Mainland Sim purchase group for creative builders

I took a slightly different approach to this "problem".

When I first came to SL, and bought my 512 what I noticed was the slum feeling that your all talking about, so I bought the 512 next door, and then the one next to that.

Slowly an idea formed, parks, I was going to build parks...I (err we) now have about 35,000 sqm of land under management, most of it is already in park/reserve form or planned to be.

There are exceptions, there came a point when the tier was getting a bit much, so I built an apartment by the beach, cheap rates, large prim allocation, always fully rented, the rent from that helps pay my tier, and I have some donated tier now.

I'm exploring sky boxes above the parks as rentals, seems to be another way of contributing to the tier. I havent looked at this excess tier selling yet, I should do that too because I currently have quite a lot spare.

The interesting thing is that around the first park I built the neighbours are now joining in, making their plots fit the woodland park feel, one neighbour has taken it on board completely and is now also building parklands.

Sure there are still a few ad plots around, and some ugly land, but slowly things are looking nicer and nicer.

The latest place we are working on is in a new sim, its not as nice as previous areas and it does have 2 casinos in it, but even there things are being picked up by the neighbours.

I built a lake, one neighbour built a landing area for the lake on his land, another on the other side of the road built a run off from the lake and then a bridge over it.

You can make a difference on the mainland.

I have also bought some places I wanted to save from possible destruction (waves at Raymond)

You can start small and work your way up, sure there will be ugly things around you for a while, but sooner or later they leave, and eventually the right people move in and you end up with a nice place.

Do I think what your thinking of doing is a good idea? Yup, If I wasnt already so committed I'd probably be in for 8 or 16k of land for a park.

Where would I do it? Mainland, but thats purely a personal preference, there is no good reason for it.

Sell or Rent it? Well I went the rent route, but my renters don't have an "interest" in the area, other than enjoying it.

Also as someone already mentioned, water/woodlands can eat prims very easily. I only use 4 layer primswim water so thats 4 prims for every 10sqm before I even think of rocks/fish/plants

I have a few trees that use 30+ prims, for just one tree....but these are feature trees, I usually only place one in an area and use 1 or 2 prim trees for the rest.

Well. You'll find people, get by and get your project going soon enough. Worst case, you'll sell off half, &c, but my guess is that you'll have people find you. Advertise. Especially in the classified forums here. It's free.



First, stop thinking of it in terms of an albatross and picture more of a swan. People will really pick up on your feelings toward a project - good or bad. It's infectious. That's how I know you really don't think of it as an albatross - but if swan is too pretty, perhaps project a sturdy mallard duck image. Post in classified forums. Tell all your friends about what you are doing; talk to your sim neighbours, hit some unofficial forums too.



Erm... you are on the mainland. Use the land sale feature if you need to bail out. Give your tenants lots of warning, of course, as you mentioned.

And ah... you ARE going to be hassled incredibly by the landlord aspect. You are going to hear every excuse for nonpayment or bad behaviour that exists.

But by taking on this project you have basically said: I'm immune to all drama and will carry on no matter how dismally depressed and thankless this becomes!

I'd strongly recommend taking a little money for your time spent. If only to pay for an occasional night out so you can ignore the residents completely, and get away from all computers.

Your residents will be better off for it. Nothing's more risky than relying on a landlord who is slaving away hours a night for absolutely no reason, while taking tons of drama and abuse. Money is a bad motivator, but it's better than no discernable motive at all. Because you'll get fed up, and ask: Why am I taking all this abuse? ...and hit the land sale button just before you leave for World of Warcraft.




I don't offer refunds. Ever. Why? Because let's say a tenant gets bored and wants their money back - what's the fastest way to get it?

That's right - by becoming a huge pain in the arse so you'll evict with full refund!

Don't reward bad behaviour in any way, especially financially. Not everyone is like this, but enough people are, so as to make the practise incredibly risky.



Ged, what I see is this. You are an incredibly nice person who is a reluctant landlord, hoping for the best. I'd flip that around just a little - be good in business first, take pride in that. THEN offer your community all the wonderful things that only you can do. You'll be in a good position to do it at that point.

You are promising something to your residents - you are promising that you will stick around. Plan for success as vigorously as failure. I have contingency plans too, but my success isn't crippled because of them.


Last thing I would say is this: some run completely differently than I do and are quite successful.

