Prokofy Neva

Good question. For many people on the forums, their game is in fact the forums; they no longer log on anymore. I log on several times a day to help my customers and spend long hours working on my rentals or creating things or exploring. So I'm not in that category. But too many of the highly-opionated on here -- whose high opinions start with themselves -- don't really go in SL or do anything there. If they do, they might sit in one spot in IMs the entire time. I once made it my business to go and visit the shops of some of the loudest mouths on the forums, people who had heckled and harassed me viciously because I expressed opinions different than theirs. And to my surprise, their stores had not changed since the first time they were built -- in 2007. Or 2004! Their vendors were pathetic, and contained things no one bought any more because SL had evolved to other forums. The traffic on their stores was...8. Or "0". I then switched from annoyance to pity. These people had nothing going at all. Some of them had once had thriving businesses, but then changes in fashion or the very materials of SL or changes in policies (against trafficking) put them out of business. And they are frozen in time. I don't gloat over people who are behind, as I am behind myself, and a very slow learner. But I do have an informed opinion from logging on nearly every day and helping customers and learning of their problems and their joys, what works and doesn't.

Wouldn't it be great if all ban scripts were effective only up to 16m before the border of the property. Or better yet, 32. Failing that, wouldn't it be great if people who insisted on having ban lines would voluntarily make a strip of easement around the property if they are on waterfront and then the rest of the parcel they could have their ban lines/orbs -- surely that's sufficient. In Keuka, someone has deliberately terraformed up their land to block a creek and put access-only ban lines up so that you literally cannot navigate the creek. I asked the Lindens if they would be willing to push down the edge of their land (a steep hill) on this creek to make it navigable, but they wouldn't. And I understand their reasoning -- if they give into one request for Linden land to be changed, they'll have a zillion. On the other hand, it's their poor terraforming and bordering in the first place that created these waterway horrors. They could have made it wide enough to boat through and not have any of the land in the creek sell to individuals like that. But since none of this is likely to change, it's portage or do without...

Look, you're pre-set to suspect evil and ill will, and then to antagonize, particularly anything from me, as I've seen before, so I won't reply. Others will understand what I'm talking about and get back to me on or off the forums.

Gals, I don't care about seeing my own ad. That's not the issue. Um, I'm not "advertising to myself". I merely want TO KNOW IF IT WORKS. It's a mechanical question. Because I don't see evidence that it does. It's not about "wanting" or "wasting one impression," that's silly. It's about finding out from others if it works. How do I know it works if I don't see my ad? Everything else on the MP and inworld works differently. If I post something for sale, I see my page for that item. If I check off the search/places ad inworld, if I search for the name of my store, I see the ad in search. Same for classifieds, which of course also work on some formula where they aren't always visible, but still, I see them. Not so with the MP -- that's all there is to it. The entire business of "impressions" -- upon which digital advertising is based -- never impressed me and I don't think that's really what makes sales, except in some theoretical world. Impressions don't make sales, sales make sales. People click through and buy not because there were 1000 impressions and they were one of them, but because you reached them with something they wanted, or your ad sounded compelling. I'm not going to be buying them again for the simple reason that it doesn't seem worth it, because there are too many people chasing the tiny window of viewability. $799 in fact seems like way too low a price for this tiny window. It should cost 10 times as much, the way the top view does on classifieds. If I spend $1000 and not $10000 on a rental ad, I know I'm not going to get as many views, TPs, and sales. This idea that there is some "fair algorithm" at work that maybe puts me in the queue and in the view sometimes doesn't seem reasonable to me. That tiny, rare window should go to whomever can spend the most money, the end. I won't be one of those people, but at least I know that I haven't been put in the view due to socialistic theory but by market motives. It seems to me you are overthinking this -- and your experience isn't universal. I've gone to the page, refreshed it a half dozen times, and I don't see the same ad, much less my own. That leads me to conclude that there's an enormous queue of people chasing this window, and therefore it's crazy. There's also this: I never look at the ads on the main page. Ever. They never have anything I'm remotely interested in. Occasionally, the ticker of things that people actually bought is interesting, if it is furniture or a house, and that I will click on. Perhaps I've even bought things a few times but I don't recall that. Only search works for sales, not ads. Google knows this, too, of course. The people who buy those ads at the top of the page of search results endlessly annoy me because they never change and I will never go to their stores, even though I have in the past precisely because they are annoying me so tremendously with some really lousy junk that they should know better to be paying money to advertise. It's a mystery why one top creator in particular is putting that discounted junk up there. So how do you get at the top of search? Obviously one way is by being viewed, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy -- you are viewed because you are viewed. But over time, I tend to think that the best made items in a category float to the top by more purchases. Even so, I will scroll through a bunch of pages because you never know.

