Should SL stores offer premium members a discount?

"Even content creators encourage the blurring because they'll happily accept money but when it comes to delivery problems it's suddenly all LL's fault. Happy to accept the money, but not caring to deliver and trying to push the blame on someone else."

What blurring Kitty? That's an awfully strong statement. Who's problem are delivery issues? The real merchants here 'service' their customers and work through glitches LL imposes on us on a regular basis. I am offended to be lopped into a minority category(as should other merchants) and treated like its all of merchants in SL. I don't think I have personally seen a more elitist attitude than that. You single handedly polarized every merchant in SL. And, there are some quality one's here also. You're right in one aspect though..........we will accept money from anyone because we do not discriminate like you do. When you are in business, you take the good and the bad, no substitutes.

To the good merchants of SL..........I applaud you for putting up with weekly encumbrances and work through them to the customer's benefit.

Yes, but 1 private island's worth of land would support 128 Premium account memberships. In other words, for 1 island's worth of hosting costs, LL can make US$295/mo if the island is a private estate, or US$768 if the land is split between Premium users.

only if:

-There is sufficient demand.

*and*

-512 Meters is big enough land for those residents to do what they want. The more land average per user the less the difference.

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But that is secondary - there is also no true claim by LL that producing land is a limited resource on that scale. Therefore it really doesn't matter that they could cram more premiums into a smaller space.

My point was mainly that all those private islands are making LL far more money than doubling or tripling the number of premiums would.

If I've understood that correctly, it's not only offensive, but it's also untrue.

To what purpose?

If they have more than 512 metres, they would be paying more tier on the extra.



Every region of land is a server, which has a fixed running cost.

But that's kind of the "SL as video game" model, right? I mean, if instead the model is "SL as the 3D intarwebs" then we'd expect the consumer to become (or remain) sophisticated enough to distinguish between the hosting company (LL), and the site owners (in-world businesses).

None of which is to say that business owners could never have a legitimate interest in promoting Premium memberships, although I've already said I don't see that being the case now. But anyway, I'd be pretty surprised if there are many current Premium members who would take content creators to task because they didn't get their money's worth out of the Premium experience.

.......

I guess a case can be made that every active resident, including strictly NPIOF, can make a positive contribution to the SL experience, and thereby to the economy. I mean, in theory, one could create compelling content that drives folks in-world or improves retention, without ever paying a dime to LL, nor to any other content creators. It requires a fair bit of squinting, though, to see how this entitles a lot of support from LL, or much gratitude from other content creators.

You have to look further than just the tier income. Those 128 premium land owners would be calling LL for support. My customers, in the estates I manage, call me and my team, and my estate owners pay me to respond to such calls. Furthermore, although I work for very generous estate owners, they pay me in lindens, at generous in-world rates. However, LL pays their employees in real money, in amounts that far surpass any in-world rate.

I won't even get into the quality of support we provide, I'll only mention that there is no ticket to fill out and no waiting for 1 or more days for a response and solution.

Requiring people to be premium isnt the solution

Non-premiums drive the majority of the economy.

All these businesses need customers.

They're the store owner's problem as far as the buyer is concerned.

If a store owner knows that some transactions will fail and that some people will not get what they paid for then it's just dishonest at best to not replace in case of any problems with delivery.

But you're right with the general objection, yesh, I should have put "some" in there somewhere .

Kitty..just about every biz owner i know happily forwards a replacement of anything that someone complains they did not receive as long as they can see in the transactions that the person did in fact pay them for something. However, I have also had the situation where people have come into my store and requested a refund for accidently buying the wrong thing, not understanding what the product was, deciding it didnt fit their decor, and for things they bought 3 or 4 weeks before that now they finally tell me they did not receive. Sorry...but in those cases I try to make them happy but i am not into refunding people for their own mistakes. I had one person do this 4 times in one day, then bring a friend in with the same arguments. Essentially what they were doing was buying things and then finding fault with them to then demand a refund. That is called scamming...and I wont be taken for a ride like that....reagardless of the state of SL's delivery system.

I often also have the situation where the person simply forgets the name of the item...and once i point out the exact name for them to search for in their inventory they find the item with no need to a replacement or a refund.

