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

I would be much more likely to buy more mainland parcels if it were not for the jump in tier levels. Why not charge for tier in 512sqm increments with the cost based on how much land one owns? For example, right now I am at the 1/2 region tier level (32768 sq. m.) which costs $125/mo. If I am doing my math right that works out to about $1.95 per 512 sq. m. parcel. So, let's say I found a 4,096 parcel of land I wanted. Right now it would cost me $70/mo. in added tier to buy it because I would have to tier all the way up to a full region. Why not let me buy the land and pay $15.60/mo. (the same price per 512 sq. m. I pay now). This would allow land owners to expand their land ownership in a way that is easier to manage, especially once they get to the half or full region levels.

Of course, if I added enough land that the amount of monthly tier would reach $195/mo. then I would still be able to tier up to the full region amount and be able to add more land beyond that at about $1.52 per 512 sq. m. I would think that this would help in mainland sales and potentially increase revenue for Linden Labs at the same time so it seems like it would be a win win to me.

I like this a lot. Takes care of a couple issues, or at least forces those using 'bots to upgrade.



Great post, Winter!



I seriously like both of these. A permanent SL to IM (no, not SLim) connection would be seriously useful -- an I would buy more land if I knew I had a break on tier. In a heartbeat.



That would be handy



Like that a lot.

Premium Accounts have been tied to owning mainland and getting stipends. Adding so called 'benefits' that are nothing to do with owning land or getting stipends is changing the product in a significant way. I have paid my next 12 months premium fees and I want my money back if LL is now going to withdraw the product and give me some useless thing like being able to join more groups instead of what I paid for.

My guess is that LL is going to open up mainland land ownership to anyone with payment info., so premium accounts will become a nonsense. If LL do that I want my money back, since this would make the product I bought worthless - like asking me to buy a ticket to a concert then letting everyone else in free.

Any'benefits' should be linked to or in addition to the original product.

Maybe being able to own open space (as 1/4 sim) as well as mainland, all within the one tier structure, would be useful. There are plenty of mainland owners who are shaking their heads and wondering what all the fuss is about with open space sims - they still look like a much better deal than sharing a sim with 100 bots, an ugly in your face build at 40metres and a BDSM club on the mainland.

A more attractive tier structure for premiums might be worth looking at, but if LL is looking at making money from premium accts instead of a break even situation I cant see this happening. Upping the free tier from 512 to 1024 is not really much of an incentive to the larger mainland landholders and could mean more abandoned plots of land with ugly builds making the mainland a unattractive place to be.

I like the idea of an extra 512 free tier each year.
Definitely keep the stipends.

And I don't know if it's possible, but maybe the option to mark an upload as temporary? For example, when you want to try out a beta animation before uploading it for good. It would only exist for, say, 5 hours, before being completely wiped out from the asset server or the sim. It would be useful for people who don't use a local OpenSim, or for testing animations that need other elements from the grid to check the full effect.

Also, define, publish and enforce reasonable resource usage guidelines for the mainland.

See the Nieun region for a good example of bad behavior. Most of the region is deserted because a club on 8k of land, 1/8th of a region, has 35+ people on it, 24/7. It's been that way for well over a year. The people I know there, conceirge people, are less than happy because all their ARs about it go ignored.

And SVC-1224, "New feature: llParcelSay", would be much appreciated by anybody who lives near a club.

If LL are going to make anyone with payment details be able to own mainland land how about creating zones of regions where only premium accounts can have land, and introduce "planning permission" for all new builds in these zones where people have to lay out their plans and useage before they are allow to build and local residedents can put in objections,????

Great, out-of-the-box idea.

Yep, this would work for me. I'd like to have my own sim, but I abhor the Mainland and I can't afford full-island tier.

Where are you reading that they are going to withdraw any of the current benefits of Premium membership?
Again, where are you reading that?

First of all I will be realistic, I don't expect LL to spend much on these benefits. While a 1024 tier free would be nice as I approach my second rezz day - I can see this will cost LL (but if you are feeling generous ). So :-

1) Ability for more than 25 Groups

2) Ability to mute group IMs

3) A premium only forum with regular input from Lindens about matters of import (like Linden Answers used to be).

4) Ability to select multiple recipients for IMs (like a friends conference but with delivery if recipient offline)

5) Increase IM cap limit - 20 is far too low


Will put rest of wishes on my letter to Santa which gets put on fire to go to North Pole

When a Linden has a one letter name I feel like it's a big eff yoo to the residents.


As far as making premium more desirable, there are two things people want: room to spread out and stability. Well, three things - room to spead out, stability, and respect.
</spanishinquisition>

I have to admit I'd feel bereft if my stipend poofed, so any increase in free tier would need to be at the very least equal to my feeling of the value of a stipend should that happen.

