do you consider basic accounts to be inferiors?

When a basic account spends those Lindens with an SL business that pay LL tier, they contribute to that premium account's ability to keep providing LL with revenue.



Almost all businesses offer discount for anything sold in bulk, and for LL, dealing with large stable accounts and the revenue guarantees and efficiencies that come with that make offering a discount to attract those customers more than worthwhile.

Back of the bus with ye!

make room for me though...

I think violent is a little strong, but then you did post about making flex-prims premium only, so I guess you like to stoke the fire with super-combustible material at least a little

Renting from a "land baron" shows your support for LL as well, as does buying from the LindeX. Both of these contribute to LL's income, the first one indirectly via. a 3rd party, the second indirectly through the charge to the seller. You're certainly incorrect that purchasing L$ doesn't contribute

And I'm with Fade on internal economies of scale - Linden Lab's best bet is to concentrate on volume so the land barons are exactly what they want in the future - it's cost effective, lean and manageable.

As I said earlier, Linden Lab's job is to get a whole heap of people here, from there the land barons, content creators etc. will drive their income.

You can't charge for SL like a platform. If you look at even a small platform - Torque 3D - that costs US$100 for a "small firm" license, up to US$10000 for a full commercial one... and it has no trial period (it only has demos). So, do you think you'd like to login to SL with all the build tools disabled until you paid US$100 on the basis that your L$ income would be forever capped, or US$10000 for uncapped income?

The argument about "basics rent land which makes more tier" is, I've just discovered, wrong!. The reason is that probably, even though LL gets much more money paid in tier, they make much more profit on premium memberships than they do on tier, and because of the tier discount, the landlord system also reduces the amount they make from the land they do put out. Look at the following:

1 sim: 65536sqm
Sell to one landlord to rent out. Monthly tier $195 x 12 = US$2340/year.
Sell as First Land to Premiums. 65536/512 = 128 first land plots. Yearly Premium $72 x 128 people = US$9216/year.
Total difference in income for sim between Premium and landlord model: US$6876/year.

If any of the Premiums don't claim their First Land, or sell it on, that's even better - LL still gets their premium membership fees, plus they either still have the land for the next Premium, or they get the tier from the person who buys the land.

I suspect that soon we're going to have to start asking the question, "can SL afford not to be a game?" People using it as a business platform naturally want to minimise their costs.. and payments to LL are one of their costs.

I pay for my e-mail. It's part of my whole interweb account.

I don't use google video or youtube, the latter of which is subsidised by advertisements, I believe. I play almost no flash games or movies, I normally find both lame.

Payed-for websites: Fark, CAD, Fileplanet, ENWorld - which constitutes the bulk of my internet time aside from here.

If a website wants to support itself with ads, or offer itself for free, that's cool - but if there is also a subscription service, I'm under no allusion that I'm on even ground with those that do pay for it - hence why many websites offer only basic functionality to non-subscribers.

No, it's not wrong. Nobody said renting was as good for SL as everyone buying a premium account. The arguement is, it's not freeloading - which is true. They are still contributing to LL's income. If LL feels that they are contributing enough, that's their buisness.

Perhaps your product isn't appealing or your advertising isn't effective.

One advantage of being a relative newcomer is I haven't got caught up yet in the forums.

Seems to me that there is more agreement in concept than disagreement, but its the details that are causing the grief.

First off, I think its important to look at the big picture in the free vs premium accounts. A successful free acount will spend lindens, which will help the overall economy, which in turn, will allow land owners to pay tier. So while on an individual basis, free accounts are being "subsidised," I would bet my last linden dollar that the economy would collapse without them. Of course, there are free account holders who probably do little else than collect the stipend and dance, but that gets boring really fast and is probably a self correcting problem.

However, there should be some sort of greater difference between premium and free accounts. It doesnt have to be economic differences either. Say for example, allowing premium accounts to customize last names, or greater ability to adjust the avatar. Or bring back telehubs but allow only premium to use PTP teleporting. These are just examples off the top of my head.

