How Do You Know When the Inworld Economy is Hurting?

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/9/2022 at 7:07 AM, ValKalAstra said:

In the spirit of offering a different perspective: I'm a relatively new player here and in the year I've been here, I think I've transferred about two hundred us dollars into various purchases. My purchases happen in world and on the marketplace in equal measure. On top of that my wardrobe isn't saturated yet and my various photo projects are in need of special purpose props too. There is a lot I want to buy.

My purchases however have more or less stopped in the last two months or so. There are about 4.000 L$ just sitting around on my avatar and I'm wondering if I should transfer them out at a loss.

There are two prime issues for me. The first is an extreme homogenisation in what's offered. What drew me to SL were the extravagant offerings, the unusual outfits that sparked creativity, places filled with otherworldly wonders where you could just as well find a dancing robot with breasts as you could find a cat with a jetpack.

When I head out to shop, what I'm seeing instead is... Well. Not that. It's normal clothes, which I love too, don't get me wrong. Yet when I enter three or four shops in a row, everything begins to blend together.

• Miniskirt. Pleated. Length doesn't even cover the bum.
• Miniskirt. Pleated. Belt buckle. Length has never even heard of this bum thing.
• Miniskirt. Pleated. Has got a cat picture. Panties mandatory, bum in plain view. Personally I'd call this a belt but who am I to argue.

It's all so very samey and more than that, often it literally is the same but with a different texture and more still - frequently, it's not even different textures.

So my shopping trips fizzle out because I'm overwhelmed by this sensation of basically having seen the same items, just arranged differently and while my wardrobe isn't saturated, it sure is not lacking for yet more variants.

My other issue is one of searching and finding items. I can understand the idea behind giving items creative names but if your turtleneck sweater is just called Erika-chan, chances are I'm never going to find it. In general, marketplace search is barely functional as is. Even if I filter out demos and gachas, I'm still flooded with them. If I sort by newer items, there will be twenty pages of the same item, just in a different colour.

It's gotten to a point that it's more feasible to use external search providers to look for ancient forum threads recommending stores, then filtering out which of these are still around and then looking and browsing there, which quickly brings me back to the homogenisation of content making me give up after a few stores.

So here I am. Money in hand. Wanting to buy something and not being able to get there.

I'm happy to award you "Best Post of the Year" even though it is only January 12!

You are absolutely right and if you want to find the weird things with tentacles such as by cinphul or What's Up Spirit, you would just 'have to know" of their existence. They are in few events, and not consistently. They never have weekend sales. Some of them don't even have a group to join. 

What I find confusing about the enormous mass of weekend sales now, half of which I screen out as never having anything I need (furniture for rentals) is that you can't tell the creator's name from the product's name on the ad on the event page. And most of the time they are not in search/places because they did not put themselves there. Search doesn't work anyway on the SL viewer for all kinds of reasons. So, bewildered, not being in the right groups with the right people to get an instant answer to these puzzles, you try to pull up their avatar profile (not via search, which is broken, but using Artizan's HUD). You try to study their profile, which they may or may not have closed. Hopefully, they put their store in their picks, but not always. Some of course are very proficient and working all these levers, but not all, and it's not necessarily a sign of high quality that some merchant has a Facebook page, a Flickr, and Instagram, a picks with their main store, a picks with their policies, a profile with their CSRs' names etc -- it's merely a sign that they are organized and willing to hustle mightily to sell their wares.

I still manage to get the Lovecraft throne and the sneakers with Mercury wings by digging around and asking people but it can be tiring. There used to be more odd findable things on the MP. The Lindens did a clean-up of things that they felt were outdated or not selling or duplicated or whatever, and some of those fine things disappeared.

In RL, it used to be that if you didn't want to shop at Barnes & Noble's and deal with all the commercialized books with vapid content, you could poke around in the old book shops on 4th avenue. "Wise Men Fish Here," said the sign on one old book shop that moved up town and then went out of business. I can think of only one used book shop on St. Mark's Place now, which was closed due to COVID. I find shopping for books on Amazon increasingly risky, as there is a category of hustlers now that have learned that they can seize books they didn't write or publish, print them out in very tiny print to save on paper, ink, and postage, and sell them before deleting their page.

