Land Sales and Tiers should not be LL's main source of income

First let me state my land status in SL, so as not to misrepresent my perspective. I do not own a sim, or openspace. I rent from a very organized sim owner.

That being said, it seems unsustainable for LL to count on land sales and tiers as their main source of income. There is a major conflict of interest here. It is in LL's interests to keep adding more and more land to the grid. This is against the interests of the people buying the land. This is a very bad structure which in the end could possible destroy the end product for all.

Some very creative people in SL, have created very different business models because of the Platform. This leads me to believe there is a better way. Sorry i have no real good ideas or comments about how to change the structure. Personally, i think that free accounts are essential to SL. Also, i have never understood why LL does not sell official SL products. When i entered SL, learned how the platform worked, and started making products, i raved the platform and would have bought anything with SL on it. Yes i understand that Lindens have tons of freebies and stuff, but a line of SL products for sale would still also do very well and probably bring in more money then most can imagine. Please, people do not be afaid of lost sales cause people are buying SL products. At this point the market is so vast that i doubt this would actually affect any1. Donations too. I don't take donations from customers, but im sure that if i put a box out then people would donate.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Please comment or add your own suggestions.


Oh i forgot to mention that i would not be against product makers to be able to get Certified thru LL. Say everytime u finish making a product and put it out for sale, u could send a copy to LL, they can certify it, then the seller can put an official SL stamp on it and give LL like L$1 for every sale of the product. It would let customers know that hey this product is not a scam and brings in income to LL. But not make certification a mandatory thing. Its a thought. lol. The product testers would also be a nice compliment to the jira system cause they would see the direct affect of bugs in the platform. Which looks to be sorely needed.

Because that creates an even worse conflict of interest than land selling does. If LL offered official, paid-for content of a particular type.. what would happen to resident businesses in those fields? If LL are depending on the revenue from their official content, then there's the risk that a competing resident business would have to be told, "you're outcompeting us with your great content at good value prices, that's great - but we need the income to run the grid, so you'll have to scale back somehow, or the entire world will end, your business included". That's a pretty bad situation!



There was actually going to be a certification scheme for scripted objects at one point, but it seemed to disappear. I suspect this was because the objects that were most frequently called for certification were gambling games - to be sure that they were playing fairly - but gambling was banned.