No dwell - no point in free content

Retaining existing customers is just as important as drawing new ones.
I've been over and over this. Let's do it again.

Customer A spends US$10 a month on SL.

Customer A spends 50% of his time on Customer B's land.

Customer B is providing the site that Customer A is spending US$5 a month on.

If Customer B gets L$30 a month dwell from Customer A spending that time on Customer B's land, then that's a royalty of 0.2%. I get more than that from my pharmacy loyalty card.
Irrelevant.

I'm not arguing that Linden Labs shouldn't have changed dwell. I'm arguing that they shouldn't have eliminated it without trying to fix it first.
Erm, the changes to dwell that I originally proposed (and suggested to Linden Labs) over six months ago are modelled on a real part of the real world economy and work tremendously well there.

I'm not taking that attitude, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it spread and create more fragmentation in the already fractured landscape of Second Life.

So you're in favor of Linden Labs giving away their system for free... after all they have the satisfaction of what they've created to sustain them in whatever jobs they move on to after the company goes under.

Hmmm. I'm paying LL US$25 a month and they just pulled the L$100 or so a week our group got in dwell.

I don't need that money, and I'm not going to change anything as a result, but I don't think you ought to assume that just because you're paying for a benefit you're going to continue to receive it. In fact, it would be more rational (in coldly economic terms) for them to reduce both the stipends by 20% or 50% than for them to cut dwell, DI, reputation bonuses, or even the basic stipend.

I admit, I only get around 30L for a dwell. I dont depend on it and the removal of it wont effect me that much. But Eversince ive been playing theres been dwell, and i remember when they removed the rating bonus. But it seems they keep eliminating some of the incentives because the people who dont get them or dont get enough or live off of them throw a fit. I dont blame them but thres a point when people start abusing the avantages causing them to get removed. For example when there was rating bounus somone offerd to rate me if i payed them money, or they offerd to pay me 125L if i rated them. Now people are camping making a massive amount of dwell.

The lindens could of set a limit instead of removing it all togeather just like there is a limit on the stipends.

Some people DO live off of dwell and support their buisness off of it they might have been doing it for a year or so and when you just take it away you dont expect problems??

Plus, honestly taking 50L away from a free account a week..That seems kinda petty. 50L cant get you very far in purchasing much on this game.

I said nothing of the kind.

But I do believe that enjoyment the creative process itself is a reward. So there is a point to creating things even if there is no monetary reward. Traffic bonus or no traffic bonus if people enjoy what they are doing they will find a way to do it

A hypothetical example

Bob makes Widgets. He really enjoys the creation of his widgets. It is quite possible for Bob to continue making his widgets without any monetary expense by building in a sandbox. Bob reason for coming in world (widget making) and his enjoyment in world (from making widgets) are unaffected by the removal of traffic bonus. Bob could in theory still make money from his widgets (free vendor space, word of mouth sales, whatever) but since Bobs primary reason for coming to SL is the creative process thats pretty irrelevant. For bob there is still a point to creating in SL.

The whole point to there being a Linden Economy (from being able to buy more than your 512m2 of First Land and to trade Lindens for Dollars and buy stuff to just having all the permissions controls to keep people from copying the animations you sell) is that people create more if they're paid for it.

When you create widgets, it doesn't cost you anything to create more widgets. You don't have to buy prims to make a widget to give to someone. So Bob, creating widgets, can give his widgets away for free without suffering any economic loss by doing so. In fact Bob doesn't have to spend any money at all on SL to do this.

When you create a build for people to visit, when that is your content, you have to buy land and you have to pay for the land, and the more people who visit your land the more land you have to have to support them. There's no way to create that kind of free content without spending money. Not only are you not rewarded, you're actually punished for creating free content!

As an open source software developer, I'm in Bob's position. I can write cool software and give it away, because I'm not paying for each new person who uses it. So if you say to me "you don't need to get paid to create" I'll nod and agree with you... for my situation.

But that's not what this thread is about.

Linden Labs is in the position of the person who's created a cool build. So... when you say to the person who's created a cool build "you shouldn't need to be paid to create", that's like telling Linden Labs they shouldn't need to be paid to create. If they enjoy creating a virtual world, business or no business they'll find a way to do it.

Right?

