MP fees raising to 10% per sale. Thoughts?

[Minkarue]

6 hours ago, Gadget Portal said:

There may be a case there, actually. They shut down competitor's options while allowing fraud and theft on their own is the angle I'd be discussing with a lawyer, if I had the time and money. 

Which is another issue in itself. 

It doesn't cost a dime to report suspected antitrust violations , all you do is go to the Federal Trade Commission's website , https://www.ftc.gov/faq/competition/report-antitrust-violation

 

[Elvina Ewing]

15 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

So .. What did happen to Primbay ?

pardon my ignorance, but what is/was Primbay? Never heard of it. I gather it was some alternative marketplace? Did it use L$ or USD? Because we could use a Marketplace that bypasses this entire gametoken system, avoiding all the exchange fees and thus keeping prices very low compared to LL's MP....

[Kyrah Abattoir]

A while after Onrez and Xstreet where bought, assimilated and shut down, one of the vendor solution providers created a web frontend to their vendor system which was called primbay.

At some point the website closed and they said they would reopen soon, and nothing happened.

[Alwin Alcott]

39 minutes ago, Elvina Ewing said:

pardon my ignorance, but what is/was Primbay? Never heard of it. I gather it was some alternative marketplace? Did it use L$ or USD? Because we could use a Marketplace that bypasses this entire gametoken system, avoiding all the exchange fees and thus keeping prices very low compared to LL's MP....

https://wiki.casperdns.com/index.php/PrimBay

[Alyona Su]

Some people proclaiming questionable legal practices by Linden Lab are forgetting one very important thing: The Linden Dollar, upon which all these claims and opinions are based, has zero legal tender value. Therefor, monetary laws in any country do not apply to anything Linden Dollar-related. Only the actual real world dollar aspects of transactions with Linden Lab directly, such as when buying Linden Dollars (service fee) or cashing out Linden Dollars. Until that exchange happens, the Linden Dollar is nothing more than a Linden Lab-created token. It is literally "Monopoly Play Money" by another name.

Now, if only we could get the makers of the Monopoly board game to allow us to cash out that Monopoly money...

[OptimoMaximo]

3 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

Did it use L$ or USD? Because we could use a Marketplace that bypasses this entire gametoken system, avoiding all the exchange fees and thus keeping prices very low compared to LL's MP.

I'm not sure if you're addressing "prices" as the commissions LL applies or the actual item prices, but if it's the latter my counter-question is: lower than they already are? Are you serious? Aside from the downloaded assets that costed few minutes to the "creator", there are items that took weeks to make and are already set at ridiculous prices, for the amount of work and time necessary to complete them, next to nothing and definitely dimes in comparison to the prices a similar asset would cost anywhere else. All for those downloaded assets that set the bar down, of course. When it's possible to give no value to something, any price is fine for such merchants whose only investments in such items were 1 minute log in to the download site, 1 minute download, 2 minutes conversion to dae in a 3d package and 1 minute upload, starting the tragedy of the commons and a pile of crap that collapses to 1 single triangle the moment you look at them from farther than 1 meter. 

There is a widespread inflated perception of a Linden value. I for one struggle setting some of my products to the price they are, I have a few Maya plug-ins that took much time and effort to make, not counting the expertise needed, that on any other plug-in sales platform would have costed 4 times the price they are set on MP, and I have to hear that they are expensive!

[Elvina Ewing]

17 minutes ago, OptimoMaximo said:

I'm not sure if you're addressing "prices" as the commissions LL applies or the actual item prices, but if it's the latter my counter-question is: lower than they already are? Are you serious? Aside from the downloaded assets that costed few minutes to the "creator", there are items that took weeks to make and are already set at ridiculous prices, for the amount of work and time necessary to complete them, next to nothing and definitely dimes in comparison to the prices a similar asset would cost anywhere else. All for those downloaded assets that set the bar down, of course. When it's possible to give no value to something, any price is fine for such merchants whose only investments in such items were 1 minute log in to the download site, 1 minute download, 2 minutes conversion to dae in a 3d package and 1 minute upload, starting the tragedy of the commons and a pile of crap that collapses to 1 single triangle the moment you look at them from farther than 1 meter. 

