No dwell - no point in free content

I will be selling my 40000mts of accumilated land in a sim. For months i have been building it up, i get on average just under a thousand visits a day, and much thanks from visitors.
On of the things that helped me financially was dwell, without it i can not justify carrying on. Whats the point in doing free content for SL without some financial help to cover the huge tier costs?
I now expect SL to start to become one huge americal mall, with nothing diverse and appealing, little creativity except for goods for profit.
Personally I feel very sad about this change to the terms, for me removing the stipend would have been a better solution. We will no longer see cool content unless backed up with items for sale to help pay teir - a sad state of affairs.
I will now become a free user.

If you're expecting financial help then you're not exactly providing free content, you're simply passing the cost on to someone else, in this case LL through dwell payments to you.

If you feel the only reason you got so many visitors a day was because your content was free and that those visitors would not come if they had to pay, then you need to take a hard look at what you were providing.

Though I agree with this: "If you feel the only reason you got so many visitors a day was because your content was free and that those visitors would not come if they had to pay, then you need to take a hard look at what you were providing", it is also not the first time that the OP's question has been raised in these forums: "Why should I pay for the entertainment of other people???"

I think a good deal of people who are right now offering free entertainment will do it for a fee in the future.

What's the point of paying hosting fees to build a website and forum based on a topic you find interesting or to support your favourite social club? Seriously, you sound like one of those people that waves a receipt at the treasurer every time they buy thumbtacks for the bulletin board or subway for the dance team.

If you've bought more land than you can afford to pay for, that was just a simple mistake on your part, like buying a car that requires more monthly payment, insurance and gas than you can afford. How many companys pay you for using their product?

That's a good question. How many companys do pay people to use their products? Do coupons count? How about cash back from credit cards? That's kind of like dwell payments isn't it? Maybe it's not such an innovative and useless a model as we thought. What do y'all think?

Well, my website can afford 200000 visits per year for 3 € per month. I'd say this is significantly more expensive

Your motives were entirely wrong. Some of my reasons to provide free content: to help people learn. To brighten someone's day. To get feedback on my own skill-set. To make the SL world a little bit of a better, more fun place.

Not to receive a free hand-out. The GNUbie store run by Jai Nomad in Indigo and YadNi's Junkyard will continue to thrive, I'm sure, because they're motivated by the right reasons. I'm fairly sure the north of the original SL continent will continue to be mostly mall free, with boutiques here are there.

Regards,

-Flip

I offer free corncob bubble pipes at my "Quay" because I like people blowing bubbles all over my boardwalk. :hrug:::

Well, ideally, it would be 'to the visitor as a fraction of the $10.00 a month they were paying for it'. If dwell was based on premium visitors, then that would be exactly what it was... but Linden Labs didn't think of that obvious fix.
I would like you to show me any site anywhere in SL that's sufficiantly unique and amazing that it's worth the hassle of buying a land pass to visit it, even if it's only L$1.

It's like websites. How many websites are "for pay"? How many "for pay" websites do you visit? How many websites are paid for by banner ads... by payments for traffic? By something that operates very much like dwell?

I've run both kinds, and building up a site that people are willing to pay for access to takes years of work and the kind of unique content that I honestly don't think is possible to host within Second Life.

Oh, and before you come back and suggest that people start selling banner ads in SL, I think you ought to try it first... if it's a viable business you win, if not, you'd be wasting your time debating it.

Um, the OP wasn't "receiving a free handout". They're still paying for their land. They're paying a little less for their land - because it is valuable to Linden Labs - because it's one of the places that attract paying customers.

Landowners pay more to Linden Labs than anyone. They're not the guy going to the treasurer for thumbtacks, they're the guy who owns the meeting hall that's the club's biggest expense.

You know what? I think LL should raise upload fees. The cheap upload fees are a subsidy for product creators. They're much more of a handout than dwell, and they encourage people to upload big bandwidth-busting textures instead of small efficient ones.

Let's say, L$10 for a screenshot, since that's a fixed size and not generally used for building, and maybe L$10 per second of sound (but make it as long as you want). But textures... L$10 for each 128x128 area. If you want to upload a 1kx1k texture that's L$640. Fair?

Everything we do at the Shelter is free for folks, and will continue to be regardless of the loss of Developer Incentives or Dwell. Charging admission to new residents completely defeats the purpose of our mission, and it won't happen as long as I'm around.

