What happened to the fees?

[Doris Haller]

Hi,

I remember well the discussion about new fees to remove freebies from XStreet. See here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Managing_Freebies_on_Xstreet_SL_Roadmap_FAQ

They say there

We expect to enact these controls within the time window 30 - 90 days 
following this roadmap announcement on November 18th, 2009.

When I read the fee schedule today (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Xstreet_fees and http://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=4) it says

Xstreet does not charge merchants for standard item listings on the 
Marketplace website.

What happened to the expectation? Does it mean that the freebie management is cancelled or postponed?

Or is it already implemented and I just don't understand the fee schedule?

[Irene Muni]

As far as I know, it is NOT already implementd (I only sell freebies in Xtreet , and I'm not payin for list them).

If that implementation is cancelled or only postponed... who konws .

[Ceera Murakami]

I haven't seen anything yet on the new fees being implemented.

Possibly, like many, many Linden Lab policies and plans, the people in charge if implementing it got distracted by some new "shiny", like the new TPV Policy and TOS, or Viewer 2.0, and dropped the ball. In this case, it would, in my opinion, be a good idea if they never found that ball again.

The proposed new fees already hopelessly damaged their credibility with a lot of content creators, and caused a lot of people to cease using XStreet-SL either as merchants or as consumers. It may be that they are waiting for that firestorm of hostile Resident opinions to die down a bit, for us to be distracted by the new TOS and TPV policy, or some other issue, before proceeding with what was pretty obviously a poorly-received policy change.

Sadly, I wouldn't count on it being any more than a temporary reprieve. Linden Lab virtually never reverses course on any ploicy decision, no matter how much their paying customers oppose the idea. And especially not when they believe it can make more money for the Lab if they proceed.

[Doris Haller]

They just nevere ever said something about it again?

If they wait till everything seddled down, it will boil up again when they finally do it, right?

Maybe they just dropped it like it's hot...

[Lindal Kidd]

Ceera.Murakami wrote:

... Linden Lab virtually never reverses course on any ploicy decision, no matter how much their paying customers oppose the idea. And especially not when they believe it can make more money for the Lab if they proceed.

And they really do think this is going to be a huge moneymaker for them.  Pink Linden stated that the shiny model they're looking at is Apple's iPhone apps, where Apple gets a 30% cut of sales.

LL may never charge that much, but that is the golden goose that they are trying to catch.

[Doris Haller]

Lindal.Kidd schrieb:

Pink Linden stated that the shiny model they're looking at is Apple's iPhone apps, where Apple gets a 30% cut of sales.

LL may never charge that much, but that is the golden goose that they are trying to catch.

Yes, I remember that. But that was long ago in November or December.

Seems that there are no news on that...

[Cinnamon Lohner]

Hi Doris,

They provided the following update in February.

--Cinn

https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/commerce/blog/2010/02/12/update-to-freebie-mitigation-roadmap

Hello all,

We've gotten  a lot of questions regarding the timeline for the freebie  mitigation roadmap we announced late last year.  We had intended to  begin work on this last quarter, but some more important projects took a  bit longer than expected.  You've heard about a couple of these already  this week, the  L$ balance merge & wishlists.   We are working hard to improve the experience and we will get to the  freebie mitigation roadmap as soon as we can, albeit a bit later than  planned.  Rest assured, we will provide at least 2 weeks notice via a  commerce blog post as well as by email to all merchants with active  listings onXstreet SL before launching any of the changes put forward in  the freebie mitigation roadmap.

Thanks all.  When we have more information  we'll let you know.
--The Commerce Team

[Velcon Ethaniel]

I don't mind listing fees, but I think $10L per item is retarded.

[Nuno McCullough]

Linden Lab put an hold on fees as already stated on Colossus Linden post on May 6th

 

UPDATE (May 6th, 2010):

None of the plans in the following roadmap have been implemented.  They have been put on hold in favor of other features and functionality that merchants have requested.  We do not yet have a date for when we expect to implement these changes.  We will message the community and all merchants directly with fair warning before implementing anything in the following roadmap.  Until and unless you hear from us that we are implementing some or all of the following changes, they do not apply.

Based on merchant feedback on the importance of demo items, we have implemented a better way to link demo items and products in the new marketplace due to launch in the Summer of 2010.  Each product will have the ability to link to a demo item and each demo item will have the ability to link to the non-demo, complete version of the product.

 

 

So for now we can still have items on XStreet (future SL Marketplace) without mandatory listing fees

[Corax Cyberschreiber]

I was hoping this was all some kind of magical joke.. seems not. Ok, I can see two sides to this matter.. freebies are bloody nice, but crap filling up the markets is not. It's obvious here that Linden Lab is showing the world who their target is. It's not the recrational players either. I'm going to have to take my own listings down. Sigh, I'll have to find somewhere to put them up in world.er

 

Thank you Linden Labs, for showing us all how much you love your money. Taking the easy way out that just gets you more money, instead of putting the research and time in to find a better method for a system that never worked properly to being with.

 

Just my twenty cents.

[Vick Forcella]

You answer and discussion here:

http://blogs.secondlife.com/message/205809#205809