How has the $0.50 Fee change for buying Linden$ helped SL??

[Wallace Wirefly]

Now that Linden Lab has upped the fee for buying $L I was wondering if this increase has helped SL. We know that LL increased prims to lands and they reduced charges to land owners. So are all the buyers of $L absorbing the cost of these "improvements"? We see most improvements coming from creators in SL does the increase in fee help them? It is interesting that long ago Linden Lab used to publish data on all sorts of things about second life statistics that stopped so we really have no idea whether second life is profitable or things have improved. We do know that Sansar project has probably used up a bit of money. Are we now paying to recoup that monies? has moving the "grid" to the cloud resources saved money? And has this degraded the performance of the system or improved it? So exactly what has this $0.50 increase in buying $L done for the everyday person in second life or what is this increase for? The floor is open for discussion.

[Ethan Paslong]

2 hours ago, Wallace Wirefly said:

 The floor is open for discussion.

i wonder whát discussion... same as you nobody here knows the income, nor the costs for the Lab to keep things running.

So did the raise of fees help? ..... dunno, but pretty sure they paid the electricity bill, the lights are still on.
It's a privat business, i'm sure if you are shareholder you would know a bit more, they don't have to explain us what they do with the money.
It's never said what they pull out of SL will be invested.. or where.
It's a company that has to make profits to keep board and shareholders happy, and we are the ones they collect it from.

About Sansar and the other projects you mention we know even less.

Edited August 25, 2018 by Ethan Paslong

[Fionalein]

Every transaction has follow up costs, like documentation etc. By increasing transaction fees the Linden buys might stay same in volume but will have decreased in number... this idea among others will have lead to the change...

[Tari Landar]

I don't believe there is a way for individuals, most likely even the vast majority of LL employees, to say whether or not the fee change has "helped". LL doesn't hand that information out willy nilly, nor will they ever. They're rather vague on where the profits go, for the most part, which is of course their right as a business (even if we'd prefer it not be, at times). I doubt LL would ever share the intricacies of what profits, from what areas go towards different sectors/projects/whatever have you, very few business have ever taken that kind of information out of need to know status. 

However, we do know that sl has been, and still remains, profitable. We know this because LL has said, since day one, that sl will only remain available (open, running, etc) as long as sl is profitable. We're still here, 15+ years later, so, clearly, it's profitable. It may or may not be profitable to individuals, that's pretty subjective and situational, but it's overall viability  and profitability remains stable. Of course that could change in the blink of an eye at any given point, but only LL(or, rather, select LL employees) will know when/if it does immediately. The rest of us would have to wait until it was/is made public knowledge. 

[Callum Meriman]

SL Grid Survey proves that the change reversed the leak of private islands.

The grid has substantially grown since it came in; These quotes from the wonderful Tyche are from the "other" SL forum.

Before the change:

Quote

YTD net private estate losses stand at 137 regions (0.9% loss)

After the change:

Quote

YTD Net Loss of private estates has now shrunk to 25 regions

 

[Amanda Crisp]

My Partner and I have rented  Land together (under our Original Avatars) since 2005, first in a D’alliez sim, then in Geneva before Anshe whats-her-face stuck it to her tenants. For the last 10+ years we’ve owned a good chunk of a MadLand sim and mainly lived in Skybox land. My half of our Tier was $40 usd, and that went down to $35 based on all the changes.

From *my* perspectives, LL lost money on me by upping the transaction fee.  My monthly tier declined and I offset the increased transaction fee by purchasing one big chunk of Lindens a month as spending money (now that I don’t work inworld any more).

LL lost monthly money on tier from me and effectivly lost on Transaction fees since I only pay those once a month now.

This model may not fit everyone. I’m fortunate that in RL I’m a ‘senior worker” nearing retirement, (and therefore have had a chance to work my way up the heirarchy in my profession) my kids are grown and gone  and the Cat is cheap company..... so I can afford to bulk-buy Linden $ for when Skye and I make our weekly runs on the shopping events.

Its possible that the reduction in tier has me purchasing a few *more* Lindens than I used-to, but thats mainly because I no longer DJ in-world and I had to replace the shopping-cash I was previously collecting in the form of tips.

Can the tier reduction be stimulating other segments of the inworld economy? Possibly, but virtual macro-economics is really not my thing so i can’t speak intelligently to the subject. What I can opine to is that this might be a move to retain more of the current tier-paying customer-base (the part of LL’s income which is steadier than transaction fees) and to encourage more Residents to buy Land and become part of the “steady, monthly income stream” for LL.

My guess is that LL is looking at “long term survival strategy” and trying to normalize their revenue, which in turn would give them better access to expansion-credits from RL banks so that servers can be maintained and updated, staff can be paid and Sl can evolve.

Again, I am a “cat-herder” and not a Finance nabob - so these are just subjective impressions based on hanging about a business for a few decades now.......  free-input is usually worth what you pay for it.

 

Edited August 26, 2018 by AmandaKeen

[Teagan Tobias]

$0.50 in not even the half of it, in about one year the fee has gone from $0.40 to $1.49. I think it was still $.40 the last quarter of last year (2017). I just buy more lindens each time I need them. The funny part is I did not even know about the $0.40 until it went to $0.99 last year and I saw people talking about it here in the forum.

I'm not sure of the dates, but I don't think I am far off.

[LittleMe Jewell]

The increased fee has probably reduced fee income from those of us that pay attention to such and realize that we are better off buying in bulk (so to speak) and can afford to do so.

There will always be those folks that only buy L$ when they need to pay their inworld rent or buy L$ via an MP purchase (which is a horrid way of doing it unless they are buying really high dollar items) or buy a specified amount every week/month simply because they always have and it works for them.  Those are the people that either don't pay attention to the fee, don't care, or are just clueless enough to not understand how to avoid some of those fees.  Since LL has raised the fees a few times in the past year, my guess is that there are actually quite a few people like this - they keep doing the same behavior no matter LL's fees - thus not causing a major drop in LL's income from fees.

[Loydin Tripp]

On 8/25/2018 at 5:57 PM, Callum Meriman said:

The grid has substantially grown since it came in; These quotes from the wonderful Tyche are from the "other" SL forum.

I would love to know where that is, the "other" SL forum.

It seems to be an annual event that Linden Labs starts another 'episode' with me. Be wonderful to have place to ask questions and voice concerns minus the ever watchful and occasionally censoring Linden Labs.

Thanks, Loydin Tripp

Edited October 31, 2018 by Loydin Tripp

[ellestones]

1 minute ago, Loydin Tripp said:

I would love to know where that is, the "other" SL forum.

It seems to be an annual event that Linden Labs starts another 'episode' with me. Be wonderful to have place to ask questions and voice concerns minus the ever watchful and occasionally censoring Linden Labs.

google search on keyword "virtualverse one"

altho if do go over there and just rant then the SL residents on there can be pretty censoring on ranters, as the forum is lightly moderated. The people on that forum expect arguments to be soundly reasoned or you will get crickets from them

[Loydin Tripp]

15 minutes ago, ellestones said:

The people on that forum expect arguments to be soundly reasoned or you will get crickets from them

Thank you, reasoned arguments is where I live.