Stipends and Economy

I agree. LL NEVER made any promise except that they would pay $50L per week to a basic account that logged in at least once during the week and $500L per week for a premium account regardless of when they log in. There was never anything mentioned about bonuses.

It's done in RL. And if I were to sell content I'd definitely be doing it in some form. But the thing is, it's not exactly something I'd likely talk about. For example beer companies do this; send employees into bars to order their beer and let people they meet try it. People in the bar don't know this. They think they've hit it off with some hot guy or gal. There's something not quite honest in this.

It would work. Whether or not you would want or could find the job is another issue. I suspect there are people in SL doing exactly this sort of thing. I doubt they're posting job offers for this kind of thing.



No argument there.



I posted another suggestion in another thread. Not to you though. However, I have to say I've not seen anyone else post any suggestions for options like what I discuss above. Perhaps I've missed them. And maybe someone should keep track of them and post a thread to discuss those kinds of suggestions. It's better than just complaining, wouldn't you agree?

I agree -

LL should stop promissing a set dollar amount -

If they want to keep this marketing plan up -
Instead they should say they will pay you a % of your 10$ a month back in Linden Currency.

Id also favor a small increase in Money for higher teir levels - set up in the way that its diminishing returns - Full sim teir could maybe give you 3 or 4 times what the standard $10 a month gets. This could be done instead of dwell.

-- it does not make sense to offer a fixed stipend when the Linden Dollar's price is market driven.

Agree. The stipend should be a %.

Interesting thought on the tier %. Keep that in mind for when/if LL goes to L$/m tier pricing. We know that the big tier players are going to want something in return for their investment and lost discount.

In the meantime, I'm still hoping LL let's me "cash in" all those useless and unused textures I've uploaded (I don't delete them just for this eventuality!). In the meantime, they're just eating up server space.

Yes I do agree and if I see any others I'll post them. I want to see what the "lower/no stipend" pushers propose for the talent-less who have time constraints.


hmmm a higher stipend for more land? I don't know that it should be in place of dwell/traffic because some people with very large plots don't get much traffic because it's for personal use rather than business use. I also don't know that it should be such an extreme difference...3-4 times the regular premium stipend? Seems like that in $L would undermine the land tier costs to some extent. I agree it would be nice if you recieved a bit of stipend money based on how much land you own (not just he higher tier levels) to encourage developing that land ($L for texture uploads, object purchases, etc...for those who just want to create an attraction or a replica of something without trying to make money off it) But I think any $L given back for land ownership will be coming out of those land tier charges and therefore undermining the whole point of land tier charges. If the economy wasn't such a big deal to so many it would be a good incentive for people to own more land? maybe?

As for the set $L ammount as part of the agreement...hmmm...in one way it's nice to know you have some security in signing up, but I can see the RL$ vs L$ problems associated with it. Perhaps (and i can't believe I'm saying this) the Stipend amount should be a set amount of your monthly payment at whatever the current RL value of the $L is. That would encourage everyone to want to help the economy. Did someone just suggest that? I can't keep track

This so discouraging. This is the third time in this thread I'm mentioning what is proposed for talentless people. I continue to do it, because people continue to post in a way that shows they don't understand. If you are talentless, you are the user of an entertainment. A user of an entertainment does not expect to get paid for using the entertainment. Linden Labs provide part of the entertainment. Talented people who make stuff provide part of the entertainment. Therefore the only people that actually have an actual reason to get paid for this entertainment are the talented people and Linden Labs. Talented people only get paid when you spend your $10 monthly fee on the market rather than pay to Linden Labs. How does Linden Labs get paid, teir costs, and monthly fees from those who want stipends. Why is it good to make sure Linden Labs get paid, and bad to make sure talented people get paid?

The market does pays some you may not want to get money. The market may pay gamblers, some land barons, and some that provide services others consider bad. No one gets anything including content creators however, unless people start learning to use the market and not just their stipends.

Its nice to be told our opinions do not matter on a thread set up to discuss the matter.

Oh, come on! That is not what Forseti meant by "it doesn't really matter" and you bloody well know it.

LL's view of thier product is the context in which we function. LL does not consider Sl to be a game - because (using the strictest interpretation of the word) it isn't a game. There is no goal and no restricting rules geared to making it more difficult to reach the goal. For LL, SL is a place in which the users can do as they see fit - the only limitations being those common to most societies, basically enforcing a social order so that people can get things done. This is our context.

