Prices Doubling?

Yep no need to get the price up at this time.. Althought I need to cut down a bit on RL expenses. So only will drive the Mercedes, the Rolls will stay in the garage.

But most of the Landlords have raized there prices already..

If people can sell more than 20 a month, they can afford a premium account and rent from LL directly. Landlords are (mainly) for basics.

Mabey they can but will they? Store owners arent moving that easy with their store due to the Landmarks and Customers. a lot of folks here try to break even with their Tier/Rent. If you lucky then your basic account will be paid for too. A few people can cash out some profit to RL and only a very few will be lucky enough to pay their RL rent from it.

Its the "L$ to Tier/Rent" that have the most trouble..

Anyway, I will not raize my prices yet. Will see what the future brings.

Their personal choice. Personally I feel they should limit basics to selling only 20USD a month, to encourage more premium users.

That doesnt work.

Mabey this works:

Basic wants to make something: "Sorry for premium users only"
Basic wants to give money to Premium account: "Sorry only premium members can do that"
Basic wants to transfer items: "Sorry for premium users only"

It would be nagging as hell.. But something like that is the only way to encourage people to go/stay premium.

I don't know what the big deal is really? If someone does raise their prices, its due to inflation in SL. No one is getting any richer by doing it. I did raise mine but it was only a percentage of the increase and not on everything anyways.

No prices aren't doubling either. Maybe a few Lindens here and there. I know at least two of the vendors I rent out that have either raised the rent or talked about doing it because of dwell going away and trying to pay with tier with the poorer Lindex exchange rate. I had no problem with them doing it because I know things have changed in the past 5 months.

And if say the Lindex strengthened again, I surely will lower the prices back to what they used to be.

I know u can relate Shaun when I say personally, I use to charge for my Mall just enough to cover the sim and advertising. Many business are not in business to make Pure profit, but any smart one isnt going to just pay out of pocket every month for the hours they put into making SL worth being here.

I can not see where before i charged before 2 - 2.5L a prim just to cover the server expenses every month (sim purchase came from my personal sales or pocket) at a 250L per dollar price, and not raise rent. People see and assume as they wish about content creators and business people. In the end Not one person is sucessful in SL without working hard for it. I am sure even Anshe Chung had many sleepless nights when she first started and probably still does. Second Life is not a Get Rich Quick idea. I think I can Speak for Many content creators when I say we spend 12 hours+ a night for many nights or weeks to put out 1 new unique items to earn maybe 5 cents an hour at the price we place it at to sell to the members.

will consumers tolorate prices doubling in such a short time frame? that should be asked when their favorite club , designer, shop, or sim shuts down shop because they can not pay for tiers. Just my input.

A sudden increase in prices won't bother me too much, as the only thing I ever spend $L on are uploads and crap at the freebie stores.

Why not just write(or pay someone else to write) a data scraping thingy to get the current $L/USD rate off of the Lindex or SLX, and assign your vendor prices based on that?

Example: If you wanted to sell your Grey Goo Sim Crasher™ for $1 USD, and at the time of purchase the current Lindex rate was 500 $L/ 1 USD, your vendor script would sell the item for $L 500, then (optionally) cash out immediately.

A bit more complex than your usual vendor script, but definately doable.

I "own" half a sim in Dreamland (Plush Zeta) next to the Dreamland hub. I rent most of it out and charge Linden dollar rental by the week. Providing I am able to cover part of my tier cost I am not personally too worried about the devaluation issue personally. After all I can increase rent.

But what you have to take into account is that devaluation aside, the stipends are also decreasing (as well as dwell) therefore people have less in world money to spend, unless they are prepared to purchase more Lindens via a real dollar cost.

That is a difficult issue because of the attitude problem.... some people will never use real US Dollars to participate in what they call a game. If that attitude changes then the Linden Dollar may stabilise

Maybe the time has come for Linden Labs to abolish free accounts and charge the entire basic premium tier, and pay the higher stipend that goes with it. With this they could (by concession) allow each new premium client the ability to create two free (non stipend) account alts if the member wished to create his or her own group for land purchase

Of course we could loose many free accounts but in time the economy should recover due to the remainder of us receiving a higher stipend and the extra real dollars would migrate directly to Lindens profit line.

