Yellow Peril is Perilous

[Pussycat Catnap]

Sim for sim, mainland makes more money than an estate sim - so its not a bad idea to entice estate renters over to mainland.

In total estate makes more - only because there are more estates.

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/mainland-versus-estate-which-is-the-better-bang-for-your-buck-to-linden-lab/

[Qie Niangao]

Except it doesn't actually work out that Mainland makes more per sim than Estate, according to Jack Linden, back when Mainland was considerably less abandoned than it is today.  I'll never find the quote, but I remember it distinctly because I'd proposed calculations along the same line as yours, and he responded that the numbers were close, but that in fact Mainland earned just slightly less per sim than Estates.

What was never clear--and those meetings were no place to press for such details--was whether that was comparing top-line revenue, or net of support costs, or just what.

It certainly seemed surprising to me, given what we know about Mainland ownership (from Tyche's amazing Mainland surveys, for example) and the enormous difference in per-square-meter costs across the range of tier levels.

[Pussycat Catnap]

My suspicion is that the old quote was from a time with more lindens and support. So supporting a lot of customers was more expensive.

Now with the difference in regular, concierge, and a sim owner - the small owners are largely ignored. Chat box support is what we get. So costs may have shifted. And this might reflect why they've been pushing premium accounts so much over the last year.

We can get 'outsourced support' on a product that is largely fixed and unchanging and manages itself (poorly, but eh... they can mostly ignore mainland). Estates require regular handholding through changes and fluxuations, and are more risky when one quits.

Linden Homes is the ultimate no-support fixed low upkeep product that just rakes in cash... which does very well (they're generally full). So convincing the lindens its bad is like convincing a junkie that crack is bad. You know it is, in the long term - but the fix sure feels good in the short term.

 

[Tyche Shepherd]

Currently each Private Estate region generates on average US$215.27 Tier per month (factoring in known grandfathering , distribution of Full vs. Homestead vs. Openspaces and using list prices) .

A full region on Privately owned mainland (including Linden Homes) generates an average of US$261.07 Tier per month. However if you include the 44.8% of land which is Linden Owned Mainland as an overhead this drops to US$144.11.

So that's Gross income,ignoring any costs such as support, infrastructure. Figures are derived from my Mainland Census at the beginning of June and my Private Estate survey at the end of June.

 

So depending on whether or not you want to include Linden Owned mainland in the equation - it goes either way

 

P.S. I suspect this is my first post in the (now not very new) forums .

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

Your numbers for a mainland sim are half of mine.

I get this, more detail on the link I had a few posts up:

 

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Show me the the money

:

How many mainland residents does it take to equal one estate?

If we assume the average mainlander owns 2048+base 512 (probably they own less, but some own vastly more…) for $15/month – and if we assume every one of them paid annually (the lowest rate – $6/month)…

Then a full mainland sim holds 25.6 of them.

(65536m / 2560m)

They pay LLs $(15+6)*25.6 = $537.6 per month.

- For every mainland sim’s worth of land LLs manages to get occupied, that’s what it makes. And unlike estates, this does not have to be contiguous (together) – it can be here and there with mole builds and abandoned lots between (see below for how much unused land they can afford).

An estate pays $295 per month; regardless of its occupancy. So the question is, how empty does mainland need to get to start making only $295/month per sim?

So lets empty the mainland sim a little…

295/21 = 14.05 mainlanders to pay the same in per month as one estate holder, burning up 28774m (44% of a sim). All mainlanders after this are added bonus.

To me, that implies that premium accounts make more money for LLs than estate accounts. Walmart philosophy.

Estate is a courtesy service – a model that assumed premium accounts would be unpopular. It attempts to shift the revenue elsewhere. However estate sales is simply unable to raise as much as you cannot convince someone to pay for an estate what they pay for mainland.

The less land each mainlander has too… the better for Linden Lab this gets.

The difference is small, but it is there. Its the old model for any service like this: the less each customer uses, as long as they keep paying, the better. But in this case… its actually, the less they buy, the better. Its the idea that you can make more money selling a candy bar for 99-cents than you can for selling the same bar for $1.50, because you’re more likely to sell 2 of them.

If all mainlanders owned only 512m of land… paying 6/month. Then 49.2 of them would be one estate account, but they’d only burn up 38% of a sim – all remaining land on that sim would be added bonus.

- Translation: from half to 62% of mainland can be empty, and still equal the money made from an equivalent amount of estate land.

Think about that next time you lament abandoned land and mole builds. Yes, it’d be better to move that abandoned land, but until it hits over 60% of maninland being in Linden hands, its no crisis.

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[jwenting]

"Remember First Land?  It was gamed to death by land flippers"

which is most likely exactly why the idea was abandoned. It was abused to fleece beginning land owners rather than empower them.
Linden Homes don't suffer from that as they can't be resold or rented out.