The initial statement of this thread is that without the Traffic bonus there is no point in creating places to be enjoyed for free. I listed a point (or reason) why someone would do it anyways. Nothing more nothing less.

You seem to insist on reading far more into my statement than I intended.

Your statement wasn't relevant.

You talked about creating widgets in a sandbox. But if you want to create a club, or a hotel, or a beach, or a city, and have it stay in the world - you can't do that in a sandbox.

Err, well, I'm not doing it deliberately. But, I guess I could be. Sorry.

No you can't. But if that is what you want to do then it is a business NOT free and should have a business model that allows it to continue without handouts. Depending on LL to GIVE money has for quite some time been a bad bet.

I was only stating that there is a reason to do it and if you love it eat the cost. Because you enjoy it. Nothing more nothing less.

Thank you!

That's a rather valid point.

And... I did miss your earlier post suggesting a better dwell method...

/13/7f/102386/1.html#post1005617

Which sounds like an outstanding idea.

(You'll recall, I'm sure, I was also quite in favor of your earlier draft of the plan pointing out that if only premium accounts were counted for dwell, event hosts and such would become a marketing force encouraging basic accounts to upgrade...)

Whether or not LL is willing to skim the cheaper L$'s off the Lindex to back a dwell system funded directly by a fraction of user fees would be an interesting shift.

But I don't see it fixing the rather unsporting practice of buying traffic from other players. It'll just be more focused on premium players instead of basic players.

And I think it would foster a bit of odd and somewhat anti-social behavior between land owners:
A: "Hey, come on over..."
B: "No, you come here."
A: "but I want you to come here!"
B: "No way, you'll get all the dwell and I won't get anything!"
A: "Well fine... stay there and rot."
B: "How about I go there and you come here and we keep IMing..."
A: "hmm. Okay."
B: teleports
A: teleports
B: "So anyway, what did you want to talk about?"
A: "Eh? Oh... I forgot."

Dwell is not a handout. It's effectively LL paying you for creating content that's attracted people to their world - which in turn makes those people more likely to give LL money, or makes others more likely to by making SL busier. You worked so you get money - that's how it's meant to be. It's only the gaming of dwell that's made it seem like a handout.

The Lindens give it out. They have decided no more. As they have for so many other things. DWELL is not an entitlement. It was a bonus. Bad decision to base a business on it.

If I may, dwell was presented as a legitimate reason to purchase a premium account and buy land rather than stay a basic member. To quote http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Land+FAQ
"1. Why would I want to own land?
Residents use their land to build homes and businesses, hold events, create attractions like zoos and carnival rides, build multi-leveled games - basically anything they can imagine. Also, if you own land and other residents hang out there, you can earn traffic (which may net you L$ rewards). The most visited events, buildings and attractions in Second Life show up inworld as Popular Places. Already own land? Find out how to use it."

It was not a bad business decision to count on something they promised AND ADVERTISED to help pad the cost of land purchases and premium accounts. So don't blame the victim.

Note the 2 words I bolded. Hardly an Iron Clad contract.

Please don't twist my words. I said it was promised and advertised, not a part of any contract. But it was not foolish to base business decisions on a known and advertised feature of the game, any more than basing pricing of objects partially on the cost of uploads. I feel like those who value dwell are being treated like dinosaurs, stuck in a time machine. But dwell is still being paid out, and already we're reading about some of the people making decisions that hurt our shared world due to losing more money.
I don't know how to make this any more clear: I do not RELY on dwell, nor is it my only reason to provide the land and events that I provide to the public at considerable expense to myself. But the decision to remove an incentive to provide good events is having and will have a negative effect on the presence of such events inworld. The cost of keeping it is small compared to what we lose as a community from removing it.

I never said you did rely on it. None of my business if you do or don't.

What was advertised was the possibility of L$ for dwell. It was hardly promised.

Long run past history of SL doesn't really bear your train of thought out. Other incentives and bonuses have been removed prior to your joining SL. We still have compelling content. We still have people doing things for free. Those that wish to do so will regardless of the change in dwell. New Residents Joining after the dwell bonus is gone will not miss it. They never had it. Those that discontinue their efforts because of its removal will be replaced by others. That is the pattern.

The only thing that is constant in SL is that everything changes...and quickly.

