Basic Members....would you be willing to pay a SMALL yearly fee?

Let's see here: You are assuming that each and every Basic account holder has the experience and ability to make a profitable business - they don't.

You missed the part where I quite clearly stated that I do NOT make even 10 USD in a month - and if you can find a brand new Basic account holder, or even one that has been here for, hmm, let us make it two months, that constantly makes 10USD each month ..... well then, why not recommend that they upgrade to premium.

On the topic of "16-digit cards": I'm sorry, all gift/rebate type cards have an expiration date - usually one that makes using them quickly a smart thing to do. In this light they aren't useful for anything more than being submitted to LL, drained, and then thrown away - and before anyone starts saying that that tactic could be used to get funds to start paying for the service: No. If someone is going to use a disposable item like that to up their Linden Balance chances are they're doing it to purchase a few things in world: not to get a different account level.

Further, the use of one of these cards would - eventually - lead to an account termination when the user is unable to pay for the service any longer, and cannot get a hold of another gift/rebate type card.

Other forms of this require cash beforehand - not an option for everyone.

CCs - they require credit, not the easiest thing in the world to get.

PayPal - This requires an existing bank account ..... Really, do I have to state what is wrong with this suggestion? probably so here it goes:

If you actually have a bank account - great. If not, then this option isn't possible. Yes, the smallest percentage of Basics may fall into tis category where even PayPal isn't an option (heck I'm one of them), but the simple fact is: We exist.

I said earlier that I'd not be willing to pay: I'm not willing to pay for BASIC services of the same quality as I am getting from America Online for my FREE account with them. Simple as that. should the need arise for me to own land or any other such thing .... well them I'd consider it - but that would come right back to my earlier statement: Unless you are willing to pay for those that cannot upgrade, don't try and argue this any further. You have a Premium account - that's great! You want Basic members to pay for services that are comparable on their level to America Online? Nope, not so great.

Oh, and Lord Sullivan, I entered the .... oh blast I cannot remember the name of the raffle - but if I do win I am unsure if I'll be taking the account upgrade (My only interest in it at this time is the stipend) or a certificate. either way it'll end up being downgraded before the period is over in the first instance - I still have no way to pay for it afterwards.

Uhm... let me get this clear:

1.) you are of adult age.
2.) you don't have a bank account or a credit card and can't afford to pay a dime.
3.) nonetheless you're able to afford a decent PC and a high speed internet connection.

Sorry, but either you're one of very few cases out there, or a minor who managed to verify himself with a gift/rebate card obtained by a family member. I can't imagine any adult person without a bank account but both a fast PC and internet connection; neither in the USA nor in Australia, Japan or Europe.
If anything, your case shows that "verified" doesn't always mean verified.

umm if they have access to a computer and the internet, they have by default, access to PayPal.

If they don't, we're not talking about them anyway... they aren't playing Second Life, they are probably more concerned about where their next meal is coming from.

Ishtar, I am an adult of legal age on Supplemental Security Income and living at home (with my parents and younger sister), as far as the State is concerned I am unable to manage my own bank account (something I proved already - impulsive buyer) thus all finds are sent to this home ITF (In Trust For) me.

I have NO credit, NO Bank account,am lucky to see anything at all from my SSI checks, and for your information this is a family computer system - one we HAD to get due to utter Hard Disk Failure on our old 1999 model Compaq.

In the future, instead of jumping to conclusions kindly ask for clarification if something eludes you - I'm getting very tired of having to make my home situation known just to explain my own viewpoint.

Before you tell me to get a job, come live here for a few years, it's not possible in this hick town .......I've tried - repeatedly.

Internet businesses aren't any better - I don't have anything to offer at the moment and frankly don't trust ad revenue sites at all.

Your post is one I've seen countless times before as an attempt to rationalize the train of thought that it isn't that hard to pay for the account: If even one case exists that shows otherwise, then that blows the argument out of the water.

I'm such a case. Please stop using the tired logic of "if you can afford ....." It doesn't work as more often than not those saying they cannot afford the fee are those who are using a family unit.

No Eean, they don't. Please read the post before making that assertion - to have access to Pay Pal the user must have an active bank account that it can take funds from. I remember reading in the blog that there are users who do not have a bank account and that, while not in my situation, are using a family computer.

Please don't assume such things.

I can relate to you quite a bit there. My RL handicaps prevent me from being able or allowed (by government) to manage a bank account, and i also live with my mother who is considered my legal guardian because i cannot servive on my own. I am of age 26 and this area i live in offers no suitable jobs for my level. It's mostly all hard labor work, and I'm not that type of person.