Likewise, since the most signifcant current advantage of a premium account is the ability to hold land, why not give the free accounts a taste of land ownership, and give them the ability to hold 512 M of land. More free accounts might realize they like land ownership and upgrade.

If LL feels that they are contributing enough, while their marketing managers are making statements like "SL isn't profitable now and it's not clear when it will be", then I start quietly worrying about their business.

However... most land barons seem to collect their rent in L$, which they then dump on Lindex to convert to US$ to pay for this same tier.

Today, someone put a L$4,000,000 "block" on at 315, which is going to take a while to clear through. These huge 'dumpings' are what is causing a problem with Lindex, because all the 'little traders' like myself, who put a L$2,000 surplus on there today get held up waiting for all this to go through... so people put at 316 instead to get rid of theirs first... then 317... 318 etc etc.

They may 'contribute' to the economy in this method - but I honestly don't see that it's a particularly positive thing to disrupt it like they clearly are.

Lewis

Nope, but then I'm aware that plenty of folks support LL's operating expenses indirectly. For example, I pay $US 100/mo to LL for half a sim through my partner's account. The only way that will show up is if LL changes their accounting practices to allow multi-owners of island sims.


I think LL has to decide what works best for them on the basis of their business model/needs.


Nope. LL is aware that they are making $US indirectly even if some players aren't.


Yes. See answer one.


If you're talking about lifetime accounts, then I wish I had known about SL early enough to have been in on the ground floor. Those folks took a chance and won.


Not so long as I pay $US 100 for my half of Chaos via Ferran.
Can't think of any
Absolutely.


No. When we owned a mainland sim, we each were on premium and shared tier. When we made the decision to buy an island, it was obvious that one of us should drop to basic.

And right there you have the problem with LL selling SL as a platform and courting businesspeople.

Businesspeople minimise their costs, and to them LL is a cost.

As long as LL pursue that route, their entire business model will be have to be based on selling every bit of land they put out at the maximum possible tier discount, and garnishing a steadily-decreasing amount of money from LindeX sales (steadily decreasing because the exchange rate is falling).

Now, how LL want to do business is up to them, but it would be nice to have some idea if, when, and what they are doing about the profitability problem.

That's a bit silly. Surreal just said she's paying for half an island, and her partner is paying for the other half. Do you really think LL cares about dipping out on that $9.95?

Ok this is all wrong.

#1 - Lifetime accounts should have their stipends increased to $L1000
#2 - Lifetime accounts should have their land grant of 4096m increased to 8192m
#3 - Lifetime accounts should have the ability to logout basic account users who get on our nerves.

Briana Dawson

How can these new players find your shop? It isn't even listed in the find, Lewis. You don't have a classified ad. And the traffic at your club is 73, which indicates to me that YOU don't even hang out at your club. It would surprise me if you get any business at all.

No. That's silly.



It's not a bad idea to provide incentives to move from the free account to the paid account.



Depends on the restrictions. If the free accounts are restricted too much, then they'll become useless. Useless for people to use and possibly useless for LL to use as a tool to attract paying customers.

Ultimately, LL alone decides what's free and what's pay.



Admittedly, I haven't thought too much about what usefullness this could provide, but I can't see how this would be useful. Based on the nature of this post, it seems like the function is wanted to discriminate against basic users (restrict their access to an area or make them pay more for something).

I'd have to vote "no" on this function, but my opinion is subject to change.



Jealous! If I was aware of SL back in the day, I'd probably have one of these accounts myself. But, I wasn't, they were, good for them.



I am not.



The money they make from me pays for alot of things: bills, salaries, new hardware/software, etc... So, yeah, the money they make from me, in part, makes free accounts possible.



Except being able to own land? Not much. I do like the L$500 per week stipend though.



I would prefer to always be able to go back to basic account.

HP

Bah.

Chaos isn't a business expense, although we do have our main store there. Chaos is our big, personal sandbox. We play there.

We don't get a tier discount because it's an island sim. I actually pay more now than when we owned Riiki because we did get a group tier discount for mainland property.

As for the rest, back up your assumptions with figures.

