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Link for full economic statistics?


Ceera Murakami
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Admittedly I did have a couple of digs at you personally, sorry if I offended you, but part of the point I am making is that you have a cult like undying disdain for all things LL and it would be difficult to put this across without mentioning you personally. It's unfair to suggest I didn't debate the topic, I think the arguments I made in this regard are quite clear.

 

Actually contrary to what you believe, I do not have a hatred for ALL THING LL. 

First of all I like that you said "LL" vs "SL".  I love most things "SL" with regards to the experience, the countless ppl I have met, the close friends I have made around the world, the doors in my RL that my experiences in SL have opened (i.e. I was able to formally realize and actually hone my creativity, artistic skills, and technical skills to fromally become an "Artist" over the past 18 months), and even the significant additional discretionary income to RL for doing something I love doing (creating 3D modeled shapes in SL).

It is because I love virtual worlds like SecondLife so much and for the countless reasons like what I mentioned above, that I speak passionately and intently against anyone, any group, any organization that tries to damage it or destroy it - even if that enemy of SL is the owners of the actual grid that threatens it by their organizational immaturity and their resulting damaging actions to the virtual world I love so much.

I find LL is most often the biggest threat to the grid that I love so much.

As such, whenever LL strays off the path of trying to improve SL (which is about 90% of the time), I will use whatever powers available to me to expose their bad strategies, stupid repeated preventable mistakes, poor customer service culture, and weak organizational structure.  Since I cannot sit on the LL board...  Since I am not one of the "favored friends" of LL with a back-channel voice with key LL staff...  Since LL's staff has a culture that only learns & listens from being publicly embarassed for their mistakes...   The only power I have to defend SL from LL's stupidity is to publicly flog them whenever they do things that risks SL.

Unlike you and a few others here that truly believe the best apporach to make SL healthy is to hide LL's stupid mistakes, defend their actions at all costs, compliment LL staff for trying so hard, etc.  I see these actions by Customers of a poorly run operation as harmful to the progress of the product/services this company offers and even a form of Customer irresponsibility.

So.... there you have it.  The moment LL does something to SL that is clearly positive and impressive, I will be there to pat them on the head.  The moment LL treats their customers with respect and wishes to work with them, I will be first in line to work co-operatively with them ( I have had a few good back channel private talks with sr. LL staff - I dont brown nose with them - I had straight forward one-on-one topic discussions with them).

But until then, this is my strategy to protect SL from its owners actions.

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Worryingly we are moving towards agreement!


Toysoldier Thor wrote:

I find LL is most often the biggest threat to the grid that I love so much.

But it is also LL that has made all of the above things that you like here possible, thats why I believe they deserve a more balanced approach.


Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Unlike you and a few others here that truly believe the best apporach to make SL healthy is to hide LL's stupid mistakes, defend their actions at all costs, compliment LL staff for trying so hard, etc.  I see these actions by Customers of a poorly run operation as harmful to the progress of the product/services this company offers and even a form of Customer irresponsibility.

I think this is unfair, there are a number of times when I have been vehemently critical of LL, I posted extensively on changes surrounding the new marketplace, in particular with regard to image sizes, listing size, bbcode and animated GIFS, I wrote a damning post relating to the new advertsing site, it's probably just coincidence, but it has to be said the day I posted that the site was shut down. I have posted more recently criticising the lack of advertsing opportunities, and on the pathetic state of Marketplace search. SL is a complex animal and I am prepared to put up with some imperfections and teething problems, so when Marketplace search initially didn't work correctly I may well have spoken in support of LL, now they can no longer call this a teething problem and the Honeymoon Period is well and truly over I am frustrated and angry about it and would have no hesitation in saying so if the opportunity arose.


Toysoldier Thor wrote:


But until then, this is my strategy to protect SL from its owners actions.


How does what you post achieve this? you claim they are spinning bad figures to look good, this would suggest they feel uncomfortable with the figures they have to announce, so if they already know they have such a big problem that it needs to be covered up, how does you pointing out this alleged cover up help things?.

If you receive a complaint from a customer doubtless you will go and deal with it, if the same customer comes back the next day with a similar complaint, well maybe you will help him out again, but how about when he's back on day 3, and on day 4 he is here in forums calling you a liar, and on day 5 he is dreaming up conspiracy theories about you, day 6 complaining again, it isn't going to be very long before you think Looney Tune! and mute him, so are you sure your strategy is truly effective?.

