Linden Puts in Discounts on Island Set-Up and Tier

[Prokofy Neva]

This is great news:

 

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Featured-News/Decreased-Land-Set-Up-Fees-and-Changes-to-Transferring-Regions/ba-p/2978049

 

I've been hearing that the Lindens' sim numbers have dwindled down to less than 25,000 in total, from their heyday that was twice that or something (perhaps someone will remember; I personally remember when they were 32,000).

The problem you see right off the bat is that a discount on a homestead (which you are still required to first own a private island to obtain) still doesn't solve your problem of the new expensive tier, which isn't $95 as the grandfathered tier is, but more -- is it $125 now?

However, what's interesting is that this discount includes another concept of keeping grandfathering status (i.e. lower tier) in exchange for a higher set-up fee which many would go for.

The Lindens won't pull out the stops and allow homesteads to float free of island purchases first because if they do, they will have customers outselling them and making money from servers that they'd rather be making. Every housewife will borrow a grand to flip 10 homesteads to "estate managers" who will pay her $25 US or more per sim and she never has to do a thing, and send them to LL for customer service.

Now, for a similar discount on mainland tier, it's only fair. 10% group discount doesn't cut it any more. The tier has to not only come down, but have more granulated steps - $25 to $40 is too steep.

 

[Conifer Dada]

If discounts are going to be spread to the mainland as well, what I've always thought would be best is to increase the tier-free allowance from 512 sq m to 1024 sq m.  

[ChinRey]

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

Now, for a similar discount on mainland tier, it's only fair. 10% group discount doesn't cut it any more. The tier has to not only come down, but have more granulated steps - $25 to $40 is too steep.

---

Yes. The big question here is, is this just a desperate attempt to stop the sim death or is it the first step in a long overdue plan to reduce the tier overall? Only time will show.

[Prokofy Neva]

I think it's a stop-gap to reduce sim-death. They know when they open up Sansar, many will head for the exits and flood over there. This place will undergo a tremendous shock. Some will remain, or wash back on weekends after inevitable disappointment.

But they refused to make a 1:1 plan for transfer of land and the docile merchant and landlord classes, some of whom already have inside deals, haven't fought for this. Ebbe feels no pressure to give 1:1 and in a way, he can't with a different configuration.

So like TSO or There, the old Sansara as we were once originally called with die out and eventually we will see the big GAME OVER sign flash as we did in TSO. 

It's not usual that Silicon Valley tycoons make products that help destroy their other products. That is, there's always another i-phone that makes your previous i-phone obsolete, but there isn't a two-way wristwatch that makes all iphones senseless. But the Lindens think they can wean themselves from the land model, which they hate, and there's no shaking them from their convictions. 

[irihapeti]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

 big GAME OVER sign  

---

a alternative to GAME OVER sign could be the sign: SL IS NOW A PLANET (not a World)

meaning

that LL says that from this date: xx xxx xx, there will be no more resident tradeable sims added to SL

No more mainland sims. No more private islands

only new sims that might be added are non-tradeables: LDPW sims for mainland continent edge tidy up, and Linden Homes (if new signup demand warrants)

rough figures:

5,000 mainland sims at $300 month tiers

20,000 island sims at $300 month tiers

$7,500,000 tiers income a month approx.

except for Founder 4096m perpetual parcels which remain as is (forever)

-  all existing grandfather and estate discounting tiers (and mainland tiers) will be increased over 3 years until parity

the whole grandfather island sim thingy started bc server type classes. Which dont apply these days, so is no reason not to phase them out on a now fixed-sized planet

- all homesteads and openspaces sims will be upgraded to full sims and tiers increased over 3 years until parity 

in a fixed-size planet, mainland sim parcels are more valuable (bc LL landlord) than island sims (bc Resident landlord), so is not reason why the tiers should be cheaper

- the 10% mainland group bonus abolished progressively over 3 years until parity. For same reason above

- edu discounts to remain at 50%, No renting or selling on edu sims

+

if there was a certainty that there would be no more new SL land ever then LL can have its cake ($7.5 million a months worth) and eat it to (Sansar)

and us residents can have cake as well. The resell value of our sims/parcels will increase, and when they do we wont let them go easily or cheaply

in this fixed-size planet, we be all in like robbers dogs on all that empty mainland (: And the island barons will gobble up any island sim as soon as the For Sale sign goes up, at just about any price

so lots of cake for us residents as well I think, in parcel value

and we will go off-planet to Sansar also for the other new experiences/stuff that this brings us

[ChinRey]

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irihapeti wrote:

5,000 mainland sims at $300 month tiers

20,000 island sims at $300 month tiers

$7,500,000 tiers income a month approx.

