What do you do when the 'why's' just don't add up?

This may either prove to be an interesting post, or maybe it will fall flat on it's face. Time will tell. So the question, when the why's just don't add up anymore.

My SL career seems to be largely a series of ups and downs, and a lot of why's along the way. Why are my sales in the toilet, why can't I log in, why can't anyone teleport to my sim, why can't I do this or that. You get it, the local day to day that used to be amazing to me.

But what does one do when the why's don't add up, or if they do, they add up to nothing good. Like I am making sub-par wages, I mean miles below minimum wage for the better part of a year now. Doing what I think to be skilled work, I mean I could get off my butt and actually work in video games, for real, and get some 25-35 per hour, making textures for them, believe me, the day I graduate from university that may just happen. It has crossed my mind on a few occasions.

So I guess the real question is this? Why do we put up with inferior service, that we pay for, and watch our hard work basically sell for pennies, lately if it sells at all. And once you realize this, is there any going back? I think the 'boom' is so over, it's all fizzle from here on in.

Interesting post and this comes from a great content provider.IMHO.I have popped over on several occasions and love your stuff.
One possibility that I have been mulling over for a while, is that people are only buying the cheapo stuff. Since SL's big Xstreet push my hits and sales have doubled but the average spend is down.
Last week people were going crazy on the freebie trail taking from me xmas and halloween stuff at this time of year!!! I have stopped giving freebies on Xstreet .
Just a thought that your stuff is at the top end of quality and price that's why sales are slow.But of course could be wrong.

I think we do it because we don't have to 'get off our butts' to do it - most of us aren't depending on SL to support ourselves in RL - in fact some of us (me included) can barely support our SL lives with our SL income. Perhaps it's the joy of creating and being able to share what we create, or some deep-rooted psychological thing where here, we are creating who we want to be, and can leave our real lives behind for a little while.

I don't see this as a "we". It's an "I", meaning you personally. The boom is over for you. For others, it never started, for some it's still booming, and for yet more, it is still to come.

What's to do about it? When something loses its interest, and there's no sensible reaon to continue with it, stop doing it. It's not just SL - it's everything.

The main "why" as Phil has pointed out, is not for anybody else to answer. Why aren't *you* working harder in rl to get better grades in university so that you can improve your chances of getting a better job when you leave, particularly with the recession deepening every time a journalist puts sensationalist pen to paper, or selfish whingers with no idea about economics decry governmental initiatives that are intended to improve the general position but affect some badly? Why are you choosing to do "skilled work" in sl rather than selling your services for much more in the real world? Why are *you* spending time in a pastime where the laws of real world economics barely apply and are at the whim of a third party with entirely different criteria for survival, development and profit from yours? Why are you complainng about something that you have voluntarily committed yourself to, in the full knowledge of the environmental Terms of Service and your consequent almost non-existent rights? Why are you even asking this question in the forums?

Pie (Is someone holding a shotgun to your head?)

wow, tough crowd! ;0 but i can relate to the op and to the responses in roughly equal measures... my own take on it is, even though i could go back out and get a dayjob making more than i do here (even in a 'good year'), the fact is that rate of rw pay offered hasn't increased for me in at least 15 years (even as my skillsets and resume have expanded - oh i don't know how to measure it, something like 5-10x in that time). and, as ya see the news, things aren't getting any better, anywhere...

do absolutely what you need to do to take care of yourself, though!

Inferior to what? Taken as a whole package, SL is better than any of its competitors.

Just a bit of a tough crowd I suppose. Thanks for the words, and no, nobody is holding a gun to my head, I suppose I am just dis-enchanted at the moment. One can only do the same thing day in and day out, and expect different results, for so long. Is that not the text book definition of insanity?

