Introducing T Linden. What would you do to improve Premium subscriptions?

Pffft, You think getting rid of premium will change that?

It will be basic vs concierge (sim owners) then

I hope we all realize...that this is not really an attempt by LL to find out how to increase the value of premium membership.

It is a way by LL to get ideas on how to make money on Premium accounts by adding things to premium that have no cost to LL but a perceived value to users, at which point they will remove the stipend. Their comments on Premium, posted several times throughout this thread, make that pretty clear. Premium accounts do nothing for the LL business model because they don't really increase revenue.

My thoughts have not changed, eliminate Premium and make land purchase open to all users, that would generate tier.

DRD

I'm not going to tier up because my tier would nearly double. I would, however think about a tier up if I could get 1024 more.

And don't forget that whenever mainland is bought by a dealer and sold on, three people get to pay tier on the same land that month.

I'm afraid you've mixed up revenue and profit.

Premium accounts are a significant revenue generator for LL. Every cent in premium subs is pure revenue.

However, they are not a significant profit generator.

One user agrees!

I stand corrected - not being interested in mainland property, I did not know how the auction process worked . . .

But now a question, why would you pay so much for land in such a lousy environment? I have yet to have a good experience while visiting the mainland from a "performance" perspective (read lag or relatively lag free).

Oh, and BTW, an explanation to educate a fellow resident without the sarcasm would have sufficed. Peace.

i actually downgraded to basic this month.
the fact that if i cant manage to get a paypal transaction to go through and i get suspended means i cannot use the lindex to cash out and pay any tiers, which puts the entire estate at risk.
no thanks. youve already stolen premium alts and all their $ (no to mention openspace sims), you arent stealing nina and the estate as well. the easiest way to avoid that drama is to go basic.

im also still bitter about being lied to and mislead by ll on the whole firstland issue when i went premium. dont promote something as part of the premium membership months after that something has been killed off hey.

Not quite!

For example, I have been selling off the unwanted parts of some roadside parcels and using the tier freed up to consolidate in other sims.
I don't pay any extra tier.

It's important to remember that we don't pay tier on land. We pay tier on the tier level that we are at.
LL don't get any additional revenue from the example unless one or more of the parties has to tier up in order to buy the land.

I think that LL make money on unused tier rather than on the same parcel changing ownership.
The tier jumps are designed to induce people to buy land in order to fill their tier level.
I does backfire on LL though. People will hold back on buying if the purchase involves a big tier jump.

I'm at the 1/2 sim tier level. I avoid the jump to the full sim level by renting unused tier from others. Tier rental is less costly per sq.m. than would be using an alt at the lower tier levels or paying another 1/2 sim tier for a few thousand sq.m.

thanks for your contribution to adplot blight

Carl, you just put it in a way that I understand much better than when I tried to say it =)

LL is doing this exact exercise I think and is why we talking about it now. I think they maybe going to put the price up and I am going to have to pay it if I want to keep my mainland, at least whatever I can afford to anyways. Is why I agree with Sling T. now, and others who just say dump the premium bundle and let any PIOF buy whatever they want or need including mainland.

Its true that LL can just print lindens, but the lindens stipend is real money to me because if I didnt get it then I would have to buy more lindens than I do now. So if the stipend was taken away and the fee stay the same, or the fee increase and the stipend stay the same then it will cost me more real dollars to play at the level Im playing now. And for me thats not an accounting exercise. And the lindens I do spend, that another person cashes out is not an exercise for them either. And I think LL is looking at things in this way as well.

However, if I only had a PIOF account with the ability to hold mainland (if there was one)then I'd probably end up buying at least $US72 more lindens than I do now, less whatever I get charged for my 1st 512m which I wouldnt get as a bonus anymore.

Its my mainland and its tier thats at risk in the same way that everyone who has OS now has been put at risk. I have about 3,800m mainland that I would have to cut down if the you-can-hold-mainland fee was put up higher. LL will only get the same total amount from me because thats all I got. And in the amount I do have to spend each month I also want some lindens to buy stuff with, and put money in people's tip jars at my fav places. So the place to cut my costs if I have to, will be my tier. Just like whats happening now to lots of OS people.

Im just like everyone else I suppose. Some people pay less tier than me and other people pay way way more. But we all in the same boat because we all got our own limits and there is no more when thats gone.

So we need more people really to come SL and stay and is why I think we all (LL specially) need to really focus on that and not just look at how we can extract more money out of each other inworld and LL out of its current membership. Because we, those of us here now, havent got any more money than we got now. Not in amounts of any significance. Its not like we all going to somehow double the RL dollars we are spending now.

And the people we need are not just any people. We desperately need more ordinary people with $US30-50 a month, to spend. People who dont make or create anything much. Who arent rental barons or shopkeepers and dont want to be. These people and me to, are those people's inworld customers and thats whats really missing in SL now. Customers who buy stuff. Consumers.

