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

The biggest Premium Feature I love about being a premium account and will continue to be, is my access to Live Chat and the ability to call when I need help. Personally I have always been treated with respect and concern, even if they couldn't help me. I felt they wanted to resolve my issue. I love the private sims and hate mainland. So being a senior (age) user, Service and the benefits is what is important to me.

I would also like to see only Priemum accounts be able to buy islands, but they should also be able to buy the new Homestead Sims, or a Open Space Sim to go with there homestead. If they are a premium account and do use mainland they should have a larger size lot and more prims. (see my idea of premium membership levels)

Next I would like to see Benifits with longevity such as. Example. One free name change on a Sim per one year of membership. Or one transfer location of a sim with two years member ship.

A Tier level of premium membership. Example. higher level, less sim tier paid. OR the higher the membership or level the purchasing power goes with it.

Depending on levels of the premium acct. would get credit in US$ to their accts . i.e If I was say a level 3 premium acct. and I paid 125US annually, that would intitle me to 1 free tier on my sim or say $75 US posted to my account as a credit.

A point system, that transfered to US$ on my account for how much Lindens I generated from inworld then transfered to US$. (Remember those Lindens are being paid by other people in SL who are bringing money into in world. And Linden makes 3.5% on each transfer from Lindens to US$. Reward me for the talent it took to generate that 3.5% revenue for Linden

The Free stripend I think should go away, I don't want Linden dollars for my premium membership, I want benifits. Tangleable Benifits. I think SL has a very aggressive bunch of talented individuals who are creative and involved socially for the most part.

Rewards us for our work by giving us the benefits in tangable ways, It would relieve some of the "Feeling of gouging" we are feeling now from Linden. You are getting close to being to expensive to play any more. Rewards and pats on the back for those of us who have contributed to Lindens growth and success. There are many out there.

There are alot of us that have money to spend and want to..

I'll agree with many here in that I think you need to fix your business decision making process tenfold before you start trying to add treats. The OS saga is only one of several examples I've witnessed in my 4 years here that makes me all but wonder why I am still here. It will take a lot for me to keep my islands.

Now I suppose this is a start - premium accounts have been long neglected since they lowered the stipend. I agree with what others are saying - more bonus tier, more stipend, more groups.

You know what I miss? Concierge. Yeah, you can claim they are still around, but when they started it was such a great idea. An in-world chat channel, an email address and phone number that had an individual on the other end, region restarts (now in the client), region restores, etc. And it was prompt and good. Now, it may as well be a term deleted from the LL sites. I know you could say it wasn't scalable, well, make it scale. It was a great service and I miss it dearly.

On that note, how about Premium support? Bring back a premium in-world support chat. Or maybe premium members get bumped in the support ticket queue. I dunno. I'd love to bring back Concierge as well, but I don't see that (or this happening). But thought I'd mention them...

MM

Why pretend our opinions matter here? Like you're really taking notes.

Just break it to us how we're about to be bent over, and if you could, a little KY wouldn't hurt. Just like rippin off a bandaid. Just post it in yer little bloggie, declare it as policy and get it over with so we can all get back to second life without the rumors and speculations and misquotes and everything else.

so, you are saying give premium more but keep basic..... dont give a reason to upgrade an account simply give premium more? I was premium well over 4 years until I lost my trust in LL and dropped to basic. The only way I would go back is if ther grid was fixed, once and for all. There's absolutely no reason I would want to be premium any longer. Its fine if you do, and if you make wishes but since Im basic Im not allowed wishes Mine being no seperation, all accts the same. and a charge for all accts. Now, you may disagree with my wishes but it doesnt give you the right to negate them I dont care what your wishes are, they mean nothing to me but I wont negate them.

- Get rid of Premium charges
- Get rid of Stipends
- Offer more affordable SIM products

Well it's pretty simple - we have probably reached a saturation point for mainland ownership and it requires more premiums to exist if mainland is going to grow. I am sure LL misses the mainland auctions, and how much money they commanded. With premiums in decline, LL has to do something before they can expand again.

What they have seen is a desire for a measure of order, as evinced by the Bay City and Nautilus auctions. What they really should have seen with those auctions, however, is that people are willing to pay a premium to get double prims for their monthly tier. Which is why 1024 is probably the ideal tier-free amount of land to own. If LL becomes more egalitarian and allows anyone to own mainland, this would be the biggest incentive to go premium.

I also suggested a bigger group membership bonus, preferably 20%, or an extra 2% or 3% per donating premium member. This would also make up for the reduced stipend that I suspect is coming. By allowing us to own more land as groups, premium membership would become more attractive since it is ultimately about land.

Elimination of the parcel listing fee for premiums would also be nice, or some kind of bump in links to give premium parcels more precedence in search all.

I had some other ideas a while back, but I have to dig them up now.

thumbs up T Linden, So far your blog was really good. Here's hoping you have success....

My proposals are things that don't have an impact in-game, and so don't have the potential for creating the kind of class system you're talking about. These are also the kinds of things I was suggesting that Premium might have to make it worthwhile when I *was* "just a Basic", because they wouldn't be taking something away from Basics or denying Basics something that had an effect on their day-to-day situation in-world... which things like reduced inventories or reduced creation or ONLY increasing the group limits for Premiums would.