As long as the community continues to support us (which they have, hugely) - we'll be around doing what we do. At least in our case, the loss of dwell does not mean the end to free content.

I know people that at current upload charges spend around $25,000L per month on uploads. Drastically changing the upload fees would probably do two things 1) make content that much more expensive 2) prevent newer players with less money getting off the ground.

I'm not opposed to them being raised from $10L to like $15L, $20L etc. That wouldn't affect the overall as much

But those expenses aren't hidden. Tier payments are clearly published. All we're seeing here is an equivilent of the dot.com bubble bursting when the VCs began to realize that they weren't ever going to recover their initial investements, much less see any future profits.

Agreed.

Most content creators don't just upload that one item once, but many many times. You can't tell exactally how things are really going to look until you've uploaded them. If you increase the fee, people will either put out lower quality product because they can't afford to upload so many times, or they will charge more.

Why can't people read before starting a new thread? There have been MANY ideas put forth from the community about how to fund compelling free content. FFRC, donations, sponsorship from content creators, ect. SL has gotton to a point where there is really no need for handouts to landowners directly from LL.

That is awesome. I gotta remember to pick one up.

I proposed a "pay by the pixel" system for texture uploads long ago. 256x256 = L$10. 512x512 = L$40. 1024x1024 = L$160. BUT, also give a better texture preview system; the problem for content creators is you typically have to upload a texture for clothing well over 10 times to get everything right. Allow a texture to be discarded for a refund, for say, 30 minutes after upload, or until the creator clicks "accepted."

Receiving traffic payments was a free handout. You pay $195 per month for a full sim's tier. Period, that's the price. Not $192... not $190. Unless I'm missing something? Did the original poster's account say, "1 month, full sim tier.............$180"? No, of course not. It said $195.00, not something a little less.

I pay a full sim's tier every month, and I find people complaining about the loss of a miniscule amount of money to be showing some peoples' true motives, especially since they're typically the same ones who have been guilty of gaming the traffic system which has caused the removal.

Regards,

-Flip

If you cant not afford a sim/land without your dwell/developer bonus, then you shouldnt have the land to begin with. People are mad because LL stop paying your tier fees. Why should they pay? I cant think of one good reason.

~Tya

Thanks, you did a great job of giving me a jumping-off point! let's continue this thought experiment...

L$25,000 per month? That's not so much, I'm just playing for fun and I'm paying about that much for land, once I convert part of it from dollars.

I know people who are paying US$400 or more for the land their builds are on... there's a lot of places that have multiple sims in common land. Some of them are getting money back from renting and using it to subsidise the rest, but the ones who were doing a really good job of making attractive builds really were making it on dwell and DI.

So cutting dwell makes genuinely popular and interesting builds more expensive, and prevent players with less money from making the kinds of builds that they were able to.

Meanwhile, someone can upload a texture for L$10 that uses up as much bandwidth and storage as a 4096 parcel full of prims that costs US$25 a month in tier. Is (say) L$2000 in dwell on that parcel that cuts the cost down below US$20 that big a subsidy after all, by comparison?

(yes, I know that prims are textured and that textures don't cost sim resources other than bandwidth... but you get the idea, I hope)

If someone who's made a great build that I enjoy hanging out in, and who I've tipped hundreds of Lindens already, can't make it... I don't care whether they "should have" the land, I care that Second Life has become that much poorer.
Because Linden Labs benefits from people who make Second Life more attractive to paying customers.

Do they ? or is it the avi sex and the promise to make money that brings people here...

Linden Labs is the "investor" here. If Linden Labs is really NEVER going to become profitable (which is what you're basically saying, whether you realise it or not) then they're better off bailing out rather than trying to nickel and dime Second Life to death.

If that's all you see in Second Life, what are you doing here?

Some people put money into SL, and don't expect to get anything back.

Opinion:

I agree with the original poster. For me, however, the stipends are far more important than dwell. I would not be in favor of raising the cost of uploading textures.

As it is, one has to upload many more textures than one actually uses, due to the inability to see their overall affect until it is brought into the game.

coco

I am a builder, since 2003. I see more to SL then the average user. Though the vast majority are unable to comprehend what the SL concept is and where it can go in the future. Most people are here for the money or the promise of making money, sex.. yes sex. Take a look at the find menu, and you tell me.