motivation for basic members to be premium members

what motivation is there for basic members to be premium members besides owning land.

i was reading here in this thread /261/f6/84836/1.html

about increasing the amount of groups we are allowed to be in.

I am not trying to put down or bring a big divided up between premium and basic members

but there really is no incentive for basic members to become premium besides owning land.

with the rise in rental land in private Sims and the prospect of making that even more easier to rent land on the main land as outlined here
/130/05/84754/1.html

the one motivation for a basic member to become a premium member will be severely diminished

with so many basic members taxing the system and getting to play virtually for free should there not be some added motivation for basic members to want to become premium members.

just some food for thought.

They're not 'playing for free', really. They're paying a third party who then pays Linden Labs. Probably not as much as if they all owned land seperately, but it's not free. Someone is holding the tier for that land.

I thought at the telehub time that p2p would be a great thing to reserve for premium members.

But there are surely a lot of other things that would make premiums more attractive, such as the increase in groups you mention.

Maybe ability to change names! Stuff like that. And I wouldn't balk at a raise in the premium stipend, either.

coco

Nice try, Khamon.

I never thought you'd stoop this low.

Oh yeah nice try Prokofy; I thought you didn't post to the General Forum anymore.

Don't you dare insult my Jarod like that, Cory.

I know that once my partner purchased an island ... the only reason that I kept the premium membership for a bit was because of the stipend paired with the bonus.

Once they eliminated the ratings bonus along with the stipend ... (I really liked my hunk of L per week ... and my shopping has been curtailed drastically) I no longer had incentive to pay the monthly rate and could buy Lindens for the same price.

I suppose that makes me cheap .. but really figured I could buy the Lindens if I needed them .. 9.95 worth a month and it would money going directly to fellow players.

Okay Jardon, back on topic:

I hadn't thought about granting the ability to join more groups only to premium account holders. Actually, it never occured to me to limit P2P to premiums either. Linden Lab seems to think that the ability to own land and the boosted stipend are enough product for between six and ten dollars a month. There were more premium features promised way back in 1.2; but they were never itemized and they never materialized.

Heck I'd still upgrade Khamon to a lifetime account if that were made available for some length of time. It just wouldn't squeeze out of the Christmas budget in the short window of opportunity I had when I joined.

Topic yes topic, does Linden Lab value premium accounts per se? Their business model may be morphing into something that recognizes large scale land developers and everybody else. Premiums that own less than a few sims worth of land may share a bucket with basics in LL's collective mind. I suppose these questions bear asking. We'll know the answers based on their decisions over the next few months. Time tells all.

*edited to clarify this point because a certain Godel is kicking me in the shins

Linden Lab might well be doing everything they can to encourage premiums to teir down to basic with the expectation that most of those accounts will continue to pay tier indirectly through rental empires. If LL can reduce the number of people they have to deal with as direct customers, they can slow the expansion of liason ranks and better focus their development efforts on the needs of parallel grid operators.

This thought evolved from combining the wisdom of LL functioning as a hosting service and the observation of dozens of people posting and telling me inworld that they've tiered down to basic and are now renting more land than they owned when they were premiums.

Is this really a growing trend?

Ooh, being able to pick a new first or last name when you're "Confirmed" (heh) as a Premium Member would be a nice bonus. Particularly if you're stuck with a name like "Sexy67 Daftpoodle" because you didn't understand the way LL works.

Not that I've any regrets about "Stonecutter", but the options were a bit thin on the ground when I signed up.
Now THAT is an interesting idea. If I have a problem with land or neighbors, I'm more likely to go to Alliez or Tony, so instead of dealing with a hundred or so premium users demanding satisfaction they have to deal with two people who are doing a great job acting as buffers between LL and the builders on their islands.

Maybe LL doesn't really want a whole lot more Premium accounts.