Do it just for the fun and that is the only reason. Sometimes it is fun to make a little money while you are doing it. It is also vitally important to just blow off a creation deadline and other SL commitments and just go and explore like a noob again. No matter how long you have been around, SL is still dynamic and always changing. Every time I think I have seen it all I come across something like this posted in another thread here:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Saucier/200/34/85

I have also found it very relaxing and fun to start sailing again with the opening of the Blake Sea. It has also cheered me up to see a new direction that LL as a company is taking. All of the new, open areas in SL that have been created by the Moles for the enjoyment of everyone. We finally have an SL equivalent of National Parks and that is very refreshing.

Just need to find your center again Atom.

Not insane.

Pep (Over-optimistically unrealistic perhaps)

I know where you are coming from.
only you can decide what is right for you

I second that big time! /me waves to Atom. My alt rented one of your properties on the original Galveston Isle* (I say "original" as it is the one you built if I understand correctly and I LOVED it!!! Still a nice sim, but just not quite the same as before) and I LOVE your new amusement park.

You are most definitely a wonderfully talented person, Atom. Might just be time for a lil "breather." Currently doing that myself now and I already feel refreshed.

*(Adding that first home was where I had the door-to-door salesman arrive that I posted about in the "Unwanted Visitors" thread. Will always remain one of my personal favorite SL stories since it happened when I was so very new.)

>>"So I guess the real question is this? Why do we put up with inferior service, that we pay for, and watch our hard work basically sell for pennies, lately if it sells at all. And once you realize this, is there any going back? I think the 'boom' is so over, it's all fizzle from here on in."

Going to attempt a serious answer.

There are a few ways to make money here; and eventually perhaps more. Let's look at them:

Entertainment (DJ's, clubs, event services, weddings)

Software (scripts, coded services, bots)

Content creation (building, texturing, region design)

Land (land barony ~ rental, and at it's worst: land flipping)

...a few other random things.

Let's consider them in terms of income potential and stability.


Entertainment.

You might get a DJ gig and make some pocket change while having fun. But let's face it: online clubs are money losers in this decade.

That may change when the typical first world citizen has an avatar, but it's hard times now for entertainment in terms of both income potential and stability.



Software.

This one is really spiky. If you make something that solves a problem, like say Mystitool or a Rez-Foo style device and sell it... you at least have a chance.

So income potential is high *if* you have a major hit, but that's really rare. Stability is kinda poor ~ make a hit, and the world will be flooded with "me too" products.

Content creation.

I'd say of all the things out there, in spite of successes like Anshe with land, this is where the highest income potential in general exists. Clothing. Rideable Horses. Sculpties. Texture Emporiums. Architecture.

There's a wicked caveat that goes with this, though. You had better do two things: be strongly branded such that people will buy from *you* and not even consider others (a la Harley Davidson's branding) and second: keep creating endlessly. Stop for a while, and your stuff will be oh-so-2004.

Income potential great, but stability kinda poor.



Land.

Land flipping as a career, I think, is dead. The rental side of land barony struggles these days, but *if done right* it is still okay. Strong branding is essential, but one does not need to create new land endlessly, so in that sense it's a little easier than content creation.

One wins at land barony via excellence, and once you sorta figure that out it's stable. A full standard region might only make you 150 USD/month, so income potential is kinda poor unless you have a lot of regions. Stability is good, though. One can generally have an idea of monthly income 3, 6, and 9 months out, and most content creators can't predict that anywhere near as accurately.

Other random things: Being a famous person granting interviews, currency arbitrage, being a camwhore for money, a known blogger or suchlike... yeah there's money out there for a rare few.

But these generally make content creation and land look downright good as a business.

* * * * *

So what happened?

Well, in late 2006 we had an incredible boom, and incredible hype. Let's take some *very* rough numbers. Say 1 million were here, and 10 million more signed up.

Don't believe the signup numbers? Call it 100,000 here, and 1 million signing up. In either case, a factor of about 10.

So in late 2006, if you had a business, there were ten consumers out there who had no land, no clothes, no... nothing. And they needed to create it with their nonexistent skills... or buy it from you.

