Premium Plus - Slip up of what's to come??

[ItHadToComeToThis]

They won't make standard uploads more costly. They are sometimes daft but I don't think they are that daft. Can you imagine the revolt if that happened. LL would be inundated with complaints, forum posts, calls, support tickets, in world protests. All that will happen, if anything at all, is that higher subscriptions will yield cheaper upload costs.

[ArgontheDevil Ormega]

On the surface, the leaked changes would seem to only benefit people who are in SL to make money, merchants, land barons, etc.  There is nothing there that I can see that would justify the increased cost for anyone else which actually makes sound business sense.  If you know that only a certain type of member is going to be willing to pay the increased cost, it would seem only rational to tailor those changes to that member.

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

Someone told me in world "Who knows what's next? Charging 100L per log in?"

[Kyrah Abattoir]

In my opinion, it would be "nice" if they changed upload fees to take in account the size of the texture, but I CANNOT expect them to do something intelligent like that.

[Alwin Alcott]

4 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Someone told me in world "Who knows what's next? Charging 100L per log in?"

or re instate a older one    ..paying for teleports

[LittleMe Jewell]

13 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

They won't make standard uploads more costly.

I wouldn't totally bet on that.  They have said many times that they want to spread their income out over more areas.  I could see something like 5L upload fee for Premium Plus, 10L for Premium regular, 15L for Basic accounts -- not for mesh uploads, but just the other uploads that are currently a flat 10L.

[Selene Gregoire]

54 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I wouldn't totally bet on that.  They have said many times that they want to spread their income out over more areas.  I could see something like 5L upload fee for Premium Plus, 10L for Premium regular, 15L for Basic accounts -- not for mesh uploads, but just the other uploads that are currently a flat 10L.

Raising the price of uploads for basics won't get them more premiums. It will lose them basics. 

[Charlotte Bartlett]

 

1 hour ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I wouldn't totally bet on that.  They have said many times that they want to spread their income out over more areas.  I could see something like 5L upload fee for Premium Plus, 10L for Premium regular, 15L for Basic accounts -- not for mesh uploads, but just the other uploads that are currently a flat 10L.

That would not surprise me, I think you may be spot on in terms of their approach..  I spend roughly equivalent of 360 USD a year on uploads at the current Lindex rates.  So on the math alone (assuming I am a mid range content creator example), I can't see how they would make it free for Premium Plus, unless it costs a significant fee.....

Also the worst thing they could do is increase the cost for basic.  I hope they learnt that from the group changes (which were rolled back after residents feedback).
 

May the speculation continue until we know! 😅

Edited June 22, 2020 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Qie Niangao]

31 minutes ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

Also the worst thing they could do is increase the cost for basic.  I hope they learnt that from the group changes (which were rolled back after residents feedback).

I guess that's right. It's kinda tricky though. Changing a fee denominated in L$s isn't quite the same as changing a US$ charge. Charges of real world currency are actual revenue, whereas L$ charges only indirectly cause revenue to be booked somewhere else in the economy.

The most direct path is if the charge causes demand for L$s to increase, forcing the money supply to expand by the Lab selling brand new L$s on the LindeX (rather than trading L$s resident-to-resident). That happens, but there's also a risk that a higher L$ fee could instead cause basics to do fewer uploads (or whatever) thus reducing demand for L$s.

I think the real revenue play would be to use reduced L$ fees to entice people to go Premium /-Plus. Collecting real US$s for those subscription fees is way tidier and more certain than the money supply contortions of L$ fees.

That said, though, they need L$ fees, too, as a "sink" to offset "sources" such as stipends; the last thing the Lab should ever consider is to buy L$s on the LindeX to keep the currency stable. Fortunately, one huge L$ sink is Marketplace: all those commissions and special listing fees charged in L$s can offset a whole lot of stipends -- probably enough to afford foregoing some upload fees from their Most Special Subscribers.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

4 hours ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Raising the price of uploads for basics won't get them more premiums. It will lose them basics. 

Yeah but that's for everything, there is nothing they can do to motivate basics to tier up because many of them have no intention to ever do so.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

13 hours ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

Someone told me in world "Who knows what's next? Charging 100L per log in?"

remember AOL used to charge per hour usage back in the day....

Edited June 22, 2020 by Tarina Sewell
I probably owe them money....

[steeljane42]

47 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Yeah but that's for everything, there is nothing they can do to motivate basics to tier up because many of them have no intention to ever do so.

They can allow premiums (or premiums plus) to buy homesteads directly from them, without having to own a full region first. Not now, of course, but after moving to AWS is complete. Assuming there would be another tier decrease sometime, it could motivate plenty of people who want to "own" land without 3rd party between them and LL, but can't afford (or just don't need) a full region and don't want to live on mainland for various reasons.

It might hurt big landholders, though, and they make LL some good money by paying for all those regions regardless of them being used or empty. So I'm not sure LL will do something like that, even if they'll have no other reasons or technical issues on the way.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

3 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

They can allow premiums (or premiums plus) to buy homesteads directly from them, without having to own a full region first. Not now, of course, but after moving to AWS is complete. Assuming there would be another tier decrease sometime, it could motivate plenty of people who want to "own" land without 3rd party between them and LL, but can't afford (or just don't need) a full region and don't want to live on mainland for various reasons.