Anyway I really don't want this to go on forever, feel free to reply, I will definitely read it, but in the interests of others I won't respond.

Whilst I cannot agree with your approach I support and admire you goals.

  

 


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Mickey Vandeverre wrote:

Balance is a Good Thing.

The problem is that Rodvik does respond to the negative bloggers.

It's encouragement to continue for more attention.  Unfortunately.

Dead On Mickey. 

A wise Sr. Exec or PR Team for a company would tackle negative messages if possible head on as opposed to ignore them.  1)  It allows you to to counter any statements that are false,  2) it shows to all that you are not afraid to openly engage and willing to listen and address legit concerns that are brought up,  3) Its great optics,  4) It acutally quite often turns critics into qualified allies if the critics know that their concerns are at least being listened to - it shows to them that their concerns and criticisms are heard and respected even if not agreed to.

And when someone is not heard... what does one do next?  Speaks Louder.  :)  I have no problem speaking louder if LL cant hear me.  Seems that is what LL Management wants me to do.

An ancient proverb:   Keep your Friends Close and your Enemies Closer.

Rodvik is falling in line with all previous Sr. Management and LL culture of only paying attention to those that are "friends of LL" and completely ignoring any criticisms from anyone that exposes the weaknesses of his company.  A sign of a weak leader when you only surround yourself with those that bow to you.

 

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Toysoldier Thor wrote:

Ralph,

I do agree that a major factor of what is eroding inworld Grid activity and inspiring several SL Grid customers to strongly consider and actually execute on a strategy of moving more or all of their activities to other open grids like IW is the high cost of SL Teir for sims. 

If land costs were much lower and prim counts per sim much higher (i.e. look at the monthly costs and prim counts on IW vs SL), then this would likely stimulate a significant resurance of inworld activity.  I am very comfortable is saying that if LL has lost teirs for 655 sims in the past year (due to customers closing or abandoning sims) its mostly due to the cost of maintaining them not being worth it anymore AND/OR because they could get an equivelent sim on a competing grid for a fraction the month costs with double the prim count.

The potential problem is (and I do not know this figure - only LL does) is that LL must charge a minimum fee per sim that is tied directly to the RL costs of operating the physical server it runs on as well as all the associated costs to operate that server in their DC.  If they could lower this cost and pass the savings to the customers by way of reduced teir costs then LL could do a lot to stem the flow of their customers migrating their activities to lower cost open grids.

If LL is reducing these per sim costs (i.e. more virtual sims per physical server, faster cheaper servers, etc) and not at least passing down a portion of these savings to the customer (i.e. LL is being blindly greedy) then they are consciously ignoring their competition and causing their own demise as the SL Grid erodes in use.

If LL has done everything possible to reduce per sim costs and their teirs reflect a near break-even pricing, then LL is in deep trouble since that means they are not running a competitive product to their growing competition that can operate their sims at much lower costs and in turn offer sims to us customers at much lower teir pricing.

I think its more option #1... LL is ignoring that they have competition and does not want to pass on any of their cost savings to their customers and basically they are Fiddling as Rome burns.

I have been looking at InWorldz the past few days myself, Toy.  Imagine my surprise when I saw:  $75 USD per month tier for a full sim with 45,000 prims (with a $75 USD set-up fee), prims to 128 x 128 x 128, free uploads!  Now THAT is something that people could afford!  $295 tier ($1,000 set up fee), 15,000 prims, 64 x 64 x 64 max size and $10L for each item you upload...yeah...there is no way I could afford all that. 

My problem with IW comes in when I look at their total number of people logged in at any one time.  Yesterday, the max number I saw online was 183.  Right this moment, there are 105 online.  I would love to have my own sim and build a great experience on it!  I could do a LOT with 45,000 prims!  But would I just have this wonderful sim all to myself? 

I am in complete agreement that the Lab seriously needs to re-evaluate their tier structure.  Get things in line with their competition.  I just hope they get a clue sooner than later.

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Yupper... competing opensims like IW do offer much much more cost effective Sim Teirs with much larger prim counts and they have always had scalable prims (contrary to what SL finally started offering a month ago).