Ravenglass Rentals (run by Prokofy) does things like offer instant refunds, and has no fee up front as far as I'm aware of - just because I would run differently doesn't mean such things are impossible. You'll just have a very different set of problems than I have.

Learn from all of us, and most of all, don't do anything that would keep you awake at night.

I'd be gambling with someone elses money, so would probably be of the same attitude when the time comes. Other peoples money always seems more important than my own.

One idea I had earlier, have you considered setting aside maybe 1 or 2 1024m plots as a communal sandbox? 234 prims isn't massive in sandbox terms, but if you're filling up with creative types, it might be nice for them to keep their house and furniture rezzed while working on stuff. If eveyone is responsible enough, it shouldn't get messy. It also frees up prims for them to use to make nicely flowered pathways and things.

I've been toying with similar ideas. I own a Class 5 island which I'm currently using mainly for learning & testing purposes (and writing open-source land terraforming tools, etc.)

At some point, I'd like to turn the island around for residential rental, run on a "not-for-profit" basis, and geared towards "content creators": creative artists, builders, scripters, etc.. Meaning, I'd charge just enough to cover the monthly island fee plus a small overhead. I'm not looking to recoup the cost of the island, but it would be nice if at some point the "overhead" can partly fund one or two additional islands for expansion (if there is enough interest.)

I am still undecided between leaving sections of the island as "empty space" to provide "double prim" lots for residents, or having a private sandbox for residents instead. What do most prefer?

Could we chat? Your post has inspired me to set aside additional areas in the Linji Sim as parkland / green open spaces. I won't be able to do it in a "prim-heavy" fashion, like you mentioned later, but would especially appreciate tips and knowledge of what low-prim objects are out there to maximize the green-effect with a minimal number of prims.

(Thanks for the very detailed response, Desmond. Lots of snippage below to cut down post length.)
So far, I've been going the route of preferring word-of-mouth. It's more important to me to hopefully find people who "buy in" to the concept of keeping things nice and pleasant, rather than who are going for the low rent. So, I'm willing to go with word-of-mouth trickles of interested people, for now.

Heh, my tone doesn't come across in the text of forums very well -- I am often cynical and sarcastic, but I'm also a bit of a dreamer. What I wrote was just my contingency thinking, which, I suppose, there was really no reason to share; worse yet, I was posting them in the form of rhetorical questions -- I had already thought out my answers to those

But for the record, I AM very excited about how Linji Haven is turning out already Looking to shape up very, very nicely!

It's good to hear the good as well as the bad, and how motivated you still are, despite everything. I think I'm beginning to get a taste of that too, with my own project!

Regarding your suggestions about the financials: 1) making a bit of profit; 2) refund issues: no worries. Although I'm running on a "low profit" margin (probably a bit lower than even the great rates at Caledon), my planning is definitely taking into account the bottom line. In the end, the project is a bit of semi-altruistic "trying to do good, in one sim on the Mainland" and a bit of self-serving "I'll have a nice plot, and surround myself with other talented people." I've calculated out a bunch of potential scenarios, and will continue to keep a close eye on it. I'm still hoping to avoid as much of the "hassle" factor as possible, by trying to design it so that the residents will generally have little to complain about.

Refunds: I think your suggestions prompted me to reconsider. Since people can rent for time periods as short as weekly, and it would likely take that long to find replacements, I think short leases will not get refunds. However, it will have to be case-by-case: there's one wonderful individual who placed her trust in me and the project with a VERY long-term prepaid rental, many times longer than I have even been a resident of SL, and for her, I would gladly refund her, if she needed to go. It's only fair.



Well-said. I think the details of my business plan will differ from most everyone else's, but in the end, taking input and suggestions from you and others, and blending them with my personal goals and ideals, is going to make this venture successful.


And this is where I'll prove to Desmond that the bottom-line does matter to me For every 1,024 sqm square that I have un-rented, I need to either up the rent for everyone else, or cut into already slim margins. Also, I'm trying to encourage _large_ plots to prevent "crowding", the recommended plot sizes of 2,048 and 4,096 already yield 468 and 936 prims to work with.

What if a resident needs more prims? I'm planning to set aside several additional parcels as "protected land" (low-prim greenery). These protected areas will be adjacent to most of the remaining un-rented parcels. So, I get a dual benefit: 1) more open space that will make specific un-rented parcels AND the sim as a whole more attractive; 2) an additional source of prims which can be rented for Residents who require more. The bottom line will be "dollars neutral", I think, while improving the open space of the Sim. A win-win situation for everyone.