So if someone wishes to insist i am a minor, they need to learn the facts cuz i don't have to prove anything to them... Some people just need to know when to NOT speak their mind, without some knowledge of what their getting themselves into. I am lucky that my family together is able to afford 2 decent PCs that i use for Sl and some MMOs i like to visit once in a while.

But even though i have a similer situation at hand IRL, i do have access to paypal and uise it on a daily basis for online stuff. I used my bank debit card (wish permission of course lol) to create the account and i add funds to it when i need to.

I agree ...LAND HOLDINGS is a joke anymore..we have no rights in sl...we pay pay pay..for what? We file abuse reports that we have no idea what the outcome is? We have land we pay tier fees...but the parcel across the way uses up all the sims resources? We get greifed and well....it goes on and on...This Avitar name is an alt..my original is almost 3...I remember when LL cared, those days are GONE. sigh...so sad. But I am addicteded, and keep waiting for something close to SL to come out so I can go play elsewhere, and eventually it will happen!

Then you're "one of the few cases out there" that I mentioned who have both an internet connection and a PC available but aren't able to pay for any service. I can imagine that it must be hard, but usually one has to pay in order to play. Might seem unfair, but you'll have to understand that it's also unfair when our tier has to be raised so LL can continue to provide the service for free, in order to be an attractive place for product placement. Sorry.

I think everyone agrees that the old system of "setup costs" for an avatar was ok. The issue cranking out $10 every year and requiring bank accounts, credit cards, or paypal to set up. Personally I have no issue with this but even this is apparently flawed as you can use those prepaids as they did to get verified and it's pretty much untraceable.

I really gotta stop reading these posts it's past beat the dead horse but it's like a train wreck...I can't look away.

The footnote on the Economic Statistics page makes it very clear (which is why I focus on the 6,690 residents earning US$10 or more as they're making enough to cover the cost of a US$9.95 monthly Premium account):

"PMLF = Positive Monthly Linden Flow looks at the flow of Linden Dollars into a unique user's account BEFORE Linden Lab Charges are applied to the account. These numbers EXCLUDE payments or receipts related to the sale or acquisition of land (since theoretically these represent investments and not business receipts). All numbers are rolled-up among avatar "alts" to the Unique Customer Level. Businesses that are operate Linden Dollar exchanges are excluded. Note that some businesses accept payment outside the Linden Economy (e.g. via CC & Paypal) and those numbers are not included in these reports."
source: http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

Hmmm, what if I buy L$ on a third party exchange, and they are transferred to me in-world? This LOOKS like a transaction between two AVs... or is it excluded by the Linden Dollar exchange clause I forgot to quote? <g>

Must be...

Max

Hmmm--this subject seems a bit heated, but as a complete newbie, I suppose I don't know the history, etc to understand why. Is it because of degraded service or some such?

I hold a Basic Account, and did not pay anything for it. This actually came as a surprise to me--I thought it was a trial account and assumed that I would have to start paying the 6 to 10 dollars after a month or so (don't ask me where I got that notion. I confess to not always being terribly observant)

So, yes, I'd be willing to pay for my service. But there seems to be no reason to in the meantime. Premium Accounts don't seem to have any benefit to them whatsoever, aside from land ownership. As far as land goes, I rent on an Island where I couldn't buy land anyway. I have a shop, and the proceeds pay my rent and leave me a bit left over. Really, the 400L a week isn't all that enticing--I had to buy a few Linden to start, but part of the game challenge for me is to make the rent and toy money in SL.

Perhaps if there were better benefits to Premium Status, or simply that Basic Memberships only lasted for the length of a trial period (3 months seems plenty)?

's alright Ishtara. Believe me, I can understand - at the same time I sit back and wonder why anyone bothers paying anymore. Businesses aside, friends aside, there isn't much reason to stay in Second Life if this keeps up. Even my own reasons may become moot after a time (the recent hardware issue LL had came bloody close).

Hi Virrginia and welcome to the nut house!


As for history...

I've only been here a year and noticed the following.

At a time in February, I remember begging them to restart the servers because they hadn't been down for 3 weeks and it badly needed a restart.

Since then, we've had open registration. Within 2 weeks of that, we had an incredible amount of downtime due to griefers creating disposable alts. LL has said unless it's insanely horrible griefing, they do not ban by comp locking.

At least once a week, we've had griefer attacks. They implemented the grey goo concept which helps some but not always, but alas, the dev team needs to be paid to work this up.

