NO MORE DWELL or Traffic Incentives??????!! NOT COOL

You say you want to change the economy... well you're completely destroying a business in SL. Myself, as well as many club owners, and event planners, and people that coordinate the massive attended events... all now more or less pointless.

These event planners, promoters, event organizers & land owners SHOULD be receiving pay. Dwell is a tremendous incentive for me to have become a pro member, bought more land, built a club, spent money on a stream to DJ, etc... all the time, money, and energy... WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT I COULD CREATE PROFITS THROUGH DWELL!

THE PROBLEM IS THE DAMN CAMPING ZOMBIES!

I try so damn hard to create successful events, with REAL people! I have no campers at my venue. And when I have a great night at the club, I should get dwell.

Why would linden labs decide to CREATE MONEY to pay dwell?!?!?!
It is so obviously to me that Lindens should pay out dwell... not create money.

I feel that by removing dwell like this, as if it is minor detail in the world of SL, is very upsetting. I have spent alot of time and money to create a successful business in SL... and now in june, I will have no income.... I dont want to sell friggin clothes and hair!!!

By removing dwell, you are removing a major aspect to the SL world, destroying enterprises. Just the thought of it make my SL progress feel much more meaningless.

I am not at all saying, I'm doing it for the money. not at all. I am saying I like making profit in the world of SL. It is a goal among many to run a successful business in SL. IT's so lame Linden Labs can pull the rug out from under us without even flinching.

Please, any linden, please tell me, what is the point now for any event hoster or club owner to continue if there is no chance of making money from the people at the events?

I can only speak for myself but when I go to my favorite club I always throw the Owner/DJ a couple hundred L. I don't think many people are not going to understand that without dwell they are going to have to support the clubs they go to. Even if you wanted to charge a small cover charge, it will still account for more then the dwell paid out. It may even open up other avenues of advertising like Free Admission nights and stuff like that.

Saying that a club is going to fail without dwell is like saying its not worth going too.

Doubledown: You asked if there was any way to continue making money from the people at your events...

My response is that you're going to have to start doing exactly that. At the moment, Dwell cash is awarded due to the presence of people on your land, but it doesn't come from those people. It's generated "from thin air" by Linden Labs - it's what's called a "source" in to the economy (the opposite term, for where currency is "destroyed" into nothingness by things like Upload and Find-listing fees, are called "sinks".

In the post-Dwell era (I get the horrible feeling that phrase will become the "post 9-11 era" of SL...), you'll have to think of new ways to monetize your visitors. Charge a cover fee, ask for donations, sell something (spend $L10 once to upload a quick+simple "I Donated At Club Blah" t-shirt, then sell 'em for L$5 each), find some sponsors - be inventive! I would have previously suggested MetaAdverse as one possible revenue stream but they seem to have closed their doors.

I'm getting in to the habit of tipping at venues right now, in the hope that I can influence others around me to do the same. Given that Dwell is going away, it would seem worthwhile to try to get a "culture of tipping" going - I'm not too sure how best to encourage that apart from tipping when I'm having fun, though.

I'd like to point out the obvious here:

Dwell payments are so low in the first place you won't miss them unless you were the sole owner of a sim packed 24/7 with no camping chairs. Dwell gets divided up on group land and if you own a small plot you arent getting much dwell to begin with.

To sum it up: You never have and Never will be able to live off dwell payments. Here's a cup of hot coffee, its time to wake up to reality.

First off, please no one tell me how important or unimportant dwell is to my business. I have an under 4000m club, and when I throw a successfull party (hiring djs, promoters, hosts, stream, etc) the only thing that keeps me afloat is the next day when i receive some lindens for my troubles.

I feel dwell is deserved (but that's another argument not worth arguing about)... furthermore, people's land tiers, membersship fees, fees to upload textures, sounds, anims, etc... every way that lindens milk us out of money, a portion of that should pay all the dwell incentives. HOW STUPID IS IT TO CREATE MONEY OUT OF THIS AIR TO PAY PEOPLE?! Linden Labs are RAKING in the dough... sure they have millions of expenses... but I feel for everyone that pays US into the system, there should be a small portion put into a big pot and paid to all the people deserving incentive. That is people's automatic donation to an event.

Another idea... land owners apply to get subsidies... IE, you have to apply as a legitimate venue to begin receiving dwell payments...