---

 It would be more like

500 occupied mainland sims at $300 month tiers

4,500 abandoned mainland sims with $0 revenue

1000 island sims at $300 month tiers

19,000 closed down island sims

It's not going to happen of course. Linden Lab may have been too slow to reduce tier but I can't believe they'll actually increase it.

[irihapeti]

---

ChinRey wrote:

---

irihapeti wrote:

5,000 mainland sims at $300 month tiers

20,000 island sims at $300 month tiers

$7,500,000 tiers income a month approx.

---

 It would be more like

500 occupied mainland simes at $300 month tiers

4,500 abandoned mainland sims with $0 revenue

1000 island sims at $300 month tiers

19,000 closed down island sims

---

dunno about the closed down sims

in a virtual never-ending expansion of sims then for sure there is a collapse point. Which LL/SL hit way sooner than they expected, bc of their projections that would be millions and millions of users. And tbf the actual signup trajectories did indicate that in the golden years of SL

that with millions and millions of signups then there will always be another buyer

was not only LL who bought into this projection and bet the bank on it. Was also every wouldbe virtual real estate investor, who bet there banks as well, looking to flip parcels/sections for profit to the millions and millions of new world settlers

was pretty heady days those were

+

when a resource is scarce (fixed, limited) then is a whole other thing, to a ever-expanding thing

i just put $300 as a cake point. It could be any number. $10, $50, $100, $1000. $10,000. There is a cake point tho which if you hit turns your limited resource into a cash cow, pretty much for at least another decade. 2 or 3 decades even

+

is quite interesting to try work out what is that cake point

for example

theres approx. 900,000 unique signups signins each month. How many of them own parcels/sims, discounting the about 60,000 who got Linden Homes ?

say is 100,000 then

at 25,000 sims then 1/4 sim each avg. 300 / 4 = $75 a month each

would you pay $75 a month for a scarce resource to live, on use etc ?

and that you can sell for this amount, or 2x or 4x or 10x, or 100x even if was a beachfront with 3 or 4 side LDPW  protected ? Knowing that the view will never ever get built out

if not you or me then how many of the other 900,000 would. is it 100,000 at $75 ? or is it some other number ?

+

on your estimates then is 6,000 people at $75 each

i think is a bit low this estimate, given that theres about 60,000 who got a Linden Home already.So if 6,000 then the estimate is that only 1 in 10 SL users (in this planet not world scenario) would/will buy mainland or private estate parcels

i think 1 in 10 is a bit on the low side. 100,000 might be to high as well, but I think the cake point is closer to 100,000 than is to 6,000

+

eta signins and last para

 

 

 

[ChinRey]

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irihapeti wrote:

i just put $300 as a cake point. It could be any number. $10, $50, $100, $1000. $10,000. There is a cake point tho which if you hit turns your limited resource into a cash cow, pretty much for at least another decade. 2 or 3 decades even

---

I know. But I wanted to point out that the figure you used as an example is considerably higher than the current tier. The official price for a full sim - mainland or island - today is slightly below 200 USD. But a substantial number of sims are owned by the big land barons who receive serious quantity discounts. How much, I can't say - for obvious reasons LL keeps that a closely guarded secret. Current rental levels suggest a tier of about 50 USD/month for a full sim but it's probably higher since the land barons are bound to cut their margins to the bones to be able to compete in today's market. Not anywhere near 200 though - that would have been instant bankrupcy for the land barons.

---

irihapeti wrote:

theres approx. 900,000 unique

signups

signins each month. How many of them own parcels/sims, discounting the about 60,000 who got Linden Homes ?