Several times against my better judgement I have put "listing enhancements" for a specific product tied to a holiday or special occasion, on the front page even, for $799, which is a lot of money for me. Then you get a report showing all the "impressions," which is merely whom it was put in front of, the click-through which are of course much less, and you see the sales on your control panel. But what I never see is the ad on the front page. Now why is that? I look at the front page, I scroll through the offerings, and my ad isn't there -- even a day or two later (and they last 7 days). Then I figure, "Oh, they must have so many front-page ads that they can't show them all on any given scroll, but it probably comes up some other time." So then when I remember, I go back and check for it -- I never see it. Of course it's annoying that you have to remember to cancel it before it bills again, and now two ads billed again and I haven't seen them on the front page in 7 days, randomly checking. I don't mean the front page for a category, I mean the whole front page -- that's what it is, no? What's the deal?

I think you have a built-in problem in that RL photos don't sell as well in SL as photos of SL. There's something jarring about photo-real that puts people off. You could consider using your photography skills to take good *SL* photos and they may sell better. But regardless, to get noticed by the market, you can't just put keywords in search or put a picks on your avatar, you need to go rent a mall so that you will get shoppers to see you, or get into a gallery sim, or get into an event. This takes time and research but that's how it's done.

Now, if only they would add another filter for those crates that have only a picture of a thing, but not the thing itself.

The more pertinent question to ask is which adults -- and did they involve parents -- deployed their children against Pelosi in such an obviously politicized way in the first place.

The problem with the language LL has in its TOS is that you could either use it to "indict a ham sandwich" or use it to do nothing, or both, depending on a given Linden or a given day or a given workload. When we had a police blotter, we could build up some sense of jurisprudence. We could see WHAT and WHERE. We could figure out what clubs perhaps to avoid, or certain sandboxes. We could see their "thinking" on things. I could write reams (and have) on what this told us about their mindset, but the operative point now is that they took it down. You can only find it on the Internet archive if you really, really work at it, only for a few dates. It wasn't complete, and that's a shame. A full-time, 24/27 ticker of actions taken on abuse reports in real time would be immensely instructive and serve as a deterrent, in my view. But the Lindens don't wish to publicize this proprietary information any more. There are certain RP groups that I view as despicable that endorse racism, slavery, persecution, denigration of women, and more. The Lindens leave this alone as "consensual among adults". I think it lowers the whole culture of SL considerably. @ clivesteel I don't know who Jagix is or what your ARs have been about so I can't tell what your story is.

Perhaps you can tell me what exactly the Linden policy/enforcement record is right now. You can't abuse report a Trump sign per se, as is. But if there were more than one on a sim, could you? One on every one of 10 sims in a row? What might work? Encroachment doesn't count, because it could say "We are for a blue sky" and if it encroaches they will remove it. I do wonder specifically about these Trump sign infestations what might be done within the enforcement practices of LL.

