How to help newbies financially?

Yawn !!

You lost my interest right there. I can't speak for others, of course, but I'm not interested in what you see.

If we're going to pay...they're going to stay. Mandatory. Period. Their eyeballs are not going to get to whatever "stimulation" you provide....if they all they have to do is grab and dash. A store won't even rez with the "stimulation" during that time frame.

How about this. Consider the 11 minutes Rez Time for all that "stimulation." Mandatory. Quality Stimulation requires Rez Time. It's like turning your car on in the winter, and letting it heat up a bit, for maximum performance.

Frankly....I'm tired of being told that if you put out quality products....you don't need tools. Wrong. I've got quality products on the floor. I get enough compliments to know it's not complete crap. Same thing with all the other business owners looking for tools.

It takes more than half an hour to get through the whole store. I need tools that get someone through the store in a mechanical world where dashing off is a simple click of the button. In RL...you use a pushy salesperson to do this. Here...we use something mechanical.

That tour is ONE tool. There could be dozens. Most will require a mandatory stay in a mechanic world. We're just trying to tweak one....and come up with some others. We HAVE the product. This is not exactly a "build it they will come" type experience. There is MORE to it.

If you're not a business owner in a mechanical world....might be hard to grasp this....only way you will understand...is if you open up a business, and experience some of the challenges. It's a tad bit different in some ways than a retail store on Main Street in RL....I've had both...I can make that judgment.

I added the Perky Room last night. Quality Stimulation.....for maximum stay time....and I'll leave it at that.....as I don't feel like having my new tool messed with and picked to pieces.

If they grab and dash, where do they dash to?
Do you foresee a situation in which they would TP to somewhere, grab, dash off somewhere they want to be, and then remember every 11 minutes that they have to pick up a trail again so that they can continue grabbing?
In order to grab and dash, they would have to interrupt whatever they were doing every 11 minutes.

Perhaps some ex-campers might do that. It seems a bit extreme for only L$2 a pop.




I don't know who's been telling you that. Whoever they are, they have no idea.
They obviously don't see where content creators complain that they can't get visibility in Search or bid high enough in Classifieds. It doesn't matter how good their content is, they can't get the eyeballs except perhaps by accident or word-of-mouth.


Yes indeed. There could be and should be many tools. I get a sense from your post that you perhaps under the completely mistaken belief that I see this as some ultimate one size fits all wonder tool?



Well, if someone, whoever they are, is messing and picking at your new tool, I can sort of understand your irritation.
For example, I started a thread about some methods of helping newbies financially in an environment where camping income was going to be squeezed.
In that environment, designing something that pays people a fixed amount to remain on a parcel for a fixed time would be an extremely sub-optimal route to take.
And yet, some people will insist on messing with the thread and picking over some system that forces people to stay on a parcel if they want payment.

We are in agreement for a change. It is said in this forum a lot, or it was when the bots threads were on the go. It's just one of those things that ignorant (unknowledgable) people like to throw in as an argument against the need to improve search rankings, if they don't approve of the means of improving the rankings.

Ah, the bot threads!
Those were the ones in which a bunch of ethical pygmies were arguing that traffic bots were a perfectly OK business tool.
No doubt we'll have the same sort of nonsense out of them when people start talking about the clear abuse of Alts being used to game rankings. "It's not against the TOS" sort of thing.

The only pygmies I've seen in this forum are those who claim to know things that they haven't got a clue about, although I prefer the word "retard" to describe them. There are also those who resort to lying when they are on the back foot. Oh! That's you, isn't it - on both counts.

I'm not really understanding what you are saying above. It was my impression from all your responses that you were promoting:

a) no mandatory stay, but toss lindens (which would be grab and dash)
or
b) no mandatory stay, and no lindens (which would be futile)

was there a c)....that I missed?



I'm bewildered. Are we reading the same thread??? Most recently....you mentioned "quality" product here - would snip it...but it is referred to in each paragraph...I assumed perkiness equates with some sort of quality in the context you used. When I used the word perky, earlier....I was referring to something different.









I offered up quite a few suggestions, with more than a few details, in the spirit of your thread and original topic - - -

1) Have an attendant stand at site to greet newcomers
2) Send out customer service reps with newcomer gift bags
3) Offer jobs
4) Secret Shopper's Club
5) Hiring an in-store data collector
6) Bring a Newcomer to the store day
7) Adopt a Newcomer Program
A Guided Tour System

I've scanned up twice....I don't see one direct response from you, to any of these. Not a problem. But...in between all of the above being offered up...I see a relentless fixation on an 11 minute mandatory stay...which I, as a business owner have repeatedly said...no stay, no pay. Period. The others can speak for themselves...but I interpret their responses the same way.

