How do people afford it

Not necessarily - some people value price above all, and do not appreciate beauty enough to pay for it. It's a completely different market and you have to choose which one you want to cater to.

I'm still so embarrassed at all the nice stuff said in this thread! Aw shucks guys...



I think it probably helped that I had my shop selling houses for a while there - I got to know a *lot* of people just helping them set up, doing modifications, stuff like that, in spite of the fact I really didn't come down from my platform for anything but business in those days. The shop was the same theme, so that helped.

It probably didn't hurt that there were a LOT fewer places to go back in those days, when I got started. Maybe 10 private regions a week were being rolled out then. It used to be, new regions were added to the western edge of a blob of islands to the west of the Old Mainland.

So if you ever wanted to see 'what was new' you could fly to the western edge of the world, and look at the regions there. I got a number of visitors that way, who said they were just seeing what was new. That was back in the days when 2000 people concurrently online was typical. Now it's 25 or 30 times that.

I wish I knew a good answer - but I fear my experiences are somewhat dated. It's definitely a *lot* harder to get started now with higher region cost, higher tier, lots of deeply entrenched competition, many ideas already explored and over ten thousand other private regions to go to.

* * * * *

If it was me, I'd do this: invest in about 30 prims (free!), a notecard (free!), $L 10 for a texture, and $L 100 for a group. The texture to be put on a 10x10 prim, to be the 'map' of your vision. The other 30 prims or so to be 'land reservation markers' and the notecard explaining the theme, rates, rules, and everything.

Plan *really* carefully so the finances work out. Allow chat in the group, and put their names on the markers as people choose their part of the shared vision. That way people can get a sense of who else is involved. Build a few things to show examples of your vision (even though such items may only be used temporarily until new residents learn how to build).

Expect 95% of the region to be built by others. Yep. You yourself won't have many prims to play with - you might do the roads (usually important!) or maybe a tiny public commons, that's all. 500-700 infrastructure prims that aren't even very fun! But remember, the more prims you take, the less people can be in your community. Most important - take a deep breath, and TRUST people to do a great job. Not everyone will, at first. Keep trusting. For months. New people get better - way better.

So for the cost of some time, $L 110 and the use of someone's sandbox, you can take $L reservations for the region. Startup cost of region to you: Nothing, or, maybe a little bit depending how much you can afford to put in yourself. The more $L you can put in yourself, the easier it will be to get people on board. But yes, it's theoretically possible to springboard yourself into having a region.

Prepare to work your tail off to keep these people happy for a long, long time - remember the real cost of land barony is that you can't *not* log in most every night, for the forseeable future. And good luck


...also: a warm congratulations are in order to NeoBokrug Elytis and the Nexus Prime + "The Wastelands" crew. The Wastelands are now eight regions of post-apocalyptic desolation - it has been one year since they first got started. Talent really can translate to success.

Neo, I'm blowing your sekrit about The Wastelands, it's just too good to keep! These are also the guys that did the I Am Legend region - if you saw that, you have some idea how good these guys are at what they do.

This is very sensible, but there are other models for operating a successful community.

I build 100% of my regions, less the prims I allow for my residents. So the appeal of my communities is that someone is living in a unique building that isn't for sale anywhere. It also provides the benefit of a planned community where everything, down to the placement of the last cypress tree, works as part of the plan.

Cristalle Karami does the same thing with her community. The fruits of her creativity are a big benefit to living there.

The downside to our model, (I don't know whether Cristalle would agree) is that it would probably take me years to build enough unique houses and infrastructure to fill up as many regions as Desmond has. I'm just running 2 mainland regions, and 1 estate that I haven't offically opened yet, and it's about as much as I would be willing to take on. Fortunately, I'm already 80% full (out of what's complete) on the new region without one shred of advertising, just from word of mouth. So the model works, at least on my small scale.

The trick is to do what you enjoy (in my case designing, building, and planning), and craft a business model that utilizes your unique talent.

I want to correct something - I do sell mine, but sales are so sparse that they're ALMOST unique. hehe. The way this occurred was that I wanted to use the rentals as a showcase for my skills.

But Avion is correct - there is some demand for places that don't have the same houses you see everywhere out there. Not to ding those prefab creators at all, because their works are beautiful, but there is value to me in not being part of a community that looks like everyone else's.

And I will put a plug in for Avion's places. They are incredible. Well worth it. I'm jealous

But you're right, Avion, it would take an excessive amount of time to do a buildout where EVERY house is unique.

Come off it Des, you're telling me you spend more time online as your so-called "main" than you do as Desmond? Is that even physically possible? Is it really your main if you spend the majority of your time as your "alt"? ;-P

I haven't been on that character in months. I never really thought about 'main' and 'alt' other than chronological precedence... % time spent is a factor? In that case Des is my 'main' for sure.