Be careful and do the math first. At the lower end of the "going rates", to merely make up the $295/month of a Private Island sim is not trivial. At my rates, I found that I would require a 75% occupancy rate, JUST to pay the monthly on an island, which is rather high when starting out with no reputation or experience. I personally decided it was too risky (despite vastly preferring an Island vs. Mainland.)

Still, that was just with my pricing structure. Perhaps you could design one that would comfortably cover both ongoing expenses, as well as build up a reserve for future plans. That'd be great! It was what *I* was trying to do too

Hey, Ged- I'm glad to see you going ahead with this. I'll keep an eye out- when you have the rules and stuff figured out I'll be in line for a piece to build on I think

Funny you should post, Ace Largely because at one point, all 3 of 3 builds on property were YOUR designs. I still have your CHOC house planted in a hillside, overlooking a lake.

Actually, the Linji Haven sim community is already more than 2/3 claimed (in 4 days!), with I think 21x 1,024 sqm squares left, split into 2,048 and 3,072 areas. It's actually shaping up quite nicely, I think, for mainland!

The "rules and stuff" never got completely finalized, but people jumped on board anyway. The rules are all based on "Be considerate, play nice." The only part, I think, that needs better clarification is build-height to border, which really isn't workable on a 2,048 sqm plot. But, I also say "if you work it out with your neighbors, bend or break any rule you want" basically.

I'll admit it, I have a bit of internet ADD and did not read every post in this thread.

But with that said, I have owned the same piece of first land I bought in Yongwang since November 2006. I purchased two adjoining plots as well. I have a small store that has items at cheap prices for new people to be able to have something that's better than some of the freebies out there.

All that said, I have owned this land for more than 3 months now, so I think I can be considered a "lifer" in that I won't skip town tomorrow. SL currently has about $90US of my traded Lindens. This covers my tier (which is $5 since my partner has contributed his free tier to our group) and which will (hopefully) grow. I'm very interested in a mainland sim as described.

Mainland because first off, I don't wish to use my paypal account for SL. As long as LL has my money, I don't have to worry about when to send payment, they'll automatically deduct it. Lazy I know, but it's what I have found works best for me. (remember, Internet ADD)

Mainland because second off, nothing against PI owners, or those who have proposed PI for this use, I prefer to maintain control of the land I reside on. If I have an ugly build, I expect neighbors to complain and show me what might work better for the neighborhood. It would help me, more than the neighborhood, to have people who care enough to show me what I should do. I'm more of a follower anyway.

I would be very interested in this project if it is possible to work around those two issues. I can easily sell off the land I have currently (land barons have already contacted me numerous times) and make the move, when this project gets off the ground. All I ask is for the same amount of land I currently hold (1536m2) with possibly an additional 512, as that is what I can currently comfortably afford.

I currently also host 3 SLE boxes on my land at no charge to the NPIOF people who sell through that route. Is there any way to incorporate that into the design? Not a big deal if it's not possible, I can always inform them that I can no longer support their efforts.

A

I think you may have misunderstood the point of the project.
You wouldn't be buying the land, so your tier would not be collected by linden. You would be renting the land from Ged, and would have to make the payment to him each week/month.
Geds group maintains control of the land, and covers the tier.
You also don't have to have paypal to rent/buy on a PI, some accept L$ for the monthly payments.

Also, with private islands you are more likely to receive complaints about an ugly build than you are on regular mainland

Actually, this is just proof that I have managed to evilly hijack this thread, and I really did not intend to.

The proposal of the ORIGINAL poster, was for a group of people to band together, win a mainland auction Sim, and then split it up amongst themselves, as truly OWNING the land themselves, pledging to keep to the social contract of keeping the Sim clean.

The earlier posts in the thread argued the pros and cons of this approach. And definitely, there are a number of benefits of that approach, not the least of which is not having some single individual "holding the bag" if everything else fails. It also bypasses all the annoying group role issues, and group ability to terraform.

Each method has its merits. While I share my experiences with what I ended up doing, I'm really rather interested if any other groups are pursuing either the original poster's idea, or the Private Island approach.

My apologies if it was aimed at a different post.
My memory is not the best (hence why I always have the wiki open while coding lsl, php.net when I'm doing php).

Perhaps we can get a thread going to continue the discussion of rented community sims. I think idea sharing will help all those involved to keep their projects running. Knowing the difficulties may also help those planning to join in (I'm definately interested in doing this).