So SL has got that way too.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/11/2022 at 3:28 AM, rasterscan said:

Last night it took me longer to take my shoes off in SL than it did in RL. For the reason quoted. If you sell shoes put the goddam word shoes in, like say 'erika shoes chan' then they'd show up in a quick inv search for shoes

You could look at the tab "worn," that might be faster.

[PixieGirrrrl]

On 12/10/2021 at 4:13 AM, Tarani Tempest said:

I was talking to a friend some time back, that I felt that the ever growing weekend sales were going to ultimately hurt designers. Maybe not the well known brands... but smaller fish, like myself.

I used to check out all the events and occasionally buy one or two items at full price. Now I do the weekend sales every weekend and think nothing of spending way more, paying 60-75L for every item, always from a wide variety of stores. Naively I thought I was actually contributing more this way, but am I actually hurting designers/the SL economy by shopping like this?

I'm definitely spending way more than ever before, but I rarely pay full price. Should I go back to buying much less, but always paying full price when I do?

Edited January 12, 2022 by PixieGirrrrl

[Sid Nagy]

The SL economy is more than the relatively small percentage of all merchants who try to make a full RL living out of their merchandise. Every L$ spent on whatever merchandise from whatever merchant supports the SL economy. Small potatoes merchants have to pay bills too.
And besides, for every full price merchant there are at least two smaller low price merchants who are more than willing to take over when said full price merchant calls it a day because of lack of income. That is how SL works too.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, PixieGirrrrl said:

I used to check out all the events and occasionally buy one or two items at full price. Now I do the weekend sales every weekend and think nothing of spending way more, paying 60-75L for every item, always from a wide variety of stores. Naively I thought I was actually contributing more this way, but am I actually hurting designers/the SL economy by shopping like this?

I'm definitely spending way more than ever before, but I rarely pay full price. Should I go back to buying much less, but always paying full price when I do?

I don't know the answer to this question and I'd like to hear from more actual creators in business and there are few of them on the forums. They don't have the time and they don't wish to wade in and then have their reputations suffer due to haters with a lot of time on their hands to snipe at people trying out ideas or floating hypotheses.

I should think ANY sale will help a merchant and there are merchants from whom I ONLY buy their weekend sale items, and I figure while they may be annoyed I don't buy their full-price items, maybe they are grateful they get at least this much business from me -- and everyone else. I've noticed certain savvy weekend sale mavens have grown and developed and have stores now that are more elaborate and larger, so they must be thriving. And weekend sales are pretty much all they do.

Every once in awhile, I feel a sense of guilt that I am never buying their new releases and items at full price in the back stock. Except...why should I feel guilty? When I really value something, I pay full price for it. (BTW, there's this illusion that everything at a merchant's event is somehow discounted, and it's true many are, but I often find that after the event, it's the same price in their store. So there's no need to rush, and you can see if the yen for the item wears off.)

Every single merchant I buy from regularly has been sucked into weekend sales -- because they need *some* kind of sales in this awful economy and the hope is that it will be a loss leader that draws people into the store and they will buy other things. But in the last month, I can think of one one or two times I went into a store and bought something else that caught my eye after I got the 30L or 60L sale item. And here I'm not guilty but cynical -- I feel that any of their items may become a sale item at any time, and therefore I merely have to wait -- and I'm rarely wrong. In fact if I see a skybox I just bought from a merchant now on sale, I feel ripped off -- which is irrational, because it's random.

So possibly the answer to your question is that weekend sales harm creators by lowering their worth, devaluing their creations, and making them servants of the greedy masses looking for a deal. So it's "the system," and not the dynamics of their reluctant relationship with their customers who will only buy their marked down stuff.

