Make Memberships more attractive to creators.

[James Samiam]

Currently the Membership features don't have much in the way of benefits for Creators in SL. It seems to be a lot more geared towards Residents.

Simple suggestion - Make uploads free. Textures, Meshes, Sounds, whatever it is. Or at the very least, discount the upload cost or allow a certain amount to be uploaded each day for free.

[Lindal Kidd]

I think you haven't quite grasped that LL is running a business.  As such, they have to make more money than they spend.  They have a number of revenue streams.  The primary ones are Premium membership dues and land fees.  However, they also make money on uploads, on sales from the Marketplace, and on purchases and sale of $L, as well as some fees for things like Event listings and Classified ads.

I'm going to assume by "Creators" you mean "people who create content for sale"...since almost ALL of us are "creators" who occasionally make things for our own enjoyment.  Yes, Creators do generate a lot of revenue indirectly for LL; their products are one major reason people like SL and continue to use the platform.  But if LL gives up part of their revenue stream by giving Creators a break, they will have to make it up elsewhere.  What fees do you suggest that they could increase? 

Also, you seem to be advocating that these new benefits for Creators could be a part of a Premium membership.  A lot of Creators aren't even Premium members.  Do you think that they would be happy to become Premium, if they had your proposed benefits?  Or would we be creating two classes of Creators...those who were Premium and those who were not?  Would that cause complaints of favoritism?

In the past two years, LL has significantly decreased the costs associated with land ownership, and increased the cost of Premium memberships and $L transactions to compensate.  Those changes caused a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

Sound idea,  but I think free is a bad idea,  asset storage costs, these are on aws,  last time I heard they have over 300+ PETABYTES of space used.   free uploads would make the price go up for their storage.  

[Alwin Alcott]

3 hours ago, James Samiam said:

Simple suggestion - Make uploads free. Textures, Meshes, Sounds, whatever it is. Or at the very least, discount the upload cost or allow a certain amount to be uploaded each day for free.

and the same time raise the cash out fees with 50% for merchants? ( not for the residents of course)
Create a fee for owning a MP store?
Make tier levels higher for businesses?

Edited January 29, 2020 by Alwin Alcott

[rasterscan]

40 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

and the same time raise the cash out fees with 50% for merchants? ( not for the residents of course)
Create a fee for owning a MP store?
Make tier levels higher for businesses?

Winces but sees where you are coming from.

[Cinos Field]

I'd love for it to be more attractive to residents.

I mean, you get 1024 of land, the improved customer support and the stipend, but those are equally useful to both consumers and creators. The rest of the benefits aren't really... anything.

[Jules Catlyn]

I don't see making uploads free as a big incentive. They already cost pennies on the dollar and are easily recuperated once a product goes on sale. Just like in RL, it costs resources and investment to make a product. From the top of my head i wouldn't know what Linden Lab could do to improve means and tools for creators since i am an avid believer in that the users have to create their own ways/platforms to promote their business. Like was said before; they made land cheaper, which makes it easier to own an inworld store and you have more tools for support which benefits you as a creator as well. Also the addition of the new Bellisseria continent has opened new avenues to create and make money. I also follow the improvements on the marketplace with a keen eye. It is far from perfect but i see progress there as well. 

[Tolya Ugajin]

7 hours ago, James Samiam said:

Currently the Membership features don't have much in the way of benefits for Creators in SL. It seems to be a lot more geared towards Residents.

Simple suggestion - Make uploads free. Textures, Meshes, Sounds, whatever it is. Or at the very least, discount the upload cost or allow a certain amount to be uploaded each day for free.

I believe your suggestion is contrary to basic economics.  Supply and demand inevitably dictates pricing.  They seem to be getting plenty of demand at the current pricing, and making it free would result in a loss of revenue for the Lab, and the benefit for them would be....nothing.