That is a business environment that can't last. Watch:

a) Say 1 million became 10 million in 2007. Now, you got 11 million seasoned people inworld by 2008, all trying to sell stuff to new residents.

b) 11 million people in business would need 110 million new signups, or another factor of 10, to sustain the business climate of 2006/2007. Well, we didn't get 110 million new signups. But let's say we did! For 2009, we'd need *another* factor of ten, or one billion people to sign up, to maintain the business environment of 1:10 growth.

This is why I cut expansion of my estate in 2008 to a crawl. Looking at an exponential growth curve, I had no doubt the business climate couldn't last, and went for stability instead of implosion.

That's not to say there isn't money to be made here. In fact, there's more money to be made today than there ever was; we have the numbers now. This is also why I'm in the land business; land is a service here not a one time sale, like most content.

It's *hard* to reinvent oneself constantly; only a few rare geniuses can do it in the content creation business. And some will manage it, and they will make far more than I do. But I've got some semblance of stability with land, and there's value in that also.

* * * * *

Now for the crazy talk, for anyone still with me.

I see another big boom coming some day; from 10 million to 100 million. It will be a sea change; it will be cultural. Like email, the average person will one day be *expected* to have an avatar.

For instance, email was around in the early 80's and before in huge volume, but it was a geek thing. Now it's unthinkable that a first world citizen doesn't have email.

Atom, your time will come; and there's an old business joke that rings kinda true: no matter what happens, you haven't failed until you yourself quit. You can be doing badly, but if the other 10 million quit their online biz and you are still standing... you own the market.

This is a time of great flux, and shakeouts, and change... but the survivors will stand at the top of the biggest online business expansion period the world will ever know, in a number of years.

It could be two years, it could be twenty. We are all just a little ahead of our time.

Part of the reason is habit. You started creating content when SL was new and fun. You got into the habit of creating content. And now, even though SL is less new and fun, your habit is hard to break.

Part of the reason is emotional investment. Your content creation shop is your baby, and you'd be sad to abandon it.

Part of the reason is start-up costs. Which may not be a cost financially, but there is an amount of work you'd need to do to get into the video game business, for example. You'd need some sort of credentials, you'd need to market yourself.

But ultimately, what you point out is the reason that Second Life cannot succeed without better protecting created content. IP infringement bids down the value of your work. Lack of consumer protection bids down your work (expensive purchases are too high risk, when one has no way of recouping the money when the product turns out to be shoddy). No meaningful perfomance standards bids down your work (you cannot capture the value of making a texture that's both pretty and less laggy). No effective means of advertising bids down your work (you can't get the word out that you have a superior product). The permissions system bids down your work because it impedes your ability to provide content in ways most useful to consumers.

The fact that I can create my own content is the big thing that drew me to Second Life, apart from any other virtual setting. But I don't have professional skills, I'm a self-taught amateur. I can make content that works for my purposes. What I lack is the creativity or knowledge to figure out how to make content that works, and works in the most efficient manner.

That benefit is also a curse. I get to create my vision. But if everyone is creating their own visions with skills around my level, that leads to a proliferation of inefficient content that contributes to lag.

If Second Life could attract more content creators with professional-level skills, there could be a lot better quality, and more efficient, conent available. However, it isn't going to attract many professionally skilled content creators if, as you point out, there is far more money to be made, with less headache, outside of Second Life.

Of course, it is possible that even if Second Life were well-run with respect to protecting content, that may not suddenly increase the quality and efficiency of content available. The other important issue is how willing Second Life residents would be to pay professional-level prices.

No way thats ever going to happen. I wanted to believe this too when I first got fascinated by SL but then reality set in. Having an online avater just isn't that useful or necessary, especially in a place so poorly managed. If RL ever gets so bad that people start needing to have an avatar we're all in trouble.