---

You can't really tell from that figure for two reasons. 900,000 is the number of accounts signed in last 30 days. The number of actual people is much lower, probably less than half of that.

And 30 days is too short a time span. A substantial amount of Second Life land is owned or rented by people who don't log on every month, or even every year.

[SirLeighBastard]

It's extremely hush-hush at the moment, but rumours are spreading that the existing version of Second Life is to be subject to a massive rebranding exercise in the run-up to the announcement and failure of Second Life V2.

It's going to be renamed ZombieWorld.

***Call me and soon a bot will answer

[Prokofy Neva]

No, I refuse to advocate the demise of the 10% discount. There is a concerted class of insider geeks and high-end merchants that have lobbied against this modest privilege for the nearly powerless Mainland rentals class, but it's entirely political and about power holding not real economics.

Few really use this to any advantage, look at the map. We need the surveys of the Mainland we used to get from an avid watcher but basically, the few large land rental agencies (I'm a small one) have grouped their land to get the 10%, and some end-users make alts and group their land, but mainland rentals are a tiny percentage of land in SL, and end-users tend not to group their land. So the fantasy that this "perk" is meaningful and should be "traded" for something else is folly. Instead, it should be left alone and even encouraged as it helps people get a little more prim land, and that helps the vast abandoned land problem.

You mention the idea of "no more tradeable land". Where did you get the idea that it was growing in the first place? The Lindens long ago stopped printing mainland sims and growing SL at its green tip, along the outer edges of the existing continents. In fact, some continents are even unfinished, as they stopped new printing and fresh land auction sales ages ago.

Why would you want to save such remnants of a free market that exists in this world that provide jobs and incentives outside the creator/scripter class. Why? Why do you and so many Lindens hate land commodity so much? Is it a threat to your power as a geek or power user or designer? In real life, it doesn't work that way; why should it online? Hamlet Au is the lead crusader in agitating the Lindens to end land as a commodity and kill the land market out of a ruthless hatred of any class of ownership outside the geek squad. But it's short-sighted in a normal and balanced world where you need multiple types of entries to an economy and multiple types of revenue streams.

The Lindens only auction used abandoned land now (aside from their very dilatory and mismanaged abandoned land sales program). As for the land market itself, perhaps this fact my concentrate your mind a bit: last night instead of abandoning my land and forcing someone to try to get the Lindens to sell it to them for $1/meter, months later, when the Lindens might feel like it, I set it to sale for 0.5/meter, knowing that land bots often will get it at that place, then somebody can hold it and flip it for $2, let's say.

No land bots came.

I set it to $50 for 1056 meters finally, which shows it as "0" on the system, and still no bots came. That tells you what bots eat these days. I then woke up this morning to see finally it had manually sold. Good! Now somebody who pays $5 in tier to LL can have it.

I'm no big student of the land market these days, but from anecdotal experience, I would have to say that all but a tiny few of dealers make enough money to justify the frustration and costs. Most people just flip it and make pennies that erode away in tier anyway. 

So there is no need to freeze this trade, either, quite frankly, as it is not significant and not a solution. 

It would be preposterous to add more Linden Homes sims. Again, look at the map. This is a map in which the green dots are actually real people, as commerce is not allowed there and therefore there are no traffic bots, and adult public sex isn't allowed, either, so there are no whore bots. That means real live people.

The good news is that there are at least a sprinkling on them, indicating that they get use. The bad news is that it is like Dutch Elm disease, spots among many empty areas. It's not fully used. It is not sold out. It is not growing.

Grandfather tiers on islands should remain because the rise in tier was never justified, the investment people made in them for the first five years of SL substantial, and again, it doesn't help as they are a minority of products.

People like you are always willing to aggressively, savagely go after the tiny incentives that very hard-working and hard-suffering people have achieved in this totalitarian economy, for the sake of some ideological chimera -- it's always OTHER people you want to punish with the "disruption" that Silicon Valley so loves. Knock it off. You have no idea what you  are proposing, and you can't be blamed, because none of us have even the most basic facts we used to have from the Lindens:

o number of people who have spent more than $1 Linden each month (used to be 450,000).

o number of people who have spent the equivalent of $25 US each month (used to be under 50,000 I believe)

o number of islands (we do not have this from official sources

o number of mainland sims in Lindens' hands

o number of auctioned parcels

o and who buys those parcels -- all information once transparent, now gone.