There is a widespread inflated perception of a Linden value. I for one struggle setting some of my products to the price they are, I have a few Maya plug-ins that took much time and effort to make, not counting the expertise needed, that on any other plug-in sales platform would have costed 4 times the price they are set on MP, and I have to hear that they are expensive!

right now you sell something for say 260L$ on MP, how much of that in USD will you put in your pocket, after all the fees are taken off? I saw this example calculation somewhere around here that LL is taking 31% off that. So, 69 cent for that item in your pocket. If you sell the same item on "another marketplace" for the same price =1USD, even if that hypothetical marketplace would also take 10%, you would still end up with 90 cent. 90 cent > 69 cent

[OptimoMaximo]

1 hour ago, Elvina Ewing said:

right now you sell something for say 260L$ on MP, how much of that in USD will you put in your pocket, after all the fees are taken off? I saw this example calculation somewhere around here that LL is taking 31% off that. So, 69 cent for that item in your pocket. If you sell the same item on "another marketplace" for the same price =1USD, even if that hypothetical marketplace would also take 10%, you would still end up with 90 cent. 90 cent > 69 cent

Alright, this clarifies your statements. Of course I would prefer the one that takes the lesser commissions. 

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Elvina Ewing said:

right now you sell something for say 260L$ on MP, how much of that in USD will you put in your pocket, after all the fees are taken off? I saw this example calculation somewhere around here that LL is taking 31% off that. So, 69 cent for that item in your pocket. If you sell the same item on "another marketplace" for the same price =1USD, even if that hypothetical marketplace would also take 10%, you would still end up with 90 cent. 90 cent > 69 cent

Or you could just sell it directly to the customer. They'd send you a dollar and then Paypal would only take 30 cents plus 2.9%, which leaves you....

...wait a minute.

Any sort of "new" marketplace is going to be dealing with the same issues. Processing a microtransaction is comparatively expensive. Any new marketplace would have to deal with that fact before it even started taking a commission to support its own operations.

[Elvina Ewing]

4 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Or you could just sell it directly to the customer. They'd send you a dollar and then Paypal would only take 30 cents plus 2.9%, which leaves you....

...wait a minute.

Any sort of "new" marketplace is going to be dealing with the same issues. Processing a microtransaction is comparatively expensive. Any new marketplace would have to deal with that fact before it even started taking a commission to support its own operations.

Paypal would take 30 cents? do they do that? well then the hypothetical new marketplace could have an option to withdraw funds to a bank account directly? And BTW we still have to deal with PP on top of all LL fees right now... The least thing LL could do for us is to offer us an option with their praised Tilia to withdraw directly to bank account...

[Dima Plessis]

Paypal doesn't charge to transfer your balance to your bank account, so PayPal fees don't come into play for exchanging money out of SL. All the fees are on the LL side. Fees to sell on MP. Fees to exchange you $L to your balance. Fees to transfer that balance to PayPal. Those fees continue to rise, and that means the price of products in world will be pushed upwards. All you folks buying goods from creators are probably going to be paying these fees eventually, through the increased cost of doing business in SL. If you're ok with that, allrighty, just please don't complain when SL goods are expensive. 

Edited November 26, 2019 by Dima Plessis
Typo'd

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Dima Plessis said:

Paypal doesn't charge to transfer your balance to your bank account, so PayPal fees don't come into play for exchanging money out of SL. All the fees are on the LL side.

You're right about transferring from Paypal to the bank (no charge for that)...but...if you have a Paypal business account you are charged 30 cents per transaction plus a percentage of the sale (2.9% for inside the U.S. and I believe it's 4.9% for outside the U.S.).    Those outside the U.S. are also charged an additional currency conversion fee.

