Why Free Accounts Must Go-Part II

Just make it so free account holders can't have or use Linden Dollars. Simple as that. There are tons of freebies and things they can do without Linden Dollars so I don't see it as a major impact on them. I recently checked my sales in the last month and out of 120 sold items only 2 of the buyers had free accounts and they both baught my lowest priced item at 100L. Again this system would be an incentive to get more paying accounts and encurage the economy and discurage camping. Also they could incress the free land before teir to 1024 since a 512 is pretty hard to actualy find use for. Someone mentioned Escorts as a problem with free accounts but I disagree completely. These girls (and guys) provide a service to not just SL but RL too by giving a safe sex outlet to a lot of lonely people. Of course the Escorts wouldn't be able to get paid without a paying account and this would also bring more paid users into the fray and good Escorts make 3 to 10k a day (more than I can selling clothes and other items) so they would be the first to get a premium account. Another thing that could be done is to not count free accounts as traffic which would also discurage owners from having camp chairs as a false way to boost traffic numbers.

Want to use the SL economy be a premium account holder.
Want to boost traffic, find real ways to get people with premium to come to your place.

Then I agree, free accounts (in that sense) are not part of the problem.

Interesting idea.

I would also like to chime in that I have a free, verified account - as does my wife.

Free accounts do not mean we're not contributing to the economy. It means there is no incentive for us to pay $10USD/month ($20 in our case) for premium accounts that do not offer us, personally, anything in return. $10/month for a meager welfare cheque isn't doing it for me. I'm not saying I wouldn't consider a Premium account, but butter up that pork boy and make it worth my while.

Crippling free accounts isn't the answer either. Nobody is going to go running around half-naked with NEWBIE tattooed on their forehead and no ability to participate in events, then a couple weeks later say "This is great, here's some cold hard cash LL!" Does anyone even use the crippleware concept anymore?!

I've sunk $55 USD into SL in the past month, and I'm already done with the place! Grid instability and lag like I havn't seen online since trying to navigate the newly graphic-glitter filled internet of the early 90's. There's better ways to spend ones time than watching barbie doll's dream house slowly materialize over the course of an hour.

So stop the "Freebie" bashing and start hollering at those actually responsible. That would be the people taking your money and giving you nothing in return. End of story. Fix the network, stabilize the grid and hire project managers with the ability to take this little Linden project to the next level. The guys currently running the show just don't have any concept of managing something this big.

To those blaming the campers, again, who is responsible for their existance? As much as I like it, take the damned debug console out of the clients before you release them. Any proper coded idle timer cannot be defeated in world. I don't care how good your scripting is, you cannot fake an event trigger from a remote peripheral. The only thing allowing these people to remain online for days at a time is the fact they disable it in the client. And FWIW, I also see Premium account holders (Premies?) abusing this. (not camping, defeating the idle timer) Why code a timeout at all if you're going to release a client with the ability to turn it off? ::roll::

Mouse mover. If the chair doesn't kick the person, then a simple program that can move the mouse accross the screen will keep the avatar logged in. If I felt like it I could code one (it'd have no interface as I'd be using Assembler code, but it'd do the job).
There's even a program out there I've seen that'll defeat most scripted anti-idles, such as time limits (it automatically sits you back down) and such.

Then you're not part of the problem.

The problem is not "free" accounts, it's "unverified" accounts.

Indeed, that's why I never even considered getting a citizenship in Brand X.

Economists. Ones who don't understand economics, and try and fix fundamental problems by playing with the money supply.

Client side security is no security. The problem is not that the campers can defeat the idle timer, it's that there's an incentive for landowners to pay for campers.

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,72119-0.html

"That's all that needs to be said."

"It's as simple as that."

"Period."

"End of Discussion."

OMG. Thank you!
*Yoinks a bit about the Realists and sends it off to a guy who doesn't like D&D because "You can't kill a giant fire breathing lizard of that size with medival weaponry!"*

Hmmm... great. I bet we will soon find then free accounts will be even more collecting griefers. There are a lot less things to do when not even able to spend some money.



I wonder if this statistics are true for other shops. I don't really remember anymore how much US$ I "invested" in SL already...

