Why Free Accounts Must Go-Part II

How exactly? Whether I give you L$500 and you spend it, or I spend that L$500 myself makes no difference.

All of LL's income, all of the income generated by businesses in-world is dependant on real, actual money flowing into the economy at a steady pace and since unverifieds do not contribute US $, and can not offer L$ up for sale on the exchange, they have no impact on the economy what so ever.

They might have some impact if they were doing anything that causes someone else to buy L$ to pay for what they're doing, but I don't know a single well known business in-world that's run by an unverified.

Ah, but would you spend it?

Think about camping chairs for a moment. The owner of the camping chairs has to spend the L$ to fund the chairs. This means that either
a) they buy it since they think traffic is worth the money, thus increasing the demand for and thus value of L$, or
b) they earn it, and earn enough to spend it that way, in which case if they were not giving it away to campers they would probably cash it out, increasing the supply of L$ and thus reducing the value.



Bear in mind that unverified accounts haven't been around for long enough for businesses using them to be really well-known. Aimee Weber's *preen* became very well-known while Aimee was still on a basic account and could therefore potentially have been unverified if it had been possible to create an unverified basic account at that time. In my personal experience, Biran's Gadgets was the same, although it isn't as famous as Preen.

Entire books are devoted to the concepts of Macroeconomics and wealth creation. Basically every dollar spent gets multiplied becuase it changes hands. If I pay people to hang out in my club and then they spend that money then it enters that chain.

Now - If id spent the money myself? perhaps but more people = more demand. Since I am only one person (in this cae a claub owner) buying lindens to give away - I spend more on this activity than i would simply buying myself clothes.

your example is correct if I were to say give away 500 dollars or spend 500 , but it breaks down is i were to give away 500 , but if i just spent for myself id have spend 300.

It becomes more tangled if I gave away 500, and spent 200. now ive put 700 into the economy as opposed to the 300 i would have spent.

SO the unverifieds impact on the economy is to add in demand for goods and services - so yes - they contribute.

basic Consumption.

again - I dont think that camping chairs contribute to the ecomomy in enough of a positive way to make up life style costs they incur (lag, closed sims, general poor quality of builds, etc)

I think if traffic numbers disapeared , jobs would fill up most of the void and once the economy stabilized a better standard of second living would exist.

eliminating dwell payments, did not - from what i can tell destroy the economy.

eliminating traffic, I think would be even more beneficial.

If I didn't spend it, that would technically benefit the economy because it takes those L$ out of circulation, decreasing the short-term in-world supply.

Since LL is involved in the currency exchange, any large shift would result in Supply Linden selling less, so the overall effect is still nothing.

Also, from a consumer's point of view a reducing of the value of L$ is a positive thing, not negative.

I know quite a number of new clothing-related stores who have started since unverifieds, every single one is verified (of course I would expect that when it comes to taking money out, people are far more inventive of suddenly coming up with payment info ) so the time scale really doesn't seem to be it.

You might have a point with A (although why someone would spend so much of their own money on camping which doesn't attract real customers is beyond me ) but then you still have to be able to claim that they wouldn't be spending that money if unverifieds didn't exist.
If someone starts a new club and ends up spending $2000 as pay-out for camping, would they never have spent that much without unverifieds? Or would they just have spent it a different - more useful - way?

That might work out in the real world, but I'm failing to see how it does in SL. You have to pay your tier in $, so does everyone else who actually owns land. LL has to pay their bills in $, their staff in $.

If all of a sudden noone bought L$, how is any business and to an extent SL going to survive? Every last L$ in-world can change hands a 100 times, it still won't do anyone any good when their tier is due if there's noone willing to trade real money for it.

To people who've been around longer than me: I know the LindeX is a somewhat recent addition and it didn't used to exist. Was there a reason to switch from trading money in world around to the exchange? Was there an actual demand for it, or was it just something LL created and it took off?

If you didn't spend them, wouldn't you cash them out for tier?



Not really - the producers still need to make their tier; the fact that consumers are freer with the L$ can help cancel this out a bit, but often they are stuck putting up their prices. Meanwhile, the fixed L$ incomes that consumers benefit from (such as stipend, prices, etc.) become worse value. A while back, when the L$ value was very low, producers were using network linked vendors which charged prices in equivalent US$ instead of L$, and there was even talk of a group getting together and printing their own currency.



Well, the original post specified well-known businesses - this is a really difficult thing to measure because there are only a few businesses which are really well-known across the entire grid. Most businesses either become known within the "generation" in which they're created, or within a particular interest or subcommunity (eg, Xcite for sex, Abbotts for aircraft, etc). I used Aimee as an example because she was perhaps the first example of a truly famous business, but even given that, many recent players haven't heard of her.

I imagine a hypothetical might help explain how I see it. Lets use a job since i dont like camping chairs. Ill assume the employer is verfied and the employee is unverified.

SO im an employer and I own a bar - my interesting isnt spending lindens my interest is making lindens. So ill spend what I have to to keep my business floating but I have enough clothes, etc. for now.