 

I'm all for leaving educational sims, and I note that while you're happy to do so, for people who have HUGE sources of revenue from the RIDICULOUSLY HIGH tuition bills paid by American parents, you won't do it for your fellow citizens in tiny businesses selling clothing or rentals or gadgets on the Mainland. So again, think before you advocate suffering for others.

Your notion that evil running dogs of capitalism AKA island barons are somehow in the gravy is also all completely wrong. You have no idea. These people as a class have decimated enormously. All the major rentals groups from Anshe Chung to Adam Zaius on down have slashed their holdings; some long-time owners like the fruit sim people have hastily exited only barely picked up by others; you just have no idea, again, what you are talking about. The reason there are 25,000 sims, and not 32,000 or 40,000 as I believe there were at their heyday is because *these people* cannot sustain their businesses, and that's a BAD thing.

Island barons in Second Life are not George Soros or the Koch Brothers, which is how people imagine them. They are black single mothers in Michigan and white male retired postal workers in Ohio, and injured war vets in Colorado. They are not the rich moneybags you imagine; they are ordinary people, even people more poor than most in real life. They work hours for which they are not paid enabling many people to enjoy SL for far less than they would have to pay to Lindens.

The solution to save the Mainland (the old Sansara and other continents) and the private islands around them is NOT to do any of the things you propose or any other vicious and radical moves. It's to leave them alone and not get in their way anymore, or even encourage them.

Fortunatley, Linden is not as vicious as its user base, and has slashed prices on islands significantly. They know that killing off these people that you and others love to hate and wish to punish out of some wild ideological zeal and hatred in fact is sawing off the limb that they are sitting in.

There are many many other things the Lindens could be doing. I'm tired of listing them. My goal is just to have the Lindens stop devaluing land and undermining those of use who make businesses with it. It took us four long years to get them to act on the ruinous IMPEACH BUSH and 16-m micro baron empires that despoiled, devalued and depressed land for years, enabling the enrichment of a few geek friends of the Lindens.  I could tell 10 more stories of things we lobbied for and they changed (griefing third-party viewers, VAT tax, etc.) but it's lost on most people.

Second Life is a product, not a world. The Lindens do not want to become world-managers. So they are making a new world because the first world they made ran aground because they did not want to maintain the rule of law. Their next world will be less free and less creative for all but a tiny segment of high-end creators as a result. 

 

[Prokofy Neva]

@Chin Rey I tend to agree. I believe that the $195 grandfathered tier islands and $95 homestead islands are a minority of the product. There are enormous numbers of $295 sims. These don't rent out as well as people imagine -- look at the map! To get that $295 out of the ground from their 16 white, flat pancakes, owners have to offer ridiculous prices and incentives. They no longer "sell" parcels first -- they give away one month free. They put initial rents at below their own tier price. It's ridiculous. Read the ads, people and you will see this is not the profit center it once was.

Yes, they get discounts off that $295 price. But it isn't so much as to make them profit centers as many are leaving the business. Let's say a 100-bulk owner got a slash from $295 to $245 or even $195. He will still have a hell of time moving those parcels. I know because I have them myself at my tiny level and I travel around and see how they are doing and I see they are in trouble. This is not cause for rejoicing, believe me. "Land barons" as I said are single moms and retired folks and injured war veterans; those few who are actual prosperous real-life businessmen are far and few between. No sane person would get into a business with this slim margins with this risk and this hassle unless they liked the world itself, had friends there, or enjoyed a severe challenge as a kind of hobby.

Where do you get the figure of 900,000 unique signups each month??? That can't be true, guys. The last figures for WHEN the Lindens published this information years ago was far less. What's more important is to look at retention given 1 out of 9 fallout rates. At one time, there was something like 90,000 premium accounts; this fell to 50,000 and the Lindens stopped reporting it. They've tried upping it by slashing the cost to half for some campaigns. I do see new people coming in but it is not 900,000 not retaining and leaving 100,000, it's considerably less. Ask any worker at any newbie help station and they will tell you this, i.e. Oxford or New Citizens.