There are well known 'groups' setting up literally hundreds of campers now, since there's no payment verification involved so that's a drain on resources that could have been avoided.

There are also issues with LL continously stating that they are NOT making a profit at this time. That translates into not being able to properly staff or upgrade technology. Leaving those of us who DO pay LL in some form or another to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of unverified accounts that do not contribute.

I don't care if someone says they have a job and blah blah, they buy clothes. They are NOT contributing to LL. They are merely transferring money around between avatar accounts as opposed to directly paying a membership, or buying Lindens. So they rent? Big deal, that space would have to be paid for by the owner regardless of if and who rents there. All paying rent does is turn a profit for the land owner who already pays LL thier amounts in the first place.

Now, we are having major issues with concurrent users online. Of which, at any given time, some of the best guesses (using popular spot ranks and such) up to 6,000 are camping (I agree it's not the best scientific method, but probably the best educated guess out there).

So LL isn't making money to produce what's needed to stabilize the grid, all the while allowing anyone and everyone to get on SL without paying a dime, while those who have been here since the start have sunk thousands of dollars into a game that was completely playable on all levels just a mere 6 months ago. (I'd never lost ANYTHING in SL, til 5 months ago, and now I've lost several tens of thousands worth, thanks to LL not being able to pay for the techonology and equipment to keep up with all these users concurrent online.)

As for those who do not have the means for jobs around thier area, every state has a program for disabled and handicapped people that lists employers that agree to hire them. Check your local state website for more information.

Also, work at home opportunties abound for those who have any sort of drive for money.

I work out of the home and so does my mom. She recently became a medical transcriptionist, and makes quite a bit of money doing so from her home. She does have deadlines, but nothing stringent, usually a week or so to transcribe a set of documents.

I work for a crafting company that ships supplies to me, I make them, ship them back and they send me a check for shipping and pay for the projects.

All it takes is a little research and some time invested in already paid for internet to find something that can be done.

Of course, this is for America... I obviously have no need to search for job opportunites in other countries but I just did a google search with a few random countries that have a few select legitimate ideas.


Also, thanks to the internet, anyone can set up a shop and distributors. I part time operate an online store where I touch no merchandise and never handle the money. It's menial and it's more or less driven by free advertising, but it's a nice spot of change.

I use Yahoo, where I pay only 11 bucks a month to have my domain name, an easy template builder (mostly drag and drop ease), and all the affordations I need to run it.


It takes time to do searching, but if you actually put your mind to it, you can find ways to make ten bucks a year.

Hell, I could probably search my couch for a year and come up with 10 bucks. Or the washer. I save my cans and make a couple hundred bucks a year recycling.

Seola, it's really nice and all that you have faith in the state and federal government - sorry, such programs in some areas are not so easy to find, and when you do find them you have to go through whatever other organizations exist in your state first.

Guess what? In a few places these programs are <b>useless</b>.

Your personal experience is a good one - good for you. don't assume that it is the same for everyone, it isn't - plain and simple.

Internet businesses aren't always an option either - thanks. each to their own - but please be realistic about your suggestions, I'm pointing out that not everything works the way you seem to think it does.

"There are also issues with LL continuously stating that they are NOT making a profit at this time. That translates into not being able to properly staff or upgrade technology. Leaving those of us who DO pay LL in some form or another to foot the bill for hundreds of thousands of unverified accounts that do not contribute."

They're paid for each and every island that is purchased, among other things.

I don't care if someone says they have a job and blah blah, they buy clothes." They are NOT contributing to LL. They are merely transferring money around between avatar accounts as opposed to directly paying a membership, or buying Lindens. So they rent? Big deal, that space would have to be paid for by the owner regardless of if and who rents there. All paying rent does is turn a profit for the land owner who already pays LL their amounts in the first place."

The same thing happens in real life there Seola. Rental Landlords in some places pay the bills using all the rent money.

"So LL isn't making money to produce what's needed to stabilize the grid, all the while allowing anyone and everyone to get on SL without paying a dime, while those who have been here since the start have sunk thousands of dollars into a game that was completely playable on all levels just a mere 6 months ago. (I'd never lost ANYTHING in SL, till 5 months ago, and now I've lost several tens of thousands worth, thanks to LL not being able to pay for the technology and equipment to keep up with all these users concurrent online.)"

Please see above - and I stand by my original recommendation on the Blog: grab a few of the class 5 servers (as many as are needed) to update all the hardware. at the least it will help the issues a bit until the software can be fixed.

Now, with that out of the way, could you please keep personal agendas out of places where they do not belong? Posting different ways to get money in real life? fine - just remember that not everything works the way you'd think (trust me, in this area you'd be lucky to get any job at all - government or no).

