low dwell

Can someone explain why people host games like Tringo or Pizza when dwell is so low.

Where does the income come from. Or am i misinformed as to the amount of dwell you can get?

For some it is ways to get you around their shops. Getting someone within eye sight of your product can help a great deal. It also is a good selling point for land renters that can point out the traffic on the land to shop keepers looking for a place to rent. With others I believe they are after the developer's incentive. I don't know much about this, except that it seems to be more sought after than traffic. I think a rare few do it for the fun of it. I don't know, you could always ask them yourselves with an IM.

"With others I believe they are after the developer's incentive." Is the developers incentive described anywhere in writing? What is it? How much is it? How do you get on the developer newsletter??

Always wondering!
Bounder

For many businesses, moving up on the "popular places" list is far more valuable than the modest income from dwell. Being high on the list makes it easier for people to find you, and thus more likely that they will visit and spend their Lindens in your store. Thus, for example, the "get paid to camp" chairs; the businesses are foregoing their dwell income when you sit in them, but still getting the benefit in popularity rank when you hang around.

Dev incentive is paid out to the top 2% of dwell-getters for a given month. So, take all of the people who own land and get dwell - everything from a dwell of 1 to a dwell of 40,000. The top 2% of those people are eligable for Dev Incentive.

Its proportional - so if you make the bottom of that 2%, that might translate to US$20, while the top end of the list may be over US$100. Dev Incentive winners are posted to the Linden announcements forum usually the 1st or 2nd week of the month.

It used to be that, on average - you needed a daily dwell of around 3000-4000 to make the list. Not sure if those numbers have shifted or not.

Typically, those at the top of the list have to spend *way* more than they receive in Dev Incentive in order to get to that spot.

If you're successful, Dev Incentive can be a great way to help offset Tier Costs.

Hope this helps!

Dwell/Traffic monies and Dwell/Traffic scoring vary, but it's paid daily by the Lindens and divided up from a fixed total amount (I _think_ it used to be L$48K and it's now L$96K) based on the total number of Residents in-world (each resident has Dwell points that they expend) and how much they time they spend (minimum of five-minutes) on each parcel they visit "that" day (your Dwell/Traffic monies and score given to you Tuesday are based on Monday).

If you have a 512-sq.m parcel and want to cover your monthly Premium account cost of US$9.95 by selling your Dwell/Traffic monies on the LindeX then you'll want to derive a minimum of L$84 a day (based on an exchange rate of US$1 = L$250; 30-day month; not including the 3.5-percent the LindeX charges for the transaction).

The problem is that most games like Tringo, Bingo, etc. are "high-prim." An individual game board for Tringo or Bingo uses nearly an equivalent number of prims as a 128-sq.m parcel (which has 29-prims). The more game boards the greater amount of prims consumed and the greater the total monthly tier fees. Using a hypothetical Tringo Island with a monthly tier fee of US$195 _plus_ a monthly Premium account fee of US$9.95 the island owner would need to derive a minimum of L$1,708 a day (not impossible, but highly unlikely).

In a nutshell: The more people on your parcel and the more time they spend on your parcel the greater your Dwell/Traffic monies and scoring. However, the bigger your parcel the less likely your Dwell monies will cover the costs of your account and tier fees. Think of Dwell/Traffic monies as a subsidy.

Still with me? Great...



This now brings up the Developer Incentive Award. Every month the Lindens pay out a US$ award to tier fee-paying Residents (more than 512-sq.m of land) _and_ were in the top two-percent of total Dwell/Traffic scoring for the month. The total amount of the US$ award varies from month to month and is paid out according to Dwell/Traffic scoring (in other words, the greater your Dwell/Traffic scoring the higher your individual US$ award amount). The individual US$ award amounts can be used to pay account fees and/or tier fees.

In another nutshell: The greater your total Dwell/Traffic scoring over the course of a month the greater your likelyhood of making the Developer Incentive Award list and getting a US$ award that can be applied to your account and tier fees. However, the larger your tier the less likely your US$ award amount will cover the cost of your account and tier fees. Think of the Developer Incentive Award as another subsidy.

This doesn't mean that some Residents don't make enough in Dwell/Traffic monies to cover their account and tier fees. Some do. And this doesn't mean that some Residents don't get large enough Developer Incentive Award amounts to cover their account and tier fees. Some do. Just that the greater your total tier fees the less likely you are to reach a break even point even with a combination of Dwell/Traffic monies and Developer Incentive Award.

How much is an individual Developer Incentive Award? I suggest you compete and find out. Just trying to make the list is a worthy challenge and a lot of fun.

