No Q4 Pricing Changes Planned

Here's the latest blog entry: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/10/09/putting-an-end-to-pricing-rumors/

The good news is that there are no pricing changes planned in Q4 and that includes raising the grandfathered Sims.

The most interesting comment to me is this:
- we are evaluating changes to the configuration of premium /basic subscription models and to mainland tier pricing, but have no specific plans, and again, we don’t expect anything to change in Q4.

Looks like they are seriously taking at a look at premium/basic accounts. Obviously they either need to eliminate basic accounts, eliminate premium accounts, or at least make changes to the premium accounts to make them worthwhile.

We've discussed it before but any new ideas out there?

What if all you got as a non premium member was a taste of SL...a tropical sim, a snow sim, a granite pile of crap etc. Maybe a dozen sims where you could try SL out and build in sandboxes. If you wanted access to the rest of SL, you had to pay $5 a month...

Not advocating this approach, but you asked for new ideas. If they can't come up with new reasons to go premium besides land ownership, maybe all they can do is take away stuff that is now free for all...

Or just a demo version for 14 or 30 days with limited options.

I am so staying out of this discussion. This is a "guaranteed to make you enemies" type discussion. Oh no.

Unless you just look at it as a brainstorming session. It would probably kill my rental biz to take away free memberships. But it's fun to try to solve a puzzle LL has been unable to solve, even with five links to upgrade to premium on the home page.

That's the way I look at it.



At the very least they should increase the stipend amount to equal $9.95/mo. While I'm one of those terrible people who advocates premium memberships only I don't think it's going to happen.

There must be some other benefits they could provide premium members rather than take benefits away from basic members, but I haven't come up with any yet. Or should I say I haven't come up with any that wouldn't affect the entire economy negatively.

Why would it effect the rental business?

Surely even now, if all your renters had to be premium, renting is still an attractive option against owning land and paying tier.
The only threat I would see for the rental business is if LL change the Tier charges to 512sqm blocks or per sqm, rather than the big jumps in Tier we have now, then that may have an effect.

Well lets see

Theres the current plan where all free players who actually get involved in SL are a large part of the market for the content creators.

This keeps things rolling basically as things go.

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Eliminating free accounts would change Second Life a great deal. Many content creators, as well as many land lords would go out of business.

What we would have left would be those who really want to be part of the virtual world.

Eliminating free accounts would be a BIG nail in the coffin for the whole "SL is the 3d Internet of the future" idea.

Since it would be basically admitting SL for the time being, and the forseeable future is only a virtual world.

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The first option is better for keeping SL growing and big. The Second is better for keeping quality of SL high, performance, etc.

Depends on what they need I guess.

I hear you and have never advocated eliminating free accounts before. Unverified without credit card, yes, but not all free accounts. I love and respect content creators and would never want them to lose a single linden.

Wild wacky thought...bring back First Land.

More random thoughts: What if the more land you owned, the bigger your stipend? How about a free classified section just for premium members? What if only premium members' could have profile picks? Or only premium members could get IMs via email or upload textures? How about a 20% prim bonus for premium members? Just ideas...

Don't you think at this point that would seriously hurt landlords and estate owners? That's why I didn't mention it.

Well. I don't expect any of the changes to be anything to cheer about. I expect they will all be things that cost more, or things that are taken away. Things have been taken away ever since I've been in LL.

I will be happy to be proven wrong.

coco

I don't know why they just don't kill premium accounts and let anyone buy land and your tier level is the type of support you recieve.

How long did YOU survive with 117 prims?

Ok, if the OP is shooting down ideas, I'm running for cover. Steve had the right idea...

and you also have to own land to get stipend?

Nah, not shooting down. Just questioning.

Good point. My first place was a rental and I had 200 prims. I couldn't stand it. I've got way more land than I needed now because I couldn't be restricted by low prim counts.

Not to be pessimistic, but that is basically non-news since LL always said that grandfathering would continue throughout 2007 and if they're going to charge for voice as an additional feature then they can get away with saying they didn't increase the price since it's a voluntary step to start paying more

The fact that they're still thinking about mainland tier isn't great news either since the only thing Zee indicated last November was that prices there would go up.

There really isn't any news there and the reason people have been talking about November as the price increase time isn't because they think prices will rise in November, but because LL said prices wouldn't rise for grandfathered islands in 2007.

Apparently they said they would give 60 days notice and to do that for a price rise in early 2008 an announcement would need to be made in November.

I don't think any change in tier charges, whether free or unverified accounts exist, how much stipend you receive, etc should happen for awhile. There have been enough unannounced, drastic changes lately with severe consequences. SL is feeling more and more like a game of craps at a casino(and the odds aren't even as good)

My preference is to give it a rest and not only work on providing a stable platform but a stable economy as well. If the idea is to get people to look at SL as a business opportunity(and I think that is one of their goals), they can't dump sudden and unpredictable expenses (VAT, tier increases etc) on people. When a RL person signs a lease for a store, they are at least guaranteed a certain rent for 2 or more years on their shop. In SL, it seems the very next week all the terms of your account are in danger of being completely reset.

Will throw my two cents in before the wars start
I actually think this kind of brainstorming is fun, and would like to think there's a chance to get some positive ideas going

I like the first idea there, making stipend relative to land holdings, not sure how that would affect the land market, because I have problems getting my head around that. But it would at least be a real benefit to becoming premium. (Note and disclaimer: I am not a premium member - not to say I'm not contemplating it though - and only share in group-owned land).
Free classifieds I could see working, although it would be unfair on content creators who are not premium members. Maybe a discount?
Profile picks to my mind are essential ways of sharing cool places with others so that I wouldn't be too keen on.
Although I can see how the uploading extures idea might come from, again it would be very unfair on non-premium content creators. And remember, it already costs 10L a pop to upload a texture. I may just have paid more on texture uploads over the past few months than I would have paid in premium fees And before anyone jumps on that one .... I know why I pay for the uploads and all that.....
And yes, I like the idea of the prim bonus at lot if it were feasible, afraid it may not be, but I know it would be a big incentive for me.