Easily two out of every three people, more probably, I meet in SL today are here with the stated intent of making money either entertaining, renting or selling stuff they make themselves or on behalf of others if only to pay their way for most of them. Make off who tho ??? Each other ??? We not even sustaining ourselves really, LL yes maybe, but not our inworld businesses as a whole. While LL can show they doing OK, the inworld economy itself is not good overall. The business failure rate in SL has always been high, but I think is alot worse now than when I came about a year ago. I think we are mostly just cannibalising each other inworld now.

If we dont get more customers, more consumers, then lots of the designers, landlords and shopkeepers are going to close, as many are thinking about now. And thats not good. Not for them, not for me and people like me. Because we get less choice then. And when there is less choice then prices go up and when they go up past my limit then I cant play anymore either.

I try earlier to talk about what I think ordinary people, consumers, can relate to when they first come to SL and maybe will help to give them a reference point while they come to grips with what can be a very daunting time. I nearly quit so many times in my first two weeks because it was really hard. Im glad I got stubborn and not let the game beat me =)

I hope maybe LL will hear me and if not then maybe they will listen to Anne O. who read what I was trying to say before about new people and how LL can use the fanfrenz way of helping new people to make real friends in SL like Desmond S. was talking about. Anne a very experienced person and she maybe not remember me, but I remember her because she helped me at a time when I needed it most. I couldnt work out by myself how to change my clothes working from the outside in as you ordinarily do anywhere you in a public place. I nearly drove myself mad trying to figure it out at the start and Anne showed me how to do this. So thx again Anne =)

That Edit Appearance thingy has to be the dumbest cruellest thing I ever seen. Wheres the wardrobe dialog for goodness sake. I dont want to make my clothes. I just want to put on what I got already. You kno, a real wardrobe with hangars and drawers with all my stuff neatly folded and dresses and jackets on a rack, bangles and necklaces in my jewellery box and my shoes and boots in a neat row at the bottom. A wardrobe please. Something I immediately know what to do with the very first time I see it. I know how to double-click on stuff to open it. I know how to follow instructions that say right-click and Wear this top. And right-click and Make to create a new hangar in my Wardrobe. And I know how to drag from the box on the floor, the outfit I just bought and drop it onto the new hangar I just made. Click-click open. Right-click menu. Press-drag-drop. This I do know how to do on stuff I can see.

At the moment its just well, diabolical to figure out how to do something as simple as changing your top. Wheres my instructions ??? Umm! I know press F1. No thats not it. Whats that ??? New. I try that. chit I'm all white and my bosom sticking out. Take it off. chit chit now I got no top on at all. Where's that other top i was wearing. chit i dont know. chit someones coming. wat u looking at ??? piss off please. chit he not going he just standing there gawking at me !!! HEEEEELLLLLPPPP !!!! nobody chit !!! quick quick umm! New. chit im all white again !!! wat a dumb game !!! logout. At least one of the buttons did what I expected anyways.

LL can make a whole 3D world but not a wardrobe in a popup dialog. Inventory !!! arg !!! even dumber when it comes to helping a new person dress themselves for the first time. folders smolders 2u2 u litl g33kp3 nd y u mov dem afta i put on te 1st time i cant fnd dem gain wen u do tht u u arg !!! 2 wks l8r i fnd zills saimsaim oth plc in mii vent arg !!! /me k33l u loooongtime

I run off on another tangent again by the looks of it, o well =)

So anyways, I want a wardrobe now as well please. Along with a better profile page and a email and I dont want to pay premium anymore and I want to keep my mainland and have a tenancy agreement and not be a peasant and I happy to pay you what thats worth ...

or ... if I not get any of these things then can I have more stipend and more bonus tier and smaller tier jumps so i can get more land and can you reduce my premium fee to $2 a month or a $1 even. That would good because then I would have lots more lindens to buy stuff with and support everyone else inworld =)

We joined around the same time, I found out via the forums that first land had been scrapped, there was a hell of a lot of official bumph about first land when I joined, I share your pain on that issue.

at the end of the day none of this matters anyway.
ll is going to look for more ways to milk us of every last $ they can. if any of you think that this new premium initiative is about anything more than getting more $ out of you for less in return...

yes, they were actively promoting it everywhere. the front page of the site, all the subpages, in-world, in the viewer, everywhere.
i felt so totally scammed when ppl started saying 'oh, that was discontinued MONTHS ago'.

This idea might have some legitimacy if LL ever bothered to actually VERIFY any of the information submitted. But they don't. I won't go into the details here, because it is much too close to printing out the details of an exploit. But the assumption that Linden Lab actually verifies the ID of the account holder in a way that would matter is a very weak and insubstantial one.