I really don't know, I'm sure there's thousands of ideas to resolve this problem.... however, the Lindens are taking a position that's like... "hmm, well I dunno where this dwell money is gonna come from, it cant come from thin air" NO, it needs to begin coming from the company.

Welcome to the new second life Doubledown........Like it not its here. been thur the weekly pay cut,event support, these nightmarish camping chair phase, etc.........Second Life is full of surprizes........Its always changing

well that bringsup a funny chat i had with a owner once. He thought sleeping chair people counted for 1/2 dwelling. LOL you can tellid those clubs that have money chair really don`t know what they are doinf or saying ehhehe Who in the world and how do you get 1/2 dwelling?

I really simply find it lame of Linden Labs to create this superficial opposing argument among citizens..... that dwell is hurting the economy. Damn straight it is! Stop creating money to pay dwell.

When LLs reclaim land from a user that has left SL, where does that money go?

When users create groups, where does that money go?

When users upload pics, animations, etc, where does that money go?

And
$10/mo to own 512
$15/mo to own 1024
etc etc

LL needs to continue to pay land owners, event planners, venue owners so we can continue to make SL entertaining... LL wants people logged on, playing, enjoying, continuing to use, continuing to invest, continuing to spend.
Do they want the average user time at 4 hours or 4 minutes?

Us residents are the reason other residents are using SL

Well what we need is one large protest meeting like we had in 2005 Jan.........

But 512 costing $10 a month. well LLbABS well sell out befor reaching that number
DI is dead why? because of camping chairs. content is dropping like a dead fish....gesh LLabs has a big problem on hands these days....

Why was dwell removed? Last I heard there were plenty of L$ sinks (things you have to pay LL for like uploads) to cover it?

Yay? Less lag...Less bad radio stations...this isnt the Slapocalypse...its simply to get people back into the creative mode...and get them to stop working for that 2.50 an hour on a stripper pole...

THIS IS WHAT IS PREVENTING ME FROM CREATIVE MODE!!

Dwell was a major contributor to my club. No camping chairs... just great times.

LL does not care about the chairs! LL is claiming the economy sucks because there is no way to pay dwell without creating money out of thin air. PEOPLE WAKE UP! LL NEEDS to create a fund of existing Ls and US$ to keep the dwell program!

well get use to it. the change is going to happen......like it or not........

I'm a Premium account holder, I'm also currently paying for 1/2 sim worth of tier. *I* would therefore be one of the sources of this "pool" or "fund" you want to pull money out of.

However, I have never visited your club, and likely I never will. I do not visit clubs, period. So why should I be asked to efectively subsidise it by diverting a portion of premium account payments and tier payments to club owners in the form of dwell payments?

A mechanism already exists in SL to charge a "cover charge" for clubs. This would be a much fairer way of financing clubs in my opinion. Let the people who like them and want to use them pay to support them, rather than forcing *everyone* to pay out to support events that they don't attend themselves.

I don't want to pay you for your club. If you want lindens find a way to get them from people in world, don't expect a cut of premiums.. I don't want to support events like furry orgies or 'best nude avatar'. I also don't want to support 'Picasso collection.'


In world is the only legitimate way of doing it..if you aren't drawing enough to suppor tit - then accept that and have fun, stop doing the club, or FIGURE OUT WHAT PEOPLE WANT (and will pay) TO SEE.

That's part of what made SL attractive, that many people weren't purely market driven and did things purely for fun, not to get money for it. And dwell encouraged this, many of the coolest places in world are NOT pay-to-visit but are free because they are for everyone to enjoy.

IMO instead of removing dwell LL should increase the amount of L$ sinks, like the current upload charges (as Argent pointed out in one of the other threads) are far too low, and encourage you to upload huge textures because they cost the same as smaller ones. I'm still very much for charging for things like p2p landmarks to land that doesn't have p2p enabled (but would have the p2p landmark option switched on). Hell, I'd have been happy if they'd charged for sim to sim p2p teleports in general, to keep telehubs active and discourage over-use/abuse, but they decided against that.

Hara, I'm all for that..more so than paid events. What I'm saying is I don't want them taking a chunk of my stipend or premium fees to donate to dwell costs for places I don't want to support.

I dont see why keeping 30L-100L a day or w/e is such a big deal, If the privileages of owning land and having a premium account keep getting chipped away whats the point of trying to make some money or have money to spend. If the dwell goes away whats next the Stipend?

