17 people per day that want to pay 100L$ for a product/service?
How to find 53 people that want to pay 1000l$ per month to pay the rent for a shop/house/land ?

And that's not by buying a FULL sim, put an ugly store on it and selling low quality products or services and login once a month to cash out your money.

Begin small and take the time to grow.
You have to create a place that people love.
That people want to visit.
Make a quality product that people want.
Give good customer service.
By being in your shop
Talk to your potentional buyers
Let them feel good
Let them trust you
...
...

When you have the time and skills for it it's rellativelly easy.
You have to work hard, very hard and it will take time to make a good name in SL, a place where everybody wants to be, a product that a lot of people want to buy, ...

Well with 10.000 m2 I am far from a Sim owner, but I can relate to what Zoha says. Because I see it is working for me this way.

At the moment my sales are going in the right direction to make tier each month, but it took quite a while to get there. And that is with investing each month a bit of cash into the game to speed up things a bit. The more my sales are rising, the more land I could get, and eventually I could make tier on a full Sim. Even though I do not want a full sim anyway, it would be possible this way, but don't expect to be there very soon.

And as Desmond said, there are people for who 300 USD is disposable income they can justify to put into the game each month. Though I am not one of them, I can imagine that you just buy a Sim to make it as beautiful as possible, while never earning a penny back from it. As soon as I win the lottery, I will show you

Greetings Marcel

If the owner was selling it as a going concern, s/he ought to have expected to state the nubers, but if it was selling at the normal the price of the land, plus maybe a bit for the builds, then the numbers would be irrelevant.

I don't own anywhere near a sim, but I make a decent rl livelihood from the land that I own.

Very true.. and I've visited HR Block and am curious about other big co's that have bought into SL so I can see what they are doing with it..





That's a great way to break it down, I always do that RL with things, it drives my wife crazy.. (I justify paying XXX$ per month for a water softener by saying breaks down to .25 cent per shower, etc)

I'm in my shop alot when customers arrive, and I welcome them.. but it seems they get the used car salesman fear and run before I can talk them into purchasing.. lol when really all I wanted to say was welcome and enjoy

I appreciate the responses.. I'm really not digging for specifics from anyone or trying to mimick a biz plan out of this, I'm just curious about some of those places that always seem to be unoccipied ghost towns and who/why they are keeping up. Is abandoned land pretty common? I rented in one region that had a great setting, but it was 99% vacant rentals.. I tried helping out and taking over 6 of the shops, but they already ran out of prims and couldn't have handled if more people came to rent.

Maybe I'm nosy.. but I do thank you guys for responding.. I know the tier fees are a cost in the bucket for most, and when I come across a beautiful place like Costa Rica, I want to help out to keep it going.

Don't worry about it, if you don't pay them enough they will just steal from you and wait for the next wave of noobs.

In many estates, the "pay" is via sales. It is what has kept Livingtree going -- though this last month has been, um, challenged due to the SL outages.

According to the SL Economics statistics around 4,000 people have a positive monthly cash flow of more then US$200/month. That is in world, many land owners also receive rent payments outside of SL via PayPal.

My SL business covers my land costs and produces a profit each month. But many sim owners don't look to recover any or all of their tier costs, they chalk it up as entertainment expenses.

If you have a successful business it's possible to run the business in one small area of the sim and then build the rest as an area for play or exploration. I know that Phobos runs this way and I expect others do too. The big businesses might actually be making enough to support multiple sims, of course. (There's a claim I've seen made on some blogs that the economic statistics cut off at the US$2000 level to hide the fact that there's a tiny number of residents making US$15000 or more. This doesn't actually make any real difference statistically - the Gini changes from 0.9651 to 0.9657, wow - but apparently it could be a political problem.)

Another method is simply to split the sim between multiple people. Certainly if you have a mainland sim or a grandfathered island for US$195, if you want 16384sqm of land it's quite substantially cheaper to split a sim with some friends.

Sadly, that number is taken before deductions for tier are considered. So probably many of that 4000 disappears after tier is taken.

On the plus side, I am one of those lucky more than 200/monthers.

I was surprised how fast revenue built up. You will do well when you have a good product, and a good marketing plan that includes taking care of your fan base...

As for the surfing sims... The main draw many have is that they are connected to other sims with malls and such. When we host a surf event we draw 50 - 90 people on a sim for hours. The lead time up to the competition also draws people for practice. Everyone who sells our boards gets a cut. Its a franchise. The better they do, the better we do.

I think the key is getting your product known. Sending out full perms free items with links and note cards gets around fast. There are many ways to develop a buz about your product. Just as in RL. And its surprising how fast the little amounts build up. They key is not to be static in one shop someplace. Find ways to get your product out there, get it used and get people excited about it.

That sums up the game these days..................

As for investing 5,000.00 by real companies well thats nothign got ads for some companies. But really compnaies stil have common sence. If the platform doesnt allow enought fleaxablity or stabilty for the use of showing off their products or services just like real Life they pull out fast. I think another posting forgot to put this in that startment as well........Nobody continues to pay X monies for crappy service.............

God companies know when to pull out of a bad situation!!!!!!!

I see this completely the other way round. I have one and a quarter (openspace) sims devoted to nudism. I guess it cost me about $100 a month to run it but for the amount of time I spend there and the pleasure it brings me I think this is small change really.

It serves no commercial purpose at all and I have no interest in making the money back although I have got a tip pot that pays for little odds and ends, but obviously doesn't cover the cost of the sim. In fact I like it when people tip me small amounts becuase I think L$50 from somebody who hasn't got any money is just as important as a L$1000 tip from somebody who has heaps of it - it's the thought that counts.

The bottom line is I pay for it because I enjoy it.

Hell I may even add some more land if any of the neighbouring islands become available

/me grins