What I find disturbing is how many Trump campaign kiosks are all over SL now, and mainly owned by just one person who runs a rentals business. Just one person can have that kind of effect, and if they don't put more than one per sim, they aren't in violation of LL's rather half-heartedly enforced ad rule. But if they were to cap that world-wide, we'd see less of that and other obnoxious stuff. What's also sad is that there are few counter kiosks. Maybe there's a Sanders kiosk here or there. But what is really needed is some kind of anti-hate kiosk. But people have also big networks of yellow jacket (French) kiosks that seem questionable to me. As with the "Impeach Bush" guy who defaced SL terribly and didn't really care about politics as much as being obnoxious and pushing Linden limits, I think this attention-getting visual and verbal behaviour isn't necessarily of substance but about other things. Linden Lab is in the US, and like most Silicon Valley Internet companies, it tends to try to have a First Amendment level of free speech, even though as a non-state actor, it cannot enforce this protection and is not required to offer it, either. Most Internet platforms have TOS rules that are shy of the First Amendment. But for all kinds of historical and lifestyle and idiosyncratic reasons, you might find the Lindens responding more against hate of LGBT than they do hate of Jews or Trumpian white supremacist rants. One of the ways I have been griefed by a set of very hard-core 4-chan type griefers is by impersonations of me as a "bot" named by my company (I don't use bots at all) and spewing of racist, Trumpkin stuff in groups. This leads to slews of hate mails against me and bans from properties -- that's why it is done. I and others abuse report it, the Lindens can take their time on it, but eventually, those day-old alts are deleted, only for new ones to appear. I think Linden libertarianism and also the overwhelmed AR system contribute to this problem. One of the problems companies face is trying to define hatred. This shouldn't be so hard as they imagine as there are very well-established UN definitions in CERD and other tready bodies, but in the US, the bar is set high for free speech. And given how rabid and crazy the Twitter far left is on these subjects, that is a good thing, quite frankly. As I said on the libtech list, I think they should have a ban on racist remarks and of course racist incitement because they are a university, and it is not only unbecoming of a university, but usually universities have their own standards against racism that they should enforce on their lists. Wearing a MAGA hat is not something you can lawfully qualify as "racism" even in a university sense, and the atrocious disinformation and lies that went out about the Covington boys around their face-down with the Black Israelites and a Native American are a very good indication of that. The media didn't comprehend how the Black Israelites started this rumpus, insulting not only the boys but the Native Americans; Black Israelites have now murdered 6 Jews and an Italian-American policeman in Jersey City. This isn't trivial. Online hatred leads to offline violence and that is why we need to care more about it. I personally believe Trump is responsible for the murder of Jews in Pennsylvania, and attacks on media figures and the escalation of white supremacist violence. But I am certainly not going to let anti-fa off the hook because they have a long history of violence and extremism here and in other countries. The problem with your post is that it doesn't have definitions or plans but just an overall indignation. It's ok to vote with your wallet even when your sense of injustice is only vague, but frankly, I wouldn't want to put you in charge of deciding what free speech should be tolerated and what is not, because I suspect your views are leftist and narrow on this subject because what you appear to wish is to outlaw all explicit Trump supporters and voters. And you and others do not have grounds for this. A Trump voter can be someone fed up with campus political correctness (with good reason); there are black Trump voters; there are people wearing a MAGA hat because someone merely gave them a free hat; there are workers who lost jobs who voted for Trump who five minutes before that would have voted for Sanders if the left still cared about workers, and so on. It's a very blunt axe to go hacking away at all things with the name "Trump" on them. I'm a Hillary voter, liberal but not progressive, and a first-term Obama voter and second-term Romney voter who will vote for anyone but Trump. But the task then and now is to persuade my fellow Americans that his policies and beliefs and antics and just overall immoral craziness are damaging not only to liberal values for America and its ideals in general and in practice, harmful to all kinds of people. THAT is the problem. The various forms anti-Trumpism takes is simply not persuasive; his followers have only doubled down; they have only found new reason to support him as the Democratic Party splits more and more and lurches left more and more. When a left-wing Democrat who wanted to take guns away, who is gay himself and a mayor, is slammed because he fund-raises in a wine-cave, we are doomed. Try to understand that. To accomplish this goal of opposing Trump, I'd rather support protection of refugees and ending of mistreatment of asylum applicants rather than police transgender bathrooms and provide abortion up to birth; I'd rather provide better and subsidized medical care than "Medicare for All" which is an outrageous expense; I'd rather re-join the climate change treaties and re-start the practices of the Obama era than have the "new green deal" which is merely socialism in a poor disguise and so on. And I'm not alone in this in the Democratic Party off Twitter. I suspect AOC's voters are not likely to vote for her again, because their jobs and medical care and public transport have not improved on her watch, even as she has gone further afield in search of national glory. The best way to counter Trump is to start alternative groups and movements and support of alternative candidates, not abuse-report Trump supporters which will go nowhere in SL. LL can only shrug at losing your $11.99 per month. But if you started a group or held meetings or bought some microparcels for another candidate, the media might cover you and you might find others to share your common cause.

