How to help newbies financially?

You hit the nail on the head Qie...the Cone creator says he doesn't have those funds for hosting fees..so he cannot ever make it a mega big network.

This is way out there. But what if you really did have a bus driver.

A network of 24 businesses/venues hire some perky people as tour guides. There is a group for it....somehow the group got Huge....so twice a day a perky person sends out an announcement that the tour is about to start....and starting location is given in group chat. They flock to it.

They are required to click something at the first location to get started. The perky tour guide tosses out some info about that location....plus they get a LM and notecard. They can ask questions. It's also like a social event....great way to meet people.

15 minutes at that spot....they get paid from whatever device they clicked....everyone heads to next location....same thing. Maybe do 6/7 locations on each tour. After a while it would be routine for the perky person tour guide.....plus, you gave someone a job.

Those that made it to every location, and made it to final stop....participate in a drawing for a fairly large amount of loot.....and a giant gift basket. Sky is the limit on number of tours given, as long as a perky person is ready to go....and has at least 6 participants game for the tour.

In addition....you have a large group base that you can send info and offers to.....another group base besides your own that you have access to....that in itself, would be a huge benefit/pay off.

All you need is the device that pays them....no server issues....yeah, it would take a little tweaking and organization. I could line a few up for my group members as an experiment....they would eat that up and love it.

Its possible Mickey...but you have to weigh up effort versus return. The important part is to keep the level of interest up and the Tour frequency....can't be sporadic event.

With fixed camping becoming a non-event...i'm sure there are people out there thinking along the lines of a Tour and rewarding the participant.

So far, my biggest pay offs have been with the promotions that require a bit more effort, but that's the way life works.

The one-on-one contact with a person who is giving them handy info directly, rather than tossing out a notecard that will be lost in inventory....would make more of an impact.

I have fun touring right now by myself...and occasionally running into someone to talk to...would imagine that would be a bit more fun in a group.

I'm always very impressed with how the dance club owners have managed to have someone consistently manage the front door....we simply lure/bribe one of them to be in charge of the tour guides.....lol.

What would be a blast....would be to have one of the business owners step in now and then to give a tour.

I'm going to do one. I'll find one of my group members to tag along and train for the tour guide position...and I shouldn't have trouble finding some hard core shoppers from my group to participate. (kind of seems a shame to waste it on newcomers without lindens....shame on me)

I can do perky for two hours.

Send me your info....I'll line it up. Not sure how to handle payment at each location, though.

Do you want the info of competitors?

Sure...I'm pretty confident that my two hours of perkiness will prevail over any competitors.

Send me LM to location that you want the group to arrive at. A notecard with basic information you want me to go over. This goes for anyone....I have a few other cool locations lined up that will be fun to see.

You think I can do a good tour in 15 minutes at each place?

For now...let's skip payment at each place. These won't be newcomers...if it works, we could tweak that later to apply to newcomers....I'll just have some kind of drawing at the final stop that was donated by each venue owner. I found a contest drawing gadget the other day....they just click on it, and they are entered....then the gadget does the drawing.

Also need to make up a gift pack to hand to each person that has LM, notecard, and some kind of promotional offer/gift.....all of that in one package for them to open later....unless you want to leave that out for them at each stop.

It would be a lot easier to do the tour in voice...make it go faster....whoever I use as a "trainee" can follow and type for me, if there is someone who can't hear voice.

Probably best that it be a surprise tour....that's what is fun about the cone tours.

The cones idea does sound attractive, in practice... But if you really want or think that LL should get involved in it, then take a look at when and how they get involved with other 3rd party initiatives, like Xstreet, for example.

You have to show that it's both successful in practice and something tha LL would derive *direct* benefit from acquiring it, and then don't be surprised if they take the idea in a completely differernt direction and deliver something that utterly fails to do what you had hoped.

Otherwise, there are feature requests that don't involve LL becoming an 'active partner' which might benefit the cones system, like, like:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2838 "Group Money Account"

But you're right, I'm not following the thread that closely because I'm conflicted about this project. I see positives and insurmountable negatives.

I think that turning a large percentage of the camping population into rapidly teleportting region hoppers has the potential to generate tremendously more lag on the grid... more demand on the asset and presense services... a cost that everyone suffers for.

And while seemingly stable at the moment, SL's re-occuring periods of "Chronic Teleport Failures" are never far off.

