Step 1: Eliminate the Basic Membership lindens giveaway effective now!

Well, if you want to distinguish between Free and Basic accounts... that changes things somewhat. But, really, wasn't that the way things were before they made "free accounts" into full Basic accounts? You signed up and got a week to mess around, and at the end of the week you had to pay for a basic or a premium account?

Doesn't matter whether you think you're in front of the screen or behind it, the "extras" are being paid the same 20c a week to act. If there were 1/10th as many people in the game, would it be as fun? I don't think so.

Fair enough.

That does make it hard to "comparison shop" for strategies, though.

Hopefully more people will start to look at this kind of approach and we'll start getting more like a real economy in Second Life, one with a variety of roles. THEN it might be time to start talking about killing the basic stipend, or further cutting dwell.

As others have said, the L$ has never been stable.

Yes, each week a newbie logs in, he gets 50 free lindens. Each and every single time a seller sells a FREE copy of one of his designs, get gets however many lindens. Given that people do claim to be able to make a realworld profit from such sales, eliminating free copying of items might be a better place to start. Or perhaps a retail tax automatically taken from the vendor.

Others have also pointed out that its the newbie accounts that fund many of the smaller retailers. I know of one designer who specifically targets this market. Getting rid of free lindens for newbie accounts would remove many of these retailers.

Since this is a open forum and ideas are dicussed, I do find my opinions are in keeping with the spirit of the forums. Or is it acceptance of the OP required to post replies? Perhaps reading the title of this thread would help, it sure looked like a demand, not a request for discussion. "Eliminate the Basic Membership lindens giveaway effective now!"

The discussion does seem to me about how LL spends their earnings so my thoughts are acceptable.

Account Type           Subscription     Gross Stipend      Net Profit
Basic                       0.00             9.45              9.45
Premium (monthly)         119.40            94.55            (24.85)
Premium (quarterly)        90.00            94.55              4.55
Premium (annually)         72.00            94.55             22.55

All figures are annual and in $US.  Conversion rate used was 275.

Looking at these data, LL "pays" more than just Basic subscribers to play. I suspect the bulk of LL's $US revenue stream comes from tier fees.

Of course, this presumes that the majority of players with a Premium subscription got it with the intention of selling virtual bucks back for real ones. If only a minority of such subscribers do that, the above point is meaningless and should be ignored.


For an economy to flow, there needs to be either a full circuit of currency from consumers to providers and back again, or a continual source of money to the consumers -- otherwise, the Rich end up with all the money and the Poor go broke and stay that way. But if there is a source without a sink, there's devaluation of currency. Adding a sink is an easier change than removing a source PLUS putting some kind of circulation in. Right now, there is no such latter sytem in place (unless you count camping chairs).

In reading the post i dont see how anyone can interpret it to be anything more than a suggestion.

But you are right, it is an open forum and your opinion does matter.

If thats how you interpret it, then thats what it is.

Thank you for your input

(a small post this time honest)

Wayfinder - I must have read your message wrong...

Linden labs can't be 'paying' US$8 (depending on math/exchange rate) per year to each basic account? It costs them nothing!

Sure, the people selling L$'s encounter poorer exchange rates for their sale because of stipends... but isn't that part of the cost of doing business?

So... LL is merely cooking the books a little to short change the rich so they can give to the poor. Quite a clever swizzle if you ask me.

Wait... Those cads... they're getting all the glory for it too!
Sherrif! Down with Robin Linden and the band of merry (Lind)men!

--
Evil Prince John... er, Jopsy

Well, all freebie accounts have a 7-day trial period... which is ridiculously short for such things as learning how to get around, how to buy things, how to navigate, how to build stuff (if they want to try, so they can learn what they _can_ do if they want to stay), how to change skins/clothes/attachments, how to fly a skyboard, etc...

Most of the popular activities in SL are shopping, chatting, and socializing... some extend "socializing" to such things as griefing people in sandboxes, and playing bang-bang games that include guns/bombs. However, the productive people who really support LL are the landowners (even the First Land owners, with 512sm plots like me), and the people who at least try to create interesting things and events.

By EVENTS, I do _NOT_ mean contests in which casino/club owners reward their VIPs with $200L "prizes" for "sexiest leather" or "best in red". I mean real events with something interesting to see or do... like an art exhibit, or a live poetry contest, or a site that features live talk radio for a 3-hour period (or a podcast of the owner's fave Celtic music or "smooth jazz" from their local radio station). An "event" is not a regular feature... a casino/club with camp chairs/dance pads and a movie is not an "event". It's a feature, just the details change.