I'm so glad you mentioned this. I've been meaning to ask for this, too. I really feel constrained by having only the 10 picks. I can't put all my rental communities in, for example. 16 or 32 or whatever would be great! However, I bet I can figure out why the Lindens are going slow on this. There's a system some store owners have where if you put their store in their picks, they will either let you enter a lottery, or give you money, or give you *something*. And so perhaps they feel this is "gaming the system" although I don't think it's as bad as camping is/was. Still, it's an abuse of the original intent, which was really to be for genuine picks. The reality of "picks" is that people tend not to use them for actual "favourite places". They use them for stories, since there isn't room on the profiles for actual stories, especially if long. Or they make elaborate things, like their RP preferences, or their rental policies (in my case), or just their thoughts on life. So they are not really picks as such. Long ago and far away in another galaxy, when we debated about how to keep search from being gamed, I suggested to Philip Linden that he use "picks" not merely "traffic" or searches as traffic was now inflated by paid camping (and today by bots). This was before picks were gamed as much with store raffles. And I was confident then that I, who refused to use traffic gimmicks, might get higher in search because a lot of tenants would snap a picture and put it in picks, not so much to say "this is my favourite rentals company" but more like "my first kiss" or "home sweet home" or "my RP limits". So each time they did that, it would report my land as the place. Then you would see what people actually cared about. To be sure, this could get inflated, too, if someone merely happened to be in my little rental while they proceeded to use up 10 slots in picks to put in all their favourite poems or rare cat breeds as people can do. This is called a "folksomy". I tried to introduce this as a device where people could leave their favourite places' landmarks and share them but of course that had the problems of needing to be updated and cleaned out from people putting scammy "business in a box" sales illegally in sandboxes etc. I'm rather have more picks than groups at this point even though I am out of groups now and forced to keep alts going to have more groups.

I totally understand what you mean about that. And yes I have put houses on myself and messed up my clothes. But most of the time, double clicking on a folder only opens it, but doesn't put it on me. And I don't recall if in fact I turned it off somewhere to make it not do that. I have another thing where each log-on puts a system newbie shirt on me I then have to take off, but that's separate (I think). Your advice about the "string of letters" makes me recall the trick to try to force up lost things -- first clear cache, the re-log and just type "A" then "B" then "C" etc to force it through a relog. That seldom works but it does enough times to make it worthwhile as a thing to do for lost inventory. So your idea seems to prime the system to make it "settle" better. The thing is, almost any set of random letters with my huge inventory is likely to turn up actual things in a search. So i'm going to try with random series of numbers with a letter that generally will not turn up anything.

I have no idea if I have a large enough sample to really make a definitive comment, but I just note that certain houses seem to work and others fade in popularity. I think you can never go wrong with cottages. TOO rustic and they don't work. Hive, ionic, May, Wayfarer Wishbringer, Post, LAQ tend to work. I'm mystified why Artisan Fantasy's gatcha cabin set doesn't work, but maybe because people don't like to see a bed in an open first floor and want that sequestered or in a skybox. A cabin that has witch/herbalist themes built into it works, the Dragon Magick Wares houses work, but not all. Who knows. I put out something and if it doesn't rent, I am forced to change it, even if it doesn't work. I think you should make larger places because I think that is desirable. If you can't swing a cat in them, people won't move in.

Yes, I did notice it in some rooms in the Victorians. But not in the campers. Which gave me hope.