I don't mind tossing out even more suggestions. Many of the suggestions that I've tossed out in forum were poo-poo'd...and I did very well with them....so I've never been afraid of sharing ideas. Most won't take them. Guaranteed. Which works fine for me.

But I do mind continuing to toss them out if I have to go back to every comment and explain something that has been discussed to death. In order for a healthy discussion to continue....(free of fixations)....it is the responsibility of all parties to keep it healthy.....most certainly the responsibility of the person who asked for the suggestions in the first place.

As you can see....those who were engaged in discussion....have become a tad weary.

The bit you have missed is the meaning of the bit that that you quoted.
You have a fixation on the "no stay, no pay".
You don't seem to be giving thought to where the people might be in between the payment intervals. You seem to be saying in effect 'If there's a *possibility* that it might not be on my parcel, I'm not interested'.
If people don't stay on one parcel for 11 minutes, where are they going to be during those 11 minutes?




Yes. You were talking about being perky while conducting a tour. The tour involved visiting competitors locations and the tourists getting LMs/Notevcards/Eyball-presentation from those competitors. You are confident that your perkiness will swing the overall balance in your favour.
I had used this concept in a confidence in the power of a presentation that would overcome the knowledge of the 'downside' that the process in which you were involved necessitated the exposure of people to your competitors' content.

Where I mention "quality" in this context, it *absolutely not* anything like 'build it beautiful and they will come'. For fresh eyeballs, the quality/presentation can only come into play *after* they have come.



These are all good ideas. They seemed good to me enough to stand on their own without me trying to build on them. I'm sorry if you interpreted my silence as some sort of criticism.
I actually have a form of reservation *but not with the ideas themselves*. These are good ideas to throw into the mix. They are certainly usable by people in the position to spend significant time inworld or who can pay people to do it for them.






"which I, as a business owner have *repeatedly said*...no stay, no pay. Period."
What you are describing there conforms to what you describe as a "relentless fixation" when I'm involved. You don't seem to be able to recognise the same thing in yourself.




This is a tad confusing.
You note that I have not commented on your ideas.
You complain that you have to go back to every comment and explain something that has been discussed to death.
So it must be others that pick holes in your ideas.


I'd really love to explore many ideas that would be large-scale enough to replace a good proportion of current camping cash. The reason for this is the premise heading for a situation in which camping is being squeezed by LL - but camping cash being asserted to be a key grease for the wheels of the economy.

The question that I am addressing is not "How can we get more eyeballs on products". The question is "If camping cash flow is key, how can we replace this, and can we replace it in ways that are more valuable than simply sitting people on parcels for extended periods?". Out of that flows the concept of paying people to tour, but avoiding "No Stay, No Pay" because that's going back to the camping model in disguise.



It would be great to discuss such ideas with being interrupted by those with a fixation on "No Stay, No Pay". The kind of thing that I proposed has advantages over camping in that it gets people moving around SL and seeing a variety of places. It can be attractive to people who don't camp. It presents opportunities to parcel owners, and particularly those who can make a good pitch for their wares. It bypasses Search. It presents guaranteed eyeballs to small start-up places.

This is where you're on your own. This thread was excellent through most of it, but it was nothing to do with what you've been aiming at. You need to discuss your ideas with like-minded people but, in this thread, it's been business owners who have been discussing and, to be honest, you've just been in the way, even though you started the thread.

To the best of my recollection, nobody has been interested in doing what you've been proposing. Everybody knows that LL won't be involved so your original proposal was dead on arrival. To get anyone at all interested in any of your ideas in this area, you need to drop your fixation on 'no requirement to stay'. Once you you do that, you will be able to join in the real discussions, instead of talking about talking, which is what's happening now. You won't be able to join in until you do.

To be honest, business owners with tunnel visions have been getting in the way, attempting to strangle something at birth "because it can't be done".

The cones system is very similar to what I proposed as an idea - paying people to move around, resulting in them seeing different things. The experiences of people trying it were very interesting.

One thing arose out of the discussions was an issue that I had seen from the start. A system without a beefy back end server is not scalable except as a collection of completely separate systems. That could happen, but the separate systems would introduce all sorts of issues for tourists trying to find systems and for landowners who wanted to have visitors from all of the separate systems. How many hundreds of cones would fit on a 512 and leave enough prims for actual content?