So, in my terms, SL is split into two main population groups:
-- paying users, with premium accounts, who usually own land, and who usually are "content-producers"
-- freebie users, who lag the servers/sims by their automated camping, desperately trying to get enough Lindens (without having to pay for them) for new hair/tats/jewelry/skins by taking up space and server resources via laggy scripted camping sites

Not many of the freebie users are also content producers, as far as I can tell. Yes, socializing is fun, but there's only so many times you can discuss the latest buzz about JLo with some moron in a nightclub. Or talk about how sexy the av next to you is. Or why you can't stand the way everyone _else's_ blingy junk lags the club to death (ignoring all the bling you're wearing yourself, of course, and all the scripted things you drag around, like floggers, scripted nipples that talk, scripted phalli, sexy walk scripts in shoes...when there are 40 people in a club, and half are women, and most of them are using at least one scripted attachment, that's 20 more scripts, on top of dance balls, money balls, slot machines, poker games, scripted dance floors, "sparkle" jewelry.... Now there are STAY balls in clubs, which prevent you being pushed/bumped??) or who got bounced for griefing someone last night, or finding another BUSH sign where you least expected it (which is irritating but not a BBC news item). Yes, I like dancing, and it's kinda fun to enter a contest once in awhile to show off a particular new outfit I really like, but there is other stuff to do in SL.

I've got a landmark to a beautifully-designed Irish bar in my folder, but every time I've been there, nothing has been going on... and I know there are Celtic music fans in SL - or just _Irish_ music fans... Chris de Burgh, Thin Lizzy, U2, whoever, someone with an iPod have an "Irish pub night" and a podcast (no, I don't own one, don't _want_ one, but they can be used in neat ways like this). Or someone in Dublin can ask the owner of a local _real_ Irish bar if a local college radio station can broadcast on the net/website from the bar one weekend when they have a really good band? Then the SL bar can set the land music to play that radio broadcast during that time frame...

Yeah, I digressed a bit -- some people get irked at yard sales as fake events, I get irked at the dressup contests, during which everyone bitches about the lag.

My point is that freebie accounts do not add much to SL... they are consumers-only, largely (yes, a few do learn to build stuff, and rent space for shops/apts, but they are a minute percentage of the freebie pop; there are also premium SLers who prefer _not_ to own land, and are basically "tourists" themselves, but at least they are paying for the service with a credit card and can buy Lindens for themselves quite easily). And freebie members do not pay for their Lindens... they exist on handouts, basically. So the freebie accounts should be time-limited to 90 days, at which point they have to "fish or cut bait", essentially: mandatory upgrade to premium if they want to keep their SL account alive.

I upgraded so I could own land and really do something in SL... and while I'm not the _mos_t productive "producer", I have been able to build a few things I haven't seen anyone else do: a cat tree, f'rinstance (for cat lovers and small furries). I also built my own gallery/shop, which is only 15 prims, including a pool/planter in front (12 without the pool/planter, 3 rooms/2 levels, and window walls front and back, and could be used as a basic newbie prefab house for a First Land lot as well), and it has seating areas in two rooms, for those who want to wander in, sit and chat over coffee (in the upstairs office) or tea (in the downstairs front room with the Buddha laughing over their shoulders). I don't think I've actually _sold_ anything yet, but at least it's not a glaring eyesore to the rest of my neighborhood, and I had fun doing it.

Basically, I think SL would be better off with a majority population of real paying members, whether or not they are "content producers" as well. As it stands today, at least 1/3 of the members are freebie accounts, and those "members" of the community have no intention of ever upgrading and paying their way.

A premium account is only $9.95/per month. That's two venti lattes at Starbucks, dear. Get a brain and get real.

I'd like to address this notion of products people make for sale being 'free'. Yes, they can be replicated without additional cost, however they are not 'free', without economic cost.
First of all, time is a commodity (and increasingly so in modern society). Your time is worth money. The opportunity cost of spending time making a product for sale is not using that time to make more money elsewhere (like in RL), or doing something you may rather be doing. Perhaps also, the seller may have paid for a Photoshop course in order to gain the necessary skills, another cost to to consider. What about power consumption, computer wear and tear etc?
If they're selling in a shop, they have tier to pay.
Not free at all.

The seller's time is money? Guess what - so is the buyers!

Seriously, when real life allows me to replicate any manufactured item I designed for free, then I can take your point seriously. Until then, don't use real life as a justification for allowing sellers their freebie replication.