Instant bankruptcy is right. What we have now is a combination of happy exiting landlords cashing out with a somewhat flatter Linden than 5 years ago, reliefed; some holding and very exposed and worried; some clueless about the axe to fall on their head.

[Count Burks]



[Count Burks]



[Deltango Vale]

Linden Lab is a day late and a dollar short. Actually, five years late and still short. Always half measures with this company; always behind the curve. Here is what I proposed five years ago. Today, I would eliminate the setup fee entirely.

[ChinRey]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

@Chin Rey I tend to agree. I believe that the $195 grandfathered tier islands and $95 homestead islands are a minority of the product. There are enormous numbers of $295 sims.

---

Is it 295 a month for a full sim island? Wow! That's even worse than I thought. I thought it was about the same as a mainland sim.

For those who don't get the point: With the current rental price level for generic nothing-special-about-it land in Second Life, you can in theory make up to about 220 USD a month from a full sim. But that's only if you can manage to rent out everything all the time and that's not going to happen, there'll always be vacancies as people move out. Realistically you're very lucky indeed if you manage to earn 200 dollars a month from a full sim of rentals. And even at the best of conditions it'll take months to fill up even the better part of the sim. In the meantime you've paid the purchase price (which btw is about the same on mainland as an island) and a four digit number in dollars in tier for empty space.

In other words, even at the best of conditions you can only hope to barely cover the tier for a mainland sim or a grandfathered island. There's absolutely no way you can break even renting out land on a regular full price full sim island. This is of course why I know the big land barons have special discounts. If they hadn't, they would have left long ago. I can't imagine the discount is big enough to make it a lucrative business though.

Of course, that is for generic land. If you have something special to offer, you can charge more. But not much more and that solution has its own problems. Take a look at the map and see how many parcels there are for sale in Bay City, one of the most prestigious and high priced parts of SL.

 

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

Where do you get the figure of 900,000 uniquesignups each month???

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From Ebbe. In an interview in June this year (can't find the link right now) he mentioned that the number of active users - defined as accounts logged on last 30 days - had dropped below one million for the first time for ages.

[ChinRey]

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Deltango Vale wrote:

Always half measures with this company; always behind the curve.

---

Yes and no. They've been falling behind for a long time now but to be fair, they are actually slowly catching up now. But tier is just one of many issues that need to be fixed and the progress is so painfully slow. We can't really expect it to progress much faster though. Things Take Time and the last thing we need right now is another rushed change. I do hope and believe this is the first step in a general tier reduction and I hope we all understand why LL can't jsut cut all the prices in half overnight.

 

[irihapeti]

with tradeable land I mean that LL would not be printing any more land. Neither mainland or islands

meaning that there will be no more new investment in expanding the server farm. Maintenance and service only from now on

what sims/parcels LL do sell by auction will be any existing thats abandoned

+

residents can continue to trade amongst themselfs tho. Buy and sell parcels/sims. On both mainland and private islands/estates

that if we want to own a private island then we would have to buy it from another resident

is a big change this, in terms of parcel/sim tradeable capital value

and has a follow-on effect for mainland as well, in terms of the value of mainland parcels. Given the Estate owner is LL and not some resident

+

about the mess of mainland half continents

LDPW to tidy up by add a LDPW water sim where necessary to smooth the terrain down below sea level. They are not for sale to residents

+

if is not $300 a month then some other amount. Say $150 tiers. And say instead of 25,000 sims then 20,000

150 * 20,000 =  $3,000,000

and say is only 40,000 people interested in this

works out at $75 for 1/2 a sim each average

there is a number in here somewhere that makes it viable for LL to continue with SL regardless of what might happen with Sansar. The cake point

+

if the objective is to continue with SL and generate income for the company on a continuing basis then whats in it for the resident land owners ?

as you say we can see whats in it for the creator class. What do we see in it for the land owner class ? Nothing really, other than they work really hard to get and keep renters for relatively little reward 

i think whats in it not only for barons but also individuals is the capital value of their parcels. Which I think can be maintained, or enhanced even, when there is a fixed amount of land in total. Like a planet has

+

the Linden Homes thing is a factor for sure

in a fixed world where the capital value of land is enhanced then LH would be a bit like immigrant housing I think. And I think this would be best managed in the same way that is managed in the RL

eta: meaning that we dont get to stay in the hostel forever

 

[Prokofy Neva]

@Deltango Ray Yes, I realize. But it's better than a stick in your eye.