I understand you see SL as a game - the word is easily broad enough to make that inarguably true. SL is something done as leisure time, not to be taken seriously. That's cool - I know I do plenty of that. So no one is saying you're not allowed to see it that way.

So what Forseti meant was (and I should not have to be explaining this) is, no matter how you view SL the context remains the same. Rather a far cry from claiming your opinions don't matter, isn't it?

I understand all that makes sense for a business person in SL. As I have said before many do not expect to make any money off of SL, many don't understand what you mean by "using the market", including me. So if I read you correctly, you're saying...if you can't create anything people will buy, don't have the time to "earn tips", and don't want to pay EVEN MORE than your monthly fee and land tier costs for $L, you don't deserve to have any $L?? That's harsh. Heck...when you go to chuck-e-cheeses and order dinner you get some game tokens as part of the cost, and you get them each time you return to pay for your dinner. So likewise why shouldn't you get some $L to "play" with each time you pay for your account...maybe it should be dolled out monthly instead of weekly? Please elaborate on what "using the market" means (or post links to your posts if they already explain, I apologize, but work/school starting up again has reduced me to skimming much of what is here)

The way I see it, and maybe it's flawed, but if Basic members pay once which provides internet and bandwidth space for their growing inventories, and premium members pay $10 a month (almost) for the right to pay more to own land (only difference) seems like that whole $10 pays for the stipend...if the stipend was paid out in $L whatever $10US currently goes for, seems perfectly fair to me.

thank you jillian

I certainly do not begrudge anyone the right to hold and express their own opinion.

LL appears to be taking a fairly long-term view when it comes to executing on their business strategy. That's why they are able to make unpopular decisions like cutting back stipends -- a move that most RL politicians would never be able to brave. LL knows that it is early days with their product and that much evolution is ahead before their vision is achieved.

They are willing to be unpopular at times right now because they believe in their vision, and probably will continue to believe in it until it is properly proven to fail. They are willing to lose a few customers now if they are convinced it will get them more customers in the future. I'm not saying that they are beyond influence, or that their vision of SL will not change and evolve (after all, the team at LL is just a bunch of smart people like you and I... not omniscient), but...

jillian put it well... LL's vision of SL is the context in which we participate.

There are currency exchanges that are posted by SL that trade your $L for real money. Soon SL will have a built in currency exchange. The $L is not funny money, because it can actually be redeemed for real cash. When you get paid $L2000 a month from SL, at today's rate you are getting paid somewhere around US$7. That means if you paid US$9.95 you got US$7 back. If you invested that same $9.95 on a currency exchange, you would of made somewhere around $L2843. You suddenly have more money, and the best part is every $L of that was from residents. Either they sold it to someone like IGE or they sold it more directly though a site like GOM. In other words the only way residents get any benefit from the $L you spend is if you go to the market to buy your $L instead of Linden Labs. It is not a horrible thing that your stipend help pay toward the maintenance costs by paying Linden Labs, but you are not suddenly helpless if your money goes to a resident rather than LL. You are already paying for $L, the only difference in using a market is who gets the benefit of your money. I'm just saying if you are already spending RL money, why would you be opposed to spending RL money on the currency exchanges.

If you are concerned about the rating bonus stipend, then you are concerned about a free lunch. You think that everyone has a right to be paid money with a real world value just because they signed up for SL and got people to like them. Eventually someone is going to want to be compensated somehow, and if some people are getting a free lunch, others are getting charged more than they should have to be.

thank you...be assured I'm not concerned with my rating bonus except that I think it's been cut sooner than expected, but whatever.

So if I'm reading you correctly we'd end up with more $L if we were basic members buying $10US worth of $L each month. Is it possible to get rented land for $15 US per month? If that's the case, it's definitely an option if ratings go bye bye, assuming the value of $L stays the same or improves. However if members start dropping their premium accounts to do this LL will be in serious doo doo!

absolutely. If it becomes cheaper to be a basic member renting land and simply buying whatever L$ you need on the currency market, then LL could start losing out on revenues and would have to think carefully about a number of policies, including the land/tier volume discount which enables the rental market.

in this hypothetical scenario, for every premium member that dropped down to basic to do this, LL would need to collect a roughly equivalent amount from the landlord or someone else on the other side of the economic food chain.

Has anyone had time to run these numbers using an average exchange rate and an average rental cost?