At this point I'm unsure whether you're talking about the fact that replicating an item you've made having no cost, or the rip-off practise of re-texturing or whatever freebie items and then selling them. If the latter, then I certainly wouldn't justify that in any way. Theft is theft, and a scam is a scam, in any world.
My point is, 'design' is not free. It is work in it's own right. People do it for a living.
There are plenty of real life instances where you can sell something you have made or designed, with no or at least minimal replication costs. It's the digital age.
Ringtones once made can be replicated endlessly and sold, you can sell audio online and never have to press a CD...
The production cost is not in components, manufacturing, but in time spent making it. Value is added according to the strength of the design and the strength of it's execution, and just the 'appeal' of the idea.
Yes the buyers time is money as well, but the portion of their time they wish to be reimbursed for is not generally when they're shopping, but when they are at their job. I can't recall someone ever paying me to go shopping.
I'm sorry you don't think design is 'work', that ideas have no value, and the people who make SL content's time is worth nothing, if that is what you think. I disagree, and strongly.
One of the thing's I love about SL... ideas are currency.

I'm a content producer. I've a Basic account (but not a "freebie" account). This stereotype of the Premium user as being a "content producer" and the Basic account as being a sponge is one of the reasons I'm staying Basic.

Most of the Premium accounts are content producers? All the people who buy land and flatten it so they can plop a prefab house on it are content producers?

But what you're missing is that they do add a lot to SL exactly by being consumers.

For instance, you mention you run events. I hope you enjoy running your events. If it wasn't for those basic members, there would be less people showing up to your events, and maybe you wouldn't like running them so much, or you couldn't do so at all.

The basic accounts and their stipends make sure there's plenty of people eating the broth so we aren't left with too many cooks.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that there could be a lot of 'renters' who use basic accounts, and pull out the credit card to buy lindens to pay for rent and goodies when they want them.
The basic model of a game that is free to play but which asks you to pull out the credit card to buy neat stuff seems to work for a range of MMO's - only here, the payment goes to other players instead of LL.
Once someone has decided that they love Anshe's dreamland, why should they pay US$10 a month to get US$8 worth of lindens?



You know that because...? You are psychic and can predict the future? You are a fantastic judge of character of 10's of thousands of people you haven't met?

Or Alliez' and Tony's dAlliez Islands.

For that matter, you can rent on the mainland as well... some folks actually rent parcels for less than it'd cost you in tier alone. If you're not "buying" a big chunk of a sim, or paying for it a year at a time, Premium just doesn't make economic sense.

Fade-

I hear your point... and you've corrected me right and proper.

Let me try strengthening your argument a little:

An author pays for travel, seeks an experience, returns home, buys a computer, buys a word processor, attends writing classes, hires a writing coach, pays rent, eats food while writing (without a day job usually). They complete their book, they woo publishers, they hire lawyers, they revise and finalize. They travel to promote the book, work with a publicist/marketing group. They collect royalty checks, pay taxes on their royalties, answer fan mail, etc, etc.

Selling the first few copies of a book can be amazingly *expensive*.
It's amazing anything makes it through the process.

Every copy sold brings royalties which may someday bring the author out of the red.

There are some parallels to this process in Second Life... so okay, I relent and agree.

There is, however one wiggly counterpoint I'm still clinging to:
Authors can write-off their expenses on their tax returns.
Is anyone paying taxes on their profits in SecondLife?
I think SL is still young enough that it's not so much 'publishing' as 'gambling'

This is a _GAME_, people. It's a fantasy environment. Quit acting like it's a damn 51st state.

It - is obviously - a game to you, Merlyn. But why shouldn't it be something different for other residents? What you make of a platform like SL is your decision; yours, and that of the other residents you interact with. It is not wrong, to say "SL is a game". And is not wrong to say "SL is not (only) a game". It all depends ...

Actually, I am rather sure it is something different than just a game for other residents. And I don't see any need to force the perception of "what is SL" of one group of residents to all the rest. Many perceptions of "what is SL" are true. No need to fight.

This is the same person complaining in another thread about Basic account holders not being content creators? Or have I mixed you up with someone else?

What the hell does one have to do with the other? The _game_ environment for EVERYONE is being ruined by people who build large clubs/casinos to cash in on the DI via campers... along with the campers themselves, most of whom are freebie members, very few of whom do anything in the GAME apart from camping, playing slots, playing tringo, and competing in dressup contests to see who spent the most Lindens on fancy skins and bling.