But that is the biggest limitation with the competing grids....they still are far smaller in size to the SL grid.  So they all struggle at this time for reach / maintain critical mass to attract much larger movements of populations from SL. 

i.e. of actual examples I know of since am a resident and sculpty maps merchant in IW as well as SL...  A friend wanted to leverage the far lower sim costs to open a Karaoke / Live singing club.  She is a popular singer in SL and hoped she could generate a cool leading Karaoke club in IW by using her popularity and followers in SL.

After a couple months of tryng to get IW and transitioned SL residents... she gave up as there wasnt enough of a critical mass of online IW residents that wanted to attend.

Right now - a lot of the IW and other open sims are Niche grids for those that want either privacy, and/or a much lower cost place to build, or to have a beautiful sim to live on and that have little dependence on the grid's population size.  For those SL creators / merchants that have building input materials or clothing, its relatively little effort to move your content over to these grids and set up a satelite shop to generate a bit of extra $ income.  I have done it for a year now and i barely log into IW and it just generate about 5% of my total virtual sales.  So for near-zero effort to maintain, it was a good investment to diversify.

Just some thoughts.

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Toysoldier Thor wrote: For those SL creators / merchants that have building input materials or clothing, its relatively little effort to move your content over to these grids and set up a satelite shop to generate a bit of extra $ income.  I have done it for a year now and i barely log into IW and it just generate about 5% of my total virtual sales.  So for near-zero effort to maintain, it was a good investment to diversify.

Just some thoughts.

I wish more would do this.  That's what holds me back from participating there.  It's been a year for me since I logged on at IW...my problem is that I don't create or build.  There wasn't anywhere near enough content for me to choose from to furnish/landscape my land...which is what I'm most interested in.  If there was the selection that SL offers, I would over there in a flash with my own region :(

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Kylie Jaxxon wrote:


Toysoldier Thor wrote: For those SL creators / merchants that have building input materials or clothing, its relatively little effort to move your content over to these grids and set up a satelite shop to generate a bit of extra $ income.  I have done it for a year now and i barely log into IW and it just generate about 5% of my total virtual sales.  So for near-zero effort to maintain, it was a good investment to diversify.

Just some thoughts.

I wish more would do this.  That's what holds me back from participating there.  It's been a year for me since I logged on at IW...my problem is that I don't create or build.  There wasn't anywhere near enough content for me to choose from to furnish/landscape my land...which is what I'm most interested in.  If there was the selection that SL offers, I would over there in a flash with my own region
:(

The reason I made the decision last October to move all my sculpty packs to IW was because of receiving several requests from my customers and potential customers to either allow them to buy & transfer my packs to IW OR that I set up a store there to offer my packs to their build community.  Since my policy on my sculpty packs is clear that customers cannot take my maps off the SL grid, I had no choice but to take about a week and export my packs to IW.  My customers demanded it enough that I felt there was enough demand for added revenue.

The nice thing was that I was even given free & substantially reduced store rental offerings for moving my content there.

I am surprised that many other merchants dont take the effort to offer their stuff within a grid that is starved for quality build, furnishings, clothing content.  But its good for me as I have less competition there. :)

As for the size of the competing grid to SL, I think if the competing OpenSim grids would get together and meet (like all the crime bosses did to divvy up a city) and agree to merge all their grids into one larger grid, there would be a much greater chance for a competing grid to SL to evolve that would benefit them, us merchants, and even LL in that they would likely be forced to acknowledge that they have serious competition and change their current culture of NO CUSTOMER SERVICE.

But I am just wishing as I could never see these grids agree on something like that.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...


Ziggy21 Slade wrote:

what is your excuse for your constant negative spin?


 

I've been trying to figure that out for some time myself. This kind of negativity is not good for SL, and if I were a newcomer and saw these accusations on the forums I would hesitate to participate at all. Why would I put in time and energy if it is so terrible and apt to fall apart any minute? And if all these complaints are true then why would I even want to join? And if all the people in SL are this negative and accusatory, then why would I want to socialize with them? I'd walk away without a second glance, and I would have missed one of the coolest things I've ever discovered.

Fortunately I was in SL for a couple of years before these forums were set up, and I didn't know things were so terrible. In fact, I liked it a lot. I'm glad I never saw this kind of thing during my early years, and I hope our new people don't see it either.

Thanks for your comments.

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I was looking for the same figures. I found some usefull stats here

Most recent stats are from 2010, but it gives at least a rough image of the situation.