Well it is possible to get a greater return from Linden Labs if you buy the yearly option. At the yearly option you pay $72, which is $6 a month. As long as the exchange sells $L for more than this, that $6 a month would make you an additional US$1 every month. The downside is that you have to wait a year to get the full payout of a yearly bought stipend. In the end having the money today may be worth more to you than having it by the end of the year. Stipends are not useless, I'm just saying that they are not required to exist in SL. Stipends have their use, but the currency exchange market has its use as well. I'm just trying to make sure people understand that RL money is involved either way you go with similar results.

As for renting land, I believe the cheaper route in most cases for the long run are teir fees. I could be wrong about this as I don't have a list of every rental price charged by everybody, and there are discounts that give large rental land owners a possibility to charge less than the current low end teir costs. Stipends and land use are two whole different topics in the end. The cool part about rental land, is even if you are paying a rental owner to use land, alot of the money you spend goes to Linden Labs. The rental side of things at least allows payment both to residents providing a service and Linden Labs.

Why is this "harsh"? It doesn't prevent me from enjoying SL, so I don't understand this at all.

Ok...it doesn't prevent YOU from enjoying....but not everybody gets their kicks the way you do. Take a fair for instance. Many fair's include some ride tickets with your entrance fee because many people won't enjoy the fair without the rides. It's usually not enough to go on many rides, but it's enough to go on a few. People who want more rides will buy more tickets. Same with $L...some should come with your monthly fee and if you want more you earn or buy them. Yes I know that is how it is now. Probably will stay that way if Dark's scenerio becomes more widely known, I just don't understand those who think it shouldn't stay that way. In the case of the fair, those tickets have a RL value also so RL money is on the line. Do the fairs have to give tickets with the entrance cost, no, but they probably wouldn't have as many people go to the fair.

The quality of this discussion seems to have improved, so I'll join back in.

LL increasing the ease of buying L$ (albeit from other residents, not them) does indeed open the possibility of cutting their US$ subscription lifeline, since it makes no difference to us in the short term who the L$ come from.

Either LL have to maintain the premium subscription's attractiveness, by making sure the bundled L$ remain cheaper than any alternative source, or the US$ subscription income may wither, and have to be upped/replaced.

The source of their problem is their declaration that they will not buy/sell L$ for US$ directly from their own hand, with its ability to create them in infinite amount.

Fine though this sounds, in practice it is an illusory reassurance. It is not so much that they won't do it, as that they won't do it covertly, or vary the amounts without clearly announcing the change.

What do I mean? I mean that they sell L$ for US$ every day. Via the premium subscription.

I think the reason they don't do it directly is because almost none of us will be able to understand what is going on.

What would stop them making a RW profit just by making L$ for nothing, and selling them for US$. ? Thats what would puzzle people, and indeed in the short term it would work. If we ever see it happening, we could be sure LL was about to fold, and they were asset-stripping us.

The only thing that prevents it, of course, is that in the longer term, it's the change in the money supply that corrects everything, to negate the move causing it, though leaving a small permanent legacy behind.

We need a far higher level of economic literacy in the population, and without it LL would be in difficulties quieting unfounded accusations of improper practice.

But I think in the end, they may have to abandon the smokescreen necessary to conceal the mechanisms of control from the common view, and start selling directly. Both to maintain their own profitability, and the health of the economy. To best balance the two.

They probably need to do it, anyway. They seem to need the option of finer, quicker, and more decisive control. Unless I misunderstand, the economy seems currently to have entirely escaped from their fumbling efforts to hold it in any sort of check.

I am going to direct this to you because we share similar circumstances. We both work irl and do not care to come here for more responsibility. We both have a child to care as well. In fact, that is the major appeal which this venue of entertainment holds for me. It is one which I can indulge myself with while still maintaining parental supervision within my home (which is often lagged by the concentration of the neighborhoods' energetic resouces of youth). I'm guessing SL provides the same opportunity for you.

Where we seem to differ is in attitude. I understand that there are costs associated with providing entertainment. When I come home from a music venue, a movie or the art institute I have nothing more to "show" for it than I do when I hit control Q in SL. They are all experiences of the mind and as such have value. I choose to pay for my membership at the art institute on the annual basis rather with each visit because its cheaper. With that I am able to partake of the Van Gogh exhibit and Friday night concerts with no additional cost; seeing the White Stripes for "free" was very much worth the cost of membership. I attend many "free" festivals offered in my community. I understand that buying overpriced beverages and food helped to pay for my being able to see McCoy Tyner, Dr. John, Dave Brubeck, and Medeski, Martin & Wood for "free" last weekend.