I am a free (verified) account holder and have been part of the SL community for quite some time. I am not a griefer, and anyone who knows me in-world will tell you that I am a valuable contributor to the SL community.

I never upgraded to a premium account because there was never any first land available. Land barons would immediately purchase any first land that became available and resell it for huge markups.

I have space donated to me for my business as it does not take up much room to have a photo studio and a few props, lighting stands, and accessories. I always clean up after myself to keep the prim count low on the land that I use, as a courtesy to the landowner who graciously allows me to have my studio on her land. She tells me I can leave it set up, but it only takes a second to pack it all back up and it saves her having 100 wasted prims on her land.

I do whatever I can to help out other SL residents. The main group that I am a member of will tell you that I always donate time and expertise to create content for the group. I volunteer my time to be a greeter and also work security.

I work at Arsheba to host their games and help drive traffic to their club. I host games at other clubs as well. I get paid for my time and I also collect tips.

If you're a noob and are polite to me and are asking intelligent questions about SL, chances are that you'll get a nice box from me containing hundreds of *quality* freebies to help you get started and avoid having to get box after box of garbage freebies.

I've even been known to take noobs shopping, visiting a few places where they can get quality freebie clothes, quality freebie hair, quality freebie accessories, and visiting the ever popular FreeDove. If you *really* impress me, I might even buy you some things. Spend a half hour with me, and at least you won't *look* like a noob.

I currently have no need for land due to my working relationships with other land holders. I have no need to transfer my Lindens into RL dollars. I'm happy to keep my earned SL money in Lindens currency and spend it in-world.

So, why should I upgrade to a Premuim account and pay for something that I already get full benefit of for free?


Oh, and let me jump on the camper bandwagon ... *THAT* is one of the biggest FUBARS in SL. Let's clog a sim, make it lag, and otherwise make the whole area useless and worthless ... so people can collect their L$15 / hour? If I walk into a location and see a shatload of camping chairs, I immediately walk out and never return. If you support campers, you don't get my business. Period.

I don't check to see what kind of person buys what little I offer in my monopolizing hold on a nitche market. Frankly I don't care, and the stats would say that the free and the non-free buy the same product, all priced at $250. Of course, they'd have had to buy a L$2500+ av that my stuff goes with though....
But hey, I'm a free account (verified, but free) and I own one of the L$3500 quad dragon avatars, so what's to keep any other free (verified or otherwise) from owning one?

7 days seems a bit extreme. I belive there should be a limit, but only 7 days? Took me 13 to decide to go premium and I pay nearly $400 in tier fees monthly, and the quarterly premium fee. I say maybe 30 or 90 days would be better. I've met seniors on here who live on fixed incomes, and people from countries whose banks take weeks to hook up to Paypal and credit cards are rare. Even a $9.95 fee takes planning and budgeting if you don't make that much or your country's banks aren't favored by Paypal. 30 to 90 days would be far more reasonable, and would still help cut freeloaders from the rolls.

Do not resuscitate.

Yeah I'm losing money on WoW & CoH all the time, only log in a couple of times a month, can't seem to get Sony to pay me RL money for killing virtual Horde people & wandering monsters running rampant across the world there.

They won't let my partner play for free either.......................

Hmm does an AV require CPR?

Why would a casio owner lose money paying noobs to camp in chairs when he can put his own alts in them, but then again, why bother with the chairs, perhaps could just lock them in a room in the basement instead.

And it's great to hear people brag that they have never contributed a single RL cent to SL, and then see them whinging about lag on the blogs

Maybe we could all go free accounts and pay the SL staff & hardware suppliers in Lindens.

That is a good question.

Seriously guys, the laws of economics make this discussion utterly moot. Look at the statistics.

First of all, look at the composition of land through January '07 (Zee Linden blog post "Key Metrics"

Land Size-Mainland: 102.72 km2
Land Size-Private Islands 258.08 km2

The amount of land owned as private islands is 2.5 times that of mainland. In total private islands are 71% of the total land mass of Second Life:

What do the owners of these islands want: POPULATION. Nissan wants as many people as possible to test drive their cars. Reebok wants as many people as possible to wear their shoes. Anshe Chung wants as many people as possible to rent property.........simply put: the owners of nearly 2/3 of Second Life want as many people as possible in-world.