Second, SL hardly needs more "creators".  MP and inworld stores are overrun with stuff that all looks the same, especially clothing but also houses, furniture, etc.  The higher quality merchants certainly charge more and make a decent living, but if the Lab were to make creating cheaper, all that would do is generate more crap being sold, which means those folks who make good, original product, the actual "creators", would have less incentive to continue and many would fold up shop.  If anything, I think the majority of residents would benefit from an increase in prices, driving low end, low quality producers (I refuse to call them creators, since largely they seem to be just ripping others off) out, and relieving the rest of us of choice fatigue.  Oh, on the art side, it would make it less profitable for people to download pictures from the internet and sell them for 9L.

Third, if the half a penny (less, actually) per upload is stopping someone from "creating", perhaps they don't want to create all that badly to begin with.  You could upload everything needed to make a house to sell for less than a child's tray of watercolor paints will cost you at Walmart.

[Qie Niangao]

I think I understand the OP is talking about non-commercial creators, those who create only for themselves or friends or to give away as freebies; as others have pointed out, those fees are utterly trivial for even the least expensive items for sale.

Even so, the fees aren't so much intended to cover the backend costs (such as storage) but rather they're intended to encourage users to exercise some self-restraint on flooding the service with free garbage. Similarly, the internet would be a much better place if every email cost a penny to send, regardless of what it costs to deliver.

(Normally at this point I'd launch into my usual ramble about how all L$-denominated fees are to affect behavior and only US$-denominated fees are to generate revenue, and the tale of L$ sources and sinks and Supply's sale of new L$s on the LindeX, but I'm feeling merciful today.)

[Tolya Ugajin]

47 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I think I understand the OP is talking about non-commercial creators, those who create only for themselves or friends or to give away as freebies; as others have pointed out, those fees are utterly trivial for even the least expensive items for sale.

Even so, the fees aren't so much intended to cover the backend costs (such as storage) but rather they're intended to encourage users to exercise some self-restraint on flooding the service with free garbage. Similarly, the internet would be a much better place if every email cost a penny to send, regardless of what it costs to deliver.

(Normally at this point I'd launch into my usual ramble about how all L$-denominated fees are to affect behavior and only US$-denominated fees are to generate revenue, and the tale of L$ sources and sinks and Supply's sale of new L$s on the LindeX, but I'm feeling merciful today.)

I'd actually be fascinated to read about sources and sinks

[Scylla Rhiadra]

First of all . . . Hi @James Samiam!

(James is one of my oldest friends in SL)

Now . . .

45 minutes ago, Tolya Ugajin said:

Second, SL hardly needs more "creators".  MP and inworld stores are overrun with stuff that all looks the same, especially clothing but also houses, furniture, etc.  The higher quality merchants certainly charge more and make a decent living, but if the Lab were to make creating cheaper, all that would do is generate more crap being sold, which means those folks who make good, original product, the actual "creators", would have less incentive to continue and many would fold up shop.  If anything, I think the majority of residents would benefit from an increase in prices, driving low end, low quality producers (I refuse to call them creators, since largely they seem to be just ripping others off) out, and relieving the rest of us of choice fatigue.

We can agree that there is a great deal of crap for sale in SL, and on the MP. And most of that tends to be cheap and awful looking knock-offs using third-party mesh and poor textures. (If you removed every "little black/red/mauve dress" currently available from the MP, I swear the volume of goods available there would shrink by a half). And yes, it would be not a bad thing to see less of that.

BUT what you don't also want to see are smaller creators, producing interesting and worthwhile stuff for what is often a smaller, niche market, being put out of business. Using the example of women's clothing creators (because it's the one I know best), I'd suggest that, while the quality of the mesh items being produced by the big two or three women's clothing makers (most women will know whom I am referring to here) is very high, the variety of different styles they make available is . . . well, almost non-existent. They aren't quite the "McDonald's" of women's clothing, because they are very well made, but they do cater, very successfully, to a broad market by offering more or less endless variations on the same basic middle-class, middle-brow look, riffs on the jeans/boots/blouse or halter top/jacket or cardigan look. It looks very nice, and it's dull dull dull dull. I've almost given up paying attention to their new releases, it's all so predictable.

On the other hand, women looking for well-made formal wear, goth, punk, or street wear, whimsy, or historical clothing are not nearly so well-served: we almost always have to rely on smaller creators. It wasn't always this way: while there have always been the "big" and popular makes, they didn't use to totally dominate the way that they do now. And your suggestion, while it would certainly rid us of a lot of chaff, would probably also serve to drive the really innovative and interesting smaller makers out of business. If you think that style in SL is bland now (and mostly, frankly, it is), just wait until that happens.