There is an amazing amount of free content and entertainmant venues as well as educational opportunities which enable an individual to learn the tools by which to pay there own way. That one does not have the time or inclination to avail oneself of these opportunities is not the issue. At some point you have to decide what the social interaction and entertainment value is for you. Paying for a sitter and rl entertainment venues to socialize with your rl friends may be what you decide. At the very least, appreciating the value of your sl experience may help you to enjoy your life to a greater degree. It's all about the pov.

I sincerely wish you well.

I'm really just pointing out that terms like "harsh" seem out of place in the context of the situation. To be honest, if I heard someone in RL saying the same thing... something on the order of "Just because I sit on my porch all day and talk with my neighbors and don't actually do anything to earn a wage, not giving me money so I can go to the local fair and have fun is harsh"; I'd wonder who on earth thinks they're entitled to money/fun for doing nothing. Perhaps I'll just never understand that point of view.

When I was young I learned what it was to live poor - dirt poor. And for a while I had no toys. Neither did my friends. But nothing stopped us from turning rocks into tanks and twigs into miniature forts and using what we had available. I'd even venture that my current living as a designer is due in part to not having someone just give me free toys, because as a result I doubtlessly developed a more active imagination. Similarly, as I help others learn how to use the tools in SL, I find that they seem to gain more than just a mastery of some virtual interface. If I just gave them objects instead of teaching them to create their own, they'd never see the other more important benefits that this virtual place offers. So hearing that word "harsh" used as you have sounds so one-dimensional that I honestly wonder if you realize just what an amazing thing this is and what it's potential is... beyond having mindless fun.

NO FAIR!

Margaret- I know there are costs and that is why I choose to pay a monthly premium fee rather than a basic fee. I know the value and possibilities of SL, I just lack the ability or havn't been able to find the motivation/time to put into creating something. And like you said, at some point I'll have decide if it's all worth it. I forsee a long period where I won't even get to turn on the computer after my child is born, perhaps that will be when I choose to leave...who knows. As long as I'm paying for my monthly membership I do not feel that a stipend is something for nothing.


Csven - I use the word harsh because I felt it was a harsh attitude towards those who lack the time or talent or desire to create content. When I come home from a day of dealing with "gotta have an attitude with everyone so others think I'm cool" 5th and 6th graders and their sqeaky, honky, in need of repair but their parents can't afford it instruments, yeah I want some mindless fun. I do not want the frustration of "ok I gotta get something out there that people will actually buy so that I can have some mindless fun" That's just me though.

I think it's time to withdraw from this thread because I'm not serving the purpose that I joined the thread for. I am of the mindset that the stipend is part of the monthly premium membership fee and therefore not a hand-out or welfare, where everyone else seems to think the opposite, that we should have to work for every penny we have in SL. I'll agree to disagree.

It appears you missed my earlier comment: "However, if someone gets a Premium account and it says that included with the account is a specific, weekly stipend, then when LL drops the stipend there is imo an issue worth discussing at that point."

This could be the point that entertainment and diversion which is available any time it is convenient for your schedule increases in value.

Well yes, my point is I more than give back ALL my weekly stipend ( which comes from my PAID subscription) and I donate the ' ratings bonuses' through my Money Tree to complete new players, and I am sure some people running the trees from their weekly stipend will maybe stop doing so, if they dont get their ratings money also.

In my case I would continue my Tree with the stipend alone, as the ratings bonus is just something that to me, I agree is based on a broken system anyways... but I think it may put some people off running them at all, thats all I meant to say..

It doesn't matter if you have the extra money, or others have the extra money. The fact is that you are getting the equivelant of real life cash for free through rating bonuses and then giving it away. It makes no difference if Linden Labs was the last person to give it away or you were. Every $L of that moeny you give away from your ratings bonus is newly created $L that did not give any benefit to any resident or Linden Labs. Neither group got any money from you in exchange of that $L, yet whoever you give the money to can go on the currency exchange and get real life money for those free $L. Even if they buy something, they have also in a way hurt the person they bought from. They hurt them, because the money they pay them is now worth less. It would be okay if there was enough money leaving the system that this didn't make much of a difference, but the price of the $L over the last year does not suggest that is the case. Is it good that anyone should get free $L at the expense of others who work hard to make things you enjoy?