Islands

Linden Labs uses Silicon Mechanics (.com I think) for all their hardware, the boxes they buy from them look to be about ~$4,000-4,500 USD. I'll assume maximum for this calculation.

It takes LL between 20 minutes and an hour to get a new estate online. (based on ordering experience) Assuming the maximum time (1 hour), and LL's standard fee for extra processing ($52.50/hr), that's an extra $52.50 there.

In my experience, rackspace (+power) will average around ~$30 per 2 RU, per month. LL's machines are 2RU. However, this does not include bandwidth.

LL has stated in the past that their peak bandwidth usage is 1gbit, so, assuming LL has only 1gbit of connectivity (and they buy it from internap I believe) - in my experience, that's around $15,000/month.

So.

Doing the math on all this (which is ignoring larger more expensive assets, such as the database cluster and asset cluster); assuming 1500 sims:

Per sim first month (Dual Dual Core)
$1125 - Setup
+$30 - Rackspace
+$10 - Bandwidth
+$52.50 - Staff time
-----------------------
$1,217.50

Each month thereafter (assuming two hours maintainence per sim)
$30 - Rackspace
$10 - Bandwidth
$105 - Maintainence
------------------------
$145.00

Of course, these are napkin calculations - with the snippets of data LL has posted occasionally, staff time seems to be the big factor in the monthly fees - and while in a practical sense, it will probably be cheaper, developer fees will definetely bring it back up again.

Think of the non-commercial potential of a jumbo jet. You could land it in Africa with bags of rice. You can give a free taxi service to people wanting to cross the country. You could throw the most enjoyable flying parties anyone has ever seen. When will the airplane industries learn to just give a few jumbo jets and free fuel to the good hearted.

The napkin says LL are making ~$30 profit per setup and ~$50/month for rental for a total of ~$630 annually per estate. So even offering a special limited-time half-off setup fee for a week or two would require a year per sim to recover and start to generate profit.

That is a lot to ask. Still, a sprite can dream.

Yes you can rent a jumbo jet, lease actually.

http://www.aircraft-charter-world.com/

" If you need a business jet, we'll get you one. If you need a jumbo jet, we'll get that too."

There you go.

Lewis

TY and you rent island if you want

Ummm...If you bought up all the land on a mainland sim, at the ridiculous amounts that people charge, I'm afraid you'd have spent more than the setup fee

I think it's definately a fair price, you are after all going to make good money off of your sims after they are up and running. Even without 'selling' the lots, ROI is around 3 months depending on configuration. If you sub and sell, your in profit land very quickly.

I think it would be foolish to get rid of the setup...there would be soooo many people ordering sims that can't afford them to keep them.

Unfortunately there are many uses for a whole sim that do not involve parcelling them up and selling/renting them - and the whole point of my original thought was whether removal of the setup fee might just encourage more non-commercial builds.

Not everyone is here - and not everyone who buys a sim - purely to make a profit.

Lewis

Gawd you're funny

It makes sense to me that they would have a setup fee. What would be really nice is if they would waive the setup and maintenance fee if we could show we had a box and a connection capable of handling it.

If we were hosting our own sim, that would give us many more options, like being able to duplicate our sim on a second server to be used in the event of a major malfunction.

They could operate the software off our machines just as easily as they do their own, and we could all happily prance about the server and stuff without much difficulty.

Of course, this would mean *we* would have to purchase the servers, and, as needed, *we* would have to purchase the upgrades. If the server proved too underpowered to handle the upgrades, or gods forbid our available bandwidth should fall below a certain threshold, then I guess we'd have to move the whole sim to their system and pay the costs.

Of course, there are many reasons why they may not want this. My first thought would be the security of your server. They can not guarantee that your server {and the data on it} are secure. Nor can you guaruntee that you won't take data off the server.

So them's the beefs. Take it or leave it.

Love & Friendship & Blessed Be!
Lynn Erika Kilroy

*looks around*

pre-owned sims can cost a lot less to "buy."

*goes back to prim-slinging in Chaos*

That along with ComeOn's post about price planning is why the ONLY real profit LL makes is when someone cancels an island rental, and the next person pays the setup fee without requiring additional hardware purchases.

For as much as *I* would never pay the setup fee, I havent spent that on entertainment in the past 3 years total, its integral to their busines model and acceptible for people who truely want a sim.

