Added benefits for premium accounts

Another thread asks for log-in preference for premium accounts - I'd like to also add a couple things that would be small incentives for people to go premium or at least not drop their premium membership out of frustration.

1. Allow premium members to have a certain number of free file uploads a month. This encourages creativity as well as providing an added money-saving perk. If Linden allowed us to have, say 50 free uploads per month, that would save people who already upload a lot of textures and things $500L every month, and encourage those of us who upload less than that because of the costs to be more creative and experiment more with it.

2. Allow premium members to buy Linden dollars without that silly .35 or whatever fee for each transaction.

3. Allow premium members to sell Linden dollars without the 3.5% hit, or reduce the transaction fee for that to 2% or less.

Anyone want to add to this list? Thoughts or opinions?

Those perks seem to be all based on the idea of "pay us ____ for a premium account, get ____'s worth of discounts".

Should premium accounts simply be a financial tradeoff, or should the give access to features that you quite simply cannot get without a premium account?

They discussed it on the blog, but it doesn't seem to be happening, but guaranteed (live) support would be the most useful and the most requested addition.

Unverifieds get the knowledge base
Verifieds get live help (mixed volunteer / liason) + email
Premiums get Linden liasons + prioritzed support tickets
Half sim tier and up get the concierge and above

How about some good examples of features that would incentivise? For the record, I don't think that limiting existing features like the ability to script is a good example, however a higher priority in the login queue might be.

Seems the vast majority of calls for limiting free accounts call for the denial of features that might allow free accounts to be productive citizens, such as scripting or the ability to sell their creations. Aside from being incredibly unlikely to be taken seriously, those are simply horrible options. But a higher level of service, or better tools, some sort of bonus above basic service and features, seems to me like a good way to convince people to pay for premium.

That would be lovely. But it doesn't seem likely that LL could ramp up to the point where they could offer a Linden liason or prioritized support tickets for premium accounts in the near future. I would dearly love to be proven wrong on that score, though

I can see where this thread will probably go downhill fast. But I have to agree with the orgiinal poster. There should be some sort of incentive to become and to remain premium if Linden Labs truly wants premium members. As it stands right now there are more incentives to NOT be a premium member than to be one. The offer to purchase first land was the biggest hook for me back when I became premium. But now first land is so scarce in world that it is practically non existant (yeah, I know LL is working hard to fix that........and how long have I heard that?). What's the other perks? Oh yeah.........I got a 1000 linden bonus.........but I think they don't do that anymore (not sure about though). I get 500L a week stipend............but that has been decreased to 300L. I pay quarterly but 500L per week don't quite cost what my quarterly payment equals. What I'm gettng at is that there are not incentives to stay premium. I can do better fanancially reverting back to basic.............and I don't loose any abilities what so ever by doing that either.

A few tokens that I might loose by dropping premium might keep me in the accounts recievable ledger for LL. And it just might push some others to get on that ledger too.

But, I'm sure we'll hear plenty about "class warefare" of something along those lines. How the basics contribute as much if not more than premiums........I've heard it all. I understand it all. But it won't help LL in the long run and if we don't help LL then we all loose. Every business (and LL is a business) caters more to their paying customers than they do the browsers or the sample takers. No business I know of in RL allows free accounts the same access to the benefits of the business as the accounts that pay real money............and that holds true if those payers are only paying a token amount. They are paying and the others are not.

50 free uploads a month sounds very reasonable to me..........and not only for creators of textures. It costs 10L to upload a snapshot too.

It doesn't have to much........just some benefit that you can only have if you pay. How about an annual bonus............say an extra stipend payment...........for each year you remain premium? Or maybe a free voucher for an In World class of your choice? Any thing to get and retain good paying accounts.

Perhaps premium members could get a secure inventory system, reliable teleporting, dependable display of all avatars present in the scene, a world that's there when you turn to face it, reliable border crossing, Havok 4, attachments that stay attached and no shoes or hair on your butt, consistent time dilation of 1 and sim fps of 45.

You want it all, don't you?

Perhaps we should all go to Emperor Jake in Resident Answers with our list of requests to take to the Lindens. I feel like coming up with solutions and dreaming about them is the best I can do right now - but I'm glad to know that others have good ideas and have thought about potential solutions. Constructive criticism is much preferred to the whining I see so often on these boards about the evils of Linden Labs.