The big super thing about SL is supposed to be that it is USER-CREATED, that the "world" was not created by LL -- that the users are supposed to be the creators of this little pocket world, not just a venue for overgrown adolescent males playing bang-bang games, but people doing creative things... and slot machines, camping and dressup contests are hardly CREATIVE. The people who are building ORIGINAL businesses, such as the people who design and script the TVs and laptops, the radio tuners, the interesting places like the NASCAR track, the lovely nymph who is the creator, as well as the soul, of the SL Botanical Gardens, these are all creative efforts.

However, it is still a GAME ENVIRONMENT which exists only in the servers of LL. It is not a 51st state subject to US contract law, and it was not designed as a business environment, and no amount of fussing is ever going to make it work as if it were. It's a creative playground, not an extension of the RW. While it's fun to make a few Lindenbucks, and it's certainly very interesting that Anshe and some other "moguls" apparently make their entire income in SL, they got in early enough that they got a good handle on how to work the land system early on -- which is why people call them "land barons". However, it's a good thing to remember that all their "land" exists on a server, and if LL decides to trash SL tomorrow, their holdings go POOF!

So, Argent, if I look you up in FIND and track you on the map, I bet I find your ass on a camp chair somewhere.... right? You think your free ride is threatened?

Dwell has nothing whatsoever to do with the basic account stipend. If anything, the stipend keeps more people from sitting in chairs all day; L$200/month is enough to buy some basic stuff so you don't look like a Clint or Brandy.

However, people who spend money, consumers, are making a positive contribution to the world. So are people who take the effort to make themselves look interesting; I don't want an empty void of "interesting" builds, I want to see people.



This nonsense again? SL is not a game. It is a virtual world. Wash your mouth out with soap.

http://lindenlab.com/press/secondlife



The only mention of a game in the piece is as one of many possible things that can be built or done inside SL. The very first paragraph mentions earning money. Or read the white papers, which go into great detail about the economic nature of SL:

http://lindenlab.com/whitepapers/

Many people make some or all of their income in SL without being first movers or land barons. They make things that people want, accept L$ for them, and then exchange the L$ for USD. That's a perfectly legitimate business. In some cases, people can get paid in USD to build architecture or script or customize avatars in SL.

I write software. I currently get paid to write server-side business code during my day job, I write free games and utilities as a hobby, and now I'm writing code in SL; eventually, my plan is to cut back the day job to part-time and use SL to take up the slack, because it is capable of supporting a living. There's very little practical difference between my three "jobs". Programming is no less and no more real than what any content creator in SL does.

Of course SL is an extension of the real world, by the very nature of existing and having people in it. Copyright and contract law apply normally to SL; as we'll find out as soon as the IRS gets a grip on this, tax law also applies, and the IRS does consider barter and private currencies as taxable activity. All activity is real activity, and doing it online doesn't change that.

I notice in a previous message you were talking about how a camping chair you were using kicked you off and only paid out L$100. Why didn't you think about the effect of camping chairs back then? Is that why you're such a firebrand on the forums now you've had a conversion experience?

If it's only a game, you shouldn't care whether someone's a landowner or not. In fact, you can't tell talking to someone... walking around their shop in a mall... admiring their products, even buying them... whether they're Basic or Premium. There's Basics who are freebie accounts, basics who paid for their accounts, basics who've tiered down from premiums. You go dancing... some of the most interesting clubs out there were built by people on basic accounts who've never been premium. If you got a bonus pack when you upgraded to premium, some of that content was created by people on basic accounts.

And you have no way of knowing whether those creators are Basic or Premium.

So why are you getting so aggressive about the whole thing?

No, unlike you I've never sat on a camping chair in my life. I paid for my first account and every alt since, I was creating original code and objects my first day here, I've created what I think is one of the more unusual and interesting builds and I get more in dwell from it than I get in stipend... not enough to offset my rent or anything, but there's people spending time there and playing in the lagoon or skydiving or using the airfield or visiting my store every day.

There's over a hundred people who've got my scripts directly from my store, and since they're open source I have no idea how many more copies have been passed around. Oh, and... unlike some folks I don't begrudge it when people use my software in their own products: you may even unwittingly be using my creations in something you bought.

Not bad for a mere "Basic tourist".

Having $250 to start and being given $50L for nothing will have the same effect on SL as it would in the RL. Particularly when LL has stopped the 'Headlines' on the website's splash page on Feb 8th, touting that 'You can make a RL income in SL!' Short-term presence is thriving. Sure getting more people in is ultimately what SL needs, but not under false pretenses. Make your claims real, advertise on the true merits of SL, and not on the fortunes of a handful a year ago.

The economics are the same. As a teenager, my first income came from my father's income, being allowance. When I got a job, it came, obviously, from the fast food place that hired me. Not new money.

The government, or however you want to refer to LL, did not give it to me.