Um, yes, Chic, I know that you don't link that fix-up prim to the mesh DERP. And DERP DE DERP I know you don't make it phantom. Honestly, can you trust that other people know how to build besides you? Hello???? I have literally hundreds of houses and skyboxes -- no, thousands -- do you? And I have tried everything on this problem, including transparent prims put down on them set to 98% or totally $100 or whatever, of different thicknesses, and not on physics, and it does not work. You're trying it on your own houses or a few; so is moira. I'm trying it on tons of them. It does not work. Go to my office and you'll see a typical example. There's a KIDD gazebo which I like and many people like because it's one prim! Hello! All in one! So you can try to put a floor over it -- I have, of different thicknesses, to get rid of a chronic mesh bounce problem I have there, in my 50% off gatcha section. I get sick and tired of not being able to quickly rez out gatchas for sale there. IT DOES NOT WORK. Try rezzing a gatcha out on that floor -- IT BOUNCES. Why? Likely due to that all-in-one nature -- the sides or top make it bounce because it's all-in-one. Go to my office, join the open group, try it and you'll see what I mean. You cannot cure it. I left it there so that at least it's there to pull out to rez on rather than the deck itself which can have other problems. Or take a house, like the one in Hector. Trust me, I put in a floor there -- it does not work. Likely again due to walls being linked, or something interfering somewhere. I wouldn't report this if it were not true.

That's fine. I don't know why it is so hard to get across this simple point without all this correcting and haranguing. IT DOESN"T MATTER IF YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR IT AS A PREMIUM. WHAT MATTERS IS THAT THEY COULD MAKE AVAILABLE RIGHT AWAY THE ABILITY TO HAVE LAST NAMES *if* THEY GIVE UP THEIR OBSESSION WITH HAVING THOSE WITH THE LAST NAME 'RESIDENT' GIVEN THE ABILITY OF *CHANGING* THEM. THE CHANGING OF THEM CAN HAPPEN BY MAKING A NEW ACCOUNT FOR $40, HELLO! Yes, you will have an old account with all your dresses that you can't transfer and your old poorbie name of "resident". So what? You wanted last names. You can now get them for $40 and stop fussing and have several accounts. Turn the other account to a free one. The end.

on the other hand, in six months they may NOT have made progress and the schedule may have slipped again and therefore they should stop the hard thing -- changing -- and just offer the restored thing - - making a new premium account with the last names.

OK, he does say that, but having this ability restored via premium that previously existed -- that's still a better solution than trying to give everyone a chance to CHANGE their name. THAT is what Oz is hung up on. Again, I want to point out there is an IDEOLOGICAL problem here cloaked by a technical problem. We don't know how many people feel they "must" change their name as opposed to just getting a new account. People get new accounts ALL THE TIME. They make alts to get Bellisseria houses. So they can make an alt to get the last name. End of story. If they don't like "resident", truly they can start a new account with the names. It will speed things up and requite the clamouring masses. For $11.95 a month, you can have that last name.

Well, there are millions of "Jacks" who didn't get @jack on Twitter, either, but that's life in the big city. There is no need to be sad. Newbies can get a new account with new last names. Many people have more than one account. They are FREE unless you want land, cash, and gifts from the Lab. No reason not to make at this part possible and have done with it.

No, Chic. That DOES NOT WORK. Believe me, I've heard this many times, tried it many times, even in my office, not to mention rental homes. It does not work to put an invisible prim over the prim that has this problem. This problem keeps shining through, God knows why. Even when you have the luxury to make it thicker (which you don't always if you don't want to upset everything in a house or community with tenants with the floor elevating and making them walk above an invisible floor, as bad as camera rocking. Nor does it work to put things on "no shape" -- you just sink through then as often that makes it on "phantom" or "like" phantom. The only way to fix this is for the maker to make this right. Apple Fall's newest skybox, which is very nicely textured, has this problem, although they seem to be very skilled builders. KIDD has this problem. Barnesworth Anubis mainly does NOT have this problem. Many older mesh houses from Dust Bunny have this problem. You can't name names on the forums so this will be removed but I'll make lists on my own blog and maybe even for the short time these names remain, the makers can wise up and stop doing this.

Which is why they need to stop doing this, or take their time doing it if they like suffering, and just let people make NEW ACCOUNTS with the old facility to put first and last names from a list. The end. No code involved, they had that code already.