My only suggestion is that Linden Labs needs to put a limit on the max sims any one individual or business can own. Tier just gets too effecient and they need to encourage more people with smaller overall plots aquisitions so they can bring in a higher profit margin per server.

you should save your L$ to buy an education.

The same thing happens on the Linden Estates (mainland) when someone sells a parcel and both the seller and buyer are charged tier for it during the same billing period.

Oh and thanks for pronouncing my name properly.

There is enough unowned land at any time that i think the double tiering might not make up for it. I surely hope it does. Id like to see more workable means for LL to make THEIR OWN money as a company.

It might have to go so far as to create 'Merchant Linden' account that sells its own Linden Devleoped content. I think offering items used in its events like a burning man doll would be a fair use for LL completing against other players. Selling rotating hands. Things like that.

If the Governor has accumulated so much unwanted land that this is true, they need to seriously work toward consolidating sims worth of those holdings and converting them to voids.

LL will make their own money when they open source the client and start licensing the server software to companys that want to build and host their own grids.

I think the difference between renting a 747 and a SL sim is that LL expect you to pay their capital expenditure for them (the server) - PLUS pay rental

Aircraft rental companies don't generally expect you to front up the cost of the 747 - PLUS pay rental...

Put it another way, when you hire a car from Hertz they don't expect you to front up £20k AS WELL as paying £50 a day, do they?

LL's business model is 'interesting', one might also say unique.

Another misunderstanding...


I was trying to say:
Boeing can not give jumbo jet for free, and LL can not give private sims for free.
If people cant afford a jumbo jet, they can lease.
If people cant afford buying a sim, they can rent from residents.

Alright - that's not the point *I* was exploring though, but it was the 'renting a 747' post that got me going, which is why I mentioned a 747 - *sigh*

Can anyone think of ANY rental/leasing setup where the customer is expected to pay the inclusive cost of the product/service up front (i.e. the cost of buying it) AS WELL as a rental charge?

Anytime you buy land on the mainland, you're doing exactly that...except the "inclusive cost" goes to the owner of that plot of land. Well, the land on new sims are owned by LL so that's who you pay. LL only makes this once, unless they inherit it back through abandonment. From then on, it's the owner that can sell it.

L$6 avg. cost per m2 in SL
sim of 65536m2 X L$6 = L$393216
avg cash out value of L$ = US$3 per 1000
L$393216/1000*US$3=US$1179.65

Can you see that it's the market (us) that's making $1200 for a sim viable? That L$6 avg price per m2 was set by us. Do you think if people could buy up whole sims for only L$3 per m2 ($600 per sim) that LL would still have a business selling sims for $1200?

By the way, don't think of tier as rental. You buy your house up front, and then still have to pay property and city taxes for upkeep. Same thing.

But someone, somewhere, has to shell out $1200 or so to get the sim in the first place, making the whole exercise prohibitive except for those with lots of money spare to put up front.

It's quite clear from the poll that the vast majority of voters in this thread would be prepared to own an island if they did not have pay the up front fees. Sure, perhaps just a small number - but interesting nonetheless.

Someone investing $195 a month is far likely to be committed to the game long-term than someone on a 1024 sqm $5 a month tier. The time, as well as the financial commitment, are more likely to provide a better in-world experience for everyone, making SL a more attractive product to the real investors - those who pay to play it, rather than the 'venture capitalists' who throw money at Linden Labs - who are only looking to try and make a profit.

I am quite convinced that 100 people paying for a whole region each month is far more valuable to Linden Labs than one individual owning 100.

Lewis

*sigh*

ANY rental/leasing setup anywhere outside SL

I WILL get this right eventually...

Why can't you buy void sims anyway? Or rather, quarter sims, if I could buy just a quarter sim for a quarter the set-up, and quarter the tier, I'd be right in there. And when you think about it, how many 'private islands' are really used as private islands? Something like that is too big and too costly for just personal use, it really has to have something on it to make it a bit easier on the pocket.

However, if you could buy a single 'small' sim (or a full-size sim with 1/4 prims, shared script/physics time or whatever) then I think it would be a REALLY popular option, as you get many people already who buy up a quarter of a sim or so for their home (especially if they share with a number of people), but would love nothing more than the extra privacy their own sim would afford them.

Yes, indeed.

You can buy a pack of four 'void sims' for the price of one proper island, 65536 sq m each but only 1875 prims.

Unfortunately LL don't offer them individually yet.

Lewis