No Q4 Pricing Changes Planned

Isn't the above to some extent based on an acceptance that only Premiums can buy land and pay tier to LL?
I see that there is a benefit to LL in that the 'free' 512m of tier (that you pay for in your subscription) forces you to buy a small bit of mainland in order to take advantage of the 'free' tier.
What if your subscription was lowered by the cost of 512m of tier , and you no longer had 512 of free tier? Would that change everything? Would you then just simply rent somewhere?

"That would be to assume all premium's only have just 512, .."
No. We're only talking about the first 512 of whatever an account holds, where 1024, 2048 or an entire mainland sim.
How do you want to pay for that first 512 of tier? Via your subscription or as part of whatever total tier?

Because that "free" (though not entirely free, since I'm still paying for it anyways) tier is my benefit for premium. How do you put a cost on 512m? By current land pricing? Then it would constantly change the price of a non land premium. Do you do it by the cost of maintaining the asset server space? Well, then it would be out of proportion to those who own sims.

If I paid for a sub for Sports Illustrated to read the NFL news, and they removed that, would I still pay? Well, that's subjective. I'm paying for the NFL news, which means it's gone and I would no longer want it. HOWEVER, someone else may read the Tennis section and think the money is well worth it. How do you judge what the value is of each individual?

Having the 512 as an option is not a force to buy that 512 and in fact, I've read here several people have premium's without the land at all. I can't see why myself, but that's because the land part of it is MY preference. Maybe they like controlled stipend and the option of land later? Who knows?

Fact is, I probably wouldn't rent a space either. But that's MY preference.

The math I stated is pure fact and can be proven. But I can't begin to speculate on exactly who has what, or why.

Well common sense would tell me, and I hope others - that it would be more expensive to add tier for a 512. If my sub says you get X included, or I had the choice of paying for that 512 and the sub - of course I'd have the 512 included!

I believe they used to have a timed demo kinda thing, way back when...


(Circa 2005, from Archive,org)

Mari

It doesn't have to be more expensive.
The thought that I'm 'brainstorming' here is that perhaps there should not be the current Premium/Basic divide. That divide was created 'by accident'/brainwave

Currently it costs US$5 a month to have an additional 512m of land over your 'free' 512.
A monthly subscription costs US$9.95 a month.
What if the monthly subscription were US$4.95 and did not include the 'free' 512? What if the first 512 of tier then cost US5$?
You're paying exactly the same as before.
What would that change?

Do the same for the Stipend.
How many Premiums never bought L$? Do we actually need the stipends to exist any more?

I'm honestly not sure what you are trying to say other than what we've already discussed, which is how do you put a value on what people buy X for....

I'm going to try and follow this, from what I *think* you are trying to say.

If you took away the benefits to a subscription and left it with... well no benefits at all, who would pay for any of it?

That's like paying for a benefit then they say "we'll cut your bill in half, but you get ZERO benefits, do you still want it?"

And currently, it costs a total of 14.95 for the extra 512. Are you saying to take that 5 bucks over and apply it under to take away that benefit? Again, that would be out of proportion to those who own more than that. It's only 2 bucks and change to someone who owns a sim. Right now, no matter how much land you own, we all get that 512 for that one cost.

But again, there are reasons such as stipend that people do go premium. And again, that would lose LL money. Not everyone who has that option of that extra 512 uses it, but they can whenever they want. To complicate that 4.95, plus 5, plus 5, the way tier pricing works, they'd have to charge around 8 bucks, based on their percentages of cost versus amount of land. It's not 5 bucks for each 512, it changes as you go. The less land you own, the more it is per sqm. So if we were to go with 512 being a tier, you'd actually end up paying more if the premium account with no benefits started at 4.95.

Not to mention, that if we took away ALL benefits to premium except land holdings, you are essentially paying for nothing. Who would do that? It would cost LL a lot more money in the long run. Because then, not only would you have to pay for an account, you'd have to pay more tier.

Bingo!
You have understood me completely

Answer: Nobody would pay for Premium. It wouldn't exist anyway, so the idea of paying for is is moot.
Maybe Premium is a Sacred Cow in these discussions. A Sacred Dinosaur!

We (Premiums) are vastly outnumbered by Free Basics.
The only thing of note that a Free Basic can not do is buy mainland.
Some Free Basics run SL enterprises far in advance of most Premiums.