It still doesn't have to be LL doing the hosting. It would take an entrepreneur to put up an initial server and scale it up until LL inevitably bought it for a lot of money.

It doesn't matter that a very small number of business owners have been pounding the "No Stay, No Pay" (= camping) drums here.

The advantages of getting people to move around have been made clear here via the reports on cones trials.
One or more people could already be quietly developing such a system right now.
They just don't feel moved to post here about it.

Yes, we have been getting in the way of your original proposal. Everyone said that it wouldn't work because LL won't be involved. That was settled on page 1. Then we went off on the cones thing for most of the thread, which made it an excellent thread, but you didn't fit into that. Because you started the thread, I offered to create a new thread to continue the discussion, because we'd deviated from your original idea, but you didn't take me up on the offer.

You are looking at things mainly from a very specific user's point of view - your point of view, and not from a business owner's point of view or from a camper's point of view. You are not a business owner, so it's understandable, but it does mean that your thinking gets in the way. You try to fit business owers into your ideas but they/we don't want those ideas, so the original idea of the thread is dead.

Your view is too specific for this type of topic. Your idea is to find something for the campers to replace camping, but you want to go further than that. Campers are perfectly happy to give their time for money, but you want to give them money without them having to give their time. You are not representative of campers, and you are not representative of business owners. You are only representative of yourself. Sure, campers would be more than happy to get the money without giving their time, but they are happy to give their time, whereas you are not happy with that. You are on your own in this topic - you won't find business owners who are happy to give their money for nothing in return, and you won't find campers who will only accept money if they don't have to give something in return.

Wrong.
I'm looking at the big picture in which LL are squeezing down on "No Stay, No Pay".
I'm looking at the big picture in which it may be true that camping cash is vital to the economy and to retention of residents.

You are looking at it solely from your own point of view as a business owner - and one that has professed to have no particular interest in SL other than that.
Your thinking gets in the way.

You try to fit others into your thinking, for example arguing that traffic-botting was a perfectly OK business tool. You didn't represent the bulk of business owners. You still don't. You represent yourself.



Completely wrong.
They have to give their time, but not necessarily in equal proportions to individual landowners. This could suit some landowners but not others.

Your fixations prevent you from seeing this.



I'm deeply suspicious of "experts" who claim that they know how things work and can only work. Look around at all the bankers and economists who knew how thing worked.
Look around at people who claim expertise in an area but who turn out to have been coying what they see others doing copying things that up to then they had been downplaying.
"I'm a business owner" does not cut it.

Alright, you're looking at the big picture. But you are the only one who is. Like I said, you are alone in your point of view.

Yes I am looking at it as a business owner, and I am not looking at it as a charity - giving free money away. I think it's the same with all the other business owners in this thread. My thinking certainly does get in the way of yours, but you are the only one with the big picture point of view. You can tell that by looking at how well it was received in this thread. I don't recall anyone agreeing with your idea.

Yes, I do represent myself, and I find that others agree, and vice versa. It has to be that way because I can't do the thinking in other people's brains. With the bots, some agreed, some didn't, and most didn't care. With your idea, nobody has agreed, and those that have expressed an opinion have disagreed, if only because LL won't become involved.

You've changed your tune? I didn't notice that. So you're now saying that the recipients of the money *have* to stay in the place that pays them for a period of time?

I don't have any fixations. If you want my money, you have to give something in return. It's not a fixation - it's a fact - and it's normal.

I don't wish to look around at those things. They are not relevant to anything in the thread. Being a business owner in SL *is* relevant to the discussions this thread. You can't leave the business owners' perspective out of any of it, except your original suggestion, which didn't get an acceptance.

No tune change.
I've always said that the avatars logically have to be *somewhere*.
They don't have to be on any particular parcel. However the odds are that they will either be on one parcel on the tour or on the next one. How they allocate their time over those parcels is up to how they feel about those parcels.

It *might* be that some people would actually go to the trouble of seeking out a place each and every 11 minutes, spending the intervening minutes in a place that was unrelated to the tour. That would seem extreme. What proportion of ex-campers would do that I wonder?

Ah, so it's not a change of tune. People are still free to get 'n' go. Which means that you don't have any business owners on board - at least none that have expressed an opinion in this thread. And, if you don't have any business owners on board, you have nobody to pay the visitors. So it's dead, unless you are back at your original post's pool of money that anyone can donate to, and that is administered by LL creating a new system for it, in which case it's still dead.