On the other hand, if there was a benefit OTHER than land for going premium, they'd get people who were paying premium fees and not being annoying small landowners... "

I only own 1500 m2 or so..and my land blends with my neighbours - so do I classify as an 'annoying small land owner?'

I am a drain on society. I cannot go premium as my husband already has. We have 2 small children. They are my #1 priority. It does not make good RL financial sense for us to have 2 premium accounts. That being said, I would gladly get rid of the $50L stipend for myself (I am in no way, shape, or form speaking for anyone other than myself) in order to keep P2P for all players (geez, this has such a feeling of a class struggle). I could give a hairy rat's arse about adding more groups (at this time). I do work in SL (texturing builds), so I guess I'm really NOT that much of a drain. Oh well.. just my $L50 worth.

I do enjoy playing SL when I get to .

Moved to land and economy because it involves land. and economy.
carry on ^_^

it does ? what does asking about premium memberships and basic memberships and any motivations basics may have to become premium have to to with ether land or the economy ?


and Joy Honey i was not inferring anything towards basic members i was simply asking what motivations LL has to entice basic members to become premium members if this is in fact a good thing any way.

I know you were - I was just offering another aspect as to why some people stay basic

(p.s. I also think I meant to respond to a different thread. I've had a very rough week, sorry)

*hugs joy *

Actually it does deal more with Land/Econ, though dealing more with LL's econ.

*Anyway,*

If you look at the chatlogs for the 'Group changes' meetings (in particular the first one), LL is pretty clear that they feel Mainland to be a set of Estates owned and maintained by them.

With that kind of mindset, Khamon's idea makes more sense. For example, if I owned an island (that could be shared/rented in the 'traditional' manner - Numba don't count) I'd likely allow anything as long as it did not severely cross the bounds of decency. Or I could enforce that by placing the island PG (we need more of these really and I suspect that it would still fill quickly).

But the core of it would come down to, would *you* actually rent from me instead of either someone else, or even LL (via the Mainland/Tier system). In that light, as well as the future things coming down the road - like Covenants - LL is focusing on the Reseller model now. Not a bad idea IMHO short-term, since it does free up employees for other work.

Now, back to Premium - I'd probably be on Basic now myself if I didn't have Numba. But remember that other than land you're given a guaranteed income in L$ (unlike the Basic 'must login once every week' thing), and its larger too. Tis why I went straight to Premium when I got in for the first time. Land never bothered me, but I wanted something akin to a reasonable amount of money to work with if I needed it.

Interesting. Over several edits on the second half of this post, an idea has emerged - Give all accounts (including Premium) the option of auto-buying L$ from LindeX each week. There would be a monthly US$ threshold that you would set. This is purely an account-side change, and would require a CC as normal in Premium (or prepaid via PayPal or some such).

For example, I'd like another US$5 each month in L$. So an auto-buy of US$1.25 each week would be done. That's something around L$350 currently; To a Basic account this would be a *huge* improvement for them - and only for the cost of one small soda each week.

I could see enough Basic members going along with this (remember, this is voluntary) to greatly increase the turnover in L$ under LindeX. Would help fix the whole dropping L$ too I'd suspect.

OK, I hath rambled enough,

Yes Jonas as do I with only 14ksm of land neatly blended into neighbouring builds in two sims.

The way to raise the Linden's value is to create more ways for Lindens to be removed from the economy. That is, to have more things that *Linden Labs* can be paid for in Lindens. Even if they're things that don't cost LL anything tangible, like changing your name when you get married.

That would depend on your prices and policies, of course.

Do away with the basic and the premium memberships all together; there is little point to the difference between them anyway. People might pay a premium membership to get the stipend but not want land, or want land but not need the stipend.

Make every member just a member and offer up a service where anyone set up a weekly allowance that comes from SL.

Set the price at 1000L$ / 4US$ and this could replace the membership fees, and will give people an easy way to get their money on a weekly basis. While also keeping some money flowing into the system, but not letting it flow in for free.