Commentary and Opinion:

It depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

Of course the language quoted above means you that may earn money through the dwell method. In other words, anyone might, but if no one comes to your land, you may not.

They didn't mean, "may until next Tuesday possibly." In other words, they will have to rewrite this. People who counted on it and figured it into their budget, were not being insane or super-greedy or lazy; they were simply capable of reading.

coco

And an immense fuss was kicked up, and landowners got compensation.

Dwell isn't a handout any more than the money Google pays for clickthroughs on google ads is a handout. Dwell is a payment for providing a service to Linden Labs customers, just as Google's paying for providing a service to Google's customers.

A business that depends on payment for services may be making a bad bet, but if it's a bad bet that's a problem with the people who are paying for the services. In this case, the problem is that Linden Labs picked a payment schedule that didn't even vaguely match the value their paying customers were receiving for the services... because it didn't distinguish between profitable customers and free riders. In the web advertising model, It was like paying for impressions rather than clickthroughs.

If dwell was only shed by paying customers, then it would do what it was intended to do, but in neither case is it a handout and chastising the people who were including it in their business plans is simply blaming the victim.

You and I will sipmply have to agree to disagree on this one. I do not see it that way.

I highly agree with what FlipperPA said earlier in this thread - that there are actually all kinds of reasons for a content provider to provide free content. I'm a brand-new player so don't have any examples yet from SL; I can, however, relate an example from my RL...

Back when I was pursuing a career as a writer, I used to do something that my peers thought was crazy - I offered free electronic versions of all my books, containing the exact same content as the paper versions I was selling. My friends thought that this would immediately lead to a complete death of book sales; what I found, though, was that paper-book sales rose <I>dramatically</I> when I did this. And even more importantly, audience attendance during my book tours back then DOUBLED after making this decision, which eventually led to a TRIPLING of sales for my paper books (both those who bought the book that night, and others who would come back to the store a week or two later).

There are in fact lots and lots of ways to increase revenue for your business, through the use of free content; unfortunately for some SL residents, that means having to get a whole lot smarter about what they're doing. Look, for example, at that recent live event sponsored by Coca-Cola (which unfortunately happened before I was playing regularly); that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Look at an author like Cory Doctorow, whose paper books didn't start hitting the bestseller lists until after he too started giving away free electronic versions of them. Look at Craigslist; 98 percent of their content is free, yet they're making millions upon millions of dollars. Look at the comedy group Lonely Island, whose free content got so popular that they ended up getting hired by Saturday Night Live. Like I said, there are actually all kinds of ways to increase one's revenue through free content, if one is smart about implementing it.

Now, that said, I also definitely agree with what many people have said here in this thread; that if LL wants to get rid of dwell payments, they're also going to have to dramatically lower the price of actually owning land. That was one of the things that flabbergasted me, when first doing pre-play research into SL; the sheer amount of people here paying upwards of US$2,400 a year in usage fees for their own private island. At the time, I simply couldn't understand why someone would spend that kind of money just to play a videogame; now that I am playing, I'm understanding that dwell payments were a big part of that. If LL wants to no longer reward people for the number of residents who visit their space, they also will not be able to charge what I think is sometimes outrageous fees for simply owning virtual land; most players will simply laugh at them, and like me simply scratch their heads over why someone would spend that kind of money in the first place.

Ultimately, I can think of no better example of what I'm talking about than this...

My very first day in the SL main grid, before I knew anything about what was there, I of course turned to the list of popular destinations, as most new players do. After an hour or so, though, of hopping from one place to another on that list, I was dismayed at what I found; just an endless series of gigantic, soulless casinos and bordellos, offering no interaction and nothing fun to do, half of the space filled with zombie-like "chair parkers," kind of like stepping off the train in a typical European city and being confronted with the ugly, tacky red-light district there. That alone was enough for me to shut down the software and decide never to go back to SL; what's the point of playing, I thought, if there's nothing but crap to visit in SL? It was only after talking with SL veterans, and being assured that there actually <I>are</I> lots of cool other things in SL to do, that I started playing again.

Getting rid of these dwell payments will get rid of most of these "train district" type places; and it will also make the Popular list what it was supposed to be in the first place - a list of places that residents actually enjoy visiting. As a simple player and new fan of SL, I'm all for this, even if it means getting rid of a bonus that some people have gotten very used to receiving.