Premium accounts could get extra allotment of text floating over their avatar.

I do see your point but my point is based on looking at the world as a whole whereas your point is looking at the world from your point of view. That's no bad thing, that's what we all should do but I always worry about the knock on effect.

People have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars here building up a business, it shouldn't be swiped from underneath their feet for short term gains.

There are really two related but different problems: getting people to become Premium, and getting them to stay that way.

In the distant past, the latter problem was pretty much just a matter of getting folks to buy land, but that doesn't really work now after the wide growth of Estates and as the Mainland continues* to fall prey to various abuses. The idea of directly rewarding retention with annual increases in tier bonus would have a huge positive impact.

Most Premium memberships began with Mainland ownership, and continued progress on improving the Mainland is critical to expanding landowner membership. Just a brief glance at the OpenSpace feedback threads shows how bad a reputation Mainland has with many residents now; fixing that perception is a prerequisite for drawing many new Premium members.

Besides Mainland ownership, benefits of Premium membership are pretty limited. Access to customer Support is what it is; it's unlikely to be cost-effective to improve Support in return for membership dues. That's not to say that Support can't or shouldn't be better, but I see it as a separate issue from attracting and keeping Premium accounts.

I feel that way about the Group count limits, too. This is really an architectural defect that needs to be fixed for SL to be a viable, scalable social platform. The urgently needed solution is not wisely restricted to Premium members.

If the door weren't shut on further consideration of the OpenSpace changes, I would favor an option for Premium members to buy Homesteads standalone with a US$125 monthly fee, but keeping the $95 fee for Estate owners with at least one full-primmed sim. This would rescue a now quite tarnished product and offer residents a natural progression into full-sim Estate ownership. But it seems all such discussion is off the table.
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*The adfarm ban had little or no effect on landcutting and microparcel extortion, but we live in hope that Jack's next announcement will help with that.

many of the wishes here want a basic acct crippled..... and I have nothing bad to say about your wishes so I find it rather odd that you feel you must negate mine. If you disagree, fine its your opinion, do I accept it? nope but I will not take away your opinion as you wish to do to mine, now in closing, you have a great day since this whole thing is becoming a bore.

If LL wants to make money and stablise the L$ exchange rate, get rid of the premium accounts.

No more stipend or free tier.

Open up the Mainland ownership to anyone. Allow any account to set their home location to any where on the mainland. Allow support for anyone.

Make the tier into gradients of 512m on a sliding scale upto a full sim. After a full sim has been reached, start over at 512m and work back up to another full sim.

This would encourage more land ownership and not bloat the economy with L$. LL has made no qualms about Premium Memberships making very little revenue. We all know their revenue comes from tier. The more land owned, the more tier paid. With more land owned also comes more responsible builds and a better inworld experience.

What residents should be paying for is the world they inhabit. Not 'perks'. Any sharing of one's land with another is the beginnings of a broader community.

Any resident that wishes to spend money in SL will always buy L$. So many basic accounts already do.

Landlords will always have clients who prefer someone else do the building and maintaining of their home. Landowners will always paying tier in some form or another.

Call me a radical minded person, but the best way to improve the Premium Account, is to get rid of it.

Once everyone is on a level footing then Sl can move forward as a community.

Great to hear more things are being thought of to be added to premium users. Here's what I like so far and my own add ons.

Quick note according to LL premiums are concierge since concierge access is available to mainland sim owners. My former partner was a concierge member but did not get all the same bennies as PI concierge members.

NO MORE PONYIES! - we already got one remember. BRING BACK PONY!!!! (This gave me visions of "anotherpony linden" This was from an earlier post saying they wanted a pony.

I agree with most of what is said here not raising prices unless they are addons/optionals. The few addons you do have are not even being promoted to most users. I also agree with Desmond but add the idea of maybe makig multiple rewards possible. Maybe offer say X number of features and provide the ability to get the ones people want that best fits them. Maybe make it a point scale like each month get 500 points and if you save up points you can get cooler things. Then that way as a person changes in thier SL life they can start with maybe 2K stripend a week and 512 free land but as time goes on they run a business so 500 L$ (base premium feature) is ok but maye a website offers them more vlue. As time goes on maybe give them incrased points. 500 first year, 1000 second year, etc. This would allow people to get more for being loyal.

Concierge equality - this could have changed but I ran into a situation where a concierge mainland person did not have the same powers or abilities as PI owners dispite the issues having nothing to do with PI only features. The one I ran across is PI owners can have staff granted access to concierge for comunication/assistance but mainland concierge level owners have to support thier land alone. That frustration alone makes me desire not to ever concider concierge a value till I am a Private island owner.

Backup/saving inventory is something LL should have for full perm items. You can have a data save of textures, animations, even scripts with cut and paste...the time it takes to rebuild a prim even if you stores numbers though is INSANE. Also mass downloading has alot of appeal to older users that want to store alot of thier old photos, etc.