Can they keep their revenue if they climb out of that terrible cycle? I don't think so. Some people thought gatchas were the bane of SL existence and sneered nastily at gatcha makers, claiming they weren't fit to make anything else and bilked their customers. Except...some of the finest artisanal work in SL was in the gatchas, and if anything, the ability to sell a lot of copies of $50 items enabled these artists to get something remotely like the value their work deserved. Their fatpacks on sale now for $4500 give an inkling of this. So the problem isn't gatchas, it's sales in general where there is no friction, no materials costs, no costs except texture uploads, possibly full-perm mesh models and mainly human labour -- your own. The inventory requires no upkeep and arguably the accounting tactic of depreciation isn't valid in a virtual world. There's no storage costs in inventory or on the MP, only tier for stores where the vendors keep infinite numbers of copies in one prim. Maybe we are in some kind of Gartner cycle or somebody's cycle that proves that virtualized economies can never sustain human beings and therefore will die.

I'm also becoming very finicky about freebies. I stare group gift horses in the mouth, examining their prim count, seeing if they are on mod if I tire of the texture, hefting it to see if it will fit. Gone is the feeling that I "have" to take a free gift or something on 50L Friday "just because" -- I feel $50 saved in this economy is a $50 earned. You will not get even my $25, I think to certain merchants -- it used to be I never came to a store where there was a sale without buying some little thing "to support the creator". Now I think: but who's going to support me? Not only am I bankrupted by sales to keep modern and up today and satisfy my customers, or so I imagine; my inventory is overflowing, won't load, and can be searched with difficult. it is a Marie Kondo moment, of course. I personally have opted out more and more from this cycle and I don't think my business suffers from it, especially when much of the time, the room or house I carefully decorated is removed at the customer's request. There are people who would rather put that orange chair out of the library in their home and feel true ownership, than sit on my 60L Atelier Burgundy armchair find, at a fraction of the orange chair in land impact, even convexed. 

Sid seems to be happy that some creator gives up in despair and is replaced by two others more nimble and with lower prices, as it shows destructive Schumpeter trumpeting or whatever it shows. But why be happy at a human being's misery? They may actually make higher quality items. Why should they be forced from the world by somebody's cramped notion of Ayn Rand or Adam Smith? I'm all for capitalism and commerce; so few on the forums are not. But isn't this supposed to be a better world that doesn't have the worst aspects of capitalism, or socialism for that matter? Imagine if every 30L chair you bought had to be returned to the store next week for another comrade to use.

While some creators might leave SL due to lack of income, and go to where they are appreciated on other gig sites, the tragedy is more than they stay and earn a lot less, and struggle to do menial RL jobs or jobs they hate. They feel as if any moment their luck may turn and the glory days may return. I don't judge the economy only by those who make their living from it. I sure don't and I will never quit that day job. Many of the most creative people in SL work real jobs and come on only in the evening! 

I can think of certain creators who simply left the world, and I don't think there is ever a reason that "should" happen. The hysterical aggressiveness with which mesh was pushed is key here. And it's not merely about those who "can't keep up". It's about the actually talented and skilled. It isn't worth it. They can make more money elsewhere in the real world. They don't want to deal with the crazy demanding customers, who, as all game devs know, burn through content instantly and shriek for more.

You can see the entire dynamics is one of anxiety, grief, guilt, resentment -- and therefore toxic. 

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Prokofy Neva

[Jake Mysterious]

I was once a avid shopper hitting the events the same day they opened even bit the bullet when the prices started going up as my fellow shoppers stopped logging in due to price increases, because shopping was their thing in Second Life. Price increases turned them away from Second Life.

Nowadays those same people would rather invest their money in a indie game because they get more value out of it, then a outfit fatpack. The way I see it is if you want to charge more money for your product you have to make it worth it, and there has been zero change to the majority of main stream designers. Same HUDs, and same textures from their previous release but a different mesh.

Here is a statement from one of my friends, "I would rather pay a month of an MMO subscription than buy a fatpack on SL."

From the consumers end all they see is pricing going up for no reason because why should they have to think about the economy?
I still maintain a premium membership, own my land which I allow my close friends to have small homes on to avoid laggy rentals.

[StarlanderGoods]

1 hour ago, Jake Mysterious said:

I was once a avid shopper hitting the events the same day they opened even bit the bullet when the prices started going up as my fellow shoppers stopped logging in due to price increases, because shopping was their thing in Second Life. Price increases turned them away from Second Life.