I do think the Skinnerian "Random interval/random reward" model could definitely make cones more effectively addictive, and possibly even make it more popular than camping.

Ultimately, though I definitely agree that it's good for PNC (potential new consumers) to get out and explore more, instead of 'settling down' on their first day in a camping chair, and for that I wish you luck.


@rene- no reply

I don't recall anyone suggesting that LL get involved with that.



LOL...if anyone comes up with a system that is used so widely across the grid that it creates lag based on what we described above....I want IN on it.

Show them where to learn to build stuff at all the great training places.
If that doesn't help, tell them to get a RL job.

I think that the major problem might be that whereas some/many campers have funds in RL, they don't have an easy way of getting those funds into SL. FOr example there was a Brazilian on the Blog posting that the end of camping would mean the end of 30,000 Brazilians in SL.
They could survive without the L$. They are here voluntarily. They don't need welfare to feed, clothe and house them. There are plenty of high-quality freebies about.
The don't actually need the money, though they might want it when they realise that it is available.
They are simply being used by others to recirculate cash and game search.

LL open the floodgates with free unlimited accounts. Now the economy appears to have become addicted to a model brought about by that - the availability of a mass of avatars prepared to 'work' for a few cents an hour.

There are others who would be able to divert the price of a RL coffee or meal into SL but take the view that as long as they don't have, they're not going to. I've got zero sympathy for this type if their L$ earning is based on search-gaming.

The premise in my kicking off this thread "How to help newbies financially?" is that camping cash is actually a vital mechanism in the economy. There is a further possibility that the end of camping without something to replace it would see an exodus of NPIOFs.


I don't think that LL are fixated on stamping out traffic abuse "no matter what".
They could just be trying to squeeze those who are seriously taking the piss. They are watching the economic indicators for signs of unacceptable negative effects.

Why don't they just remove traffic as a search ranker?
That would stop most camping overnight. It might be followed very quickly by the mother of all climbdowns if the economy began to implode.

Perhaps the refusal to remove traffic as a ranker isn't based on some visions of making traffic closer to an indicator of 'popularity'.
Maybe it's being left like that so that a lower level of camping can continue.


We still need new ways of getting L$ to newbies/SL-poor.
Those ways could very well make SL more interesting for everybody. Parking an avatar in one place for hours on end seems very unimaginative.

Would the economy really miss 30,000 people who may just be camping, never putting cash into SL, never creating content?
They are here because we encourage it by feeding them an easy meal ticket. we're not all rich jetsetters with money to burn as some users may think.
I wonder how many of them claim they can't get cash in, but somehow manage to find a way to get cash out of SL so others can pay for their cup of coffee or even meals?
Stuff them if they can't put cash in and won't learn to create content, then they just have to survive on freebies, we may just get a mass influx of beggars again.
But then again I suspect a lot more of these traffic accounts are more likely to be just bots.
It's hard to imagine 30,000 Brazillians can have a good spec computer and high speed internet but can't get access to credit cards or paypal. For some perhaps it is true, but a lot I suspect are just bullshitting us and many are gullible enough to believe it and keep feeding them.
Of course LL don't want to get rid of massbotting completely, it's great for their concurency numbers, just make ita lot less noticable, there will be stacks of ways around it, people will just deny the 80 avatars in a box have anything to do with their store & land, because the 80 accounts will be spread across 10 IP's.
Camping in itself is still gaming the system but massbotting is just cheating, it just begs a system where you could replace the 80 accounts with 80 scripted prim cubes instead, at least then you'd have to pay tier to afford the amount of cheating you did.

In an ideal Virtual world, every new registration should be accompanied with a funding source (CC, PayPal or Bank), but LL chose to eventually go down the "Free accounts" route instead!
LL wanted the good PR associated with a growing platform with its "Gamed" Concurrency figures. Ironic that LL should mention "cheating Traffic", when they are themselves the biggest manipulators of figures for the purpose of Media spin. They also chose Free accounts because they wanted SL to be a "Worldwide" platform......and to be honest there are some truths in terms of the difficulty, some people have in getting their funding source approved by LL.

You can read one example here (written today)...this also happened to me in 2007 with LL.

/327/d6/323392/1.html

To be honest, the credit card problem you cite is because the lender/credit holder did not approve the charges to LL. Your post makes it sound as though LL did not approve the charge.