More generally, too, anything that moves us further away from the free-wheeling creative sandbox paradigm that SL used to really excel at is not a good thing. We don't need more box stores mass reproducing a handful of well-made styles over and over again: we need something that encourages more individuals to give play to their inventive and creative talents.

 

[FairreLilette]

I started with Ebay in the 1990's in it's beginning and Paypal did not even exist then.

But, what Ebay did was offer little perks such as UPLOAD PICTURES FOR FREE DAY...eight free listings a month...plus lots of others I cannot remember at this moment.

I do think LL should consider some perks for sellers.  Free upload day; promote two items free a month.  

The promotion cost to promote one time on MP is about 3 dollars and 50 cents at 799 lindens.  Three dollars and fifty cents!  That's a lot of money...that's real life goods kind of money, imo. 

And, I've  noticed some of the top women's clothing designer's now offer lower fatpack prices such as 699 per fatpack instead of their usual 1299 per fatpack which I thought was a good idea because that 799 listing fee per item is way high...so to avoid paying that 799 promotion fee it seemed to me some sellers are just lowering their prices.

Edit:  The thing with Ebay though is that they have an INBOX for sellers to get a message thru and when a seller would log on to Ebay it would say YOU HAVE A MESSAGE FROM EBAY or such and such.  Plus the free picture day gave a date such as Feb. 5th 2020 which gave the seller time to take pictures of a lot of items to upload on free picture day.

Ebay always had incentives and fabulous ones too.  Second Life does not have any.  However, they'd need to add an inbox or a way to alert merchants.  Second Life could put the "perks" to the side of the Marketplace page.

However, if SL wanted to offer perks, it would have.  It appears they do not really want too, imo.

Also, I wish they'd figure out something other than materials because uploading two more maps is just way too costly.  People tire of items in SL very fast and the cost to creator's with the materials thing is a lot to say the least. 

Edited January 29, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

I think I understand the OP is talking about non-commercial creators, those who create only for themselves or friends or to give away as freebies; as others have pointed out, those fees are utterly trivial for even the least expensive items for sale.

Even so, the fees aren't so much intended to cover the backend costs (such as storage) but rather they're intended to encourage users to exercise some self-restraint on flooding the service with free garbage. Similarly, the internet would be a much better place if every email cost a penny to send, regardless of what it costs to deliver.

(Normally at this point I'd launch into my usual ramble about how all L$-denominated fees are to affect behavior and only US$-denominated fees are to generate revenue, and the tale of L$ sources and sinks and Supply's sale of new L$s on the LindeX, but I'm feeling merciful today.)

Thanks, Qie.  I had not considered the point about $L fees vs. $USD fees.  Once you bring it up, it seems self-evident! 

I also like your idea about charging to send emails.  Maybe they should do the same with Facebook shares and re-Tweets too.

[Janet Voxel]

I think I threw a similar idea out there during another discussion a few months back. The more I think about it though, there really isn’t a need for incentives for creators. In many cases, you can make a great deal of Ls with not much more than time and effort.

To piggyback off the “sandbox” era of SL. I think it would be a very good thing to go back to that. I often say SL needs a Torley to do videos on how to use SL, because there’s just so much to know as far as SL is concerned. It also needs a blender guru (not specifically him) as far as creating is concerned.

What I find is a lot of people would love to create things, clothes, hair, skins, furniture, you name it, but they don’t know how to start. Asking around only gets them frustrated and searching for random videos can instill some pretty bad habits.
 

LL should hire someone to do that, show how easy and fun creating in SL can be. I think you’ll see a nice uptick in creativity with a nudge in that direction.

[Bree Giffen]

I think any premium incentive for creators would always be more beneficial if given to the wider base of free users. Creation of products is the tide that raises all boats. (Always wanted to say that) Upload fees are more of a maintenance cost than a profit generator. The profit I assume is from the sales fee. We don't want to handicap that.