Like I said, just my two pies worth

I cant personally see that they will increase tier on mainland, LL are trying to bring more people in .. not trying to drive them away. Good business practice is 1st to keep the customers you have and then to convert the potential customers.

Problem is that for many SL has become jaded, the dont see LL having a direction and you can guarantee the ones who complain about things like tier going up or the lack of membership bennefits are those to which it applies. I for one doubt that I could continue with a tier increase considering the VAT application too. Ive said many times LL needs to convert those free accounts into tier paying residents and the only real way of doing that is either offering something worth having for memebership OR removing membership alltogether giving everyone the ability to own land. As part of that you can even apply a stipend (like the old days). Hopefull that would reduce camping, increase peoples use.
It shouldnt effect the likes of Ray becasue people will still want to rent. Lets be honest just becasue somebody CAN own land ....doesnt meanthey want to pay the big bucks required.

It really depends on how greedy LL are... I see a good business model being

Abolish Membership (as membership offers nothing)
Enable Verified Payment info on File (to remove bots and dead accounts)
Land for All (Would allow anybody to own land opening the option of buying L$)
Lower Tier (to make land ownership more attractive)
Offer Stipend (Increases purchasing ability and may induce further L$ purchases)
Remove Tier Jump (Should be priced on use NOT a big jump i.e per 512/1024)

This would increase the amount of people holding land which would increase Tier revenew for LL which of course would effect the bottom line, would also mean a richer SL in the form of content, Land dealers would be better off due to land prices stabilizing meaning more money in world.

The current model of
Membership (L$300 stipend and nothing else not worth it)
Fully Open system (too many non-accounts i.e bots, alts, failed signups)
Closed land system (1 AV owning 1 sim with 20 parcels for sale rather than 20 AV's)
High Tier (people MAY be able to BUY land but few can afford the tier)
Poor free tier (512 really isnt enough to intice peple)
Tier Jump (1sqm over and you jump twice current usage )

The current model is still designed to be things for membership, unfortunately LL removed the ONLY restriction i.e you can still use SL even if your NOT a member which negates membership alltogether.

I guess its going to be either offering everything to all....or charging a lot to the few and removing the ability to have for free. Personally I think the latter is better.

I've been in SL just over a year. I was a basic account resident for a month then my RL let me go premium.

If there needs to be any further limitation put on basic accounts, this is my suggestion: allow full access to grid for basic members for their first month (or maybe two) after which they are limited to 3 hours log-on per day.

Brain dump over coffee:


METRICS:
It is difficult to propose detailed measures without the benefit of an analysis of the economy.

We have some metrics on resident spending and earning in a range of bands, but no idea how this breaks down between Premium and Free.

What are the numbers of Premiums at the various tier levels?
How many Premiums do not use/donate even their 512 of free tier?
What is the breakdown of unused tier?



SUPPORT:

How many Premiums actually use the Premium-only support facilities?
What is the breakdown of cases and response times in these support facilities?
(Let's not get into why a Premium might not bother to use them)

Was the restriction of certain support facilities to Premium simply a vain attempt to stem the flow of support calls? It's not actually a Premium benefit at all is it? It's just been dressed up that way?



STIPEND:
You pay your subscription in US$, and LL give you some/most of it back in L$.
Is Stipend really a significant and necessary force-feeding of the economy?
What would be the effect of abolishing Stipend and reducing Subscription rates to match?

How many Premiums never buy L$? Is the Stipend a significant income item for these people? Are they getting far more than the Stipend from other sources?



FREE 512 TIER:
It's not actually 'free'. You pay for in your subscription.
It encourages people to get into land-buying. Those who find 512 restrictive will tend to buy bigger parcels.
There is no tier-income for LL in these 512 plots.
Why not abolish the 512 free tier and reduce subscriptions to match?


HOW TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO GET INTO LAND OWNERSHIP?
What about a version of First Land in which new members can lease a random 512 plot in a reserved group of sims for L$512 (say). They have it for a month only. They can not sell it. When the month is up they get their L$512 returned and can never take up the option again.
The L$512 is just to avoid having to provide a grillion sims to be temporarily owned for free by alt/bot-controllers and/or J. Random.Goneaways
The random allocation of plots would be to avoid the creation of a super-plot by an individual alt-controller or group.



Why not just do away with the *current* Premium/Free divide?
If any member wants to buy land then let them buy and pay tier. The ability to pay more money monthly to LL is not a 'benefit'.
If any member wants to rent, then business as usual.

If we look at SL as the 3D internet then we would think it was outrageous to charge anyone just to turn on the internet. But if you wanted your own domain (In SL known as land) then you pay a premium. So the free accounts can 'browse' around a bit while some of us buy-in and have a 3D web adrress within SL we pay for each month.

LL needs to figure out what we should be charged - especially with healthy competition nipping at their heels. If they increase now after VAT, the death of Casinos and the Class 5 vs. Class 4 debacle - I feel thatthey will not remain competitive. We shall see what LL does (hopefully not what they usually do which is alientate their customers).

Funny. Thousands of ISPs all over the world seem to think it's necessary to charge people just to "turn on the internet" and millions upon millions of people don't give it a second thought.

If you live somewhere where high speed internet is unlimited and free to all, I'm sure there are many people who'd want to know.

But Second Life doesn't want to be an ISP.

they want to be a Web Host, and eventually a Web Portal (after open sourcing)