Posting about the issues in second Life, how you view unverified accounts, et al is not fine. It's a personal agenda that doesn't fit in <b>this</b> thread.

Thanks for the history--I am not sure I agree that renters and purchasers do not contribute to the SL economy, however (and I freely admit that perhaps my feelings on this are influenced by being one of said group).

Renters would be non-contributive if Island owners would own that much land regardless of whether or not people rented from them. Having spoken with my "landlord" about some of his recent sim expansions, I do not believe this is the case. A tenantless landlord will not continue to own the sim--he/she would lose too much real money (speaking generally--there will always be some who might continue a money losing sim just because they want to).

Renters thus are paying Linden Labs through the intermediary of the landlord, just not directly. And the money had to come from somewhere--I paid for my first few weeks rent with my credit card with real money. After that, I became self sufficient through product sales, but the money people pay me with did not grow on trees (or if it did--somebody had to stock the money tree!). It came from allowances or outright purchases of Linden Dollars.

Based on what I'm hearing here, and what some have told me in SL, the real issue is that Linden Labs is underfunded. How they should make that money is a good question--speaking for myself, I'd rather see a small monthly fee than (for example) adverts all about the place. I understand Island fees have also gone up--perhaps this is LL's way of "testing the waters" in terms of fee increase. I think we can expect to see things like that until LL is consistently in the black.

Thinking this over and seeing how i have friends who are teens on the adult grid, I want the in TG with me, i say yes. But i believe it should be this way,

1:Credit card and cell phone should net be required to register for Teen, Rather they should be for the mail grid. Step 1 of getting teens out of MG.

2: TG chould not have a charge but MG should or TG should cost a good amount less like 10$ for MG and only 5$ for TG. As easy as it is for teens to get into the MG there is no reason anyone should complain about them, do these, make the parents awear, and you will never have the problem again.

(opinion)

Unverified accounts exist for ONE reason:

To get more people that CAN pay into SecondLife.

MANY people simply will not hand over their credit card
number until they trust a company more. (Or better
understand what it is they're paying for.)

It has nothing to do with the people that can't pay, they
just happen to benefit from this particular marketing
strategy.



And Seola-

Non-profitability merely means not being able to pay back
investors, it doesn't mean they can't staff or equip adequately.

SL is a rapidly growing world, but over-anticipating future needs
and over-deploying staff/hw can be more deadly to LL's survival
than being a behind the growth curve and trying to catch up.

The question of basic residents not paying anything was brought up at a Town Hall meeting with Philip, some months ago.

He said he had no intention of charging basic residents and I really think, if they are causing problems in SL, he is the one who will decide when its no longer tenable for them to not pay.

I would also like to add that if someone does not have a bank account or credit card, that is entirely their own business.

I am not sure if people are still adding to this chat but to add my 2 cents worth ... I am a paying member - "resident" - and a landowner with a significant monthly fee. Add to that, I am a member of a Helper group and I am always talking to newbies who arrive two minutes after logging in to this world without any orientation or idea of what they are getting into. It is not uncommon to be asked "where are the freebies." It is also not unusual to be "verbally assaulted" by newbies who are obviously griefers and who have no plans of staying here. Often I have the relics of these tormentors on my land long after they have left. I know many people would love to join but when they witness the crass behaviour of some newbies they opt for anoher virtual reality. If you would like to find out more about newbie attitudes towards SL visit an infohub - but be prepared for some behaviours that would be considered downright offensive in real life. So yes, charge people a first time fee - allow them a 24 hours "grace period" before logging them off permanently. And clean up the trash of jets/cars/boats/plywood boxes that the "tourists" leave behind. I love to help people here and will continue to do so - but I seriosuly believe a fee is rapidly becoming the only answer to prevent SL becoming the vandals playgound of the web.

True for me. I joined in November 2006 and while I can use a credit card over the Internet, I'm not incline to do it until I know who I'm dealing with and what I'm gonna get for that.

So I joined as an unverified, got acquainted with LL and SL, then I entered credit card details. I lost the small signup bonus (250 L$), but that's not an issue.

Now I'm verified with payment info used. No premium yet, but who knows... One day...

These were all serious problems long before open registration.

I agree, A Closed Door / Entry Fee policy may reduce the number of new griefers.

It will also significantly reduce the number of new non-griefers.

The goal should be: to reduce the ratio of griefers to non-griefers.

actually when you see the scaling problems of SL reducing both might not be a so bad idea...