So, if you sell inexpensive items it's not worth it (especially due to the 30 cents per transaction fee).  More expensive items, yes it could be cheaper than LL fees to receive a direct payment via Paypal.

Edited November 26, 2019 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

55 minutes ago, Dima Plessis said:

All you folks buying goods from creators are probably going to be paying these fees eventually, through the uncreased cost of doing business in SL. If you're ok with that, allrighty, just please don't complain when SL goods are expensive. 

I would rather express my respect and appreciation for customers, and request that they support their favorite merchants by being willing to assist with the increased costs.   Many have already indicated they would be willing to pay more.

* The above is not say I haven't experienced some nasty customers who don't give a damm though and just want their 'stuff'   

Edited November 26, 2019 by Luna Bliss

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Elvina Ewing said:

Paypal would take 30 cents? do they do that? well then the hypothetical new marketplace could have an option to withdraw funds to a bank account directly? And BTW we still have to deal with PP on top of all LL fees right now... The least thing LL could do for us is to offer us an option with their praised Tilia to withdraw directly to bank account...

"Real-world" businesses pay all sorts of fees that a consumer never sees. Paypal was invented as a way for small merchants to avoid dealing with all the various credit card companies, which all require various fees and which are so complex that most businesses taking them have a separate company they contract with to straighten everything out. And most of these companies charge by the transaction, which will add up very, very quickly for someone whose business is sending a dollar's worth of imaginary goods around the world over and over again. I'm not saying that Linden Lab is doing things the best or cheapest possible way, but it's not as easy or simple as it looks.

Oh, and bank transactions direct to an account generally run $25.00. You're looking at a tidy 2500% fee there...

[Elvina Ewing]

5 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

 

Oh, and bank transactions direct to an account generally run $25.00. You're looking at a tidy 2500% fee there...

2500% how? right now i'm paying 200$ to LL for withdrawing USD to my Paypal. For that price they could have easily transferred that to my bank account instead. And then if i want to withdraw those USD from Paypal to my bank account i will pay 4.5% currency conversion fee. The latter is absolutely unnecessary and could have easily been avoided, had Tilia offered an option to transfer to Bank account directly.

[OptimoMaximo]

4 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

And then if i want to withdraw those USD from Paypal to my bank account i will pay 4.5% currency conversion fee.

Worth checking out skill then

[AdminGirl]

They should really update their policies page.. it still says 5% 

 

 

[Iren Tinkel]

My thoughts: linden dollar is falling down, I pay comission for exchange, I pay for land, I pay for process credit, I pay to paypal, I pay taxes - I pay everywhere and everyone. No, of course, I won't close my store in sl but will I make more creations and improve my SL business? No. Once LL opened servers and they were empty, we filled it with our creations and now LL can earn with us. But I think LL becomes greedy. Maybe because they want to put efforts for new projects but I dont understand why I should pay for sansar or something else that will bring them more money and make new different comissions for me.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Iren Tinkel said:

 I dont understand why I should pay for sansar ........ that will bring them more money

[ChinRey]

On 12/4/2019 at 9:04 AM, Iren Tinkel said:

Maybe because they want to put efforts for new projects but I dont understand why I should pay for sansar or something else that will bring them more money and make new different comissions for me.

The overall price level in SL hasn't actually increased with Sansar so in that sense we can say that LL only has spent invested wasted money they were going to take out as profit anyway. They may also have raised fresh money from ivnestors for Sansar - I'm not sure about that.

What's happeneing here, is a restructuring within SL. LL has dropped the land prices a little bit recently and they're trying to find ways to compensate for the loss of income. Since I'm both a merchant and a landowner it more or less evens out for me - what LL gives with one hand, they take with the other.

It's different for those who are only merchants of course, they'll have to pay more without getting anything in return at all.

More to the point though, both merchant fees and land tiers are way to high.