SL has a HUGE learning curve, between "Joe Noob" and his first login, and that person getting to the point of being a content creator that is successful enough to cash out even $5 USD per month. In fact, the vast majority of SL business owners DO NOT make a profit. They make enough to cover their in-world expenses for uploads and mall space, maybe. And maybe enough to cover some other land fees and/or shopping trips for their avatars. But if you compare the economic stats on how many people, out of the millions of residents registered in SL, actually have a "positive L$ cash flow" in any given month, and factor in the fact that those few are counted by LL BEFORE any LL land tier fees or personal out-world expenses, like land tier paid via Pay Pal to an estate owner, are added in, you'll see it is only a very small percentage of us who actually profit well enough to cash out.

So if you tell Joe Noob that to upload textures, or to sell even his first T-shirt, he has to pony up at least $72 USD per year, before he or she even has a clue if they are any good at this, or if they will ever sell anything? You'll kill the vast majority of new content creator start-ups dead cold.

Requiring membership will be a HUGE barrier to the legitimate content creator who is just trying to get started. But it will not slow down a thief who is intent on stealing other people's ideas and making huge profits from it. Setting up the false ID's needed is just part of his overhead, to be paid for with someone else's money. Note how many bogus Premium accounts were being created by land flippers who were raping First Land, before that benefit got killed. They were creating new Premium accounts left and right, with false information, surely, and discarding them as soon as they had fulfilled their purposes.

So please, let's get back on-topic, and discuss how to make a Premuim membership worth something, and not discuss how to make a free membership worthless.

My land business steers away from owning Mainland and focuses on providing fun, safe and affordable land ownership experiences on private islands.

The only immediate benefits I personally receive from the "premium" membership are: Private sim ownership, L$300/week allowance (really??), Concierge chat.

Seems to me your goal should be to get more free members to convert to premium and the only way to do that is to revamp the entire system and re-roll SL membership out and have it change drastically. You need to be able to scream the benefits from the mountain tops, because in all honesty if I wasnt an island owner I wouldn't be a premium member.

The tricky part is; how do you provide value to everyone in the world equally with our different taxing systems. The VAT has really kept alot of people from spending money in SL. So, another way to look at this would be possibly having different memberships designed by country of origin...if that can be done - while keeping the playing field level across the platform.

Ok, that said, being in the US, I propose different levels of membership; Free, Premium and Platinum. (ok, who cares what they're called....three levels).

Free - no allowance - uploads L$20 (for the newbie who's just checking it out.)

Premium - 9.95/mo option of L$500 week allowance or free 1024 tier on Mainland, uploads L$10, private island ownership 1-5 full sims (or equal land on Mainland) regular island fees apply, Concierge chat, etc....yadda yadda yadda....SHOW ThE VALUE. This level is the next progression from newbie...to the newbie who now wants to own land, etc.

Platinum - $12.95/mo. option of L$800 week or free 2048 on Mainland, uploads L$5, private island owership 6+ islands with a $20 discount per 65,536 owned whether on Mainland or privately. These members are your most valued who deserve a higher level of customer service. They are the people who are making you SL of money and typically their user hours and content creation are higher than the average user.

We could also add a fourth level; ULTIMATE which could be a corporate or business level for owners of 20 or more sims, etc.

Just ideas here. The key to all of it is...SHOW US THE VALUE.

I have two issues with premium membership...
1) I find the cost to own land confusing and it has step changes in price which put me off buying slightly more.
2) I think it is important that as far as possible inworld all people should be equal.

To address the first I'd like to propose...
Remove the requirement to be a premium member to own mainland. Have a simple pricing model which goes from 512 upwards. You pay for what you own, perhaps on a daily basis. This would be simpler, allow you to buy replacement land then offload the previous land without a whole months fee for any overlap and it would remove the current barriers at the tier boundaries.

Premium membership = enhanced 24x7 support.
That is the only service I can think of which doesn't put premium members at an advantage in-world.


Personally I am a premium member so I can have 512m of land. But the confusing and disproportionate cost of increasing this to 1024 is preventing me buying a bigger plot. My feeling is that 1024 is a better size of land for a simple home and the current pricing model makes this an ineffecient size to buy.


Access to IM without being inworld is an important service but I think it should be universal. I want something that will work on my Windows Mobile powered mobile (like I can currently have for most of the other IM services).

Not the way I look at it. Even if it is part of the extra tier for which they didn't hold land, it remains the fact that all three owners had to be paying enough tier to cover it. Whether they had to tier up to do so is a separate issue.

If it's a large transaction, say half a sim, then it's pretty likely that (some) participants will bump up and down tier. (Tier taken is determined by the peak holding, not what your tier level is set at.) I guess it's extra money anyway, whichever pot you choose to attribute it to.