I agree with Desmond on this one. My comment in the "what should Phil work on next" thread was to concentrate on making 250K concurrency a top priority with plans in place for a million. LL can max out concurrency, no matter what the number is, with one well placed advertisement. This is the reason SL has never been advertised, they have never been able to keep up and anytime an article like the Ansche Chung was published, SL was decimated with the flood of people for a month or two afterwards. The new visitors quickly discovered it sucked because everything took so long to rez and so many crashes and left. If LL could handle 250K concurrency reasonably well right now, there would be 250K online, no matter what the hardware requirements were.

Have to disagree here Zed. Right now, you're probably right - an online avatar is a 'luxury' - especially when you consider what most people do online - shopping, partying, meeting with friends. And of course one needs a fair element of RL disposable income to even participate - the pc, broadband connection, tier costs if you 'own' land, etc etc

But I recall the office I worked in in the 80's - I was always (and still am) a sucker for new technology, so I was an early adopter of the PC, email, FTP transfer, the web, blah blah. And in every case I was surrounded by people who couldn't see the application of this new-fangled 'stuff' to their private or office lives. Nowadays, nearly all my RL work is generated via email exchanges - probably much as it is for most people. And of course I view and pay pretty much all of my household bills online, have online friends around the world I'll never meet, and have two businesses in SL I would never have in RL.

If LL's attempts to attract the corporate market really take off - and I can see many applications for SL in my own line of work - there will be a massive uptake of on-line living and working. And it follows that many will then want to extend their corporate experience in SL into their private interests, with the opportunities that flow from that for SL's businesses, providing as they do a service economy.

It's going to take time and faith in the product. I'm here for the long term because I see a future in this.

Inc

Maybe it's because every morning we get up with the belief that yesterday was yesterday and we strive to work within the means that we have been given. We all make the best of all situations even if it means that we struggle with the issues that have plagued us from the start.

You stop taking it all so seriously and get on with your life.


Really....SL isn't the end all to be all......it's a portion.....a small portion of what many of us do in our day to day lives. Those that have made an econimic gain from it....worked their ass off and devoted hours and hours to perfecting their creations. And I know a few that finally bowed out because they were tired of SL being nothing but business. It ceased to fun....it's ceased to have the allure it once held.

You gotta take responsibility for your own life bro........I could whine my heart out about SL and how I can't make anything work for me.....but no no no no....I DON'T make it work for me because I'm too friggin lazy. I want to enjoy it.... I don't want to turn it into a virtual office with the same head aches as RL dishes out.

So....go find something to be passionate about in the real world my friend....before the sun runs out of gases to burn in the cosmos......or we blow up our planet with our own mindless stupidity....make the most of your first life.....and then maybe you can justify a little indulgence in your second one.

Seems we get these type of threads quite often. I think I know the reason why and my reasons will probably go against the grain here.....but it works for me.

Some (and if you take the forum regulars as a representative sampling of the general SL population, which it is not, then most) come to SL with plans of making SL pay for itself or even put real money in there pocket. I guess there's nothing wrong with that but realistically I cannot agree that that is an intelligent way to approach this platform and it's potential. Yes a few have managed to achieve that level of income (real life income). But to come into this game with expectations of duplicating what Ashe Chung and Desmond Shang have achieved is almost insane in itself...........there is not not enough room in the virtual world of SL for much more than what has already been achieved. Only the very lucky, very talented, very persistant, very creative, and extremely patient will ever even come close to even meeting tier, let alone putting cash in their RL account. To expect otherwise is foolish. That is my opinion (which many of you know is often against the grain here in the forums).