I spent over 150K to make a casino(land+tringo+slingo+poker+moneychairs+theatre etc.) and my casino was at popular list for 2 weeks. It reached populer list in 2 days.
I built shops around my casino to give rentals 200/week. And yes people rented(some of them).
Dwell income is daily 120$L max. per group member(only 4 members).
Shop rental fees at total are always under the tier.
And no profit. I couldnt find a way to produce $L from my traffic.
Now i am doing this for only fun.
I understood one thing, there is no way for me to make profit.
I wonder how island owners are making profit while paying 195 usd tier.
It is interesting. Or maybe there are different ways to make money which i dont know.
tiers are too expensive, and dwell is so cheap.
Sorry for my bad english.

Elex has a very, very good point - if you want to be successful, resist the temptation to live beyond your means.

If you learn to build low-prim, and keep your tier at the absolute lowest you can possibly get away with - your chances of successfully using your tier/dev incentive to support your costs will be that much greater.

One word: Products. 120L is very, very, very small potatoes compared to having a shopping mall on your land. If your products are of good quality and sell well, then you can easily cover the cost of your land, and then start to make a profit. As a previous poster said, games like the everpresent Tringo help to draw people to your land, and present them with products, because the classifieds and land tabs are woefully inadequate in presenting people with a full accounting of all of your products, and you must rely on them coming to YOU in order to get any profit.

This unfortunately requires you to be a jack-of-all-trades (builder/scripter/artist), or the ability to partner up with people who have those skills. Hmm... sounds similar to real life.

Sounds fantabulous on the surface, let's take a closer look:

If the goal is to cover a monthly Premium account fee of US$9.95 (which includes the tier on a 512-sq.m parcel of land) then one needs to sell 21-units of the aforementioned L$120-product (based on an exchange rate of US$1 = L$250). Any money made during the month _after_ selling those 21-units of product might be considered profit (still need to recover any expenses, such as fees involved in the creation of the product, Find > Places listing fees, etc.). Certainly possible and plenty of players do this: they have Premium accounts, pay no tier beyond it, and cover this cost by selling a product (or performing a service).

If the goal is to cover a monthly Premium account fee of US$9.95 _and_ cover the monthly tier fee for an island, US$195, then one needs to sell 448-units of the L$120-product. And all L$120-units of product sold after hitting the 448-units break even point is profit, right? Well, we're overlooking the actual cost of setting up an island: US$1,250 minimum (not including terraforming costs, etc.). Covering the cost of setting up the island itself is another 2,605-units of L$120-product. If we ammortize the cost of setting up the island over a year that's an extra 7 or 8 units of L$120-product that has to be sold every day. This is also feasible. A small percentage of players cover the costs associated with their monthly Premium, their monthly tier fee for an island, and the cost of setting up and island by selling a product (or performing a service).

The barrier to this is to create a product that people are willing to buy, can get good word of mouth, needs minimal customer service, and can persist beyond the "fad" phase. If people feel your product is overpriced (a poor value) they might be disinclined to buy. If the product is shoddy then it will get poor word of mouth. If the product requires frequent customer service then servicing customers can consume time that could be spent developing new products to put up for sale, and in the event the product can't be serviced also generate poor word of mouth. If the product is a fad item then sales of the item won't persist.

Plus, residents have a finite amount of money to spend. A L$120 item can be out of reach for a resident on a Basic account as they have a weekly stipend of L$50 and Basic accounts presently make up approximately 80-percent of the total population. And it's presumptive to think a resident will purchase currency from the Lindex to maintain their consumption. Plus, only a small percentage of the population is _actively_ participating in Second Life, typically around 5-percent of the total population on any given day. Suddenly the L$120-product has to _rapidly_ penetrate nearly 79-percent of the active player population to break even and cover the costs associated with an island (and that doesn't include covering another 11-months of island tier fees).

This doesn't mean there isn't middle ground, there is, and it doesn't mean residents can't cover their monthly Premium account fee and tier fees by selling products (or performing services), some do. But there's still a certain amount of risk (it's easy to over-tier and/or make too large an initial investment) and wind up with your expenses exceeding your sales income.

A succesful person working on this business paradigm though isn't just staying with static products, most likely. In fact, they most likely have a variety of different products, in all price ranges to make things affordable to the greatest amount of people while still having a few 'showstopper high-price' items that are the real bread and butter of their tier fee payments.

Hence why I say you need to be a jack-of-all-trades when doing this. If you have the startup money, you might be able to get away at first with simply paying people to make the products for you, but then you run into the static product problem - just like in real life. If your favorite clothing stores ALWAYS sold the exact same products, you'd get bored with them after awhile, and move on to some other store. But if you come to a store that is aesthetically pleasing, has good products, in a wide selection, at various price ranges, you've hit gold - I don't need to tell you who is number 1 on the fortune 500 list for exactly the reasons I've described.

It's tough, it's not for everyone - but I know a few people who have done just that and been quite successful, through a combination of all of these techniques. Like you mentioned Elex, though, the startup fee is probably one of the biggest things detering most people from being able to get into that game. The people that likely have the kind of talent necessary to pull it off are either out there in the real world making a ton of money, or are poor, so they work for the people that DO have that kind of money in SL - for a pitance.