Oh, and yeah there *are* other biz models out there, certainly. I *love* making things in SL, by the way. Love, love, love doing that. But I just don't have time any more. Had I considered this, yeah, I might have just stopped at 3-4 regions. But by the time I realised, it was too late. @_@

Ah well, this is how language evolves and defines itself..

Wow,
Desmond the Cool Griefer....I hadn't ever thought I'd one day say THAT!


And yes,


Desmond is my Shining Beacon of Downright Great People in SL.

I wish we had more like you!

Des- I just gotta say we were babes in SL together. I just didn't do anything business-wise
Most of that time I did not have a computer that could handle the graphics/lag, so I became a sandbox spider. I do love to build.
Just wondering, what might you be doing in RL? (Pls- Forgive the prying)

and desmond owes it all to me

VERY carefully and through progressive planning. The place has to have GOOD shops, and some other appeal like the atmosphere & beauty of Caledon, regular addicting Events & parties, or just a steady flow of "regulars" who populate it and buy stuff.

That way the rent gets divided up over & over again among all the vendors, and the place rises up in Search by the amount of traffic.

I have my own small business in a very small office in a business park- electronics development stuff. It's a small niche market. Customers include everyone from private individuals, Jim Henson's Creature Shop (yay! their stationery has Kermit)... Apple computer, Nokia, Motorola, Harris... up through the US FBI, Sandia Labs and yes, Halliburton.

Forgive me for not saying exactly what I do - I'm too easy to find that way (advertising, doh!), and every lurker on this forum would then have ALL my personal info. I have distributors; thus, the phones are slow. The market's fairly small and saturated too - I've found it makes more sense to just stay cool than spend money like crazy advertising, &c &c. So yes, I play SL from the office sometimes...

Apparently I owe it all to Nina... (grin - do I even know you? alt?)

This has been a real interesting thread. One of the first things I questioned when joining SL was how people could afford to run a SIM of their own, let alone multiple ones.



Still, I see some strange practices that don't seem to have been answered.



For example, I saw an island for sale yesterday. It was a single island in the middle of a full SIM. The SIM is to stay 75% ocean, and the island tier was only $100/month (price of island was around $200ish I believe) The odd thing was that there also were only about 1200 prims available to this land owner as well. This was a class 5 SIM at that.



How can a SIM be even remotely affordable if the estate owner is only getting $100/month and only a small fraction of the initial price? And what good is owning an island like this with so few prims. Unless the estate owner knows that this SIM is on the same physical hardware as their other SIMs and just wants to save on shared resources, it kind of makes no sense to charge so little and give so few prims. What good are the unused prims? There was no indication of using them for an underwater type "world" or anything.



I know this is kind of multiple questions, but in this case it seems the estate owner must be doing this out of the good of their heart more than anything else. It seems they own about 6 SIMs in a grouping, 3 seem to have fairly low usage and 3 were in this single-island configuration.

sounds like a void sim.

to quote wikipedia ...

"Another kind of region is the void sim, which allows a limited number of objects, and offers a limited amount of underlying CPU power. Each of four void sims is limited to 1875 prims instead of the usual 15,000, and there are four void sims created by vertically stacking them in the memory space normally taken by one full 15,000 prim server. They are used to create space between islands, as well as to provide memory space for LL's vast database storage needs, thus externalizing storage costs directly onto residents tier payments."

This sounds like an Openspace sim, i.e. you get four for the price of one, but they have only 1875 prims per sim (instead of 15000 for a regular sim). You can only get the Openspace sims when you have at least one regular sim to attach it to. Hmm that actually sounds similar to my situation, although I haven't set mine up for rental yet. I have 6 sims now, 2 regular ones and 4 openspace.

-Atashi

Desmond what can I say? Three days ago I was ready to throw in the towel and now I have something to aspire to.

Caledon is a beautiful sim and it is what expected to find when coming to SL.

Des, your "griefer explanation" post made me really *laugh out loud* at work. Don't think I've visited Caledon, but based on the feedback in this stream I will have to check it out. Thanks for making me smile.

not to add to your embarrassment, but seeing that you are so humble and rightly deserving so much more, and so as not to allow you to let your head hit the pillow feeling second, even to Claire...



will you marry us?

Marry in SL!? *faints*

Alliez is up to 82 now Des. Better get busy!

Desmond = good guy.

coco

I now know what you mean about griefing Desmond, after playing World of Warcraft. It can be annoying at best and at worst can make you loose perspective. By way of explanation, I am a level 43 Hunter in WoW, you gain experience and honour in WoW by two main functions, killing mobs (electronic AI's) or other players. There are band restriction, that is no honour or experience gained by killing something way below your level, BUT as you progress upwards the "bandwidth" becomes bigger. Where I am now it’s about 8 levels down.

A level 35 player or AI stands no chance of killing me, but I gain from killing them, contra wise a level 51 AI or player can kill me fairly quickly unless I am very very lucky. Or take them unaware.