From LL's point of view, they earn $195 in tier per mainland sim. For private islands (since November '06) they earn $295, a 51% increase in monthly tier revenue. In January LL added 779 new islands, an increase of 51 km2 (14% of the total land mass).

Those 779 islands earned LL $77,900 more in revenue, beyond what they would have earned in mainland tier, assuming they could have sold the same amount of mainland land.

Over the last 14 days 519,000 users logged on. The total number of premium accounts, according to Lee, is 58,000. Assuming all premium users log on once every 14 days (and that's a huge assumption), premium users represent about 11% of the total residents regularly logging on.........a substantial minority.

From this we can draw the conclusion that there is absolutely no chance of premium users buying an equivalent amount of land to equal the 779 islands sold in January. There just aren't enough of them to be able to make that happen.

So how did LL sell, 779 islands? Simple, they initiated free accounts, rapidly increasing the population - making it extremely interesting to companies such as Dell, IBM, ABM Ambro, Showtime, NBC, et. al., to step up and make a presence in-world - i.e. buying islands.

To LL, net revenue from premium members (assuming a fix number of 58,000, and subtracting the stipend) is about $261,000.

January Revenue from selling Islands ($1650 per island) was $1.2 million. In February it looks like another 600 islands will be sold....so let's say $1 million per month in private island delivery......(Yes, there is a hard cost for the sim equipment, but that's not an expense, it's a capital cost for an asset. The more sims the greater asset value, which enhances shareholder value, ROA, and bunch of other metrics which are irrelevant to this discussion)

Then we have tier. By the end of January there are 3938 total islands. Some are $195 and some are $295. Let's assume the average island tier is $245, the average of the two rates. So monthly tier revenue from the private islands is about $965,000.

Now the premium members own land and pay tier, too. So lets add that in......The mainland consists of about 1,567 sims. Assuming all of them are generating 100% tier (which is not the case), and that tier is $195 per month, then total tier revenue from the mainland would be $306,000, or so.

So let's add it all up:

Monthly revenue from private sales:

Island Sales $1 million
Monthly Tier $965,000

Total revenue $1.965 million, or let's just call it $2 million

Revenue from Premium accounts

Subscription Fees $261,000
Monthly Tier $306,000

Total Revenue $567,000

Private islands generate 3.5 times the revenue as premium members. The reason for the spike in private island ownership is the rapidly growing population. Companies want to advertise to the growing population. Land owners want to rent land to the newcomers.

And reason the population is growing exponentially: IT'S FREE to come in-world.

Any change to that policy and the owners of the private islands will walk away. Eliminating free accounts would close the spigot and population growth will slow, and with it, the value of island ownership will disappear. It's super simple: If there aren't more and more people driving away in the Nissan cars......then Nissan will pull out.......

If the rate of private ownership of islands decreases, then LL will face revenue shortages and bankruptcy. It is simply impossible to run this kind of technology of $500K month.

There is no way LL's board would agree to changing the policy, and as much as the Lindens are committed to their residents, they've got rent to pay, too. There is just no way they can do anything different.........it's economics 101.

The Lindens are committed to the residents, and the recent policy change of giving paying residents priority in high-load situations is the fairest solution possible.

So, any argument on this point is really moot: free accounts aren't going to go away. And its the laws of economics that dictate this, not the Lindens.

Full disclosure: my account is free and I do own a sim, adding a couple more in the next couple of months.......as "free" as my account is, I sure pay a lot of money to LL........

But what if you could get another 50,000 people more per month to pay $10 each?

And recalculate without the Stipend, WoW doesn't consider gold given out to players in it's budjets
I think you are also missing RL setup costs of each new island in hardware & work hours.

The cycle of making money by selling virtual realestate can't go forever, we are spreading out population thin by residents per meter per hour I suspect, so many empty malls & clubs about now.

And the more land released & sold the more Linden to $RL the profiteers withdraw from SL.

Heck no, most are generating more than 100% tier, since most folks are in lower tiers. At 1024 your payin like 5 times per square meter what Anshe Chung is.