100 dollars is only about the cost of 1 xb 360 game in the UK or around 2 such games in the US. Of couse their are other platforms that would fall far more in line with what SL because what sl isn't is a platform targeting the small market of profesional firms. I can get an RPG maker for 40 dollars and less that can make the a JRPG without much trouble. I can get a fully functioning 3d modeler for 70 dollar that can turn out work far better than sl. I can even get a full engine with physics and everything for 50 dollars for the basic version and 900 dollars for the full comemrcial version which still makes it cheaper than a single months bill for a sim. Simply put every non-Os mass market platform cost between 30-150 dollars for your average everyday use. Many people pay more than that in just to have land/server space. Much like the commercial editions owning a sim allows them to do more things, have more control, and more options to make money but I don't see anyone complaining aobut them having all that added functionality that they paid for. Of course this completely ingnores the free platforms that are out their but that would simply be unfar to compair open source and freeware with a for profit company.

Well, except they're not just missing out on US$9.95; they're actually missing out on US$65 (1 premium + 1 island = $10 + $195 = $205; 2 premiums + 2 half islands = ($10 + $125) * 2 = $270; $270 - $205 = $65).

And I would like to make it clear - I'm not accusing Surreal (or any other business) of doing anything wrong. From the sound of her original post, she was actually forced to do it the way she does because of the technical limits on island sharing, and even if she wasn't forced, she wouldn't be doing anything wrong by minimising her costs, businessperson or otherwise.

The problem is largely with LL placing so many of their money-making opportunities for the game directly in paths which can be avoided or minimised. No other online game does that.. and no other platform does it either.

The only solution is for LL to either a) appeal to people who care less about minimising their costs (ie, "consumers" who are planning to lose money anyway), or b) offer Premium users benefits that can't be gotten by any other method.

So with all these cheap and capable platforms around, can SL compete in that market? Or would it do better to be more like a game, for which we know people will pay $9.99 a month?

Why is there so much animoscity between Second Life being promoted as a " business platform" or as a "game". It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can in fact be both. I find arguments on both sides to be narrowminded. I can run a successfull business in SL and spend my time dressed up in a omg Banana Avatar riding around in a shopping cart for fun. Why would I have to make some sort of assumption that if I chose to be in Second Life and see it as a business form primarily that I can't also treat portions of it as if it were a game or vice versa. The point is SL can be whatever you want it to be. If you want it to be a game - then it is a game - but don't chide others who see it as a viable business platfform. If you see it as a business platform then don't chide people who see it as a game or form of entertainment. Both are very real aspects and I am personally sick of seeing the same baseless arguments over and over again.

To the original poster... How many people own a website? You pay a monthly amount for that website, maybe as little as $10 or as much as $200 or more. For the most part you don't expect visitors to your website to pay to visit. However you may advertise a product or service on your website and that's how you pay for it. You may run the site for fun and don't expect your visitors to pay at all. You are subsidising their entertainment because it's fun for you.

This is the model that LL is going for. Land = Websites. And just like if they were selling webservers, the costs would be the burden of those who choose to run websites on their servers (i.e. land owners). They don't want to charge people simply to browse the content on SL, and I think that's great. For those of us who own land in the system, it makes our experience richer that so many more people can visit via Basic accounts.

Basic accounts are not inferior in any way. It just means they don't want to be land owners at the moment. If LL wants to encourage people to move to Premium, they should offer a better deal, not strip things from basic accounts. In any case it's LL's problem to sort out. I don't think they see Basic's as a problem as long as the number of sims keeps rapidly expanding.

Personally I find this recent crusade to strip Basic's of features disturbing and short sided.

Actually, by and large, people still WONT pay 9.99 a month for a game. It's a certain type of personality that will. I've talked with friends who have worked at software stores - according to them, the amount of MMORPG games sold is far, far, far less than other games, and its almost always the *same* people buying MMORPGs.

Those "other cheap and capable platforms" aren't in competition with SL, and never will be- completely different market. That's like saying WordPerfect is in competition with the internet because they are both largely text-based in their format.

I for one am very thankful LL don't think the same way.