I know I'm coming in fairly late (in the forums and on this issue) I've spent most of my time in SL and on the forums following a 'hide and watch' protocol, reading a lot and saying very little. My personal opinion on the 'free play' versus 'premium' issue is extremely strong I admit, but I will try to address the question raised by Annabelle.

The idea of getting a number of free file uploads is a good one, though fifty might be too many. If it had been possible to 'experiment' with this feature for free, even 10 times, it probably would have taken me days rather than months to fool with it and discover it's virtues. I am anxious for LL to be profitable, and I also believe that free account holders display (if one excludes the griefers) of necessity a higher degree of creativity in SL than the average new premium account holder who is like myself, primarily a consumer. That being my opinion I don't think basic account holders should be disincentivized by restricting current services in any way; log-in priorties, reliable transport, etc. All this talk about not contributing or paying their way is pure nonsense. A lot of people try SL out witha basic membership and then switch over (I did); others possess (or are interested in learning) amazing technical and creative skills and exercise them in ways which contribute more to SL than multiples of the average premium account holder (I include myself among that number).

But I am all for added perks for premium account members which do not deeply cut into LL profits. The kinds of perks which are more attractive to the 'plug and play' preferences you will find is the growing trend among new premium account holders.

1. Given the scarcity of First Land, why not create some sort of credit that kicks in on the first land purchase? It gives real estate-minded people an added incentive to buy land and to bump up their memberships. It would also involve more people in SL real estate with more stability rather than having them waiting around for First Land and then the mad rush of FL buyers and land barons that descend on FL areas. It might also have an affect on the "FL ghetto" syndrome. If people are able to buy whenever and whereever they wish, there is no need to buy in a certain area or at a certain time for no good reason other than the need to get while the getting is good. It would allow people to choose their neighborhood (people who prefer to build giant purple penises and those who prefer elegant estates rarely choose to live next to each other) rather than the other way around.

There...thus endeth my first substantive post on the forums.

The only major difference between a Linden Liaison and a dedicated volunteer who knows what they're doing is that Liaisons have god powers and can give "official" word on policies. If you have a support problem that doesn't require god powers to resolve, there isn't that much of a line between the two.

Why do you think Linden Labs wants premium members?

Answer 1: Because it looks good to have higher numbers/percentage of members who are premium subscribers, in case they decide to sell the company or want to draw in more investors.

Answer 2: They make more money by having more premium members. Not just membership fees, but tier fees from premium members who want more land and pay tier fees directly to them. Ideally, this would mean they could hire more staff to take care of all of us.

Does anyone really believe that Linden Labs wants LESS premium members? That wouldn't make good business sense.

Everything you said Annabelle. However, I do get a sense that LL doesn't really want premiums. And for the life of me I cannot understand that. Only thing that vaguely makes sense to me is that Linden Labs is looking for their profits from major investors........Like Sears, IBM, NBC. Disney, etc. and becoming advertiser supported. Sort of like the internet and they would be the supplier for the virual "sites" (sims) and do the maintenance of the nework. That would answer to some extent the apparent "hell bent for leather" charge for numbers.......unverified, verified, pay, whatever. Just get the numbers for the investers to expose their products or services to. That would be fine but I would opt out of paying if that was the case......and I'm pretty sure a whole lot of others would too.

However...........there is always one of those. LL also tauts to its members that "it's your world" create and shape it the way you want. Build your dream life, build your dream business, play your dream game. So the confusion sets in with me........what is Linden Labs goal? It just isn't clear at all. They don't seem to be worried about the premium accounts, they cater to corporate and the coddle the basic accounts. What's the plan? Until we know the plan we can't offer much to help.

That's why I said "if Linden Labs wants premium accounts". I'm not sure they do.

I don't like the idea of giving Premium accounts extra features but I have no problem giving them incentives. Maybe 5 or 10 free uploads a week and if they go unused you could accumulate 50 total (keep someone from accumulating several years allowance and uploading the internet).

I winz teh intarwebz.

OMG - that thought had not occurred to me at all. You're right - it makes no business sense for LL to alienate their premium member base, the way it's been declining as a percentage of users - UNLESS their goal is to become supported by corporate investors, in which case it makes lots more sense to get as many 'bodies' online at a time as possible, by opening up the floodgates to free accounts. More bodies = bigger target audience for the advertisers. Even if they are strung-out AFK campers - the big companies don't know that, they just see the numbers.

Sorry, that was a run-on sentence. But yes, who needs our measly premium fees when they've got the big corporate guns supporting them?

