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Numa Herbst
SHI-SHAAA!!
Join date: 13 Jun 2005
Posts: 99
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11-29-2005 23:34
I think a lot of people are forgetting about the huge influx of free basic accounts and its impact on the median $L balance.
You can see the median $L balance taking a dip from $800-ish to $500 or so when that was instated. I'd be willing to bet that the number of basic accounts versus premium accounts has risen as a result of the free basic promotion, and that would skew the numbers as they are.
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Dark Korvin
Player in the RL game
Join date: 13 Jun 2005
Posts: 769
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11-29-2005 23:42
From: Roxie Marten Some of us would rather spend on your money on real things than buy play money on the internet. Real things like real land with a real sunset to view and real water that flows by. I'm not really sure what you are talking about here. It makes complete sense that you want to spend on things in real life. It makes perfect sense that you have looked at Second Life and decided that it is worth US$0 to you. That is what you are supposed to do. That doesn't mean everyone values things in SL at US$0. You are free to spend however much you want in world, and others are free to spend however they want. Freedom of choice is great, isn't it. Just don't be angry if someone who made something you like wants money for what they are selling. That is part of their choice too. There are plenty of people willing to give you stuff free if that is all you want. Try Yadni's junkyard. |
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Dark Korvin
Player in the RL game
Join date: 13 Jun 2005
Posts: 769
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11-29-2005 23:47
From: Lorelei Patel OMG LIES  Anyway, back to some of my original questions: If people have fewer Lindens on-hand in general now (and that's IF), does that mean that vendors are seeing less revenue? I really didn't mean for this to degenerate into a debate about welfare states, budgeting priorities or capitalism as a system. I promise you, not my intent. What I am curious about is what that might mean for in-world businesses. Okay, if people overall have less money, that is a good sign for business. It is a sign that people are finding stuff in SL they find worth buying. I would be more worried everyone saved up thousands of $L, because they never saw anything worth buying. Not to mention, $L only make businesses other than LL money when people have to buy their $L from the Lindex market. If people have low balances, then they will have to come to the Linden market when they want more. Every day only has so many US$ going through the Linden market. If everyone was rich enough to not need to pay US$ for their $L, then the value would crash quickly. |
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Hiro Pendragon
bye bye f0rums!
Join date: 22 Jan 2004
Posts: 5,905
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11-29-2005 23:47
Bottom line, free accounts means more casual users.
More casual users means people don't care as much about money.
I think this is fairly natural.
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Hiro Pendragon
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http://www.involve3d.com - Involve - Metaverse / Emerging Media Studio
Visit my SL blog: http://secondtense.blogspot.com
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Shirley Marquez
Ethical SLut
Join date: 28 Oct 2005
Posts: 788
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It's all those new users...
11-30-2005 10:11
The population of SL has been booming ever since Linden started giving away free basic accounts. The total world population was around 60,000 a month ago when I came in -- one month later, it's over 90,000! So, you've got a whole bunch of new people with a mere L$250 in their pockets (even if they can manage to resist spending any of it) -- of course that's going to drag the average down! Even the ones who get involved and spend a lot of time in-world will probably just buy Lindens as they need them, rather than building up a huge balance, so until they gain experience and start producing things they can sell, the bank balances of the new users will remain modest.
The total transaction volume seems to be keeping pace with the population growth, and that's a far more important measure; it means that the new members are spending at something close to the same rate as the old ones. More spenders = more business; good for everyone. Eventually it will mean more producers too, but for now I expect it means boom times for the established sellers.
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kai Bunin
Registered User
Join date: 13 Sep 2005
Posts: 46
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12-01-2005 06:07
Defunked stipends and bonuses, kind made it easyer for basic people life in game much better,Now your pretty much have scape some moeny some way.
This drop can get worse .
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Kevin Korvin
Registered User
Join date: 3 May 2005
Posts: 13
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12-03-2005 04:13
From: Lorelei Patel OMG LIES Anyway, back to some of my original questions: If people have fewer Lindens on-hand in general now (and that's IF), does that mean that vendors are seeing less revenue? I really didn't mean for this to degenerate into a debate about welfare states, budgeting priorities or capitalism as a system. I promise you, not my intent. What I am curious about is what that might mean for in-world businesses. There is no impact IMO, because this more closely resembles a pyramid scheme. (EDIT: OK, that was too harsh. But it does derive it growth from new subsribers.) Since I've joined around 6 months ago, subscribers have tripled, and average online users in my time zone have doubled. The more people that come online introduce more cash into SL. The running in world sales average continues to go up. Since the rate of the number of vendor's unique creations can only increase at a snail's pace as compared to the rate of the number of online users, using sales data to compute poverty is about as bad as using Walmart's sales to compute world hunger. OK, not that bad! |