I'm following this thread since there where no responses, read almost all responses. Let me give my particular point of view now

I've became Premium for the sole reason to be allowed to own a mainland plot. (When people question me if there is some advantage inbeing Premium, I ever answer that only if he/she wants to have mainland - there is no other reason to become Premium)

From the initial 512 plot, i've bought more and have now 4,608 sqm of land there. Using the 10% for giving the land to my group, I bought, piece to piece during 6 months, an old ad farm in the very centre of the sim, totalling 448 sqm. The four 16m that would complete the regular 512 sqm plot are disponible, in fact the owner of three of them would give it to me for free if it is to join the regular plot, but it would cost me more US$ 15 a month in fees. US$ 15 a month for 64 sqm? No way!

Please, make a more steady tier levels.

There have many suggestions on giving more tier-free space to old premims. All of that was made in fized amounts - 512 sqm each year, or so - how about give it in terms of percentage?

First year you can have 10% more of the land that you are paying now. In my case, I would be allowed to have another 448 sqm without changing my tier level;
Second year, 20%; and so on.
In this manner, those that contribute more with tier payments, would be more rewarded. To those that maintain themselves in the minimum, would have to wait much more to have a significant rise in their allowed land.

(please, forget my bad English)

I'm not a premium member as they only thing that currently attracts me is the support option

And well from what I've heard from the premium accounts support often say 'hang tight it will be fixed soon' so not missing much there....

What'd lure me in? Love the idea of free uploads, i guess many of the hardcore SL users are creators so that'd be a nice way to show some support to them.

Special sandboxes/space for premium users - managed sandboxes would be cool! I realise many premium folk do buy land but sometimes i want to rez something really high prim or test something not on my land.... but i do not use the Linden sandboxes as i dont want to be griefed by flying turtles lol.

An idea was mentioned earlier about webpages, i like this a lot but i'd opt for more info on profiles over a webpage of my own, again many premiums are business owners so want their biz info on their profile but also want to enjoy and share sl with their friends. At present my picks are all about my business rather than the cool places i visit, so extra profile tabs for premiums regarding in-world biz would be great.

More groups is great, my groups are maxed and i find myself leaving the enjoyable groups just to expand my biz. My IMs get capped regularly, if you could fix that at all for a premium id be VERY interested in buying an account.

For the casual non biz owners users buying premiums? the perk of a secondlife email addy sounds cool. Maybe a space in world where creators can offer discounts/giftcards/freebies to premium users only. Kinda like a big newbie zone but for premiums.

Ability to zap traffic zombie bots off the grid at the push of a button

Most of the ideas i have tinkered with have been given in any number of the 40 odd pages of this thread.. But I didnt see this one...


Make a platinum account that can own a Homestead free and clear, no other islands needed. For people who sign up for this new account type by 31 december, offer FREEEEEE transfer of old OpenSpace sims to their account (as the new homesteads) until 31 January.

I GUARANTEE you would see a rush on these accounts as people scramble to figure themselves out in light of the new OS price changes. This move would be a major PR boon, really think about it and read the OS thread if you need proof of how upset people are with LL right now. It would allow people to take over OS from their landlords who are dropping their OS in droves, or rolling them up and leaving lots of people "virtually homeless" when they do.

Most people renting these sims are paying upwards of $110 bucks or so anyways. This is money they could be paying directly to LL and with the free transfer they would hardly feel the pinch at all with the new price increase. AND they would have security that their land could not be taken away from them so easily by unscrupulous landlords. It's a WIN/WIN really.

Give the ability to pay tier with Lindens at a preferential rate - ie at or nearer the BUY rate, but ONLY for land tier.


Here are some of my earlier thoughts on accounts:
/356/24/291220/92.html#post2214815

No thanks for jumping to a conclusion which is totally at odds with everything that I have ever posted about ad-farms and about consideration for others in Sl.


Roadside parcels of approx 4k and 3k bought for their locations on the paved Linden road network.
I only need approx 1 for a public vehicle rezzing area and future sales option.
I cut the 1k-ish and sold the remainders as one 2048 and two 1024s.
None of the resulting parcels are in anyway related to ad farming.

The resulting two public rezzing areas join a number of others spread around the road network for all to use.


Tsk Nina!

I think to really have a long time change the whole concept of premium accounts is to question.
Why not have one account type and a distinct set of premium features which can be booked independingly?
examples:
- buy land. everybody can do so everywhere; maximum square-meters depend on a certain amount of L$ income in a specific time-frame.
- support can be booked for a certain amount of L$ for a specific time-frame. Or payed per use.
- have a /me@residents.secondlife.com email redirection for L$42/month.
- have a fancy name tag for L$10000 a week.
- etc.

So everybody can be happy and book the features which fit the needs.