@ChinRey, your math is absolutely correct. The only way you could nudge that up is by other things - content or service sales, live music, perhaps renting some high-end merchant stalls along with house rentals etc. Not a great way to make a living. The return of your initial "investment" (I prefer to call it "sunk cost of doing business" like purchase of a lathe or a license) takes more than 6 months; it could be a year without a full house. Any sim under 80% occupancy will fail then unless you run around like a gerbil on a wheel. WHEN you finally return that price, that's great, but you don't get better, as to stay ahead, you have to keep buying fresh land and doing fresh things (at least, that's the conveyor belt many get stuck on).

As for the figure Ebbe gave, that's a different figure than "sign-ups". He's talking about 30-day uniques. Yes, I knew that figure was close to a million and likely dropped. It's more like 70,000 tops concurrent log-ons on a Saturday or Sunday night when there is high occupancy. And I believe that figure although there are a lot of people who don't log on among them.

What I'm talking about are sign-ups -- new people who buy the premium each month or even you could calculate the number of people who come in and buy $1000 of Lindens to buy a suit and a car. THAT numbers of newbies has dwindled. That's why the 30-day uniques has reduced. 

As for Bay City  or Nautilus, I look at these areas with a really jaundiced eye. They are overpriced and therefore the land goes fallow when they could be far more livelier communities. The Lindens try to create value with their builds ,but then their fan base grab that land and hold. They don't even actually sell it. They hold. We see this in Zindra too with some land barons. Buy and hold to keep the ridiculous price way up. People are paying fantastic prices just for easements -- a little bit of tree and land between them and their neighbour. Linden could put that out with a cookie-cutter across thousands of more sims and make life more tolerable and less griefy and blighty for the population. They prefer not to, or drive them into the Assisted Living of Linden Homes.

There's also the problem of the power users/buyers at Bay City and Nautilus who grab land and hold it like dogs in the manager and also use all kinds of techniques to keep others out, thereby making them empty after awhile like all authoritarian systems. The Lindens could break this crazy they themselves created by rolling out 10 more area like this so that the price comes down and the dogs in the manger stop pretending to eat hay. They prefer not to.

[Prokofy Neva]

The Russians don't use the T-72s as much, well maybe in Syria. In Ukraine they have the modified T-72A or the T-72BM with the kontakt or reactive armour on the sides and other upgrades:



BTW I'm only finding the Russian T-90s for sale on the MP, but the Russians only use that in Syria and not the Donbass. I need to find a T-72 and preferably with upgrades for my Ukraine war installation.

[ChinRey]

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irihapeti wrote:

with tradeable land I mean that LL would not be printing any more land. Neither mainland or islands

---

Ummm, I think that already happened four years ago, irihapeti. The number of islands have been dropping at a steady rate of about 100 a month ever since 2011 and there haven't been any new mainland devlopment worth mentioning either.

 

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irihapeti wrote:

there is a number in here somewhere that makes it viable for LL to continue with SL regardless of what might happen with Sansar. The cake point

---

Interestingly, both Ebbe and at least one of his predecessors have said in public that the land fees are too high. Somehow I find it hard to believe they meant that LL was making too much money. It's more likely that they thought LL would be better off by cutting the margins to increase the volume.

 

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irihapeti wrote:

as you say we can see whats in it for the creator class.

---

I missed that. The answer is of course not much. The clothes and other avatar accessories market keeps going because of fashion but not bnearly at the level it was. There is a market for collectibles - finely crafted items that you take out and look at every now and then but are far too laggy and/or primmy to keep rezzed. But for in-world objects, nope. It's the good old question about supply and demand: The supply is steadily increasing while the demand is dropping. It's very hard to sell much to old-timers who are struggling to manage their overfilled inventories and the only thing that can change the downwards trend is a significant requitment of new users.