Thanks a lot for making me doubt my faith in Linden Labs (goes off to sob in the corner)

Give them a Linden dollar to real currency calculator.

Linden dollar to real currency calculator is not a problem. Get the name of the product and information about the product...........real product, not virtual.............and maybe a real website URL and that's all the investors want. Look at TV advertising. Hell look at internet advertising.

This game we are playing is morphing into something bigger for Linden Labs.....but lesser for the interested like me. I did not download, install, become premium, buy land, play and upload tons of textures to make my house so some business could become some virtual brower for corporations to sell me real life products for real life money. It's beginning to look like a big lie from the very beginning..........and that lie was told and carried on to help finance someone's (that someone being Linden Labs) financial venture.

Had I known from the beginning that that was the goal it would be different. But tell me who has been told this is the goal? And actually I'm not certain that it is the goal.........but it's beginning to look like it to me.

I reject their virtual reality and substitute my own.

In other words:
I will not be influenced by advertising I see in SL (hell, TV advertising never did much to me anyway, internet ads even less).

Lots of Sense in this post!

It's not "the goal" of SL, that I'm aware of. But the thing is, SL's goal has changed multiple times, sometimes by desire and sometimes by force. The current statistic that only 25% of people create things is absolute anathema to the original goal of SL as a haven for creative expression but what can anyone do? Lock newbies in the sandbox?

It's my belief that LL are courting corporate money because it provides a reliable, stable bedrock of income for them to make changes in the world - that maybe aren't changes they'd like to make, and maybe aren't changes that people will be keen on, but that might prove necessary. Corporate money is good for this because corporations really only require that their names are seen in the world as being involved with this hot new technology, and the monthly cost to them is pocket change.

Lock 'em in the sandbox and tell them it's the beach.

Seriously, though - even though I've been here only a short time, I would be really saddened to see SL morph into a glorified web browser for advertising and shopping. If Linden Labs is courting commercial ventures heavily and creative ventures by residents suffer for it, I won't see any point in continuing to stay here.

"Tierless" premium to "Full Sim Tier" premium revenue is about 20 to 1, maybe 21 to 1, depending on CC fees that LL pays.

I'm sure LL wouldn't mind simplifying their billing model some by thinning out the 'small land owner' group, as long as enough large land owners keep tiering up.

And for my money, this is why basic accounts are important, take them away and that number will go down. And the advertisers, vultures that they are will take over content development in Sl. I work with artists and let me tell you the one thing they all seem to have in common is poverty. SL is a great place for creative expression without incurring some of the recurring expenses inherent to RL creation (eg; I'm a writer myself and my printer has been out of ink for months; thank heaven for blogging). Those who posess the equipment to take advantage of SL, can and do add a lot to the SL culture and economy. But I do agree with incentivizing the move to premium accounts.

I've taken the liberty of culling some of the ideas from this thread that have seem to have the most promise; either because I think so ;P or others have been seconded by others as being favorable benefits. I'm only writing down incentives, to show all that can be done without altering the experience of the average basic member.

My two ideas were


1) To apply a land discount to first time buyers in lieu of First Land. The current FL situation has gone a long way to creating a huge number of premium members with no stake in SL (something happens to you when you buy land here...can't explain it) and the FL ghettos that spring up immediately after the rare FL boom. Question: Should that apply to estate land as well?



Jopsy, either I think this is one of the most brilliant ideas I've ever heard, or I violently disagree. Would you mind explaining it as if I were a three year old?

2) To put a cap on the amount basic members (or perhaps *all* members, maybe set the cap higher for those who've been premium members for a certain period of time) can earn from SL businesses before they're hit with a monthly fee, perhaps switched over to some sort of business account, one which would provide them with other perks that would address concerns unique to SL business users.

Other ideas, numbered, yes but in no particular order as I haven't the heart to do any actual organizing.

1.



2.

Would you rather be bill twenty people $1 each, and pay 5 cents for each of the 20 credit card transactions...

or bill one person $20 and pay a 15 cent credit-card-fee once?

I think that the 'steep' tier that small land owners pay compared to the tier per sqm value that big land owners get encourages people to rent, which let's LL defer all the billing and much of the support issues to the landlords instead of dealing with them directly.

It's pretty clear that "Renting" a small parcel from a land baron is cheaper than owning a small parcel... even with the middle man overhead. I'm sure that's not accidental on LL's part.