The problem lays in how SL is presented to the public. To the vast majority who join, SL it's nothing more than a game. And to that majority it will forever remain a game. SL looks like a game, it requires the same skill sets to navigate as a game, and, though it's much more demanding, it requires the same computer hardware and knowledge as a high end game. I played The Sims (never The Sims Online) back when it was popular and fairly quickly got disenchanted with it due to the constant necessity of "maintaining" my avatar. The goal was in the simpliest form, simply survival.........I do that everyday in real life. I did not want to have to deal with it in my playtime too. One can approach SL much like they would approach The Sims.......the goal is to survive. Nothing wrong with that but for most surviving is being able to continue to play. If you want to excell at SL you must do more than survive.......and there is the rub for many. To many, excelling in SL is making Lindens. The more Lindens you make the more you excell. If you can make enough to pay your tier and the game becomes free then (in my opinion) you have done almost as much as you can do. Go beyond that and put real money in your account then you have entered the elite level...........and very few will ever achieve that status.

The bottom line is Second Life is a game. It can become more than just a game if you want it to. But then so can many other games in this world......there are champion game players making millions in real money. Their concept of the games they play are quite different than the concepts that the vast majority of the users of the games have. The game they excell at has become "platform" to build a real career on.........it has grown beyond entertainment for them. The "champions" in the game of Second Life are those that attain that real life income. The Ashe Chungs and Desmond Shangs...........the few, the elite. Those successes are worthy of our admiration, our inspirations, and even our "role models". To achieve what the champions of SL have achieved you have to know what you are up against, know how to use what is available, know your chances of success depends on your competitiveness, smarts, imagination, and (to more than just a little) luck. Without that prior knowledge you are in for a lot of heartache, disappointments, and frustrations. And we get threads like this one...........the whining, moaning, and the decrying about lack of income levels equal to real life wages.

The people who create threads like this made a big mistake at the very beginning of their approach to SL. They came thinking Second Life was a business platform instead of what it is..........a game for the vast majority of the users. They didn't understand that in order for SL be a business model that can produce real income, that SL has to be seen for what it is to the majority of the participants. The majority of the participants are the users who play SL as a game.........they come here for entertainment, enjoyment, fantasy fulfillment, and many other reasons. But, it's still a game for them. They will spend Lindens (which are tied to real money) for items, services, and gadgets to enhance their play. But to expect those players to pay what the items are really worth compared to real life value is so unrealistic that it is often laughable to me. It also shows me that the motivation is way out of line for any expectation of success in a business in SL.

One has to approach SL as a game. Anything you create or do is nothing more than part of the game. Enhancements for the players. You are not going to recieve compensation for your products anywhere near equal to real life compensation...........not as long as you are approaching SL as a business first and game second. It's the other way around. Get that straight in your head and I think you will find far fewer frustrations, far fewer days of wondering why the "why's just don't add up". You'll have far fewer occassions where you feel the need to point fingers at others (like Linden Lab) for your difficulties. It will be easier for you to bend with the breeze instead snapping at the base. It does not matter how creative you are or how smart you are.......you will not succeed if your approach is wrong.

Common sense tells anyone that you must know your customer base. And I think every person starting threads like this one has missed that boat miserably. Sorry to sound so harsh.......but I truly believe an attitude change could very well be the answer to your question. "What do you do when the 'why's' just don't add up?". CHECK YOUR MATH.

The problem of "you can't show that your goods are quality" is not purely to do with advertising. It's a phenomenon called adverse selection, and the only way to defeat it is to enable quality creators to do something noticeable that bad ones cannot do. At the moment, money is not a good way of creating that situation, as costs and profits are low enough in SL that someone willing to pay in real money can bid comparatively with a quality creator, so vanity businesses are harder to stop.

I'm not sure how LL could fix that except by making "L$ earned in sales" distinct somehow.

Asking yourself about why you are doing something is usually indicating that you are not satisfied with what you are doing. Do what's satisfying you. You don't know what would your saisfaction would be? Perhaps finding out about that first might help. Perhaps clothes, or hair, or dancing, or being a DJ is simply not "your thing". Try something else.

You are just a regular user and you think SL has become boring? Take a break. Nothing is forcing you to be (t)here. If SL is not your game, perhaps other games out there are. If not: You can meet real people at real clubs, cafes, malls or wherever. You just have to go there. Whatever you do, don't expect others to make SL "yours", because they won't. That's up to you.