Nowadays those same people would rather invest their money in a indie game because they get more value out of it, then a outfit fatpack. The way I see it is if you want to charge more money for your product you have to make it worth it, and there has been zero change to the majority of main stream designers. Same HUDs, and same textures from their previous release but a different mesh.

Here is a statement from one of my friends, "I would rather pay a month of an MMO subscription than buy a fatpack on SL."

From the consumers end all they see is pricing going up for no reason because why should they have to think about the economy?
I still maintain a premium membership, own my land which I allow my close friends to have small homes on to avoid laggy rentals.

You cant use the same HUD or texture, most textures are baked, if its not baked (or manually drawn to look baked) it will look incredibly flat and you wouldnt buy it, and HUDs still have to be configured. Even if you have the perfect streamlined process to create, it takes time to build, rig, texture, configure, that is a number of skills that people cultivated for years.  You cant really complain about paying 50c to a dollar for a well made product.  And forget about fatpacks, chances are you dont need the exact same jacket in 35 colours, you´ll pick one, and use it for 6 years in a row.

[Jake Mysterious]

6 minutes ago, StarlanderGoods said:

You cant use the same HUD or texture, most textures are baked, if its not baked (or manually drawn to look baked) it will look incredibly flat and you wouldnt buy it, and HUDs still have to be configured. Even if you have the perfect streamlined process to create, it takes time to build, rig, texture, configure, that is a number of skills that people cultivated for years.  You cant really complain about paying 50c to a dollar for a well made product.  And forget about fatpacks, chances are you dont need the exact same jacket in 35 colours, you´ll pick one, and use it for 6 years in a row.

You can repurpose HUDs pretty easily and I can think of a few different designers who are currently doing just that has for textures for a mesh item. I was referring to texture patterns again being repurposed for said item, it is not that hard, and does not take much time. The draw to fatpacks is entirely on the fatpack exclusives which I believe is a good thing. Majority of fatpacks allow you to change certain things on said mesh which are not on the individual items.

But hey you want to argue semantics with someone who is a consumer and saying I'm wrong when I am just calling it has I see it.
How long it takes someone to design something is none of my concern, it is theirs. I am here to buy the product, and current pricing on things is just not worth it in most cases.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 12/11/2021 at 11:52 AM, Silent Mistwalker said:

That link has been given to that person many times over the years. Not much you can do when they choose to completely ignore it or twist it around to mean something else.

This is the first time this link has been given *to me*, and discussed to my knowledge. If you can find another time, great, but it's a meaningless and venomous victory.

I log in every day and fly around to numerous sims. Do you? And just last year I recall distinctly that a bot came and ate cheap land for sale. Now, it may have been illegal; or maybe even a real human being behaving like a bot. But everyone knows there is a distinctive slump to bots and other behaviours that lets you know there isn't a human behind them at least at that moment.

I have to wonder why you would imagine this information has been given to me numerous times when it hasn't, or why I would somehow "deliberately" ignore it, or "twist it," even if it *was* given repeatedly (and I have no evidence that it was). What is twisted here? There are either bots allowed or not allowed. There isn't some other "spin" you can have about it, other than to speculate that despite being illegal, some people still attempt to get away with it. I didn't realize the Lindens really did finally crack down on them -- I'm not in the land sales business, I'm in the land rentals business. PS I allow people to use ban/eject on my land and always have.

[Sid Nagy]

I have a small marketplace shop. I make only things that I like and use(d) myself. If I think the end result is okay, then I put it on the marketplace for a price that I think is fair.  I don't think in terms of economy. All the money that comes in, helps to pay tier and to fill my personal inventory with stuff from other merchants.

Yes, I'm a small potato merchant. There are weeks\months when I make nothing useful, heck I've been out of SL for a few months during the normally best selling season.
Sales go up and down, pretty much unpredictable. January is normally a slow month for sales.

I don't do any events. Too much work. And SL is not my job. It is purely a hobby. So if I can choose to be lazy on my SL houseboat or stressful about being on time with a product for the next event, I choose for the houseboat.
I'm in it for me, myself and I, not for the money.