Just a personal view

Either way, we need ways to encourage users to go premium.

edit: looks like I'm not alone:

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the big deal for me is that I rented out space at a calculated rate based on the current exchange rate at the time around L$272. now the rate is L$330 and i'm losing money hand over fist because the rent i collected to pay tier fees isn't covering my costs.
if this continues and everytime i raise my prices the rate falls and i'm stuck losing money, then i'll just selloff my land and call it a day. somebody needs to fix something because i am bleeding money.

use paypal, and USD, is my advice for renting

Cutting stipends won't help renters any, and it will hurt landlords, so somehting else needs to be done.

Uh, Shaun, you ask for people's opinions, then when Jonas gives his opinion you insult him?

Thanks but no thanks... not participating in this one.

Eh, I'm thick skinned about silly things like that usually.

I shop alot and none of my favorite designers have changed their prices. For the few places that I've visited that have... the landmark gets deleted from my shopping folders.

If you peg your buisiness plan on the performance of a fictional currency, the you deserve to bleed money.

People make this same mistake in real life by pegging their business plan on fictional $USD, which is not backed by anything, is printed by the government exacty the same was as LL prints it, and is only worth anything at all because people have simply agreed that it is worth something. It's no different from $L aside from a HUGE number of government and legal restrictions on it, and businesses at times loose out money due to forgetting to account for inflation of the $USD, too. The only reason people deserve to bleed money is if they could have predicted a devaluation of currency, but did not bother to do their homework. I don't think anyone could've predicted the more recent (last two weeks) drop in $L.

"For the few places that I've visited that have... the landmark gets deleted from my shopping folders."

Why should content creators spend their own personal money to cover tier so that you can buy their things at the cheaper rate? Why should THEY pay for YOUR gaming experience?

Musuko.

Why should we pay for their electrical bills. Why should we pay for their coffee? I DON'T CARE if they make their teir in USD. I pay mine in USD not lindens. If they can't afford to keep their business going because they price their items so noone buys them, then they should go out of business. Why should I subsidize their existence?

Ummmmm....I think you've missed the point. They're *trying* to keep their businesses going. And, in order to do that, many have had to raise their prices.

The fact is, tier is paid in US$. You need US$ to pay it, as do content creators. You're not "subsidizing their existence", you're paying a fair price for a service. If you thought an item was worth $1 last month, why do you now gripe when the item's L$ price is adjusted to it still costs $1? So, the original question stands -- why should creators not adjust their prices to account for currency devaluation just because you feel you're entitled to a discount?

This presumes one actually does pay attention to "RL worth" of the in-game virtual currency in the first place, with every purchase they make. When for many it's just a game played in spare time for kicks, as entertainment _outside_ of RL and with as little ties to RL as possible. As such they don't perceive increased in-game prices as 'keeping them the same' ... they perceive these as simply getting higher.

Actually the question is: Why should I pay more for something than I would yesterday? 10L is 10L to me. The currency exchange value plays no part in my decisions..

So my original question stands: Why should I subsidize their costs? By paying higher costs, I am. You might get the same amount of USD from an old 50L sale and a current 70L sale, but to me its just a 20L difference. I do not care about the USD value.

Why should I pay more for adjusted prices just because they feel entitled to make the same amount USD?

Putting hands over eyes does not mean tiger is not there. You make constat calim creators deserve nothing becasue SL "just a game". What it really mean is you brush off thier efforts as valueless while still wanting to own the results of those efforts. You are greedy.

You are operating under the false asumption that everyone puts a USD value on items ctreated in world. I don't resell Lindens nor do I take them out of world for the purpose of profit...never have. Therefore they are only worth as many L's as I see them as being worth. And most items don't take that long to create anymore. If I was actually purchasing the geometry files and saving those to my hard drive for use elsewhere perhaps they'd be worth something in USD, but as SL created content is only in SL and cannot be exported for other places it only has value within SL and in the in world economy. I'm not dumb enough to pay USD for something that I cannot use elsewhere. SL itself doesn't count as I see it as a membership fee.