Oh, and maybe make it possible for people to actually buy the Lindens they want - I hear there have been some problems with that recently and that definitely doesn't sound like a good busniess strategy.

[ChinRey]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

As for the figureEbbe gave, that's a different figure than "sign-ups". He's talking about 30-dayuniques.

---

Oh, just a simple misunderstanding then. It's the 30-day uniques both me and irahepti were talking about.

As for new sign-ups, newly created accounts, I've never seen any statistics but judging by the traffic at the Learning Islands it should be about 10,000-30,000 a month, does that sound about right? Of course, a new account doesn't necessarily mean a new user. Most of them will never return for a second visit and then there are the new alts for old users. I find it very hard to believe that the number of new users in a month has more than three digits and I wouldn't even be completely surprised if it turned out to be less than a hundred.

 

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

As for Bay City  or Nautilus, I look at these areas with a really jaundiced eye. They are overpriced and therefore the land goes fallow when they could be far more livelier communities.

---

There is a huge difference between those two areas. The residents at Bay City have really tried to maintain the theme and uniqueness of the place so that place still has some extra value although maybe not nearly as much as the price level indicates. Nautlius is just an overpriced slum.

But that's beside my point anyway. Whether you like it or not, Bay City is regarded as "high end" (un)real estate and it has been very stable ever since it was first rezzed. Today almost half of it is for sale and it's been that way for months.

 

Edit:

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

There's also the problem of the power users/buyers at Bay City and Nautilus who grab land and hold it like dogs in the manager and also use all kinds of techniques to keep others out,

---

I don't know about that but if you're right, it just emphasizes what I was trying to say. They're not holding on to it anymore, they're fleeing.

[Perrie Juran]

Just tagging a few thoughts here.

I've always been against Linden Homes.  At best there should have been a time limit on how long one could use them.  Then they would have worked as a stepping stone to living on Main Land or a Private Estate.   They were and are a slap in the face of land owners in the rental business.  It's a very difficult position to be in when your supplier is also your competitor.  The last time I did the math there was NOT enough abandoned Mainland to absorb all the Linden Homes. (I lost my numbers and don't feel like redoing them but someone else may feel like it) 

When it comes to the subject of profit margins, we need to remember that not everyone who owns Mainland owns full Sims.  So the margins on smaller parcels are much larger because of how tier is calculated. 

One plus to the Linden Homes is that they are "zoned,"  that is no commercial use such as Clubs, etc.  So no problems with a Club coming in and making the Sim unusable for any one else.  Mainland needed this too.  Sims that were set for residential use only.  Really I saw three zones, Residential, Commercial, and mixed use.  Linden Lab allowed a free for all and it hurt more than helped.  Still, I would want minimum involvement by LL in this.  

 

eta:clarity

 

[ChinRey]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

When it comes to the subject of profit margins, we need to remember that not everyone who owns Mainland owns full Sims.  So the margins on smaller parcels are much larger because of how tier is calculated.

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Larger? Last time I checked smaller landowners had to pay more per m2 than full sim owners. Except for those 512 that come with the premium membership of course.

The by far cheapest way to own a lot of land in SL is to open a lot of yearly-payment premium membership alt accounts and combine all those 512 tiers in a group. Managing it all would be a lot of work though and I wonder how LL would react if somebody actually did it.

 

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Mainland needed this too.  Sims that were set for residential use only.  Really I saw three zones, Residential, Commercial, and mixed use.  Linden Lab allowed a free for all and it hurt more than helped.  Still, I would want minimum involvement by LL in this.

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And themed areas even. It's not a question of either one or the other either. There's room on Mainland both for zoned/themed areas and open build-anything-you-like areas.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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ChinRey wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

When it comes to the subject of profit margins, we need to remember that not everyone who owns Mainland owns full Sims.  So the margins on smaller parcels are much larger because of how tier is calculated.

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Larger? Last time I checked smaller landowners had to pay more per m2 than full sim owners. Except for those 512 that come with the premium membership of course.