Support levels? I understand that it's practically non-existent except for Concierge level or group-reporting of a significant griefing incident. I'd be happy to pay for access to a timely and capable support facility if I ever needed it.

Why not just have a single type of account - free?
Everything from that up is by monthly/quarterly/annual subscription - tier, support, inventory levels, scripting levels, whatever.

More and more from reading the posts in this thread that's where I'm leaning too. If LL wants SL to take over the net then they aren't going to do it by charging for memberships.

My mistake has been comparing SL to WOW and other games that do charge for membership. The mistake is that LL has repeatedly stressed that SL is not a game. I agree. If they want to entice more corporations to SL, they aren't going to do it by limiting access to paid accounts only.

I do think, however, that in order to entice corporations and continue growth then they should restrict to verifieds only. The griefing must be reduced or more and more customers will throw up their hands in disgust.

Finally, I must join others in standing and applauding Seola's ideas.

I love it when you stand up.

/me blushes.

To reduce the incidence of griefing:
A. "Verified" as in tied to an individual as far as possible, which is different to "Age Verified". It would be neat to be able to makes it more difficult for someone who has been suspended temporarily or who has been banned for signing up an alt.
Payment Information On File might be an easy way. How many different types of valid payment infos can your average griefer supply?
or
B. Restrict certain types of script behaviour to people who are paying for the privilege.
However, this might be a tad restrictive on those who want those capabilities for innocent purposes.

Payment would imply PIOF anyway, so would (A) above be the best option?

An account can have valid PIOF and still be free.
Find a way to restrict the ability of no-PIOF to rezz or script??

I would bring back first land for YEARLY premium subscriptions only.

Yearly to eliminate the problem they were having of people opening an account just to get the land then closing it after a month for a profit.

Its also okay for shorter term subscriptions after they have paid for a year with their cumulative subscription fees.

You can't really even make much of an educated guess since you don't know how many premiums are actually using their 512m², nor how many are paying monthly/quaterly/yearly.

I took the total amount of stipends paid out to compare the two numbers, but in reality a portion of that is basics who still get their L$50 and probably a few other odd accounts that get a stipend for nothing.

That only works if you only own 512m² and no more.

If you own 1536m² right now, you're paying $14, $15.5 or $18 per month. If you eliminate the 512m² free tier, you'd jump up into the 2048m² bracket and end up paying $19.95/month.
Someone who owns 4608m² now would jump from $31-$35 to $44.95 and so on.

Good for LL, not so good for current land owners who fully utilize their available tier.

No. You misunderstand me. I wasn't considering any changes to the tier arrangements after the first 512. I was simply floating the idea of switching the way that the first 512 is paid for.
So nobody's tier would jump any way.

In any case, those tier prices and the bands are up in the air once LL get around to deciding what to do about tier. According to Robin's blog post, they have made no decisions, but decisions will be made.
"- 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."

Let's not get hung up on current numbers and tier jumps.
I was simply talking about the principle of getting rid of the so-called 'free' tier, and maybe the so-called 'free' stipends - in favour of a reduced subscription to match the 'loss' of these 'free' features.

When we think outside the box, let's TP way outside the box and not have old tier arrangements stuck to our butts.

Way back in Post #22, I mentioned a few of the metrics that we don't have.
It would be fascinating to see a detailed breakdown. Let's not hold our breaths.
We can only kick ideas around.

Ah okies, sorry . I read it as "Just pay $4.95/month for the premium label and you get nothing else in return" .

What premium ACTUALLY does is give you the ability to "shop @ Linden Labs"

Its almost the same is if EBay insisted you pay $10 a month to buy stuff....as a browser you can do it for nothing ... butif you wanted to buy that second hand TV .. you had to subscribe.

Its a silly model for business, I had an idea while reading this ... i USED to be totally against free accounts becasue i felt they got what i paid for and it made me upset that I should fund thier use of SL.....

BUT, I now feel different and im actually upset at the fact its me who gets nothing and not them who gets access So i started saying that premium accounts should go or offer something in return.

So anyway what if........................

Everyone was allowed to own land, but as a premium member it acts like a loyalty bonus and as such you have a lower $psqm tier than a non premium... easy to code, not difficult to manage.

Premium User should have more than 8 picks in the profile.