Sorry..the other way round then...yep, my CC company did not approve expenditure on LL.
My guess many from foreign lands might encounter similar problems

I know a lot of people who camped in order to buy their first piece of land, that led to other things...they are all business owners now. I used to camp at the casinos to pay the tier fees on the first pieces of land....it was not impossible to get started that way. Camping paid more back then. Most "jobs" involved removing your clothes for a crowd.

Several of the people on the tour that I talked to were going to spend their tour money in some way. They were having fun, too...and staying interested in SL....there is a responsibility there, that is as important as giving them lindens.

I don't consider the above people as freeloaders or beggars....and after reading the blog on camping, discovered that there are many people who would not fall into a freeloader or beggar category....not really fair to dump all campers into that category.

Also after reading those blog entries, I can see where removing the camping will have a detrimental effect in lindens being spent and more importantly in retaining users.

I don't care if people are milling about SL all day, and not spending tons of lindens. I do like to know that they are milling about all day and having fun, and exploring. That's a huge benefit to us all....in many ways. They need to have a few lindens in their pockets to keep that going.....doubt that they will stay interested if they log in every day to see a zero account balance.

Without camping....I really don't see how they are going to manage to stay. It's really important to come up with some other options.

Further free market research

My alt who is addicted to the tours....has arrived at a location for the third time in 3 days....that has Hidden their cone. I've looked and looked....nowhere to be found. The LM drops you off right in the middle of camping spots....so you have a choice....stay and camp for 3L an hour....or go back and start another tour all over again....or wander all over trying to find the cone, and add to their traffic....without them paying a dime, or without them feeding a visitor back into the system.

I may "interview" the campers while I'm here

Hmmm. Doesn't the cone give its coordinates when it IMs the destination SLURL? In my short tour, I could always find the cone by following the beacon with the Mini-Map open. I suppose if the landing point were very far from the cone *vertically* that might make it a lot more difficult.

Assuming something like that is what's going on, it's not obvious how to prevent it and still allow the devices to be used on parcels that have enabled landing point teleport routing--which is of course very common for commercial parcels.

Ah...good point...I'll go back and check that...(my alt is an airhead)....but I doubt that many tour participants would bother to check that either. Meanwhile I've started another tour.

I'm at another location where the cone is not within range of your arrival - I can't find it. The coordinates given to you from the cone, at some places.....must be the places where you are allowed to TP into only one spot. The cone must be picking up that coordinate only. My store is not set that way - you can TP into any spot - so when someone gets the LM to my store from the cone - it sets them right in front of the cone.

Another location where I spent 11 minutes ran out of money in the cone right before it paid me - girl in front of me got 2L then it turned itself off - next location it sent me was conehead headquarters....next location my own store.

So I've started over 3 times already. The only way I can start over is to go back to my store and use a different cone - it won't let you use the same cone twice.

So anyone who has problems like I did today....may not be able to start over so easily - they will probably just hang it up.

I've had no problem starting over at the HQ location. Was able to use their cone to start over within a very short period due to my being banned at a cone location.

Wayne

The problem however, is if LL gave folks a free one month trial and then required them to pay to continue, people would just dump their old account and create new ones over and over.

Free accounts are good, if for no other reason than to get new builders hooked. (ie: "@#)#$*# these public sandboxes suck! What's it take to find some place quiet where I can build and don't have to worry about auto-return?"

And, of course, the last point: Shopping malls don't charge their customers to park or enter the mall. Neither do the shops. Anything that impedes browsing is likely to impede purchasing. Of course, we all end up playing mall cop in our areas as a result, but that's just part of doing business here.

[edit: (because I know *someone* will likely nitpick) yes, some malls do charge (or expect validation) before they'll let you take your car out of their parking garage, after your visit. They still let you into their parking garage for free, at first.]

This is an illustration of what I see as the 'buy-in' for quality creators into a version in which the payment is not dependant on a mandatory stay on the parcel. Because of the delay between possible payments anywhere, there is a mandatory stay 'somewhere', usually split between two parcels on the tour.

Mickey could present a level of 'perkiness' to people arriving at her device which could end up in getting close to 22 minutes of eyeball ( and more later) for the price of 11.

If this system were pervasive throughout SL, it would drive quality over quantity.
The heavy hitters could try to swamp it, but unless they provide stimulation to lead the eyeballs from the landing point to quality content in the parcel as a whole, their money would have far less effect and would actually benefit the quality creators.
Many of those quality creators could be very small scale operations who can get guaranteed visits for a very small cost.