250L$ a week = 4$US a month
500L$ a week = 7$US a month
1000L$ a week = 15US a month

Keep the land tiers the same, but allow anyone to buy them regardless if they buy an allowance from the SL or not.

If anyone had access to the land teirs they would have to being at 0 land for 0 pay. If the current land rate of 512 for 0 remained you could have massive groups of "free play" alts each pitching in their 512 to the ground and owning a 10,000 m2 area at no cost what so ever. Don't fix what isn't broken

Yeah, if the premium accounts were free they'd have to shift the land tier prices down one notch. 0 for free, 1-512 for $10, 513-104 for $8, and so on.

Eh, I don't really see the advantage here. You can always buy money from the Lindex if you want more, and the Premium account basically covers what the first 512 land worth of teir would cost.

Your solution would just accelerate the devaluation of the L$ as well, since LL would be printing more money each month for players that opted for the higher rates.

If anything, I'd rather have some percentage (maybe L$50 of the L$500/month) come from the Lindex instead of from LL just printing money. Just redirect part of your monthly fee to the index to pay for it and reduce the amount of money printed each fortnight.

That is a posibility, I was (thinking) hoping that people would be smarter with thier money.

I had a big long response, but I won’t post it and leave this all to the Lindens to figure out, I am sure they have plenty of thoughts on the matter.

A great thinker I have never been, I shouldn't be dwelling on these things, let alone rambling about them out in public.

What I really think the economy is lacking is unskilled labor.

Right now the only forms of employment are *ahem* "service" industries... Gambling, Camping, Real estate, or Manufacturing your own products to sell.

Without the unskilled "drone" style jobs there isn't a sink to give the money the 'Haves' (Those in the top 5% of L$ earning) acumulate back to the 'have nots' (basic accounts or ones without sources of revenue) And as such the economy becomes less like a pool and more like a flowing stream, Money flows in, changes hands until eventualy residing in the pockets of the Haves and then back out again sold for US$.

Some clubs have a form of pay for guests as means of incentive to keep thier attendees both happy and spendy, the logic being that as long as they are in the club they are earning traffic and as long as they have money and see something at said club they want, they will spend said money right there. Win Win, The club owner earns traffic, the participant gets a product they wanted and the club owner gets the money that was just awarded in prize money right back in the form of product sale. Huzzah..

However there can only be one winner and the ammounts are scaled to balance vs the expected traffic earning, IE 5L$ every 10 minutes, Not stellar considering the average item of clothing costs 100L$, outfits, shoes, and hair 250L$ and skins 1000L$.

I wish I had an answer, I really do. Can anyone think of a way to make employment viable? What would you pay someone 300L$ an hour to do? ( besides sex, I covered that.)

I think the unfortunate truth here is that unlike the RL economy, not every person in SL has monetary value outside of the money in their pocket, without a skill and without money they are an economic non-entity.

L$300 an hour sounds a bit better than an "unskilled labor" rate, in game terms anyway. my 'in-game" character feels wealthier than I am in RL: I have a fairly large property next to a popular sim... but not in a lag zone... I've got enough "stuff" that some people in-game think I'm spending too much on "stuff", and my budget is a bit over L$3000 a week including land.

I don't think there's enough real money in the Linden economy to support many unskilled jobs that could pay that in three easy evenings work. Maybe 1/10th that would be reasonable.

Here's some ideas, though. What's a user got that's scarce, that can't be emulated by a script?

Avatar.

NPCs or monsters in SL role playing games like Darklife.
Window dummies in stores.
...

Ability to perform actions that scripts can't do....

Transcribing information to notecards.
Uploading or downloading objects.
Taking snapshots and movies. Rent an AVACAM for L$30 an hour!
...

Ability to make decisions that scripts can't...

Tier 1 helpdesk.
NPC in SL role playing games.
...

when we get to it, 250 l$/hour would seem reasonable to pay people who decently roleplay a (working) monster, using a monster-suit with scripts from darklife