It would be nice if a premium were backed up somehow, and saved if something happened should it fall temporarily into arrears, rather than being deleted. I'm thinking of Postmark Jensen's situation. I can see how there couldn't be any guarantee that things would never be lost; what I'd like is just a company policy that doesn't include automatic deletion happening after X inactive months. It would be kinder if an inactive premium, having gone into arrears, was downgraded to a free account, and left intact barring landholdings. I think inactive free accounts are wiped after a time, too, but if an email were automatically generated (like I receive from MindArk periodically) saying, "Hey, log in to the website at least or your account will be deleted," it would be a kindness.


People who are premium are often people who want to support Second Life and Linden Lab in the way that LL itself has set up. If premium isn't doing that it isn't our fault. I love SL, and in my tiny way would like to lend my support.

I'm a bit cranky today, and I'm already premium, so maybe this post is worthless.

The post that you originally quoted, I assume now that this is not the case, my bad

Do you have a presence there? Only asking because I went there to see if it was true once, and after several attempts to get into the sim (as it was full) I finally arrived at a land rental office. How the heck could anyone rent land there?

I want to keep my weekly L$500 stipend. It does not cost LL anything, but it keeps me in business.

How about this: how about you start by declaring M Linden was wrong to state that Premium Subscriptions are immaterial.

Then we'll talk.

A lot of good ideas here, so I'll just cast my votes:

1. Free tier on at least 1024, and first land.
2. Ability to buy OS and Homestead sims without an island purchase.
3. Put the weekly stipend back up to 500, with annual increases.
4. Free uploads.

Thanks. And good luck.

Another feature I would really like is the ability to link my premium account(s) to my alt avatars and manage their L$ balances through the web interface. My accounts are all linked to me (and my payment info) in the eyes of LL anyway. Why not be able to give my alt a few 100 L$'s in spending money via the web rather than logging in one account to pay to another, or relying on inworld ATM server gadgets to do this?


Also, I have to say that I wouldn't like to see anything done to enhance premium membership that takes away from what basic accounts have now, or makes the economic playing field between one type of account and another wildly unbalanced (for example, don't "add" groups to premiums by taking them away from basics). All of the active user base is important to SL's overall health.

YES<YES<YES,that i like

After reading in Tatiro's Blog that a logical thing to do would be to cut the Stipend. / Bad Idea !! / all my Stipend money gets put right back into the SL economy by purchasing goods and services from other SL resident's / Cut the Stipend payment's and I will, just goto a basic "Non Paying" account customer

He was referring to how the subscription fees don't really make LL any money. Most of what they take in is paid back with stipends.

I don't know if this would work. Giving subscribers more Linden Dollars, would bring more money into SL.
More Money, but the same stuff to buy. Prices would decrease. The Linden$ could lose value. It could end in some kind of Inflation.

I am not that good at economy, but i think that could probably happen.

Nope - I don't own (or rent) anything there. I live in a neighboring region.

The club is up over the cloud layer. The rental places you see on the ground have been empty for ages. From what the owner tells me, they've managed to rent houses a few times but always had to return the money because the rentees could never get into the sim..

edit: it may be that the 8k of land is allowed to abuse that region because it's owned by a group founded by a well-known resident and forum dweller that's big in the landbot business... Or maybe not. Who knows why LL ignores some ARs and pounces on others?

Yes! Split 'money-related' account issues from 'avatars in SL'. OpenLife does this, incidentally, though the other SL-alikes are cloning the SL login scheme down to the "you can't pick your last name" bit.

I'd really like to log in as (say) 'Argent', or something even further removed from my publicly visible SL identity (even, say, an email address), and then pick which alt I'm working with or logging in as in a separate step.

Like, you log in, then you get a pull down with your alts.

Surely setting homestead regions prices to the concierge entry level of 125 is not a coincidence. I say roll with that and sell Homesteads, not OS(for obvious reasons), to premium members.

It is just to bad this won't be acted on quickly enough to help the situation at hand.

Since groups are tied to land permissions, I don't see that changing soon. But if possible it would be nice. Perhaps a new non-land owning type of group.

An easier to understand, smoother stepped tier scale. BUT! Another price change now would be suicide. So put that off please.

If you want people using your mainland, and as such using their premiumness, then a visual mute feature is manditory. Understanding as most of us are, one persons art is still quite odd for the next.

Easy, reasonabe,and free.

Alisha

I love this idea. Doesn't WoW do this now? I've watched a friend play that game and that's what I seem to remember. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

'We are currently in the process of evaluating ways to make premium subscriptions more valuable to Residents and less dependent on Linden dollar stipends.'

That's quite a telling way of phrasing it. After all, if you were planning to add benefits to make premium accounts more attractive in addition to the existing stipends, you'd say that -- it would sound a lot more appealing.

Our rede is that the Lab is planning to take the smart business option and prune stipends, replacing them with one or more other, cheaper benefits for premium accounts.
http://www.massively.com/2008/11/14/premium-accounts-and-the-second-life-business-model/

LL directed us to read this comment.