Polenth Yue

You seem to have taken what I said and interpreted it in ways I didn't predict, so I'll have one more try. If you're still confused, you can ask me what I mean about those parts. I'm not talking about whether traffic games are really games or not. The point is that they are not good marketing, so stop looking for the next one to try. Instead, try other things, such as doing events. There's more that you could do, but that would get you started. I'm also not talking about slurls in marketplace listings, though I'd assume you have display copies out, so this would be a good idea. What I was talking about was starting a marketplace store and giving people the link to that marketplace store so that they can buy things from your marketplace store. What other merchants do to annoy you is only a concern in the sense that it shows you things to avoid doing. The signature links would be your marketplace store and the slurl for your main shop.

Traffic games bring in people who do nothing except that game. Run them if you find those games fun, but they're not marketing. They're not getting you seen by customers. Taking part in events is a way to make money and advertise your shop at the same time. Don't sign up for more events than you can handle and research the events. Some bring in more people than others. Some are more open to new shops than others. Make sure you have a store group and make it easy to join (free and have a sign at the events you do). If you do nothing else, this will result in regular customers. Make sure your stuff is also on the marketplace and make it easy for customers to find that link. Add your links to your forum signature, rather than just the name of the shop.

Build all the things! It's nice to see things being polished and finished. I see there's also some land for auction next to the new mainland road.

If the system is still trying to downgrade you to basic, it might not let you choose a home. I would try logging out of the site, closing the web browser, opening it again and logging back in, before contacting support. Sometimes these things just need a kick. But if it still thinks you're downgrading to basic, file a ticket for help here: https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/ Even if you do decide to downgrade, don't do it until you're close to the expiry date. Precisely because you can't hold land (including a Linden Home) if you're downgrading. Once that's resolved, you just go to the website and pick one following the instructions earlier in the thread. That was all that was needed from the start.

I see joining groups was briefly mentioned by others, but this is worth figuring out if you haven't already. Once you're in a group, you can chat to other members and will get notices for things like events. Some locations and events have group joiners (which either bring up a window asking if you want to join or give you a link in local to click to bring up the join window). You can also search for groups by name using the search tool and join that way. I would avoid ones that charge a fee at this point and also avoid shop groups unless you want the gifts (most shop groups aren't that social and are filled with people complaining about products). Big multi-day events will often have more going on, an active group, and events where people actually speak to each other. Summer tends to be a bit quiet and the birthday is wrapping up right now, but autumn is usually packed with events. What sort of things do you like doing outside of Second Life? We can probably point you to a few groups and events based on that.

When the first of the chalet coast houseboat regions were released, only the houseboats were released and not the chalets (this is Cariggus and following the coast down a bit). Those chalets are now "Linden Home" and available. (Note it wasn't the case with the later coast regions, as those did release the chalets at the same time.)

They've had the ones with the copies of the final houses for a bit. I'm not sure about the other active regions. The random region ghosts are builds from previous events. I can see Fantasy Faire, RFL track regions and the American Cancer Society. I'd hazard a guess that they were testing out event regions by using clones of past big events. Which isn't much of a guess, as I know they asked Fantasy Faire people to help stress test a clone of an old region at one point.

Another thing that can get you banned would be reversing a payment at your end. So you pay Linden Lab, you get your bank to cancel the payment and return the money to you, and then you get banned. The solution is to always handle this stuff by contacting Linden Lab. For ending a premium membership, that means you change your membership type on the Second Life website, to let them know you're going and not to charge you again. You don't let it renew and then reverse the charge.

I've actually done it twice. Once for me and once for a friend. So here's more info than you'd ever need to know... For me, as soon as I heard about the prorated thing (so my normal renewal date wouldn't change) and that we'd be able to pick a spot, I headed out into the fantasy area to see if there was one I liked more than the house I had. I listed out any region that bordered an uncloned region (there are some decor ones in the middle and the coast edges), as these would be ones with the most unique views. I searched all of these. I also searched all the in-progress coast regions, in case I'd want to wait for one of those. My main goal was a swamp house feel, so either front or back directed at inland water and no roads or bridges by the house. Direct coastal wasn't high on my list, as I find those views a bit plain (I like vegetation, some little islands in view, stuff like that). Messy vegetation areas were a plus. As I searched around, I also liked the little swamp docks some houses had. I found all the stuff I liked in Selinofoto. It's a cloned region that was altered to be coast, placing the two corner houses on their own little island with extra vegetation. The front has the little swamp dock and inland water. The back does look out to sea, but with plenty of trees and mushrooms framing the view and other house islands in the distance. In theory, some of this could still change in the unreleased neighbouring regions, but I doubt they'd do anything major at this point. The name also means moonlight, which I thought was suitable (yue means moon). When premium plus went live, I immediately signed up and got the ticket in within a few minutes of that (I'd prewritten the ticket). No issues with getting it sorted. I doubt there will be a house better for me than this, unless they add a new theme that is even more suitable than a glowing mushroom swamp. I'm not looking to get one of the bigger house plots. People are welcome to visit. It's not very decorated as I picked a different house style this time and I'm still thinking about how to stuff in as many (nonbreedable) pets as possible: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Selinofoto/39/196/23 My friend upgraded to premium plus some days later after seeing my house. I was sent forth with instructions to find a Sakura house for boating (I have a reputation for finding things apparently). Front by the water, close boat rez zone, and a wider channel if possible as it makes it easier to sort the boat after rezzing. Region placement wasn't a concern. I went through the map in a grid noting possible locations (ones close to a wider water area), then checked them all out (seeing how the front looked and the rez zone locations). I found an exact match for the request, with bonus little park area, and talked the friend through submitting the ticket. No link to that as it's not mine to share. The tl;dr version of that is the best bet is newer themes that have a lot of unclaimed houses. Look at the map first to note possible regions (needs a lot of "Linden Home" houses), then run down your list to see which looks best on the ground. This will usually work better than random wandering, especially if you have an idea what features you must have and what ones you want to avoid.