There are a ton of suggestions that are going back before even JIRA was made that can be easily discovered by exploring the atchived and current forums. Some of this stuff is already accessible and others require a bit...or alot of programming but would lead to LL at least hearing residents desires and show value added to an already depreciated premium account membership. More attachments, partners, things for profiles, tattoos, face layers, etc.

I have one region, I rent another, I have mainland too. I certainly wouldn't complain if your tier was lower than mine, you bring in a shed load more than me. This is normal business practice. You promote Second Life better than me, why shouldn't you get more breaks?

By the same token I feel estate owners should get a tier break on openspaces that premium members don't get, that's generally how business works, the more you spend the better breaks you get.

Desmond's Devil's Dictionary sort of post -

I'll make a gentleman's bet of one symbolic $L that says: free accounts will be monetised somehow with advertising - possibly even inworld business advertising - within two years.

Something like a five second ad per teleport, or ten seconds of ad upon login, or other 'stuff' in Search unless you go Premium - you get the idea.

* * * * *

Strangely enough, this sort of arrangement may be one of the fairest things possible, as awful as it sounds.

Consider that media advertising has brought us essentially 'free' radio and television, blogs, news websites and so forth.

Also, this is a great way to reduce bandwidth costs, and thus tier, by having them paid for by advertisers - i.e. businesses who stand to gain from business with new residents.

This also breaks away from the heavily 'land based' business model, which is a smart move insofar as tier alone can't stay competitively high-dollar forever.


Edit: I tend to agree Ciaran, but I live in dread fear that cost will be tinkered with, up until the point that a huge dose of uncertainty is injected into the market.

I can agree with all your points, you radical minded person hehehe

If they do that then they better be paying me to play SL.

Free uploads and "save to" would be good also

There are lots of things that LL could do to improve the value of the Premium account offering:

1) Increase the the stipend back to 400L$ or 500L$. This costs very little; you guys print the stuff. At one time "inflation" (of the value of the US$ to the L$) was a problem. This hasn't been the case for a long time. Consider the stipends (and raising them) as an "economic stimulus", with the intent of using them to grow the entire SL economy--of which LL gets its cut in so many ways.

2) Increase the base Premium account free tier from 512m2 to 1024m2 or even 2048m2. This would immediately spike demand for mainland, letting you sell more sims--including premium products like Nautilus City and Bay City.

3) Offer a [email]secondlife.name@secondlife.com[/email] free email address.

4) Increase the number of allowed groups for Premium users. The number 25 is arbitrary. LL has in the past allowed LL-created groups not to count towards the total.

5) Promote the benefits of Premium accounts. LL does very little promotion of its Premium product. I would encourage you to enlist your residents by setting up a referrals program for account upgrades (not just new accounts).

6) Promote the exclusivity of Premium status. Perhaps LL could offer things like:

a) Premium-only office hours (at hours when most of your US customers are NOT at work),
b) monthly gifts to Premium account holders, commissioned from high-end content creators,
c) an in-world help desk staffed by a Linden Liaison that's open only to Premium account holders, and/or
d) Premium-only in-world Live Help.

IMPORTANT--Keep in mind adding such intangible benefits while reducing tangible benefits (such as the stipend and free tier) will be seen as insulting.

7) Require all bots to be run on Premium accounts. Make them pay for the resources they consume.

Make Premium account holders count for more when calculating traffic. This will increase the prestige of the Premium product, while at the same time discouraging camping and camping bots.

9) More aggressively promote the existing trouble ticket benefit.

All of these suggestions add to the Premium package without taking away from the Basic package. For fairness sake, you should make any new Premium-only benefit available to owners of Islands, as well.

I agree, this is a great idea. I could use that too. Also would love the tool to mute Group IM's when Im building

A very big benefit i would like to see is web backup for inventory as part of a web based portal. the way it would work is You login to the main website and click into your account somewhere in the control panel/linkset is "Inventory Archive". In the interface you can then have a snapshot of your inventory (and maybe the past 3 sessions?) need to organize your inventory? fix it on the web not in world want to save a bunch of stuff but don't need it in your running inventory? click the Save to Vault button and its saved off.

(of course if im dreaming like that how about a Mini Server ap that can use the snapshot to work OFF GRID)*



*note this would also have the effect of giving premium members free uploads

In my eyes, the stipend is a rebate. $6-10 a month for 512sqm of tier isn't really attractive, the next two 512 steps are an additional 5 and 3/month which really reinforces that. The convenience really isn't a big factor, L$300-500/week alone would make for a pretty frugal SL existence.

That's it in a nutshell.

And a few other posters had some interesting ideas on helping to make Mainland attractive.

Just to add some thoughts - instead of just putting Mainland lots up for for auction, make decisions to simply make that ugly 512 protected. Land around it becomes more attractive because it is NOT for sale. Or impose a constraint on a 1024 that it cannot be subdivided, ever. Or if an entire region is ready to be auctioned, apply the Naulitus model on it instead and build in the buffers and the parks.

If premium and Mainland ownership continue to be joined (and I hope that's the case) then we need to fix Mainland.

Premium accounts could get more than 200 results when they search the forum.