Rita you are very, very incorrect on that point. First of all, are you aware that there are close to 100 sims just for orientation islands? Further, the first 512m2 is tier free. Then there are all the help centers and public areas that LL runs. Take a look at the for island of Korea - not a penny of reveue being generated. There is a huge amount of the mainland not generating tier.

Sure, on a per meter basis tier for 1024m2 is 2.62 times (not 5 times) higher than tier for an entire sim, but a large percentage of the mainland doesn't generate any tier.......so you average it all out, and you will find that, when estimate potential revenue, my numbers are accurate enough to estimate the the economic impact of eliminating free accounts.

Further, since private sims, with the additional $100 in tier, out number mainland by 3 to 1, and growing by 500 sims a month.....That alone means that tier revenue from mainland will never outweigh that generate by private islands.

Just ain't gunna happen

LL earns at least $195/mainland sim, with the top being $1280/mainland sim per month (128 monthly premiums owning one sim). Your claim simply isn't true ($195/sim is a loss/break even for LL btw; you really think they wouldn't have raised mainland tier by now if they weren't getting significantly more per mainland sim?).

You're also forgetting about the fact that quite a few people end up with spare tier which they're still paying for whether they own land or not. If you own 5120m² you're still paying for 8192m², or the fact that LL can get paid tier for the same piece of land more than once, so mainland sims definitely do not work out to $195/month. At least $300/month would be a far more realistic estimate.

Since when does creating L$ out of thin air cost LL money?

Why aren't you factoring mainland sim auctions into your comparison? Mainland sims have been going for $3000-3500, or double the price of a private island. At 8 sims/day, that's an income (according to you) of $720,000.

Again you're just making up numbers. 3938 private sims at the end of January with 779 added that month, and 546 in December (a lot of which are actually backorders at $195/month) puts the average private sim tier price at $228/month.

Adjusted your claimed numbers become:

Island Sales $1 million
Monthly Tier $900,410

Total revenue $1.9 million

Sim auctions $720,000
Subscription fees $456,000
Monthly tier $470,100

Total revenue $1,646,100

Even with your $195/month "maximum" claim that comes to $1.5 million or in other words: the mainland is much more valueable to LL per sim than private islands are.

Take away the cost of servers (which shouldn't fully be classified as income anyway) and it's a near break, despite the difference in number of sims.

I doubt Anshe could care less about some unverified account that doesn't want to spend RL money on SL. She makes her money renting her sims out, unverifieds don't spend RL money so they're not her customers.
When it comes to private companies, you're right, the more eyeballs the better for them, but at best their financial contribution counts as pocket change compared to resident owned and paid for land.

Emphasis mine. You said it yourself, islands, they don't count as part of the mainland and the costs of running those sims are shared equally because they are needed for the whole of SL. If premiums and mainland were to suddenly vanish tomorrow the need for orientation islands wouldn't be any less, and neither would the need for Linden owned gathering places.

Someone owning 1024m² of mainland pays $11/month ($6 for premium + $5 for tier) or $15/month ($10 for premium + $5 for tier), or 3.6 to 5 times what it comparatively costs a private sim owner.

trying to reverse engineer LL's books seems a silly waste of time to me.

Ive yet to hear Linden Labs come accross and say they need us to make sacrifices so they can stay afloat.

SO in absense of that I think we can assume they are making decisions that benefit them financially. Since they have access to the actual figures to make those decisions - Ill also assume they are better qualified to make them than most of us on the forums.

So, I gather this discussion has strayed far, far away from the posted title regarding free accounts... but I do have one thing to say regarding that. I know very little about SL/LL politics and haven't done any studying up on the free vs no-free argument and their respective pros and cons, however:

I would never have come to Second Life if it hadn't been free.

I'm not a cheapskate. I pay more than one monthly subscription fee for other computer games I'm hopelessly addicted to. However, SL isn't exactly mainstream yet, and I signed up on a pure lark.

There's alot of power in the impulse buy, people--especially when it doesn't cost anything.

We're not against free, we're against unverified.

I would have joined SL sooner if unverified status existed when I first heard about it.

It took over 6 months and a live demonstration from a friend that INSISTED several times that I needed to try it out before I finally gave in and gave LL a credit card swipe a basic account.

We are *for* unverified. We are also for better tools to create 'by invitation-only areas'.