The by far cheapest way to own a lot of land in SL is to open a lot of yearly-payment premium membership alt accounts and combine all those 512 tiers in a group. Managing it all would be a lot of work though and I wonder how LL would react if somebody actually did it.

 

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I was referring to LL's margins on Mainland. You pay more tier per sqm if you only own a small. parcel

 

 

 

 

 

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Perrie Juran wrote:

Mainland needed this too.  Sims that were set for residential use only.  Really I saw three zones, Residential, Commercial, and mixed use.  Linden Lab allowed a free for all and it hurt more than helped.  Still, I would want minimum involvement by LL in this.

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And themed areas even. It's not a question of either one or the other either. There's room on Mainland both for zoned/themed areas and open build-anything-you-like areas.

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Well, the original vision was that commercial districts would develop around the Telehubs LINK and that residential areas would develop in the outlying areas.  But it didn't happen as envisioned.  Later on the telehubs were removed LINK and replaced with the Infohubs.  (I'm providing the links for any one not familiar with the history).  If LL had actually enforced this thinking Mainland would have looked a lot different.

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eta: clarity

[irihapeti]

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ChinRey wrote:

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irihapeti wrote:

 

as you say we can see whats in it for the creator class.

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I missed that. The answer is of course not much. The clothes and other avatar accessories market keeps going because of fashion but not bnearly at the level it was. There is a market for collectibles - finely crafted items that you take out and look at every now and then but are far too laggy and/or primmy to keep rezzed. But for in-world objects, nope. It's the good old question about supply and demand: The supply is steadily increasing while the demand is dropping. It's very hard to sell much to old-timers who are struggling to manage their overfilled inventories and the only thing that can change the downwards trend is a significant requitment of new users.

Oh, and maybe make it possible for people to actually buy the Lindens they want - I hear there have been some problems with that recently and that definitely doesn't sound like a good busniess strategy.

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i just pick up on this part. Where a objective is to increase the supply of new money (new users) to the merchant and landlord classes

i think that it starts with what is it that the new money is being sought for. Like into what environment will the money be spent.

i try put this in a context. expand on it

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whats in it for creators and always has been is the continous improvements in the toolset over the years that LL have directed most of their resources towards

also the introduction of Marketplace, which lowered the cost of entry to 0$, for a creator to be a merchant

whereas LL have done little to improve on land ownership. There have been some improvements to the Estate tools and parcel tools, (banning capabilities, parcel visibility for example) however the tools that influence the economic model of land hasnt changed since forever

examples being:

- a rental system built into About Land (in addition to Buy/Sell Land)

- a more fine graduated tier scale

- the ability to transfer tiers to another resident

- advance pre-purchasing of Tiers enabling discounts to be offered for periods of longevity. Ie if I pay 12 months of tiers in advance then will be cheaper for me than if I pay month by month

- when I can pay my estate landlord in tiers and the estate goes under then any tiers that I have paid them in advance can be returned to me automagically

- landlords can pay their dues to LL in whole or part with Tiers, surplus tiers can be bought/sold on the Tiers Exchange

i agree with Prokofy that LL have never liked the land model they have now. I think also that it has been the timidity of the LL Board to address this. Basically I think they have been far to afraid over the years

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about the price race to the bottom for made products as a consequence of over-supply and under-demand

is not a creator problem this really. Creators in SL have always had it good, LL resource allocation-wise to improving the toolsets enhancing their capability to create

the price race is a merchant problem, a economic problem

and LL have been way to timid to address this also. As a economic problem

they treat it as a toolset problem. That by improving the ability of merchants to more easily market their products then a subsequent increase in sales has the best chance of occurring

that if we make it more easy to market stuff then this will be more attractive to more customers who introduce more money

as a strategy for over-supply on a rising economic cycle then is ok this. However it dont address the downturns that come in economic cycles. LL have no economic strategy for dealing with customer under-demand

the way this is typically done is to reduce stock, by reducing the supply of merchants in the market place in a economic downturn. This is done thru costings. Like you have to pay the full costs of being a merchant. Tier payments for Marketplace for example. Dont sell anything then the store will close. The stock of products is reduced. The over-supply of merchants is reduced