 

What do Second Life businesses earn per month?

 

 

2007

2010

Less then 10 usd

54,37 %

56,7 %

10 – 50 usd

27,1%

26,81 %

50 – 100 usd

6,33 %

12,43 %

100 – 200 usd

4,79 %

3,97 %

200 – 500 usd

 3,96 %

3,63 %

500 - 1000 usd

1,51 %

1,61 %

1000 – 2000 usd

0,99 %

0,84 %

2000 – 5000 usd

0,64 %

0,54 %

 More then 5000 usd

0,31 %

0,3%

2007: total 42.597 businesses

2010: total 64.651 businesses

 

What do people that participate in the economy spend per month?

1 – 500 L$

 39 %

500 – 2.000 L$

18,4 %

2.000 - 5.000 L$

12,43 %

5.000 - 10.000 L$

9,31 %

10.000 - 50.000 L$

15,41 %

50.000 – 100.000 L$

3,01 %

100.000 – 500.000 L$

2,02%

500.000 – 1.000.000 L$

0,21%

More then 1.000.000 L$

0,22 %

 

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:

...

What do Second Life businesses earn per month?

 

 

2007

2010

Less then 10 usd

54,37 %

56,7 %

10 – 50 usd

27,1%

26,81 %

50 – 100 usd

6,33 %

12,43 %

100 – 200 usd

4,79 %

3,97 %

200 – 500 usd

 3,96 %

3,63 %

500 - 1000 usd

1,51 %

1,61 %

1000 – 2000 usd

0,99 %

0,84 %

2000 – 5000 usd

0,64 %

0,54 %

 More then 5000 usd

0,31 %

0,3%

2007: total 42.597 businesses

2010: total 64.651 businesses


Made,

I wanted to know what percentage my lil SLM / inworld business was in as part of the 2010 figures you provided (I am in the $200 - $500 US/month) range.  The problem is that when you add up the percents on your 2010, the result is 106.83% - not 100%.

One of the figures in the chart must be wrong.

I saw a version of this 2010 chart about 8 months ago and even then I was shocked that my really small SLM store (ie. 6 primary selling products and about 40 smaller odds and ends products) with very low annual new products coming to market from me (I havent added a new product in my store in over a year) still puts my monthly sales in SL's top ~ 7% of monthly earnings among merchants.   Earnings = Profits and not Revenue = Raw Sales.

Seems a bit shocking when I know a lot of other merchants slave away on their store/SLM every week putting out tons of new products each month with FAR LARGER product inventory on the market than me.

Seems weird.

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Oh, I'm sorry, I made a mistake in typing out the figures. The fault was in the 50-100 usd range. Here is the corrected number in green:

 

 

2007

2010

Less then 10 usd

54,37 %

56,7 %

10 – 50 usd

27,1%

26,81 %

50 – 100 usd

6,33 %

5,61%

100 – 200 usd

4,79 %

3,97 %

200 – 500 usd

 3,96 %

3,63 %

500 - 1000 usd

1,51 %

1,61 %

1000 – 2000 usd

0,99 %

0,84 %

2000 – 5000 usd

0,64 %

0,54 %

 More then 5000 usd

0,31 %

0,3%

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IIRC, that table was entitled "accounts with positive weekly Linden flow" or something like that, rather than Merchants as such.

You wouldn't really count the first 50-80% as merchants (even if there might be a few starting, or failing, merchants in those numbers) - that sort of income many could get from sploders, camping (in whatever its current forms), contests, surveys, dancing, various "jobs", etc.

So maybe only a fifth of those are actually merchants.

Interesting figures, but you'd have to be careful about making assumptions about merchants in general from that because there's just not enough specific info.

 

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I don't know where or how Metaverse gets these figures, but the diagram they show is titled 'Business profit for *name of month*'. It is not saying 'merchants', and they are not speaking about linden dollars but about USD. In sploders, contests and so on you don't get USD, but L$.

I don't think it is only about merchants, it must include the land businesses as well. But we don't know how we must read this figures, because Metaverse does not  describe what they understand as a business, nor do they describe what they understand as profit.

Is profit the money people take out of SL, after they paid for their tier and their fun? Or did they count the Lindens that are transfered to USD?

That all makes big difference... so indeed, there is way to less info to make any hard conclusions.

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