Having listened to this tape of Oz Linden, I now see that they may not get to this, it's quite hard, the way they have conceived of this. So the task of those who want this is to get them to re-conceive it, not do the hard technical task they have set themselves -- which sounds like the labours of Sisyphus and will never be done. Oz often talks very clearly and thoughtfully, which is a blessing, compared to most techs, but looking off to the far distance, choosing his words, as if he is mindful that he can't leak a proprietary secret, or perhaps a known flaw that could be exploited. That's got to be hard. Even so, you can glean this much: they can't do this easily because they saved the last name stuff not just with avatar keys, which are unique for each avatar and would seem to be the obvious thing to do, but in other ways, which I can only imagine. Tables of plain text? Really? They do that? Is that not ill-advised? Why did they do that? I imagine this question can't be answered for the reasons I just implied, but still... I do have to point out that when it came to changing the names of Lindens who departed the Lab to their RL names, they didn't suffer from any problems. They did it virtually overnight. So Robin Linden and all her inventory and works, all her textures or objects she made or notecards or even her calling card converted from Robin Linden to Robin Harper. Or Corey Linden converted to Corey whatever his last name was, I forget. And so on. There are dozens of Lindens, although not the founder Philip Linden himself, who is no longer a Linden, but not Philip Rosedale, but Philip Linden (perhaps because there were too many things he made? Like Ben Linden, who made so many of the plants and trees?). I don't think if his disappearance from Lindenhood is the reason why his monolith in Linden Village disappeared (the one that said "My God, It's full of stars" like on 2001). I think that was just a return by accident. I think he has all his stuff. But so basically, when they want to, they can do this. Custom jobs for individual Lindens may take time due to those issues they flagged, but not very much time. The issue then is to multiply this by 3 million or however many actual avatars there are, or by only 50,000, by the actual number of name requests they get. Which brings me to the question of why they don't just set this aside as "nice to have" and put in last names again for those who want to make NEW avatars. Yes, plenty will do that, just like they make alts for Bellisseria houses. Alts are the soul of SL and it is NOT a problem for people to go make new accounts. This perception that it "isn't fair" to all those with the name "resident" that they can't change their name -- sure they can, with a new account, which they will be happy to make, especially if discounted for a time. Trust me, last names will be such a neat thing and so in demand that people will make new accounts. To be hobbling this over the idea of justice to "residents" who won't want to leave their old accounts is silly. They don't have to. They can keep them as mules. Gatchas transfer. Lots of stuff transfers. If it doesn't, that's sad, but then a last name is a cool thing. Once again, I see the Linden difficult is ideological, not technical. They have boxed themselves in with an idea of "fairness" or an idea of putative customer demand that isn't there. People will be happy to have fresh, new accounts with last names. They will have several accounts -- you know, as they already do! Let's get over this hump, please.