Back in the day I sold full perm doors and windows to starting builders. As a result I helped many of my customers in sandboxes with building tricks. Sometimes for hours.  That was more fun than the handful of L$ that I made out of the door sales to them.

SL economy doesn't bite or bother me at all.
But I don't know if I'm a typical small merchant in SL.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[rasterscan]

i got quite addicted to 50 linden fridays and that 60 linden weekend thing

[Sid Nagy]

21 minutes ago, rasterscan said:

i got quite addicted to 50 linden fridays and that 60 linden weekend thing

I scan them every weekend too.
I have build up quite a KAZZA collection from the 60 linden weekend thingy.
And it resulted in full price purchases as well.

Edited January 15, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Eowyn Southmoor]

Regarding the number of sales events that you see every single week - I wouldn't simply assume that it always hurts creators because consumers just wait for the sales instead of buying from the shop at the regular price.

Here's my own personal take on it. Cheap sales prices can often be the difference between a consumer deciding they will get that item that they aren't totally sure about, or simply walk out and purchase nothing.

I'm not claiming everyone (or even a majority) are like this, but I know I certainly am. Every year, at a few key periods, Black Friday or Christmas usually, some vehicle creators in SL offer 50% off sales for a short period.

There is one specific creator where I have purchased about a dozen vehicles from them during these sales periods. How many would I have purchased at regular price? - None at all. No, it's not cause I knew there'd be a sale (I didn't to start with), but simply because I didn't find them good enough to purchase at their regular price.

With some people, whether its RL or SL, if they like something, they will buy it, and the cost is irrelevant, more so in SL where nothing is really expensive. I am however not like that, I still weigh up value for money by comparing the product against other similar items. If Item A and B are equal, but item B is half the price - then I will never buy Item A. It's the principle as much as anything else.

So these sales, for someone like myself, are sometimes the ONLY way a certain creator will ever get my business.. and in the end its simple maths.. would you prefer 50% of your regular price, or 100% of nothing 

50L Friday is another great example of that. I have purchased so much decor, odds and ends, clothing etc from those sales  - items that I would never have purchased otherwise. In many cases, certainly with decor items, it literally has been a case of "i have no idea if or when i will ever use this, but at this price i'm happy to have it tucked away in my inventory"

[Tarani Tempest]

On 1/12/2022 at 4:58 AM, PixieGirrrrl said:

I used to check out all the events and occasionally buy one or two items at full price. Now I do the weekend sales every weekend and think nothing of spending way more, paying 60-75L for every item, always from a wide variety of stores. Naively I thought I was actually contributing more this way, but am I actually hurting designers/the SL economy by shopping like this?

I'm definitely spending way more than ever before, but I rarely pay full price. Should I go back to buying much less, but always paying full price when I do?

I personally think you should spend how you feel is right for you.  I do not think that continuing to shop the sales is harming anyone.  I do think that is good for consumers and designers be aware of how the economy is effecting SL in both good and bad ways.

Sales events are both; good and bad.  They absolutely do keep the Ls flowing which is a good thing. They are also driving down prices.  Good for some, maybe not so good for others.  This is a time will only tell type situations.

As a designer, I need to sink or swim, and that is ultimately up to me to figure out.  As a consumer, your "job" is to spend your Ls exactly how you see fit, what you can afford and what you feel is worth your Ls.  That is all you can do

And quite frankly, Thank you for thinking about it all

 

[Crim Mip]

To the extent I take part in the economy, it seems to be ok. I cash out L$ a couple times a month, once to pay land tier and the second goes to my wallet. I've sold my L$ for 241L/$1 within a couple minutes consistently for the last 2 years. If you see the backup at 240/$1 it's not rocket science if you want to sell quickly.

There are markets that are booming. The equestrian community is one. There are new horses and new accessories for horses and riders coming out consistently. Some of the apparel makers could clean up if they'd cater to that community because that's the one real thing lacking for the most part.

I manage one of the older airports on the grid at this point and all of our rentals have been claimed for the last year and a half.