It might hurt big landholders, though, and they make LL some good money by paying for all those regions regardless of them being used or empty. So I'm not sure LL will do something like that, even if they'll have no other reasons or technical issues on the way.

You have to think about intent tho, I don't think LL's intent was to offer openspace/homesteads to anyone but region owners looking to "extend" their estate without ponny-ing up for a full region.

Land tier is still the intented path to land ownership below full region. I believe Linden Labs does not want to extend concierge support to just about anyone. They don't want to depend on a handful of too powerful land barons, but that doesn't mean they want to deal with everyone either.

[steeljane42]

5 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

You have to think about intent tho, I don't think LL's intent was to offer openspace/homesteads to anyone but region owners looking to "extend" their estate without ponny-ing up for a full region.

Land tier is still the intented path to land ownership below full region. I believe Linden Labs does not want to extend concierge support to just about anyone. They don't want to depend on a handful of too powerful land barons, but that doesn't mean they want to deal with everyone either.

Yeah, I remember reading about how LL didn't really want to deal with constant opening/closing homesteads, so they decided to only offer them for full region owners. But it was long ago and with upcoming AWS move it might be a bit easier for them assuming they'll do something to make entire process automatic (as it should be).

And LL already providing concierge support for roughly the same money. Concierge level of support only requires a half of mainland region (well, technically more than half, but doesn't make much of a difference if it's 32768sqm or 33k). That's 112$ a month, minus 7$ for free premium tier (unless person is using it elsewhere, of course). As of right now non-grandfathered homesteads are 109$ a month, so basically the same exact money.

Now there is a possibility that having own homestead would be much more appealing to people than a half of mainland region, and they would start overloading LL's concierge support. But if one of your products is way more popular than the other, then it makes to adjust resources to provide support where it's more needed, as it's something that makes you more profit, so I'm sure LL would think of something if it happened.

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

7 hours ago, steeljane42 said:

Now there is a possibility that having own homestead would be much more appealing to people than a half of mainland region, and they would start overloading LL's concierge support. But if one of your products is way more popular than the other, then it makes to adjust resources to provide support where it's more needed, as it's something that makes you more profit, so I'm sure LL would think of something if it happened.

That's assuming they don't want to steer people to use that mainland.

[steeljane42]

1 hour ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

That's assuming they don't want to steer people to use that mainland.

They might want to, but wanting and making it work are two different things. Besides it's pretty clear what people are interested in: private regions and new LL homes shortage are both a good indications of what people want.

And I can't speak for everyone, but if I didn't had my own region by now (and still wanted to), then I would just wait it out until I could buy one. Mainland is entirely different "product" that doesn't suit my needs (no region management tools, no restart through debug console, only +-4m terraforming in most cases, no ability to actually have a private region just for myself and ones I want to see there, etc). So no amount of "steering" would make it more appealing for me.

So instead of trying to steer people to use their less popular product, I'd like to see them expanding and adding options for popular ones. Allowing premiums (plus) to buy homesteads directly would fit that model perfectly.

[Charlotte Bartlett]

On 6/22/2020 at 1:08 PM, Qie Niangao said:

I guess that's right. It's kinda tricky though. Changing a fee denominated in L$s isn't quite the same as changing a US$ charge. Charges of real world currency are actual revenue, whereas L$ charges only indirectly cause revenue to be booked somewhere else in the economy.

The most direct path is if the charge causes demand for L$s to increase, forcing the money supply to expand by the Lab selling brand new L$s on the LindeX (rather than trading L$s resident-to-resident). That happens, but there's also a risk that a higher L$ fee could instead cause basics to do fewer uploads (or whatever) thus reducing demand for L$s.

I think the real revenue play would be to use reduced L$ fees to entice people to go Premium /-Plus. Collecting real US$s for those subscription fees is way tidier and more certain than the money supply contortions of L$ fees.

That said, though, they need L$ fees, too, as a "sink" to offset "sources" such as stipends; the last thing the Lab should ever consider is to buy L$s on the LindeX to keep the currency stable. Fortunately, one huge L$ sink is Marketplace: all those commissions and special listing fees charged in L$s can offset a whole lot of stipends -- probably enough to afford foregoing some upload fees from their Most Special Subscribers.

We are on the exact same page.  Roughly finger in the air with a ton of assumptions (always the best math right?) if there is a 50M income tag on SL annually at the moment; sinks for all those uploads, marketplace fees, etc etc may equate to an equivalent in the region of 3-4M USD annually.   Stipend payout (and I don't have up to date premium user numbers) in the region of 3M USD.     Reducing those sinks to 2M but adding 4M to your balance sheet in premium plus fees would make the company look far more attractive externally.  When you tie those to the Lindex volumes and fees I think there are some opportunities in there for LL.

I think they have some/a little wriggle room to remove some sinks if they increase premium subscriptions for a plus account that does not pay a stipend but provides something like a more inclusive package aimed at those who want a Homestead, content creators who heavily upload, profiles expansion for commerce etc.  It's ok I know I am dreaming

Albeit, Supply Linden has had a very busy few months on the Lindex with the inflation against USD.....