Failed attempts, and the SL economy

This is partly a question for content creators and partly a question for residents in general.

First the content creator question - which is more aimed at content creators who make things which are useful for building or creating other things or environments. I can also understand if you don't keep track of these things, I certainly don't for the products I make in this category, but I'm asking just in case someone does:

How many of your products are bought for what turn out to be failed attempts?

For example. If you sell modelling poses or studio - how many people buy them because they want to be models.. and of those, how many actually become models?

If you sell vendors, how many people buy them to start profitable businesses (as opposed to just selling a few items for fun), and how many actually manage to do so?

If you sell themed avatar clothing, how many people buy them because they want to assume an avatar role (eg, buying cyberware because they want to be seen and treated by others as a cyberpunk) and how many actually manage it?

If you sell club props like lighting systems or danceballs, how many buy them to start their own clubs - and how many actually manage to become popular?

The general question I'm trying for here, of course, is.. how much of the SL total economy is being supported by people trying and failing to achieve things?

And the question to all residents is:

If too much of the economy _was_ being supported that way, would that be a bad thing?

Would it be something that we ought to try to change?

Is there a way of changing it without upsetting the business model too much, or discouraging new folks who would in fact succeed?

Although I detest Teddy Roosevelt, I think this quote by him best describes those who fail and why we should not try to discourage people from taking risky ventures.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic,"
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Wow Chris ... not bad for a loud redneck

Personally, there are many avatars/skins/outfits in my inventory that I guess you could call "failed attempts". To me, though, I see them as a product of my own inability to focus on only one part of the vastness that is SL, rather than something at which I tried and failed. My interests are too broad to sit down and focus on only hanging around one subgroup or venture. I'd say it helps the economy, since I wind up spending money in many specialty places that cater to many different interests.

Really, I think a small part of the economy, SL and RL, relies on wannabes hoping that they can turn their dreams into reality just by buying the right tool or accessory.

But the greater portion of those economies is supported by ordinary people with no aspirations other than satisfying their urges and needs in the fastest and painless way available...

From my end:

Currently my top two product lines are my Nikon SL100 Digital Camera and tripod--this is a popular item, and sales from this alone pay my parcel rent and my classified listings, and my JVC HD camera.

The Nikon is sold to/bought by photographers--many of which have active, dynamic galleries. Many of them are also RL photographers (however, the majority are hobbyists).

My next biggest sell is my JVC HD camera & tripod. This item is sold to machinima companies/directors, studios, news rooms, clubs, etc. Less than 50% of these clients are active filmmakers. Most dabble in film, but never complete projects (just like in RL). Club owners that set up the camera as prop tend to have a decent show of traffic.

I don’t know it these examples help, or inform in some way.

I tend to work on the principle of "It's better to try and fail, than never try and never know".

Broccoli

I agree with Pratyeka, this is a small part of the economy. Somebody just starting out is most likely to be using freebies of everything - it is the middle range businesses that use the most of the products provided to support business owners. There are free textures, poses, scripts, and vendors enough that one can get started for very little investment. It is only when you are bringing in enough income that you are willing to drop $400L on a texture pack or $1000L on a full perms animation that you start spending money to make money. I think that by the time someone is buying a product designed for use by business owners they are already generating enough income to be called a success - although I define success in SL as covering your tier, so your mileage may vary depending on your definition of success....

At the far end of the scale, the more successful a business is the more they begin using and needing custom tools. There does come a point where in order to continue to grow in your craft that you need to start using custom textures. I've started doing my own poses and animations now after having already cleaned out everything with full-perms permissions on the market long ago. Lastly, you always have a few duds in your product line - nobody can hit that ball out of the park every single time.

An interesting question, Yumi...

I think MOST products, in RL as well as SL, are sold at least partly to fulfill someone's dream. (except, of course, for the basic things that are needed to sustain life).

Advertising plays on this. "Buy our toothpaste and you will be sexy and popular". "Drink our beer and you will have lots of friends". "Buy a house from us and live your dream".

I'm not sure that it really matters whether the buyer goes on to realize that dream with that product. It's the fact that we do dream that counts.

I sell a couple sex beds, if the avi fails to ever get laid, does that count?

Anyway, I think this is a moot point... it's easier in SL to venture into a business because it's much, much cheaper than buying a parcel of RL land and making RL investments into something that might never pay back what you put into it. In SL, it's worth the risk.

But here's the thing - if the person with the "failed" business never tried, how would he ever know it was going to fail? Also, many people have different ideas of what failure is. If you have a club you pay a lot for but is a great place for you and your friends to hang out, even if it's not that popular, is it still a failure? If you have a shop you love but are in the red most of the time, is that a failure? Maybe the owner doesn't see it that way. They say most businesses IRL have to be open for about 2 years before they start seeing profit... some people in SL don't even wait 2 months before complaining about no profits.

Personally I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying to succeed in an SL business (even if they are destined to fail or never even get started). It supports the existing businesses in SL. People buying a bunch of stuff and never using it, or buying and using a bunch of stuff and then ultimately giving up, is much better than the lazy bastard constantly *talking* about how he or she is going to do this or that and then never doing it. If we could find a way to shut them up, that'd be cool.

I agree with Lindal,

There are no NEEDS in SL only wants, and theres only three ways to aquire stuff, BUY IT, STEAL IT or MAKE IT.