Finally, just look at Bellisseria. They keep adding area and new Linden homes and they keep getting snapped up. Every one of those represent somebody paying at least $99 (well more like $36 after stipend payments) each year with many paying more because they pay monthly. Obviously this makes it more difficult for the big land holders, but no sympathy. LL gave fair warning they wanted to reduce their dependence on you and your influence and Bellisseria let them do just that. You're now competing against them and the perks one gets for a premium account.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

On 1/14/2022 at 8:35 AM, Sid Nagy said:

I have a small marketplace shop. I make only things that I like and use(d) myself. If I think the end result is okay, then I put it on the marketplace for a price that I think is fair.  I don't think in terms of economy. All the money that comes in, helps to pay tier and to fill my personal inventory with stuff from other merchants.

Yes, I'm a small potato merchant. There are weeks\months when I make nothing useful, heck I've been out of SL for a few months during the normally best selling season.
Sales go up and down, pretty much unpredictable. January is normally a slow month for sales.

I don't do any events. Too much work. And SL is not my job. It is purely a hobby. So if I can choose to be lazy on my SL houseboat or stressful about being on time with a product for the next event, I choose for the houseboat.
I'm in it for me, myself and I, not for the money.

Back in the day I sold full perm doors and windows to starting builders. As a result I helped many of my customers in sandboxes with building tricks. Sometimes for hours.  That was more fun than the handful of L$ that I made out of the door sales to them.

SL economy doesn't bite or bother me at all.
But I don't know if I'm a typical small merchant in SL.

What caused you to close your store?

[Prokofy Neva]

1 hour ago, Crim Mip said:

To the extent I take part in the economy, it seems to be ok. I cash out L$ a couple times a month, once to pay land tier and the second goes to my wallet. I've sold my L$ for 241L/$1 within a couple minutes consistently for the last 2 years. If you see the backup at 240/$1 it's not rocket science if you want to sell quickly.

There are markets that are booming. The equestrian community is one. There are new horses and new accessories for horses and riders coming out consistently. Some of the apparel makers could clean up if they'd cater to that community because that's the one real thing lacking for the most part.

I manage one of the older airports on the grid at this point and all of our rentals have been claimed for the last year and a half.

Finally, just look at Bellisseria. They keep adding area and new Linden homes and they keep getting snapped up. Every one of those represent somebody paying at least $99 (well more like $36 after stipend payments) each year with many paying more because they pay monthly. Obviously this makes it more difficult for the big land holders, but no sympathy. LL gave fair warning they wanted to reduce their dependence on you and your influence and Bellisseria let them do just that. You're now competing against them and the perks one gets for a premium account.

 

I realize this statement draws from a well of hatred and resentment of land barons and the Lindens' own perceived aspiration to "reduce their dependency on land" sets the tone for this. It's a very old story.

But there is no evidence whatsoever that the Lindens can cease their dependency on land, i.e. rental of server space. It is the main source of their revenue, and the revenue for significant parts of the rest of the Internet. The fees and taxes they draw from the LindEx and the Marketplace are important, and perhaps in some Metaverse some day might be their main source, but they are hardly that now, especially when a large part of the economy takes place outside of their ability to tax it -- people buy inworld, not on the Marketplace, where fortunately each transaction is not (yet) taxed, and many, especially outside the US, get and spend Lindens without ever coming near the LindEx.

Look at Tyche's Grid Survey, and you will see that the overwhelming percent of SL's land mass is *private islands*. Go and look up their set-up costs and tiers over history. While these prices have gone up and then down, they represent the core of both SL's business and the resident economy; likely the income land barons on Blake Sea far, far surpasses what any sailboat maker or sailing outfit maker can ever make, no matter how popular. And that's a good thing, because there is also a cheap and modest end of this spectrum that leads up to Blake Sea, where someone can start a small business with only 8192 that may offset if not cover their SL expenses, and they may grow it to the point where it even covers their RL expenses. And again, good! Without that, you have a Renaissance Faire where only designers and scripters can make money, let alone a living, and everyone else is a peasant, forced to consume. Such stratified societies don't survive in RL or in virtual life.

