Win a Space in the Second Life Holiday Marketplace!

Khamon - To clarify, this is a special promotion and there are no land fees for this land. This means whatever the winning bid is (in L$) will be the only cost for 60 days of land usage.

I could of read it wrong myself but I simply took it to mean you have to be premium to "BUY" land. And that has always been the case.

There are 57 plots of several different sizes available. You can check them out here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Blitzen/217/50/65

Auctions will open starting at 10:45am PT today and parcels are in various sizes, ranging from 500m2 to 4000m2.

You can visit the parcels here:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Blitzen/233/10/200

The prim allowance is the same as for all regions (ie: 65,536 sqm = 15,000 prims)

Dax is correct. As you will temporarily take "ownership" of the land, you will need to have a Premium account (as is the case for all land ownership).

tick, tick, tick, tick....

The first round of auctions are live!

Go to the Second Life Auction Block:
http://usd.auctions.secondlife.com/

Click on "L$ Land Auctions" to view and bid.

Good luck!

Mainland ownership yes. If you do this again next year, and I hope you do, then maybe you should open it upto everyone as a sort of premium membership taster to show the advantages of owning mainland.

I'll gain nothing in tier fees from this as my tier level has room for expansion before I'll tier up, many others will be in the same situation. Others will be able to take advantage of a nice concept that hasn't quite been delivered efficiently, but it's all a learning curve and the idea has potential, it just needs a bit of tweaking.

too lazy to check post history - this doesnt count against the mainland quota does it? I assume if it's a LL pseudo rental it does not?

Why on earth would anyone want to waste there money on somthing that is going to be taken away from you in 60 days??? LOL

Holocluck-no, the land does not count toward your land tier. There are no land fees for the parcels for 60 days.

Just a quick suggestion. If you repeat this next year, perhaps might be worth advertising further in advance, to enable non-premium members to upgrade if they want to participate. Could be a way to boost premium membership too. And would certainly run it earlier, to give winners the whole of December (I'm assuming it will mostly be vendors who sell Xmas-themed items who would be interested in this).

I do feel for estate owners because this could compete with their business model. Having already been hit with the open space price increase, it's a bit of a double whammy for them. But on the plus side for everyone, it's good to see LL experimenting with new ideas.

I have a few questions:

1. What if a resident wins multiple parcels? I envision one person winning a ton of these and using them for advertising.
2. Although land is individually owned (tier-free), can we set land to group and allow group members to rez objects on it?
3. Is this a sampler for what's to come as far as adding benefits to premium accounts?

Are we allowed to rent out any of the parcels we win? or sub divide them?

Will I have my winnings taken away from me if I put a house on it, like was done with the openSim fiasco? Or will I have to pay tier a day after getting it because you changed the rules afterwards again? Still insufficient confidence in LL so not bidding or caring who wins and does what with it.

A strange game - the only winning move is not to play.

They actually told you what the catches were, I'll summarize them for people who don't care to read the whole thread

* Does not count against your tier
* Taken back 60 days after you get it
* Only price you pay is the winning auction price
* Open only to premium members

If I left anything else let me know but I think that's it.

This actually might have been a good concept with some additional thought and effort. As suggested, for future please consider announcing and making the land available earlier. The holiday season for vendors (what there's been of it) is nearly over. I suggest an October announcement and a pre-Thanksgiving auction so that vendors have time to set up and catch all 3 holidays.

A few other things that I ask any mall owner who wants me to rent on their sim:

1. Where will the TPs be located for the sim?

2. Who is the "market manager" who handles compliance with the market rules, lag issues, griefer attacks, etc.?

3. What kind of promotion will you do for this space to ensure real foot traffic from people who are interested in shopping? Special events like live music? Skating or other winter events? How will you make residents aware of the space and advertise it? Classifieds? A nice big ad and some "product feature" blogs on the SL home page would be nice, and a featured spot on the front page of Search as well. I realize that would be somewhat undercutting those who've paid for space on the front page of Search, but as I imagine these parcels will "rent" for far more than the average market stall, I think it would be value for money spent.

One other thing I'd like to bring up, as long as we're talking about markets and ecommerce in SL. A year ago I was making somewhere in the neighborhood of $1200US/mo in sales at this time of year. This year, I'm barely making the tier on my island. I'd actually be relieved if I could put it down to my products or something I've done wrong, but the fact is that sales have dropped over the cliff in the last few weeks. This even includes freebies -- 4 weeks ago I was handing out 50 or more of them a day, now I give away about 10 a day. The fact is, people are not shopping in SL this season.

I recognize this is almost certainly due to the economic slowdown, but I wanted to lay it down where LL could see it and others could add their experiences and concerns. It's not specifically a criticism but instead more of a "heads' up," because frankly it has DANGER written all over it for all of us, up to and including LL. Perhaps this is a separate discussion, but its one that would be worth a joint forum to put our heads together to talk over ideas for improving the situation. Decreasing sales for resident content creators means fewer residents altogether, and an unstable SL economy.

The only thing you win is a chance to spend money if you happen to have enough to have a winning bid. It is grossly unfair to offer people a chance to "WIN" then charge them for the pleasure. It should have been set up 2 months ago and end shortly after New Years. After all, that is the holiday season not December 18th for 2 months. It should also have been set up as a raffle so that all interested parties with winter/Christmas items had the same chances of actually winning.

Or put banlines? How far do you want to go with exploiting a Winter marketplace spot and then bitching in an "unfair" thread later after they see what's been done on some parcels and have to lay down rules when it isn't the wonderland they had intended for it?



Update: It looks many had the same amount of bids this morning. LL: Is there a limit of how many different parcels one can bid on and if so, what is being done to ensure that one user and known alts (maybe via connect IP addy) wins ONE auction and doesnt scalp other plots?

The way prices are (and I'm sure the auction end date were pushed back on some I was watching), it looks like the "entrepreneuring" (I'm being diplomatic with my choice of word) types might be going after these enmasse? I think would be better off financially just renting out a spot elsewhere for a month?

Ah ok - hypothetical question. Well, it's probably good for it to be asked and a Linden answer and get it out of the way

This would be an interesting idea, if...

1) the winner actually won something, instead of having to pay for it.

2) the winner was
a) selected at random from a hat, or
b) selected on the basis of their stated plan for the parcel.

Restricting the competition to Premium accounts does not bother me. Membership SHOULD have its privileges, after all. But not explaining that out front is bound to cause lots of confusion.

Try again in February with the Easter Competition. Winners get the parcels vacated by the winners of this one for use in creating an Easter Fantasyland at no cost.

There have been more details posted both to this thread and to the blog post:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/12/12/win-a-space-in-the-second-life-holiday-marketplace/

You can also view the auctions (which are now all live) on the Second Life Auction Block:
http://ld.auctions.secondlife.com/Scripts/LotSearch.asp?submitFlag=1&PrevURL=%2Fdefault.htm&TitleOnly=N&SearchMode=&ProdName=

Puppet - You can bid on and win multiple parcels. The land can be set to group, just not deeded to group. To be honest, I'm not sure if we'll be doing similar things in the future, it will depend on how this goes and what the feedback is. Thanks

You will not be able to subdivide, resell, or deed the land to group.