I like the green rocky vibe of the new houseboat areas they're building. It reminds me of the Hebrides, though whether there will be random sheep remains to be seen.

Someone's been busy in the fantasy area. It looks like all of the original interior regions have now been released. That means they're all "Linden Home" and can be requested by premium plus members. This doesn't apply to the coast regions, which were a later addition and are still being constructed.

They're not released yet. This has happened in other areas, though a lot of the backlog in other areas has now been released. I didn't consider them when I was looking around, but someone else can answer if they tried it.

Some people noted that their total didn't go up initially, but they could still join more groups. I didn't need to try it as I'm not in many groups.

It's a prior image in the sense that the region doesn't look like it now, but it's not like the ones where a completely different region shows on the map as a ghost. All the waterways and houses line up with the current region. It's just the ground texture that's different. It could have been done as part of a test, an accident, or just seeing if we were paying attention. Either way, I thought it was fun.

Wibbly Crossroads, an unreleased fantasy area, switched to having light grass texture on the map. The actual region doesn't right now, but strange magic is happening! I don't think this is important, but I've not seen it happen before, so go admire the map while you still can.

I've had people try to suggest I should do builds for people as well, and they don't understand when I run away. Trying to build someone's else's dream is almost always a nightmare. It's very common for people asking for commissions to feel they're entitled to more for less, because they don't value the work. I'd much rather make what I want and put it on the marketplace. People either like the stuff or they don't, but they don't get to tell me it's all wrong and they want it redone and they're only going to pay half the agreed amount because anyone could do that. I do like making builds for events, as there's usually some general rules and guidelines for what's needed, but much more creative freedom.

I expect many will abandon the ticketed homes when the bigger homes come out. Also right now, any house abandoned so that someone can put in a ticket is going to be in the queue, freeing up some plots that might not have been available for some time. (I don't plan to abandon though... they'd have to do something amazing for me to move again, which I don't expect will happen anytime soon.)

Bardwell (houseboats by the chalets) is now released. Lots of square plots.

An advantage of mainland is you can pick somewhere and stay there. Having your landmarks stay the same for ten years is useful. I do get some traffic from the road, but most people visit my shop via a landmark or search teleport. I wouldn't keep hopping around. Laggy neighbours come and go. What you can do to help customers is make sure you understand occlusion. Have solid walls, no holes, no windows, no textures with hidden transparency (make sure they're all set to "none" if they have an alpha layer). That way, they won't be trying to load the neighbours.

The big problem with the old system was nobody was getting the most unique parcels in newer themes. There was enough surplus in the initial releases of cloned regions to cover people who wanted one. So when construction started on the coast, railway and river regions, people were out of luck. Those regions were unlikely to rise to the top of the queue when earlier regions were still sitting empty. The plus tickets are the first workaround which doesn't involve having endless premium accounts. In future, they might need to tweak how the automated system decides on which region to assign. In the right now, I enjoyed touring around and picking a house. It wasn't an option before, because the house I got just wasn't available from a random roll.

There's a certain beauty in Reddit sending people to the forums and the forums sending them to Reddit. Brings tears to the eyes.

There always could be someone who'll break the rules in some way or other, or do something or other that might upset others, but it's a stretch to think it'll be so common as to cause a major impact. It's like the idea that a large group of premium plus people will request most of a region, leaving anyone who gets a remaining house feeling out of place. It could happen, but the houses I've seen in fantasy are either single or next to one other claimed house. Most people are not that organised outside of maybe sorting something with their best friend. If you didn't know premium plus existed, it's very unlikely that you'd notice anything was happening.

You can access your ticket to update it if you think you missed something important. Follow the link again and look up at the top of the page. Click "My Tickets". Click your active ticket. Now you can add a note.

I respond if I see someone say "hi" because half the time it's a customer who feels it'd be rude to tell me what's wrong immediately, so they say hi, ask how I am, comment on the weather and then explain that the mushrooms exploded and everything's on fire. A lot of the other "hi" are people who need help with something, because I do a lot of basic help on groups. The few remaining ones are spammers/scammers. This does mean that if you just wanted a chat, you'll probably be confused about why I'm asking what you need help with and is anything on fire right now. Always best to open with something after the "hi" if you can, to make it clear what you're about.

You need to create a ticket, which you do here: https://support.secondlife.com/create-case/ You choose "Land & Region" and then "Linden Homes" as the category. They're dropdown boxes, not ones you type in. Make sure you give them a direct slurl. So you want to be standing on the house parcel, not near it. I also gave the parcel ID, but I think most people didn't.