Beware Business Owners

money trees suck? because you have to DO something to get the money and not just camp? or is there another reason?

Assumptions once again... be careful about assigning motives to other folks. I am known in SL by more than a few as a hard worker.

I don't mind working for a return. However, money trees involve a LOT of work for very, very little return. They are farmed out quickly by bots, leaving the odd $L 1 for people that teleport like mad or wait patiently for an hour.

Doesn't take long to shake your head in disgust and move on.

touchy ... touchy .. i DID ask if there was another reason.

She said that after she got called out for gaming the traffic system and complaining about how well it worked.

I am often struck by how empty most of SL is at any given moment. I have visited malls and casinos where there was not any other avis. My own home is on an island that usually only shows one or two other "people" on the map, and one of them is a camper "cleaning up" at a little mall and rec center the sim owner maintains.

For the last couple of weeks I owned a 1024 on the mainland also, just for a little adventure. I sold it yesterday for a 100L$ loss, but it was fun to be back (briefly) on the mainland. I also saw very little traffic there.

Since the camping issue is so important to a lot of folks (not myself, however) I decided to have a new adventure, so today Jannae went on a camping trip.

First I stopped by a house of ill repute where there were several dance pads paying 4L$ per 15 minutes. I danced for a while, and let me tell you most of those folks were not afk ! I got hit on so many times, that I decided to try another spot.

I tp'd to a gambling location famous for it's camping chairs, and found about 20 or so there all filled, mostly with well dressed zombies. I was about to leave when one became vacant, so I plopped down and began "earning" 3L$ per 10 minutes, 15 cycles maximum.

The machine urged me to play for time and/or payout extensions at 10L$ a crack. I love slots, so I played off a 10 and got nothing, played again and won 80L$! A few of my fellow campers were at keyboard and chatting and/or betting, so not all were away.

Growing somewhat bored with the conversation, I decided to try the camping some other day, and on a whim bet another 10. Hit a jackpot of 3,000L$! Decided it was time to head for the mall while I was ahead.

You're not a shill for the "Kasino" industry, are you? If you're not, good for you! Quitting while you're waqy ahead - brilliant.

Serves you right for gaming the system to artificially inflate your sites popularity, when really the only reason they are there is to take your money.

Actually that would be very easy for bots to game. You just need a timed chat log and two bots that read the "script" and play it out with the same timing and pauses from the original log.

Other than the fact that they would obviously ignore anything you say or do, you'd never notice it wasn't real people chatting since it originally came from real people.

The only chat system that would work is one that asks questions like "Animal that barks?" with a list of thousands of questions. Trivia camping would work for that I guess... whoever gets the right answer, gets paid.

No. I admit I gamble from time to time, but that's my main SL vice. Except for campers though, most casinos are empty most of the time. How do they stay in business?

being "in business" in SL does not necessarily mean making a profit, for some.

I can see that rationale. Do it because you enjoy it. Some of these places have to be about making money, however.

A lot of those casinos hemorrhage money for months before the owners realize it's not going to pan out. I'm equally amazed by the vast number (literally hundreds) of rental sims, some pre-furnished, some bare, that have ZERO tenants and ZERO traffic. These places cost between $200-300 a month to run and the owners aren't doing a thing with the sims. If you're going to waste that much money a month at least put it to a good cause (i.e. send it to me).

You just saved me the hassle of opening my own kass-ee-neau (that's how it was going to be listed in search)!

I really like the chat-camp idea. That is very cool. And if you think about it, it's not gaming the system, becaue those people are actively hanging out. Excellent concept--Ok, Go! Specs and figures...

The voice chat thing would work just the same here (when it's fully operational)

I think we've pretty much exhausted this topic. We can agree to disagree on certain points.

/me rushes to check her L$ balance...

I think it's a positive idea too. One helpful idea: Bounce avs that repeat the same chat statements too many times. That should eliminate most bots. And also those really annoying actual people who do nothing but type lol all the time.

Not quite, there's more to camping than traffic, it's an advertising ploy, it's a tool to draw people in and some of those going with the intention of camping may well shop there. So one person with 7 alts isn't good for business.

"...NOT!" -Borat

It's still a crock.

This thread ended with Squeeze's first post. He said all that neede to be said.

err... where's the hug on that one? The dude needs a hug.

Save your energy. It's been explained a lot of times, but anti-camping folks are determined not to consider it.

YAY!

Actually Fiona, she said in her original post...



I can understand the annoyance at it all being one person, but she is paying to get a result and she seems to have received the result. Now that she has that traffic level, she is no longer wants to pay them.



No one is 'taking' anything from you. You are giving them the money willingly.

My general opinion of camping is it is useful and contributes to the ambience of a store, IF it is done properly. People scream at the campers all of the time, but there would be no campers if the person that places the camping stations out there did not do so.

Campers are technically working. They drive up traffic for a location for a fee. The location decided on the fee they are willing to pay to have their traffic increased. They are not stealing, when the camping station is essentially, an implicit contract to pay for services rendered.

If you run camping you need to define some rules and stand by them. Put up a sign that states that no 24/7 camping is allowed. Limit no payment info on file from your property. Do something. Of course limiting no payment info avatars may reduse the number of people shopping by a significant amount. About half the people in my store are no payment info. And I suspect a lot of the money they spent, came from camping somewhere else.

One person creating a ton of alts and filling a location up is not a good thing, but then again, it still would not happen without the pads being placed out there to begin with.

Camping, properly done is good for SL. The amount of money circulated in the economy by it is much higher than most peple would realize.

One other reason this problems exist is the fact that shoppers look at the traffic count when they decide where to shop. I have experiment over the last few months too see what effect it has on my store. With a normal traffic of a few hundred, my sales stay steady, but if I just park one alt on my property for 24 hours to bump the traffic up my sales tripled. No change in the classified, no other change to the product line or store. I have tested this 3 different times over the last 3 months and a bump up in traffic will result in a surprising increase in sales everytime.

i clearly don't understand how this works. i have spent HOURS and HOURS on my land for the past few days, and the traffic has barely gone up, which is why i haven't tied up my puter trying to generate higher traffic numbers. i'd rather pay to play.