If LL was to drop tiers to match what other comparable virtual reality providers charge , they'd have to cut them by 90 percent. They would have to do it without reducing the quality so moving everything to the cloud is not an option (it wouldn't be nearly enough anyway).

If LL was to reduce the merchants' effective cost to match other services of comparable quality, they'd have to drop the MP fee completely. Even that wouldn't have been enough, the various TIllia fees amounts to more than they can justifiably charge for the level of services they provide.

It's possible some of LL's overcharging is because the shareholders have unrealistic ROI expectcation but I think it's fairly clear that they are also struggling with bloated running costs. They're stuck with old, inefficient and expensive solutions in so many fields where more recent competitors have been able to shop around for far better deals.

I used a restaurant metaphor earleir - I can't remember if it was in this thread - and that was not a coincidence. I had been watching some episodes of Kitchen Nightmares and it's amazing how many similarities there are between LL/SL and those restaurants Gordon Ramsay was trying to ressurect from death in that series. There's no IT equivalent to Ramsay though and besides, most of the time he eventually failed.

Edited December 5, 2019 by ChinRey

[OptimoMaximo]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

it's fairly clear that they are also struggling with bloated running costs. They're stuck with old, inefficient and expensive solutions in so many fields

Yeah, I agree with you.

First and foremost, reduce expenses by moving LL's headquarters and operational sites where it's less expensive to run such activities and/or reduce the office footprint/level of luxury they can't afford anymore and invest the savings, either in more full time developers or in point 3 down below. Their interview on Sansar that was posted in another thread show a high level, huge office, just in the face of those who actually pay for that.

Second, lower the upper-in-the-ladder manager's (first in the list, CEO's) salaries as they're not deserved and relocate them where the actual work is done.

Third, invest in bailing out shareholders' stocks a little at a time, so to recoop overtime. If this isn't feasible on a significant scale, review the ROI to reflect an updated value of the investment/gross profits ratio. This is done continuously by a lot of companies that dont feel the need to be posers about their success and are facing different financial conditions (national economy changes, tax increases etc).

Fourth, drop Sansar by selling it to some other REAL game company or subsidiate it into a new sub-company and merge it with the afore mentioned real game developers. Making a subsidiary company like Tilia wasn't a problem to squeeze more money out of their users, so what would stop them from doing the same with Project SalsaAndMerengue to reduce loss and having something actually done? Better than paying shareholders in my opinion.

I know all of this won't actually be done, but at least i can just dream of fairness and a company with enough balls to do such moves.

[Luna Bliss]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

More to the point though, both merchant fees and land tiers are way to high.

Exactly.

I can't get behind the narrative "we're making up for decreasing land costs by charging merchants more"......because the cost of land was way too high to begin with.

[OptimoMaximo]

Now, about the manipulation of linden dollars value... it keeps going down the sink

Their exchange rate goes down only, there's no significan fluctuation on holidays, it just keeps going down on a steady rate. The inworld/MP economy though doesn't seem to be so stagnating to induce this depreciation. So if it's not voluntary manipulation, i don't know what else is.

[ChinRey]

49 minutes ago, OptimoMaximo said:

Third, invest in bailing out shareholders' stocks a little at a time, so to recoop overtime.

I'm not sure if buybacks is a good idea for a serious company at this stage. Even if it's a perfectly sensible and reasonable one, in the eyes of the public it can easily be confused with the kind of monkey business that has become all too common on the stock market.

[OptimoMaximo]

26 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Even if it's a perfectly sensible and reasonable one, in the eyes of the public it can easily be confused with the kind of monkey business that has become all too common on the stock market.

It's a balancing act in the case there is a too big of a spread between benefits and the generated debt towards the shareholders. Again if general financial conditions tun out to be no longer convenient in such terms, it's matter of accepting becoming slave to the shareholders doing their business with your butt exposed or take the reins back by sewing close a bleeding wound.