Ged, I'm flattered but I do think something like this, I hope to see some creative new builds not just prefabs laid around

I posted a request on the blog. I hope there's still some space for when I get inworld.

I was pointed to this thread by Ged as a way to gain some more insight on the whole sim thing. And before that I was pointed to the Linji Haven by a friend who was planning(and has done so by now!) on moving there. The series of events was true providence as I am learning there really are people out there who want to do more then just buy up land and sublet because of some article they read about Second Life on the CNN website.

A little bit about why I am here. When I first got my sim I was ecstatic; I finally had a space I could happily landscape and change around to my hearts content. I had no intentions of renting anything out or allowing anyone in but friends, etc. The sim was my private spot, my stress relief and the equivalent to spending $25USD copay 3 times a week for a therapist.

I had to revamp that when rl intruded on my sl and I had to make the decision to either rent parts of it and maintain my own portion to play in or just let it go. I chose to keep it and suffer the finances until I can find a group of people who have the same ideas I have heard expressed here.

I'm still working on learning how paypal subscription works, how groups work and a host of other things that allow me to run a sim smoothly, but I'm afraid the main part of finding that community is also the hardest part. And charging money for it. I find myself wanting to just say hey you can set up shop here, don't worry about the rent, take all the prims you need...only to realize that if I do that I will be promising a lot more than I can afford to do.

Does anyone else have the problem of starting to landscape/build and then wondering if the people who choose to live there will not like it? How do you find those you rent to? Is it better to keep full control of the sim as opposed to selling land? How do you work the paypal subscription thing! How do you come up with those nifty lawyerly sounding covenants?! When I read Ged's draft I wanted to grab it up and make it mine, it sounded so reasonable. But of course, there are things I would like to change, not to mention just plain rude to plagiarize.

Basically it's a huge task and I am seeing that while it looks so simple(buy sim, parcel it out, sell the land, sit back and reap the profits) it is far from it. all I want is to have a place I can call 'home' here in sl, be able to create whenever I feel like it and be surrounded by a great group of people while doing so.

Any ideas/help/suggestions and even plain "that sounds interesting, count me in" talk gladly welcomed! Just no wow you talk too much Joie...I hear that from my sisters a lot.

The key is this: you aren't offering land.

You are offering creative control.

Of course you can set boundaries on that; the 'no casino, no camping chair' stuff is fairly par for the course and you'll still get by.

But if you say 'no ugly' get prepared to deal with a LOT of pointless drama.




Be very, very careful about taking Paypal too. Paypal transactions are reported to the US IRS, and if you don't account for each one as misc. income expect to explain why you didn't later on, unless you are out of the reach of the US government.

Also, the biggest 'red flag' you can have is miscellaneous income without appropriate taxation, either as medicare/social security (work) or capital gains (investment) or such as that.

I personally take $L and cash them out, leaving me with only a few USD transactions to deal with instead of hundreds of paypal payments to record and report, and of course I pay my taxes appropriately.

I have read about taking L$ and paying my fees with it and I am growing to like this idea more and more.

I'm not looking to make money, just to keep my place in the world open and to be able to play a bit.

Thank you!

As Desmond Shang points out here, and Ace Albion, elsewhere, there are a number of hassles and legal pitfalls to using PayPal. Here's another one -- you are very unlikely to be able to easily and inexpensively link a PayPal payment to automatically communicating with the rental system of your choice. You'll likely have to separately increment your rental days (unless you have the available expertise to have a web server, interacting with PayPal, and then PHP scripts working with communicating with prims in-world, ugh ugh ugh). While, if tenants are paying L$ directly to a rent box in-world, the credit in rental days can be automatic.

As for charging friends... I know what you mean. And worse yet, turning down friends because I went purely for a 1st-come, 1st-served approach to filling Linji Haven. (Oh, yes -- btw, for anyone who cares, the Linji Haven sim filled to capacity with tenants this morning, ~8 days after opening. Yay!) I also thought it'd probably be better to try to treat all tenants equally.


I agree with Desmond's response -- don't try to define "good" vs. "bad" build. Just define HORRIBLE, and don't allow that. Let people be creative in their own way. But that's just my opinion.


Good questions -- I have no idea. (Except for the PayPal part -- too much trouble... I accepted a few payments by PayPal, and do not intend to allow any more.)