I pay my bartender $100 for a shift. This is a cost for doing business to me - Id normally have sold the $100L on lindenX.

He then pays shopkeeper X the $100 for a dress for his GF. - he has just spent 100L more in the economy than i ever would have.

thus - demand is net up. the whole hope is enough people are trading enough things in that big economic machine that people come to my bar and pay me more than i shell out to employees.

It doesnt matter if the employee is verified or not really - the result is the same.


****
NOW - what happens if demand for Linden dollars declines to the point where people wont spend USD for them?

Second Life fails .. bye was nice while it lasted.

I doubt this is going to happen. Becuase SL sells both the illusion of love and sex. People will pay RL money for that.

If demand for love and sex in the world goes down (dying laughing) then were in a lot of trouble in Second life (and first life).

(debate on how real the sex or love is, isnt relevant to the economic question)

*moves to feature suggestions*

Sides shes Right Up There ------------------------------------------------------^^^^^ sticking her tongue out at us. hard not to remember her when coming up with examples.

=)

I wouldn't since I just consume, but I'd guess a business owner would in which case someone buys it with the result of more money flowing into the system.

That's about when I arrived, and all that talk quickly died down when the L$ strenghtened. Prices were raised then, and didn't go back down when the L$ became stronger.

Sorry, should have been a little clearer . I meant well-known in a niche in the sense that someone would have been there, or heard about it, or in a case where I'd know about something/someone new, read about it on one of the fashion blogs. I guess I meant a level up from obscure and unknown but can't think of a word for it.

I think we just have a very different view of what is contributing and what is not . To me it means real money flowing through the economy because that is what keeps everything running.
I do get your example, but in the end, that L$100 ends up in the hands of someone that cashes it out. Whether you do it, or whether it changes hands 10 times before reaching that point, doesn't matter (in my opinion) because at no point during those 10 times is real money being contributed into the economy.

ohh i see that you mean also now -

But we want it that way that on purpose -

Its one of the inflation controls.


we do need to keep the unverifieds ! If only to get them truley addicted - Becuase,

More residents = more RL money spent though -
unverifieds convert to Premiums every day.
If only to settle down and play house..

Which can be fun till you find out the rotten bastard is a no good liar..
but i digress.

well first of all Colette Meiji you sound like someone who makes money by buying and selling land and money. That you take out funds spent in Sl and put it into your pocket without any input on your part and then justify this as an economy.

To put it simply... Second Life is and should be about content creation. If you've been watching how much real money is going into SL over the past 6 months you'll see that it's not been going up but staying about the same yet the numbers of people using Sl have jumped to the millions. It doesn't take much of a brain to see why low life scum take advantage of that and pull funds out of the economy by driving up land value. At some point people will use underhanded tactics to drive people off their land by placing casinos/camp chairs that lag the surrounding area up so bad the people living there flee selling their land for whatever they can get. Fuck all the land barons and all the losers trying to gleam money off of SL without caring a damn about the point of it.

When I came to SL it was about being creative. Making things people wanted to buy and competing with others and the better quality items won out. So you make something better. SL was also about communities of shared interests. It was easy to find people of like minds all hanging out at the same place and hardly a fake in the group. Now if you can find a community it's full of fakes who can't even tell you the meaning of the community. They come to get attention or find ways to disrupt or take over. Most of them free account holders who know if they are banned they get a new account.

Second Life used to be about roleplay and finding yourself in ways you can't in real life. Now what's it about? I don't have a clue because I don't see people exploring their nature much anymore. What I see is "where's the money!" Give me a job! how can I scam, beg, push, steal or sell so that I can take as much from SL as I can make. Some Economy..... That's why the same amount of money is going into second life now as in June yet there are 2.2 million more people using it..

Keep in mind that it's not 2.2 million people 'using' it. It's 2.2 million people names registered. I'm guessing less than 25% of the "Active in the last 60 days" are actually re-occuring users, the rest are tourists checking out the novelty of a new world.

--
Easy come... easy go.

The problem with this is that it can't go on forever. As this cycle repeats the quality of the world becomes higher and higher. Now that's a good thing, because it means the world into which people come is better and better. But at the same time it means that it's harder and harder for a new user to do something that can get noticed or have value. There are already certain types of products which are basically "out of bounds" for a newbie who wants to have any success, either because of their creative quality or because they're held in place by network effect.

Because of this, Second Life must change over time from being creation-oriented to consumer-oriented. It's an unstoppable trend - the only way you could stop it is to somehow hold back the top content talents to ensure others could still compete, and that would be absurd. It's exactly the same as RL: years ago you'd have thousands of sellers in a market, nowadays you just have a few big stores who, basically, got there because their products were the best.



Maybe they want the L$ so they can use it to explore themselves?

whoa where did you get this idea? thats completely fabricated.

Im actually suprized to see it. Ive never owned more than 2500 meters of land in 2 years.

I make my money from my store.