To say even "most" or "some" shop keepers blame everything on SL is completely untrue...if it were "most" would be out of business.

Lots of "experts" here...with zero data. Best can be gathered thru all the clamor is that apparently no one has ever tried such a thing. Ergo, the only way to know for sure would be to try it. There's no definitive yes/no to a question like this, only market speculation. I think that speculation could be very valuable in trying to decide what products/store/approach to use if someone did want to try. But unless someone does try, the world may never know.

To all those who suggest an area of a shop for <premium members only> to buy discount items, that wont work, setting a portion of land to group or payment info on file does not actually stop people who have no access to that land from buying items on it.

Why in the world would you want to do something stupid and tell a bunch of customers they arent good enough to buy from you?

But thanks for letting me know atleast..now I wont buy for ya either lol

I spose all the MBAs in this thread should go explain to Saks Fifth Avenue how their business model will never work.

No experts here. Just people expressing opinions, just like you did.

A model of "SL as the 3D interweb" would likely make Premium memberships nonsensical in their current terms - you don't really have a "Premium membership" to your ISP, except that by paying more you could buy extra speed or less contention, and LL haven't considered offering that for SL yet (if Premium members were guaranteed less lag, I think there would be a lot more Premium members )



I don't think they'll complain to the content creators (or the Lindens) about it, they just won't go Premium and/or won't stay in SL. I imagine that the few who _do_ complain to content creators are just the "random people with a sense of entitlement complaining about how greedy I am" that many content creators have encountered.



That's the theory SL was designed around, but it's increasingly seeming that it doesn't hold water. SL now has teams of talented people all working together to make content, which is great for the quality of content available, but not so great when it comes to universal involvement in content creation. Moreover, there are only so many eyeballs who spend so much time in SL, so - excepting the (I believe, relatively small) proportion who enjoy creating content in SL purely for the joy of doing so even if no-one else ever sees or cares about it* - the number of content creators in SL must be limited.

* I know that many people _start_ creating on these terms simply because they enjoy experimenting with SL, and some then get noticed and become successful, but in my experience not very many people _continue_ for very long if their content is globally ignored.

True, but sites do offer Enhanced Content for those who pay. I see nothing wrong with Free Signup entitling you to access the grid and do all the basic functions, and the, to use a phrase you gamer types like to use, Level Up, more features at different price levels.

This is exactly right, but that's the problem this thread has identified - it's not clear how LL can provide "more features" when the majority of the grid experience is provided by content creators. On the web, if you subscribe to a site you might get more content _from that site_, but ISPs don't offer a "premium membership" where you pay the ISP more but then get more content from every site you visit.

They sure would if they could!

ISPs can partner with a site to provide the "little extra" (enticement) though.

Of course if LL would try to partner with a content creator (or even several of them) there would be a riot .

You could offer Inventory and upload space based on payment. Also LL could create, or have created for them Premium Members Content of all sorts, open mainland to all payment verified, and give Premiums only the fre 512 like someone said earlier, Cristalle I think. If merchants wanted to voluntarily get together withh LL and work out some sort of discount club for Premiums, maybe for tier reductions to the merchants. It takes a little creative marketing, something that so far LL has not shown at all in regards to SL.

LL wants SL to be the New Internet. It doesn't have to work exactly like the Old One.

They sometimes do . Mine offers the Increased speed package, more email space, and a few other doo dads. Ther are ways for LL to make Premium more attractive. They just can't be bothered to think of them.

SL would be more like a web host than a ISP - everyone needs an ISP to get on SL already.

But your point is a good one. Under the current LL model eventually people wont need Premium memberships at all!

Which might work out just fine.

Or Costco. They won't even sell you anything without a membership. Plus, different levels of membership get different benefits.

That said, if I, as a basic account, went into a store and saw that they were offering discounts to premium members, when I know for a fact that it is not a benefit to them for me to go premium, that would basically tell me that they thought they were to good for my money, or that they thought I was some sort of second class citizen. If my Lindens aren't good enough for you, then as far as I'm concerned, there are plenty of places that will be happy to take them and you can go make your money from your superior premium member friends.