Funny that I am fixated on No Stay, No Pay....in RL I'm fixated on No Pay, No Stay....especially at the first of the month... lol...just hit me for a morning chuckle.

I don't know what to do with the other options I tossed out. They require time and effort....and in this SL world, we are tempted to want to use things that are "automatic"....and we should be allowed to look for automatic solutions. Unfortunately the term "Camping" is often attributed to each and every solution.....when in fact, it's not the case.

I wasn't a fan of camping as a store owner. I used it as a consumer, though. After reading all the comments from long time campers in the forum and on the blog....I've changed my views on it. Yes....some times you can change your viewpoint....if you "listen."

I've also been talking to people who would be labeled "campers"....the ones I've talked to are not at all the stereotype that is often described. Many are over one year old. Many have other things going on in SL that they participate in. They are not freeloaders or beggars....they are simply using tools offered to them....they are getting around, participating, shopping, and exploring. I think that taking away legitimate camping systems is really going to have a major impact.

Is it possible to discuss automated tools without having to relate every single one to "camping"....??? Impossible? Using the tour system...I would label those people as "visitors"......how about trying to use the word "visitor" a little more often....and coming up with some automated visitor systems.

How about using the word "employee" a few times, too. You are paying for some labor from an av, in some cases...it's different than RL....there is an automated system in place that assures both parties are taken care of fairly....it's just a different set-up....different method....but same premise.

The idea behind the cones is great, though I think that 1 linden out of each 3 linden I put into the cone is overdone. Especially when the cone itself is 500 linden. If the system uses an sql database on a web server, a small monthly fee would be more then enough.

What was again the title of this thread? How to help newbies financially.

Well, we could explain to them how to connect a credit card or paypal account to their SL account so they can spend Any other way to get lindens to their account, will require them to do something for it. Because the number of business owners willing to pay out of charity motives, will be very small.

So what is useful for me as a business owner, to help a newbie to some lindens? To be honest, not much. Even the cone tour will not bring potential customers to my store: people getting their lindens from those cones will hardly be landowners who buy my furniture or plants. But at least they saw my place, and maybe they will remember me when they do buy their own land.

Okay, so I pay 3 linden for each potential customer. Not too expensive, but how do I make sure that they will even look at my stuff? Let's be realistic, if they know they can get 2 linden they grab those and skip. If you think it is not like that, try placing a money tree for a while. Heck, most are even not polite enough to answer your "hi" message.

So the only way to stimulate them to take a look at my stuff, is to force them to stay on my sim. Still risking they land, read the newspaper for 11 minutes, cash in and go, but they might also take a look as they are required to wait anyway. In my opinion forcing them to wat before giving them the money, is the only way to stimulate them into looking around.

Sling focusses too much on the traffic, where 11 minutes per avatar does hardly generate traffic. It is not the traffic most business owners are after, when implementing the tool: it is the stimulation of the user to look around. As a business owner I could not care less about the traffic, since traffic won't bring me sales. Not if it is not extremely high. But people looking at my stuff, I would gladly pay for. After all, that is why I pay for classifieds as well: Getting people to my store. The only difference is that a classified brings only people to my store who are interested in what I sell, whereas the cone system brings people to my store that are interested in my lindens. It is entirely up to my, in those 11 minutes, to show them that I have more to offer then 2 linden for their 11 minutes. And selling rubbish will not do that

A way to tweak the Visitor System.....would be to offer a LM billboard....full of LM's that the visitor may choose at each stay. Same system as cone....but rather than being handed one LM....they click the board to choose. It takes away the element of surprise, though....that is one of the addictive parts of using the cone.

Not necessarily. If the board only offered types of place to go next, but not exact places. That way, a person could visit by type rather than just random places. Pretty much like an earlier suggestion for the cones.

ETA:
It could also include an "I'm feeling luck" choice that is perfectly random.

I was thinking about that....offering categories....each category having a mix of surprise LMs.

I added a bit to the previous post, that accommodates your addictive/surprise place hopping.

Yes...that would work.

It couldn't be an LM giver though. It would still have to work like the cones, because each board can't have all the LMs in it. It could if it were a fixed number of boards, at a fixed set of places, from the start, but not if the system is to grow. So we're back at the cones system but, instead of a menu choice of categories, we have a board choice of categories.

OMG


I want SL accounts NOT to be free )))