I do have an economic input comes from spending money in SL. Which likely is quite a bit compared to most since I make a profit. I sell Lindens, yes - But people buying lindens are part of the economy. If we didnt sell lindens there wouldnt be any to buy - Conspiracies about lindens printing rubber money non withstanding.



this looks more like a rant than actual figures.
with more people will come more people who do things you arent impressed by.

More content creators will come - more of everything will come.
As Second Life becomes more well known more new users will be less "computer people" this is a simple fact of life. Those people will know less about 3d environments and online roleplaying - which you complain about.

The fact that they go for money right away isnt surprizing - with Traffic numbers being the main way to entice people they head for places targeted at crudly done sex, casino , money , etc.

the old adage is "when in rome"

you dont seem really interested in discussing anything though considering your attacking tone and blatant assumptions.

the conversation was on the percieved lack of econmic impact of free accounts and had drifted to mainly unverifieds. I commented on that. Dont assume I have no interest in creativity.

I will say this - with only content creators and no one else to apprciate the creations - SL would be a very lonely place.

Reminds me of The Way Things Work book where they show money printing....using leaves off a tree.

I may not be able to prove your negative but I know what I see and I know what my friends see and everyone of us who has business are seeing sales drop to almost noting as the free accounts raise. My belief that less people will want to get a paid account because they think all the lag and casinos and sex clubs ain't worth paying a premium for. I wish I could see the numbers of new pay accounts over the months but I bet that LL won't show it because it would show that negative you so want proved. I believe in averages and even though I've added more and more new items in my stores my sales have gone from profitable to not even paying my teir and I've sold a lot of my land. I've put out vender's all over and still no sales, dropped prices still bad and if it was just me I would be more worried about my approach but it's every one of them who sell are seeing the sales dying. All your reasoning and figure juggling still won't mean shit when it comes to my bottom line. Second Life is dying as a place to make things and sell them.

I was just told by a free account user the line that sums up my whole argumnt.

"free account holders have just as much right to SL as paying clients"

My Advice,

close your account, leave SL to the naked noob with the penis attachment, after all it's their SL and not those of us who create roleplay sims and clothes, weapons, items to enhanse their fun.... they don't need us, just a 2L dance pad and casino.

Which is quite true. Though, Back In The Day (meaning a year ago), I was looking at the premium account and wishing I had the $10 a month to pay for it. Now I look at it and go, "why waste my money?"

And I wasn't even looking at the land part of the deal.

Unpaid and unverified accounts have as much right to SL as anyone else? Maybe. Sure they can't own land, but eveything else is there, which is part of the attraction to SL.
HOWEVER, LL borked what it means to be premium, alienated their existing userbase by opening up account registration, and as of yet have not given premium members anything new to make it worth keeping.

I've no idea what it is you sell, but I suspect your competition has grown signfiicantly.

The grid's grown how much in the last year? 5x? more?

That new land is being used by people and most don't seem content with playing "happy homemaker" they wanna get in on the big SL retail bandwagon.

Leave the pennyless windowshoppers alone...
your 'sales problem' is not their fault.

--
You really want to see a drop in sales?
Keep pushing for closed registration.

My sales have slightly increased since Sept of '05 - they basically reached a certain level then grew very slowly.

Considering my competition has grown from 2 others more up market from me - to 100+ all of the map in price and quality - Id say in my case Ive done quite well.

Other people Ive known have suceeded, but like every Business many more are going to be drown out by the competition.

This is truley unfortunate.

It would be interestign to know what percentages of business's are failing, which are surviving and which are soaring sucesses.

I know there are several in each catagory - If only by the number of designers I personally know whove gone from tiny shops selling stuff worth 5000L a month to owning their own mega store private islands.

Hmm, perhaps I am the competition. I've recently opened up a shop on my land. It started because a lot of people sell stuff for exhorbitant prices and I figured I could save myself a lot of money making stuff myself so I learned how. It occurred to me that other people might like to buy cheap stuff too, and I want to help support my tier payments, so now I'm in business. Since one can pull prims out of thin air, anyone can open a store.

It occurs to me that with charter land , 3rd party sites to buy lindens (or just a job), etc. It would be completely possible to set up a sucessful, thriving beusiness without ever becoming verfied, whatsoever.

Assuming you were good at whatever it is you did.

congrats on your new biz Annabelle and good luck.

(not saying you are unverified, yours was the post i read when it came to my head is all)

Thank you!

I am a premium member, but I have heard of unverified people setting up businesses in the manner you have said and doing quite well.

Just wanted to add to what I said before - I think there are probably quite a lot of small business people like me, premium, verified, and unverified, who aren't trying to get rich, but want to make enough to support ourselves here. And yes, I'm sure this does take some income away from the more established businesses, but that's how it goes.

Making and selling attractive items is much more appealing to me than camping, hippiepay, escorting, or those stupid pyramid schemes/let freedom ring plants (which by the way are completely illegal but no one gets rid of them).

Maybe I'm heading a bit off topic here, but I would encourage the unverifieds reading this who want to contribute to the game to look into setting up a booth at the free yard sales instead of putting pyramids on any land that doesn't have build restrictions on it.