In short the process is called "Ganking" or "Gankfeast"

But.....there are ways of getting even (evil smile). My favourite ploy is to stealth and hide in water near joint Horde and Alliance quest centres. I wait until my human prey is either drained by fighting AI's or totally focused on handing in the completed quest. And then I strike.........and....at range a Hunter (with his Pet) in WoW is almost unbeatable...I wonder why folk don't love me there any more. -


Getting back to SL I also have a job that a) I work from home, and b) has quiet moments sometimes weeks or even a few months. Providing I can keep an eye on the markets.

I thought about starting a part time land business within SL. I still do from time to time. But my own stats on margins leads me to believe the net profit income would not be worth the time taken until you have at least 20 Sims. That's nearly £9,000 sterling, plus of course monthly rentals of £3,300. Profit margins depend on what you charge, and what folk will pay but it is not a business to enter lightly. I could afford to do it and give it 3 to 4 months to take off but a failure would cost me a lot of capital. Risks include SL itself (becoming non viable) some emerging competition (OpenSim Org) and SL competition.

Not something to enter into lightly.

Hello All,

I understand that there are a few talented people in SL who have the ability to organically grow a business in SL to revenues in excess of $60k a year (latest stats say 150ish having a positive Linden Flow > $5k a month)

Although to be honest the stats are a bit hazy, they exclude land sales but don't seem to explicitly exclude Linden purchases.

What I also understand is that more people than you think are able to invest $5k to $10k a month in a hobby they love.

To be clear, I'm in no way disputing Desmond's entrepreneurial talent.

What I would say is that accomplishing what he's accompished in such a small, and for the most parts, stagnant market is miraculous rather than an example for us mere mortals to aspire to.

For the most part, if you see someone who is apparently throwing large chunks of his/her RL income into SL.. then unfortunately that's what they're doing.

If you look at the economic statistics of SL, yes there appears to be a large liquidity circulating the SL economy, but there seems not anywhere near that much being turned back into real dollars for the purposes of tier or anything else.

Now I know there will be lots of people responding to this post with lots of examples of runaway business successes in SL. Anecdotal evidence is always fun.. however I think your bank manager would be wanting slightly more in your business plan before he forwarded you the loan to invest in SL.. and why should your investment criteria be any less stringent?

Be careful is all I'm saying. Current figures seem to indicate a real unique user base of around 300,000 with average concurrent users of 40,000 at any one time.

Based on these figures the market isn't that big and (in my opinion) there's not very much real convertible cash to be made.. especially given that Desmond has requisitioned more than his fair share..

i said "us", not "me".... btw.

Hello All,

I'm a software business owner in RL and came to SL with the idea of looking at the market and seeing if there is money to be made.

While I enjoyed reading this thread, and while I'm in no doubt that people are doing wonderful things, old cynic that I am I was looking for hard figures.

So, I popped off to the economic stats page of this site and looked at the spreadsheet that detailed the L$ sinks and sources.

I figured that by analysing the data I would see RL profits taken from in world as a L$ sink on the money supply.

LL bless them do provide a lot of information and detail L$ sinks from the money supply in pretty good detail.

On the spreadsheet, the only undefined value is something they call "Other Sources(Sinks)" which for Dec 2007 was a value of L$ 7,235,632 or approx $29K.

This seems to me to be the only value which can possibly correlate to a RL dollar value being taken from the SL money supply - partially due to profits generated by SL activity and partially by people cancelling accounts and taking their cash.

There are other sinks detailed but these are all defined quite explicitly.

Now from what I can make out, people on this thread are implying that tier and land costs of in excess of $7k are being paid by inworld profits generated by a single user - Sorry Desmond, but you're the guy in question

Looking at these figures, Desmond is responsible for a quarter of all money removed from the SL money supply in any given month.

I'm thinking this because Desmond says he pays tier and land charges from SL profits and I'm under the impression that tier costs and land charges can only be paid in dollars.. is that right?

I understand that many land and estate owners take money from tenants via CC and Paypal which won't appear on these figures, but even so.. I do need to ask, where is the market, and where is the RL profit motive for any activity within SL at the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is a healthy market, looking at the figures it seems there was approximately a net value of $950k added to the currency market in December alone.. Unfortunately it does look like most of it is staying in world or in LL's bank account.

I did review the other figures, which seem designed to be opaque to say the least.

For instance the PMLF figures looked of interest, apart from the fact that the notes didn't deign to say whether these included L$ currency purchases or not.... it's all very well listing people with positive cash flows into their linden accounts, but it'd be nice to know if these are really funded by SL business activity, or by injections of RL cash.

Ok, after all that rigmarol, all a simple guy like me needs to know, is where can I find some clear financial data about the size of the market and what is the real dollar value being transferred to RL every month?

Thanks in advance..