As for Bellisseria, it's a fraction of the Lindens' island business compared to islands. It does compete against Mainland rentals and sales increasingly, but even there, the Lindens can't completely capture the market as many people want larger parcels with more prims and diversity of houses and landscaping, not available in Bellisseria. Maybe some day there will be, but there will likely always be at least some kind.

I have actually had some customers leave a 2560 m2 parcel where they had 900 prims in a group rental, and $700 a week rent for a Bellisseria home where they had to pay $11.99 (or even more in the euros equivalent given VAT) in order to get 351 prims. They could pay tax or put their 1024 in the group for that rental if they wished. But having uniformity of landscaping and a house they don't have to place themselves are attractive options for some people. And most people grasp that an inworld rental where they don't add the US $12 per month recurring fee on top of their inworld rental fee, whether island or Mainland, is the better deal, obviously. Compare US $10 a month to US $21.99, or even if annualized.

But then I have customers that get Bellisseria homes, tire of their sameness, and come back to my rentals. And I also have customers who have both Bellisseria homes *and* my rentals, and still more customers who have that, rentals from other agents and even their own private island. 

So sure, the Lindens have the aspirations to be done with the server business (it's expensive and moving to AWS only cost them more, so it will be great when some day they merely sell the software and the hookup and other people put SL on their own servers). In a way, Bellisseria, which has more rules and is more constructed is a rehearsal for the kind of world they might maintain some day as the showcase or entree for people to come in and "try before they buy" their own set up for their own server. But they are far from any such business model now.

The horse market is booming, anyway can see that. But why does one of SL's most famous and oldest airport go out of business? Why do I see big airports on the Blake Sea coast even with only a fraction of their rentals filled month after month? Is this like RL when the mafia buys restaurants as fronts and they are strangely empty? I don't think so, because I see lots of airports with their rentals empty meaning many people either seasonally fill them, have the funds to buy and wait, or are glutting the market but still had reason to enter it. I see more rentals filling up with landlords willing to allow an airplane on a single parcel.

The reasons for the failures of the SL economy in general, even if not your perceived economy in particular, is not because LL created Bellisseria or even because they put in a gatcha ban, destroying many small crafts people's business. They are more complicated than that. And the deep animosity that people bear the land business, sometimes rightly so because of the practices of a few, and their perception that the Lindens' own aversion to land for business and ideological reasons can be harnessed against their own economic or ideological enemies has been proven wrong again and again in the 18 years of SL's history. After all, you had to buy or rent land to put down your airport.

That could change any minute, of course, as the Lindens could announce a $49.99 pack for educators or enterprise where you can host your own SL, and there will be enterprises that will make separate little second lives. 

[Sid Nagy]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

What caused you to close your store?

I had enough of SL at that moment, and I did not want to be a ghost merchant. Meaning goods on the marketplace but no customer support when needed. We have enough of those already.
But I made up my mind and now my marketplace shop is up and running again and I'm active in SL again.

[Cackle Amore]

On 1/8/2022 at 11:55 PM, Sinyr Anbinder said:

>Consumers expect fat packs

>Few buy single colors for over 200 anymore it seems.

This part is kind of funny to me cause a "fatpack" to you is just ya know, the normal product to me. There's not really any reason at all to split them up by colors apart from just being an excuse to squeeze out more money from buyers

Vast majority of color variants are often just like maybe a few seconds of fudging about a hue slider and all it does it create a burden for both creator and consumer in different ways, tedious chore to repeatedly bundle up the exact same item, taking a picture for each various color of the item, then setting up the product page or boxes for all those various versions, and all your left with is a store front that's an eyesore and chore for consumers to dig through to find anything and not to mention a financial annoyance that all those colors that only took a few seconds to make all cost the same for the exact same product instead of just being all bundled together as a single normal item.

It'd be much easier and simpler for both if the color variants were just tossed into a folder for people to figure out on their own, or for better convenience, a texture hud.

Anywho, pardon the snark, mornin everyone!