Seeing as MY whole goal was to try to make a difference and improve things, I think the best way to further goal is as follows:

I release to the public domain whatever I wrote in the Linji Haven covenant, for whatever use you'd like. If you'd be willing to mention me and what it was modified from, that'd be great, but whatever. Go forth and do good things with it, please



These were exactly my goals as well, except the "profits" I intended to reap were clearly not financial, but more satisfaction and having a community to call home. Financially -- if you look at how I set it up, with no initial buy-in fee for the founding tenants, my rent fee schedule, and the amount of area available to rent, running now at 100% occupancy of the rentable parcels, it will still take more than 2 years to pay for the initial auction purchase price for the Sim. Not a particularly wise investment.

Desmond's model of an initial buy-in that offsets the initial purchase price of the mainland / island Sim if MUCH safer (and profitable) financially, but I think requires that you have a known reputation and "product", which he and Caledon already have. It's not something you or I have though



I wish you the best of luck! I *do* so wish I had an Island to play with, instead of mainland, but still, it's been a great adventure so far.

~~~~~~~Definitely going to go the Linden route~~~~~~~





Ged, you are awesome! Thank you. I am commencing the "go forthing" now and I am giving credit to you.



I know I do not have that known quality, but I also do not want tobe left flat if someone has a romance that goes south or anything else like that. I am wondering if asking for a month in advance will be sufficient to deter someone skipping out on me.

Lots to think about. Thank you!

If I had to start again, I think a reasonable idea might be "to join, pay a month in advance. In the event that you wish to cancel the rental, a full refund of all remaining unused rent will be issued with NO penalty, IF you give a week's notice before leaving; otherwise, a penalty of a maximum of 1 week of rent will be assessed."

That will at least guarantee you one week's worth of rent, while you are trying to re-fill a vacancy, but also leaves the tenants feeling protected, that they can get out, if they need to, provided they give you a week's notice.

A month in advance sounds reasonable. I'd also consider a minimum parcel size which ensures that this does not become a low-prim trailer park.

I agree. I'm seeing that even 2,048 sqm plots (my smallest plot size) are not as generous as you'd think, and do end up feeling crowded. 3,072 and 4,096 seems to be working better, but (on my fee schedule) starts to cut more badly into the bottom line for break-even.

Another way to avoid the cramped trailer-park feel might be to build in actual reserved roads, to guarantee space between parcels.

I think if I were starting over, I'd go this route, but it does reduce the flexibility of renters who might otherwise be able to dictate / request specific plot sizes and shapes that they'd like to use.

But... low prim trailer parks are where romances don't go flat! They may not have much, but they gots each other... grins

People come and go for their own reasons all the time. Then come back. Then go again. Many are very decent and try not to rock your boat too unexpectedly - others could care less about teh Evil Land Bar0nz (yeah, yeah I know but you'll get called that sometimes).

We all started with nothing; I've spent a year improving Caledon and doing all I could with it; it's a passionate hobby. If you are passionate and still having fun after a year you'll get there too.

Some people built a lot more in a year's time than I have, but I didn't exactly 'go for the money' - sims with no infrastructure, minimum covenant and a minimum of involvement make the most money. That's no secret. But it's just not me, and I don't think it's anyone posting in a thread like this either.

Good luck with your projects, I personally think you'll all do just fine.

I am planning to start a new Sim Community, for HaCk0rZ and a0L users. Here's a link to the updated covenant .

(Click on the Dialectize! button, to get the updated version. In the future, I will also consider a Swedish Chef-themed Sim , if there is sufficient interest.)

*Has visions of 1950's comedies running around in her head* You know the kind.. where this person runs into that room and that person runs out and on and on on... That's evil. lol


I have built in space between all the plots(parcels?) with the smallest size being around tha 2048. That size is only because a friend asked about it. I don't want to have a huge group of people simply because I'm a bit of a sociable loner and I would rather be able to 'know' who is there.

Can I join that community? 1 4m 133t 2!


omg....did anyone here ever play Anarchy Online and remembers that?

Hey Ace, if you're looking for creative builders then check out this guy just moving up from the teen grid (as posted on Second Citizens Forum / Business and Economy).

http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=10687

Here's his portfolio: he's definately going somewhere, and I don't just mean in Second Life.

http://www.greydawning.net/Aesop_PortFolio_March2007.pdf


Wow.

Wow indeed. This guy is good. I mean, really good!

It's definitely worth keeping an eye of him ... it'll be interesting to see what he is going to build on the main grid.