As a content creator, I spend a LOT of time making stuff in SL and sell maybe 1 or 2 of over a period. If it enables a person to live thier dream of building a club then thats a good thing.
If they decide to give it a go and try and build it themselves then good luck to them as thats how i originally started.
I say ,...... you tryers out there, keep on trying becasue you may never reach your goal but at least you have a goal and you succeeded.

If I wanted to be a mech in SL, I buy a mech AV .. then im a mech, goal successfull *grin*

Are these SL items? from what your describing it sounds your talking about real cameras as i don't see why i would need a camera in SL.

I bought my first ever video camera today and i am very happy with it

I wondered if he was paying licensing fees to Nikon and JVC for the use of their names.

Second Life is largely play.

So I think of it much like children's toys. Dollie dresses and dollhouses and toy cars and trains and cops and robbers.

Some people play plushies and others are wee kitties.

Much like children's toys, none of the dresses will ever fit, the homes are too small, the cars too tiny to be of any practical use.

Few grow up to be a Princess, or an astronaut.

Practical 'failure rate' of child toy purchases: 99.9%, maybe higher.

But without dreams, there are no dreams realised.

Yumi, interesting question, but I think the word "failed" in the thread title gives the phenomenon a negative connotation that it doesn't merit. For me, SL is very much a safe place to try a lot of different things, in order to see what they're like. So, the fact that I tried something out and learned from trying it IS the success I seek.

So I have a lot of silks from being a kajira and I'm accumulating building tools now and I have a mermaid tail and a third-party lsl editor and ... oh .... it goes on ... *surveys inventory and shakes head*

I realize that for many SL is a venue for achievement. And cost-effectiveness is very important if you are looking to build a successful business. But for me, SL is pleasure and a safe sandbox in which to try things I would not do in RL. So I DO accumulate a lot of things I will not always use. And I regard each of them as a good investment!

All you creators, keep churning out the stuff! /me loves ya!

I have a boatload of things in inventory. All very varied, all different purposes.

From furnishings to decor; club oriented to sailing; planes to stripper poles to hair, skins, shapes, poseballs, animations, scripts, textures, plants, and clothing/shoe styles from goth to prep to punk to formal.

I don't consider any of them as fitting into the "purchased for x-purpose, but results in failure", because I bought them all on a whim or for a spontaneous reason (99.9% of the time that reason is unique fun or it caught my eye)

I also mix and match quite a bit from appearance to builds to furnishing those builds.

Each and every item I purchased has been used at least once.

And those that have been used more than, say, three times, were probably used in a way that wasn't intended by the seller!

In other words, my imagination runs rampant some days and I end up being incredibly entertained (as well as entertaining friends) by varying combinations and using things in a way that the item probably wasn't necessarily meant to be used.

Thanks for your replies. The thing is, it wasn't so much about the benefits or otherwise of taking risks, as it was about the effect of that kind of thing on the economy, and what it might mean.

As an example: if shops were to offer a 30-day or 60-day trial of their club lighting systems (or similar objects) - assuming there was some way to strictly enforce this in SL -
would it make sales figures plummet?

Yes. Things are cheap enough in SL, and AVs come and go. Just sell them.

Considering that most clubs go out of business in the first 2 months anyway, the poor lighting sales guy would never make any money. And re: clothes... if you buy a dress in RL, wear it for a month, then take it back and say 'yeah, hey, this just isn't my style, can I get my money back?' the RL store will just laugh you out the door. There are no free trials, my friend, unless you get a demo skin/shape/dress for L$1 that has DEMO printed all over it.

You see, that's exactly my point..

If people had real, correct information about how likely it was that what they were doing in SL was going to succeed, would people be making any money at all?

I can't speak for anyone else, but.. I'm frightened by that thought. Because although Desmond is right, that we have to have dreams, and we have to have failed dreams because none would ever succeed; there's a catch - nothing says that people have to dream their dreams _in Second Life_. For many, the attraction of SL is getting to earn a dream that they couldn't in RL (I originally wrote "having a better chance of earning their dream", but having a 75% chance and failing isn't really any better than having a 5% chance and failing - in fact it could be seen as worse). If that isn't true, it's only a certain amount of time before the media and the populace realise that. And if what you say above is true, when that happens the SL economy could suffer a horrible recession.

Possibly. I don't think that everyone will just lay down and accept this though. There are always people out there thinking they've got a better mousetrap, whether it's a club, an RP sim (I'm talking end consumers btw) etc. If they've got a better mousetrap (and they just might!) they will buy things to support it. So will all the people supporting the mousetrap. It's in human nature to dream and to challenge; if it wasn't, we'd all still be living in caves.

Hon, I see your concern now and really I wouldn't worry. I think that far fewer people are here to make a business succeed than are here to simply play around. Yes, we hear a lot on the forums from people who are failing at their businesses. But I think most of the SL spending is done by people just playing around. Even people who bother to make a club ... many of the smaller ones were made just to have a nice place for friends to hang out. Personally, I very much want SL's economy to succeed, and I have no worries along the lines you do.

Ah, but very few people who start businesses look at it that way. Only the fools who think they are going to make big $$ in SL end up disappointed. SL is a hobby and some people do indeed turn their hobby into a profit making venture, but most of us just putter for the sake of having fun and making stuff that we enjoy. If you start out with it being all about "teh moneh" then you've failed right at the beginning.

I never see it as a "failure"
I prefer the term "unintended resolution"

i guess we have to wait untill Nikon and JVC file DMCA before LL does anything about that kind of fraud and copyright violation

but god forbid you have a sploader giving away 4 cents to 5 people! That's a bannin!