Edited January 21, 2022 by Cackle Amore

[Sid Nagy]

Only listing a fatpack on the marketplace, makes your product one item in a haystack of millions of items.
Listing every color on top of that, makes it seven or eight items in the same haystack of millions of items.
It improves your chances to get seen at all, just a tiny bit.

Edited January 21, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Prokofy Neva]

1 minute ago, Sid Nagy said:

Only listing a fatpack on the marketplace, makes your product one piece in a haystack of million of pieces.
Listing every color on top of that, makes it seven or eight pieces in the same haystack of millions of pieces.
It improves your chances to get seen at all, just a tiny bit.

That's why when the Lindens put "variants" into the MP, I don't think they will change this behaviour, there will still be 50 listings of every single version of the texture that could go on that side table, etc. just to "show up".

[Silent Mistwalker]

8 hours ago, Crim Mip said:

Finally, just look at Bellisseria. They keep adding area and new Linden homes and they keep getting snapped up. Every one of those represent somebody paying at least $99 (well more like $36 after stipend payments) each year with many paying more because they pay monthly. Obviously this makes it more difficult for the big land holders, but no sympathy. LL gave fair warning they wanted to reduce their dependence on you and your influence and Bellisseria let them do just that. You're now competing against them and the perks one gets for a premium account.

You must not be aware of the number of people in Belli that have more than one account and thus more than one Belli home. Some of them have several Belli homes. IMO, LL should limit individuals to no more than 2 Belli homes simultaneously per individual, not account. At least until such time as they have built enough regions to cover the current demand.

I understand wanting more than one Belli home, but the greediness of owning more than two Belli homes doesn't look good on the person and tells me you really aren't the kind of person I'd want to be friends.

[Kathlen Onyx]

3 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

You must not be aware of the number of people in Belli that have more than one account and thus more than one Belli home. Some of them have several Belli homes. IMO, LL should limit individuals to no more than 2 Belli homes simultaneously per individual, not account. At least until such time as they have built enough regions to cover the current demand.

I understand wanting more than one Belli home, but the greediness of owning more than two Belli homes doesn't look good on the person and tells me you really aren't the kind of person I'd want to be friends.

Wow, really? Do you apply this thinking to your RL too?

I could understand greediness if the houses in Bellisseria were given free with each account but they are not. They are a benefit to being a premium member, which unless it's changed, you pay RL money for.  A premium account if paid yearly is $99.00 a year. If I got 10 accounts that would be 83.33 per month which is the equivalent of 2 people going out once a month to a nice restaurant (depending on where you live) and having dinner. So based on that criteria if someone had 10 accounts and 10 houses in Bellisseria you wouldn't be friends with them? I mean, that seems like a very narrow minded approach.

[Tarani Tempest]

55 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I understand wanting more than one Belli home, but the greediness of owning more than two Belli homes doesn't look good on the person and tells me you really aren't the kind of person I'd want to be friends.

Seriously?

Someone pays for premium, they are entitled to the perks.  Should not matter how many accounts they pay for. 

And so far, anyone that wants one a home in Bellisseria...gets one.  Plenty to go around.  Might have to wait a tad for the type you want, but not for long. 

This is a non issue as far as I am concerned.

[Silent Mistwalker]

34 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

Wow, really? Do you apply this thinking to your RL too?

I could understand greediness if the houses in Bellisseria were given free with each account but they are not. They are a benefit to being a premium member, which unless it's changed, you pay RL money for.  A premium account if paid yearly is $99.00 a year. If I got 10 accounts that would be 83.33 per month which is the equivalent of 2 people going out once a month to a nice restaurant (depending on where you live) and having dinner. So based on that criteria if someone had 10 accounts and 10 houses in Bellisseria you wouldn't be friends with them? I mean, that seems like a very narrow minded approach.

 

Oh. I'm sorry. I was thinking about all those people who want a Belli home but can't get one because people with multiple premium accounts can't be satisfied with just two homes, they have to have as many as they have premium accounts.

I'm also sorry I have the integrity to not want to be around greedy people. I've lost way too much to greedy, selfish people over the years to want to voluntarily expose myself to the risk again.  If that is being narrow minded, then so be it.