I have tried to put some of my insights of 15 years into these issues into tutorials in Ross and Iris which are "second tier," i.e. after you master the first line of issues in SL about moving and communicating and building, then you can look at these issues involved in making businesses. In Ross, at the Memory Bazaar, go into the buildings to find various topics like how to make groups function well, how to group land, etc. and also warnings about various scams and such. In Iris, go into the fish plant to follow through the steps there and also look in the "jobs" shack near the temple. 1. Yes, I have a store with houses. I tried first to build my own, they were so terrible, I commissioned other people to build them because they did a better job -- I commissioned at first because there weren't the kind of larger residential homes with tintable windows and lockable doors in earlier SL. Today, I just buy the prefab buildings mainly at events where I can see the demos. No, I haven't made clothes since my first t-shirts as a newbie. It's too hard for me. I have gradually become able to build things and sell them, but mainly furniture and appliances. I have been a very slow learner with this and now do it mainly with pre-fab mesh or sculpty models which I texture and combine because I can't seem to get beyond Paint to Blender which you need to learn to make things in SL. 2. If you want something badly enough, you will learn it. I did not want badly enough to learn how AO Maps and UV Maps work in SL for 14 years -- until I did, in my 15th when I simply couldn't get a model to texture by slapping it on. There are good tutorials on YouTube for this, but again, until you want it badly enough, you won't stick with them. 3. Yes, it gets expensive. It's not uncommon to blow $1000 on the models and texture uploads -- or two or three times that -- $500 or $1000 or more on the fee to be in an event or pay rent or tier to LL -- and then only make back in sales what you put into the building cost -- if that. Yes, you can put things on the MP but for me, things sell better inworld at events or through my personal connections. Others get more sales from the MP. It depends on a lot of factors, the type of item, whether you are known, how search works (badly), etc. It gets better over time, but basically, if you are not a RL graphics artist or computer programmer or web designer, have no art training in RL, and aren't hugely motivated, you can't perform magic in SL. I'm completely skill-free and will remain so -- the great thing about SL is that virtually anything sells if you put a price tag on it, and I'm fortunate that my customers will buy a simple table or teapot that I make, but there are better mesh ones or hand-made ones for the same or slightly more cost, and that limits my ability to do anything than offset the cost of tier with this, which is my main goal. 4. Yes, you need capital to start a business as in RL. You don't need a building -- you could work in a free public sandbox even without a premium account -- but you need $10 per texture upload and with clothes that will mount in cost rapidly. 5. There really isn't any such thing as "passive income" in SL, although some giant homestead rental farms with cheap skyboxes and giant domes on the mainland perhaps achieve something like this. You need to do customer service. It is endless. I have "self-service" rentals that keep me busy all day even with all kinds of self-service features built in. 6. Rentals are a way to make money if you can't make stuff, like me. This sustained me for years. It's sad to think that I can make one successful thing that will then "passively" make money for me forever, and more money than I can make scratching the earth in subsistence farming (Mainland Rentals) but that's the truth. The one big piece of advice I give all future rental agents: land is not an investment. Land is a sunk cost, and a recurring sunk cost like a utility, like electricity. If you buy and rent land, the answer is not to go buy more land as an "investment". It's not an investment. It's a loss, a sunk cost. Wait until you have really established a customer base, weathered the hard patches of SL (in the summer in RL, when people don't log on as much and rent less) before you start stocking up on islands. On the other hand, until you buy 100 islands, you will not have anything approaching RL income, assuming you can keep them rented. This is why I have about 14 of them, not 100. 7. The competition is fierce and growing fiercer always. You can't think about that and have to try to hang on to your newbie enthusiasm and your dream. You have to be willing to work hard and not look around you but build your dream and hope they will come. But you also have to look at customer requirements. People do not want to live in a grunge Japanese futuristic apocalypse tower by JP, as much as I love this look. They just don't. Even for free. So you have to take it down and put the bungalows they want to live in and not be fussy. The customer is always right. Or you can just not earn money. Don't worry about the market; worry about your customers. Please them, the rest will follow. People really value good customer service. I will buy a less pretty thing, or a more expensive thing, if the customer service is there for me. 8. I'm not one to ask about fashion saturation as I don't care about clothing and fashion but in houses, I would say only mesh sells now, and it has to be spacious, the walkability has to be good (no camera bounce), it has to be tintable and lockable, preferably free of mesh bounce, etc. Certain styles of Japanese or Arabic or Rustic seem "in" but then something else comes along that is Modern or Elf and then everyone wants that. Again, it's all about the customers. You find your niche.