Not perfect, but protects inexperienced users from parasites who abuse the system as a get rich quick scheme by ripping off the unwary.

So your idea of selling your old land for L$100 per meter no longer works that you paid L$1 for from the Lindens a few days ago. Oh the pain I feel for you NOT!

[Qie Niangao]

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jwenting wrote:

"Remember First Land?  It was gamed to death by land flippers"

which is most likely exactly why the idea was abandoned. It was abused to fleece beginning land owners rather than empower them.

Linden Homes don't suffer from that as they can't be resold or rented out.

Not perfect, but protects inexperienced users from parasites who abuse the system as a get rich quick scheme by ripping off the unwary.

 

So your idea of selling your old land for L$100 per meter no longer works that you paid L$1 for from the Lindens a few days ago. Oh the pain I feel for you NOT!

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I don't understand this comment. Has somebody in this thread suggested that the old First Land program start up again? Has somebody left the impression that they might be some sort of land dealer beyond the common practice of occasionally "trading-up" parcels?*

Is your point that Linden Homes should be the successor to the entire Mainland? If not (or even if so), what about the non-existence of First Land helps with the problem of LL holding vast tracts of abandoned Mainland, sucking power and air conditioning and generating no revenue?

______________

*For that matter, it's not as if all land dealers are evil, just because they sometimes turn a profit. Indeed, some of the smartest and most decent people I've met in Second Life either are or were at one time active dealers in Mainland. It's true that Mainland offers scoundrels low-barrier-to-entry opportunities to be asshats. Witness the adfarmers of old, and the casino crystal queen, still scarring the old continents with her hundreds of glowing, particle-spewing, hovertext-infested ads, tacitly approved by the Lindens lest she abandon her one Estate sim that narrowly skirts the gambling laws. But I digress.

[Seven Overdrive]

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jwenting wrote:

"Remember First Land?  It was gamed to death by land flippers"

which is most likely exactly why the idea was abandoned. It was abused to fleece beginning land owners rather than empower them.

Linden Homes don't suffer from that as they can't be resold or rented out.

Not perfect, but protects inexperienced users from parasites who abuse the system as a get rich quick scheme by ripping off the unwary.

 

So your idea of selling your old land for L$100 per meter no longer works that you paid L$1 for from the Lindens a few days ago. Oh the pain I feel for you NOT!

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I'm not sure why you chose to take that one line out of context.  It was clearly not advocating a return to a failed program.  It was only an example of how LL once encouraged new residents to buy mainland.  The topic of the thread was about all the abandoned Mainland that is not generating revenue.  

Linden Homes may protect inexperienced residents from the "parasites" as you put it, but until I see some stats on how many of those new LH residents are trading their way up to Mainland or a Private estate parcel, I will reserve my judgment on if they are being empowered.  

Until I see equal advertising for mainland as an option for new residents, I will remain convinced that the Lab would prefer everyone be in an easily managed Linden Home or on a private estate where most of the support falls to the estate owners and not the Lab.

So... Do you have any thoughts on the topic of this thread?

[jwenting]

you take me out of context, not the other way around. The program was abandoned because it was abused to to extort sky high land prices from people too slow to sign up for it (like newer accounts...).
Linden Homes are for many probably the only land they'll ever need or want to have, a place to call home.
That means there will likely be less of a market for mainland plots (especially smaller ones), driving the price down to more reasonable levels for those who do need mainland.
Private region rentals are already reasonably priced (as in, not an excessively high percentage over cost of ownership to the rental agent). More mainland availability might hurt estate rental somewhat, but probably will hurt sale of new estates to residents willing to buy rather than rent estates more (as most rentals probably go to people without premium accounts anyway, the price of renting an estate for a longer time being higher than buying one outright).

Personally, I'd probably buy mainland were I to need more land. Cheaper that way. Less privacy of course, no control over your neighbours or the landscape (apart from selecting the parcel), but saves quite a bit of money. And that may well be what LL had in mind, driving mainland prices down so more people would be inclined to buy mainland for their stores, clubs, etc. that now typically end up on private estates, leaving large stretches of mainland abandoned.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, the Lindens started this ill-advised Governor Linden $1/m glut in the belief that it would free up all that unused abandoned land, especially from Zindra migrants, and get it under tier faster than the auction especially from people on sims who were existing owners.

 

But in fact, they are now victims of their own success as I said in the other thread, because they drove the price of land down so far that not even any bots will come fetch it even at .5 or .2 or even .1. There's like one bot that will come when it is nearly at 0, and maybe one or two live people who will come if it is choice land. They've got it to rock bottom now. Philip's dream -- he hated aribtrage.

For anyone considering the sale of their land, they rapidly see, within a day or two even if they leave out good land at .5 per meter, there is no point. So they abandon it so as not to pay the tier.