Expecting to make money from what you are doing is okay. Expecting that what you are doing would make you any money only because you are doing it is flat out stupid. Why people are expecting money to rain on them just because they are there is totally beyond me. If you want to be successful don't stick with mediocrity.

You want your business to earn you money? Perhaps this would be easier if your stuff was worth buying in the first place. Listen to your customers. Watch competitors. Welcome feedback. Make sure your stuff is as bug-free as possible before you put it in your store. Learn from mistakes - your's as well as those others do and did. Lead the pack don't run after it.

Service is not a remote village in the southern Sahara. Your shop still having pumkin-deco? Your mall still playing Xmess tunes? In late febuary? You obviously don't care about your shop so why do you think that I would expect you caring about your products, let alone me, your "valued customer"? Making clothes, hair, and other personal assets "no copy" AND "no transfer" simply means harrassment to your customers and is a reason to not buy your stuff in the first place. You don't know or don't understand why? You need to know and understand the game and the players before you can try to master them. Play the game before trying to run it. Extensively.

If you want to earn money you have to invest money. Time in the end is money, too. Same is true for talent and skill.

Just my 2cents.

In addition to all the other reasons listed above for declining business I would add, as a wise man once said--

"It's the economy...stupid."

Not trying to insult, but the whole world is slowing down and SL is not exempt. When the economy gets going again, SL will pick back up. That may be a long way off though. Meanwhile some are doing well even now (as in the real world); it's just that the numbers are smaller due to the lagging economy as well as for the other reasons mentioned above (glut of businesses in SL now compared to the earlier days, etc.).

Wow, there's a term for it. Excellent post, thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection



And that'd be gamed by swarms of purchase-exchange bots. Problem is, anything LL is likely to try is going to be automated, and residents with a lot more time to spend on it than LL will make shite of it.

IMO "adverse selection" is what's responsible for SL's slump. Unless you're really dedicated, you can't find good stuff in all the noise, be it products or things to do. So someone casually visiting to see if there's anything of interest will see the virtual world is full of drek and hucksters and not stick around. Except the ones that think, "hey, I can make drek like that, too!"

Here's my latest missive on the subject:

http://greendots.typepad.com/

LL is going to have to remove some of the rewards for creating world-uglifying crap, but then we'll probably find the hucksters have found a new thing. For example, if traffic were to disappear, there'd still be incentive for creating stacks of green dots on the map.

But they have to try *something*.

Ugh - the example on that page is really horrible, though. I learned the term from a book called "The Undercover Economist" (which is really good), and it used the following example:

Think about the market for used cars. A good used car ("a peach" is, for this example, worth $2000. A bad one ("a lemon" is worth nothing. The market is roughly 50% peaches and 50% lemons. The seller knows if their car is a peach or a lemon, but the buyer doesn't. Of course, every seller advertises that their car is a peach.

So, suppose you're a buyer. How much would you pay for a used car? You would probably think it'd be reasonable to pay $1000, since it has a 50% chance of being worth $2000 and a 50% chance of being worthless.

The problem is, if a seller has a peach, they know it is worth $2000, and there is no way they will sell it to you for $1000. The result is dramatic: there is NO MARKET for peaches! No seller will sell one for less than $2000, but no buyer will pay that much for a car that might be a lemon. The only way the peach sellers can sell their cars at a price that's acceptable to them is to do something that a lemon seller cannot do, to prove to buyers that their car is a peach. This can be "allowing the buyer to run tests on the car", but it can also be other things, such as having a fancy and expensive showroom.

Now, in SL it's a bit different because in SL most people are selling intellectual goods of which they have an infinite supply. But the effect is still similar: the presence of shoddy goods in the market lowers the average price people are prepared to pay, and thus can eventually lower the expected return for making _good_ items below the point at which the extra effort to create that quality is worth it.

Ps. Anya, that picture of multicoloured furry clones on your blog is fantastic.