So I have finally caught up with this tape of an interview with the Lindens in which Oz Linden actually answers a question I sent into Saffia, who runs the show. Basically, I wanted to know why mesh placed on mesh bounces, and goes back to inventory but not lost and found, so you to relog to get it again if it is a single copy (like a gatcha). HUGE annoyance. And furthermore, since I figured that problem would be too hard to fix or not a priority, I wondered if the Lindens could just change the error message along with the bouncing which is "the owner of this land does not allow..." And the reason is simple: All day, every day, tenants contact me bewildered and frustrated by this message. Why is the owner of the land not letting them do a thing they paid for?! They joined the group as to become in a sense co-owners! This is why I put out prim cutting boards in every community and warn people that mesh is a batch, and you need to rez mesh on to a prim, then in edit mode, put it in place. This can be too frustrating for some people and they refund -- only to find the same problem no doubt in their next rental. Many mesh houses and skyboxes have this problem of mesh bounce, some worse than others -- it has to do with the physics and the way the mesh is uploaded, I'm told. Interestingly, the Moles' mesh in the campers does NOT suffer from bounce problem, so I wish they could capture this, put it in a jar, and export it to all creators so this stops, but meanwhile, the message... Watching this interview was helpful, as I was reminded what an utterly different -- and wildly wacky -- world the Lindens, creators of this world, live in, themselves. I suppose it's something like the difference between bringing the circus to town and working in it, and going to the circus and watching it. It is entirely unlike my Second Life -- they put the stress on the first word in the phrase, and I (and Saffia and so many others) put the stress on the second word -- SECOND Life versus Second LIFE and all that entails -- and that's only the beginning of all the weirdness. So at about 16:17 on this YouTube, Oz says that the reason they can't change this message is because in fact, the prim bouncing is, in fact, on another person's land. And he explains this by saying that the user is high up in the air, building, or decorating, as people so often are, and there is a little line that comes from them down to the object they are placing -- he gives the example of a 2000 meter high skybox and implies that the user is trying to place something on the ground from that height -- or that the line goes from the avatar in a skybox down to that ground regardless of where the placement is, and depending on the angle, it's actually on someone else's property. This is so fantastically strange that I don't even know how to unpack it, because it simply isn't true. The overwhelming majority of use cases of this phenomenon happen on your own land, where you as the owner or your tenants as group members and thus "like" owners, are placing one mesh item on another on the ground, within a radius of one meter, not in the air, or if in the air in a skybox, at least attempting to place an item right next to you. Obviously Oz or April aren't rental agents and not decorating house after house so they don't experience this. They don't have customers (or shouldn't because anyone needing customer service shouldn't contact them, but the helpers on the web site). They may build up in the air, or listen to the stories of Moles who build up in the air. But there's a big difference between BUILDING when often you are hovering over the build below you, and DECORATING when you are right there, in the room, with that lamp and table. This should be obvious. That I have to explain it at length means it isn't at all, and that Oz imagines a world in which people only build from hover heights up in the air or even way up in the sky, and can't conceive of a world in which I am in a room with a lamp and a table -- bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, forcing a re-log, to everyone's annoyance. Now. I can conceive that if I were in a skybox doing this -- and I often am, that's what people want to rent -- and those lines he is talking about jut out from my avatar and go at an angle all the way to the ground, and it might just be that if I am on the Mainland especially, that line of sight could go on to another person's property such as to cause "the owner of this land does not allow..." But that's not the case. I'm in the middle of a sim, which I own all the parcels on. Often surrounded by other sims which I own entirely. The line of sight or trajectory or whatever it is couldn't possibly be extending out to someone else's land; it's on mine. That's if we're talking skybox. But on the ground -- THE GROUND! -- I am on my own land. I am in front of a table, trying to put a lamp on it. There is no line of sight or trajectory or anything that could possibly be extending to someone else's land or Linden land. YET IT IS BOUNCING. And this happens on islands and homesteads as well as mainland. It's because the mesh is bouncing. There is some function of the mesh itself -- perhaps if made poorly or with too many vertices or whatever -- that makes it bounce. A few very skilled creators do not cause you to suffer from this problem. You easily place their mesh on their mesh, or their mesh on another person's mesh without bounce. But most mesh does bounce. As I said, somehow the floors in the mobile homes in Bellisseria do not bounce, so that should be examined. When I listen to these Linden interviews, I really am at a loss. Their experience is so outside of mine (and many other people's) that I just don't know what to say, how to get them to stop the pain in every day use, although they do seem willing to stop pain. All they need to do is not overthink it, not go trawling for exotic use cases that only they imagine, but just look at ordinary life and change the message to simply "Unable to place object, try moving closer" and leave it at that. After all, they have that message when you are in one sim, trying to sit on a thing in another sim. It wills say you can't do that because you aren't in the same sim. Very clear and simple. By the same token, you could simply say "can't place" and "try moving closer" to imply that MIGHT work (if their line of sight thing is really the common use case they imagine). It's not perfect, because it isn't quite true -- mesh bounces not because of the line of sight but because of the inherent nature of mesh, and people's skills with it, which they don't seem to want to admit.