Alternate money sink ideas to help save dwell and other bonuses

The proposal was as a measure to KEEP those bonuses. The bonuses were removed after this as I posted originally when it was only being talked about. I would only want these changes implimented if all the bonuses were returned.

Dwell reinstated but land owners only recieve dwell from people with payment information on file.

Basic stipends reinstated but only for the first 2 months after creation. They SHOULD NOT be a permanant aspect of the game and this should retroactively effect ALL BASIC accounts. Not just new ones (thus remove all stipends from basics LIKE MYSELF who have been here long enough to not need one).

In addition to the increased upload fees, as a counter measure to still encourage content creation every resident could get a 'free upload credit' once a week on stipend day. During upload you could see how many 'free uploads' you have remaining and check a box to use a credit instead of paying the sink.

By no means do i think upload fees should increase THIS drastically without stipends still existing.

well do not forget that LL isn't the wellfare service, usually you pay to get something in RL, and LL being located in the real life if you pay them you get something.

Noqw they happend to have this business model when even when you don't pay you can still access theyr service.

If i was accessing a game for free, i wouldn't complain.

Its not welfare. Its called addiction hooks. Give someone enough resources to see what the game has to offer. Basic members contribute just as much (sometimes more) to the economy than premiums. Normally its those "free loading welfare collecting basics" that are the REAL ones paying the money that pays the tier of the so called premium member who just sub leases. Who in that situation is the REAL freeloader?

As far as complaints, I personally would LOSE money in ever regards if this proposal was implimented. My stipend i still recieve would stop. My upload charges would increase. The ONLY place this benifits is in encouraging more intelligent upload ch oices which will increase signal/noice ratio in content. And brand new accounts would have a temporary cashflow to let them experiment.

BTW any account that is 100% unverified should not recieve a stipend. But any unverified that chooses to give its information should (regardless of account age) start recieving it for the 2 months i suggest.

This would prevent any form of account farming due to the new registration system.

Looking back on some of the discussion, I don't see what the issue on dwell and 'welfare stipends' is really.
Right now I'm paying taxes to educate a lot of snot-nosed kids who I sure as hell don't care about, I'm currently paying for my university education, and do not intend to have children, ever. I'm also paying things like people's pensions and emergency services. In all likelihood there won't BE state pensions when I retire, and I rarely set fire to my house.

Since you can't set fire to things in SL, and age and education aren't concerns, why shouldn't the equivalent be dwell and stipends?

Another issue is that people don't expect to pay for clubs, if you can walk into it for free, then surely you don't need to pay? If clubs started ejecting people who don't pay, then those clubs will go broke. Donations are a grossly unrealistic way to fund something. Without dwell the only viable business you can really set up is something involving vendors or which otherwise incorporates rent. Which often horribly cheapens what you're trying to achieve. I'm still forging ahead with a simulator idea (started constructing it in pieces on my land), and I'm having to try and incorporate apartments and a vendor area into it. Apartments I don't mind, as it ought to be a cool fun place and having residents there will make it more so I think. Vendors however I'd rather do without because I don't really want to have to a section selling XCite! or slave products or whatever destroying my theme.

In-place of players willing to pay for entry to places, we had dwell, and really could do with having it back

I think the issue is that this isn't the real-world, it's a virtual world. And people have a very different mentality towards a computer program than they do to a real-world location/shop.

Here's a money sink. Food.

Or health. Or what-have you. Say avatars can only run for 48 hours non stop before you need to recharge them at a Linden-station for a fee. Pay X amount for a standard recharge so your avatar can stay up for 48 more hours. Pay Y amount for a longer recharge so your avatar can stay up for 72 more hours.

Food. The natural money sink.

If they just restricted dwell to the presence of *paying customers*, then it wouldn't be a handout... it'd be a "sales commission" to the people who are responsible for getting those premium members to log on to second life and stay premium.

Possibly - but that would further the trend of encouraging landowners to treat free account guests on their land as worthless... and since free accounts are often newbies, is this what we want?

I'm not arguing that it is or arguing that it isn't... I'm just wondering out loud.

Well dwell can only be received by people who own land anyway? Basic accounts can't own land except with rent, in which case they don't really own it, the premium member who bought it does. Except in the case of groups, but really that is the group's decision?

I hope they don't get rid of dwell. I hope they don't get rid of much of anything. Adding, however, would be best.

If they do get rid of dwell however, then "Buy Pass" needs to be mandatory for all locations that are not residences or shops. Buy Pass with a mandatory minimum of 5$L so people don't undersell each other too often. If the person is going to list a parcel of land as a club/casino/gathering spot in the Find and Classifieds then that parcel needs to have a mandatory minimum cover charge. If you feel your club is upscale enough, then charge more. But the only worry if dwell is gone, is that people will charge less to nothing at all as a cover charge, meaning a cheap consumer wont go to a charging club when there is a free one to go to.

And whats to stop people from having clubs at thier residences? A max number of avatars per parcel limit. If I have 23 people at my "house" nightly, dancing, using raffle balls, its no longer a residence.

Other than that. Food. A pop up box comes up telling you to pay to get your avatar walking again because they need to recharge or whatever.

Also, take away stipends for non-premium members. This is the only place I know of that pays *you* to be here.

Landowners SHOULDN'T be able to tell.

The new "no payment info on file" thing makes me want to go out and buy a bunch of "gift cards" for people. It's a stupid idea that doesn't do anything about the real problem, and while I realise it's unlikely that LL will ever back down on this, they're just as unlikely to back down on dwell, so this is purely an academic discussion anyway.

The real problem is that LL wants SL to be like the web, even in the areas where the web's model has shown itself unsatisfactory and where they don't need to follow it.

They have already done that.
It'll never happen. When any yahoo can rez a really cool club in a sandbox, there's pretty much zero incentive to pay even L$5 to enter a club that may be a waste.