Plus how is 30-100L a day ruining the econmy of sl???

Hi Doubledown. Just curious - how much dwell money does your club make on a day like this? Maybe if people knew how big your losses were, they might have a better appreciation of your issues.

Under my proposal anything they took from your stipend or premium fees would go to the places you personally visited.

In a properly designed traffic incentive model, you wouldn't. Here's an expansion of what I have suggested in the past:

* A basic account would be worth 1 "point" of dwell.

* A premium account would be worth 10 "points" of dwell.

* Each buy on Lindex would be worth some number of points of dwell, up to a maximum of 10, based on Linden Labs cut from the buy.

* Each 512 square meters of land or unused tier would be worth 1 point of dwell, up to a maximum of 10.

* If you're an officer in a landholding group, you get 1 point of dwell for each 560 square meters of land that group owns, divided by the number of officers, up to a maximum of 10.

The last two might go under the same cap, or not, depending on how you want to treat people renting large amounts of land on islands.

Each day, you would shed N Lindens for each M points of dwell you have, divided proportionally among the places you spent time in. What N and M should be would no doubt be subject to endless debate but they don't matter for this calculation.

There wouldn't be a pool. Out of the money you pay Linden Labs, a tiny fraction would go directly to the places you spent time at. None of your share would go anywhere else. The basic share would be a lagniappe like the basic stipend, more to provide some information about Basic traffic... with a straight non-lindex-buying Basic worth 1/10th to 1/40th of the average Premium, there's not going to be much incentive to buy "Basic dwell" the way there is now.

What a lame, exostencialist view. Why do you even play SL?
I play it to make a mark and leave positive impact in the world.


Im sorry, I get offended when a service I pay for changes its terms drastically (and acts as if it's nothing at all).... SL, without dwell, is not the service I am paying for.

I'm here playing the game like everyone else. I am not money driven. I do however like to see my time and efforts turn into profits. Any object seller in this game will say the same thing.

At my club (which we can look at as a gathering place, like anyone else's 'gathering place') dwell is not the determining factor for anything... it is the principle that LL realizes I am making substantial efforts making SL one notch more entertaining. LL NEEDs us residents so the world exists. They NEED what we do in there. Dwell is simply a realistic form of showing that LL knows the efforts matter, and there is a set formula that traffic = $Ls.

My club currently is making about $300L a day split 3 ways. This is a major help to recoupe some of the $60US+ to get the club going. I am never going to charge a cover to get in because NO ONE will come.... It's just a gathering with good music... Its SL, the party can't be THAT GREAT... People in SL, simply are looking for something cool to do, and I provide one option.. and my one option causes some 20-30 people to stay on SL multiple extra hours, transfer Ls, and whatever else people do when they are online. I am just one venue, one event... there's thousands in SL that are the direct cause for SL being more entertaining and securing longer logon times

I am really standing firm here that the amount of dwell pay is not the issue... it is the principle that LL respects and appreciates the event people of SL

To continue my thoughts...

In RL, any venue, any gathering place makes profits by:
entrance fees based on what is inside, product sales, and food & drink sales.

In SL, obviously there are no food and drink sales.
... and obviously there are product sales.

in SL, no one will pay to go to an event. In SL, the events (non-sales related) are games, music, art, movies, dancing, chat, testing/experimenting, or any combination. Although there are a wide range of events in SL, they all fall into those few categories. And sorry, NO ONE is going to pay a cover charge for any of these. I am certain they'd rather just find the same thing somewhere else for free. No one will simply be DYING to goto a SL event, therefore a cover charge is never going to work for a gathering place.

Being new to the discussion, please forgive me if what I ask/suggest has already been banded about elsewhere?

My understanding is that the whole issue of camping is what is causing dwell incentive to go away? If that is the case, why not use a manner of diminishing returns, such that if an avatar has been on the same parcel for x period of time, they start generating 'negative' dwell (at least, for purposes of dwell incentive payout).

My guess is this would need to be set at a sufficiently high enough threshold not to cause problems with valid events, scenes, or roleplays (two to four hours?) but to reduce or eliminate the amount of funds generated from people who hop in a camping chair and go to work for the day or to sleep for the night.

If parcel-owners are losing money by paying out in dwell-chairs to campers but not reaping rewards from the dwell linden generated, then my guess is that they will take down or turn off those devices.