Linden Lab Offering Short-Term 50% Discounts on Premium Accounts -- Smells Like Revenue Spirit

Linden Lab is offering a 50% discount on premium accounts, good until August 11, 2013... but only if you choose a Quarterly billing plan. And only for the first quarter you sign up. ("[A]ll future charges will be at the regular Premium price; price will return to USD 22.50 [per quarter].") So a good deal for a short time if only for a short time. Still, can't hurt to help boost Second Life's shaky revenue base. In that sense, it feels related to the recent restoration of the 50% education/non-profit discount:

That is to say, an attempt to offer discounts to existing revenue streams and discounts to recapture lost revenue streams, in hopes of restoring revenue lost from continued attrition to its core revenue stream of private sims.

Hat tip: SL's Reddit group.

Please share this post with people interested in SL:

Tweet

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Real winners: large land holders who are going to find a sudden spike in the demand for small 512 sqm plots

[Iggy]

With private estates below the 20K mark and abandoned mainland approaching 14%, this can't hurt, but the real thunderclap would be a universal cut in tier.

Let the speculations begin about boosting revenue ahead of a sale. With LL's recent acquisitions, maybe they are scouting for new investors, not owners.

[Metacam Oh]

Premium membership is a joke. What do you really get for a premium subscription? The right to pay more money for land? Imagine a newbie coming into SL and researching what it would take to get an island of there own. Ok first I need to sign up for a yearly subscription from anywhere between $6-10 a month depending on how much I want to pay upfront. Then you need to pay $1000 startup fee (Wha, wha what?) THEN you can pay $295 a month on top of that. No wonder people don't give SL a second thought. That's about on average of $386 bucks a month for someone's first year owning a sim, and that's before you get into any expenses beyond that. That's astronomical.

[A.J.]

I wish Linden Lab would offer a Premium Avatar.
That is something I would be very willing to pay for. People are using mesh hands, feet, ears.

Personally, I think clothing and skin designers would be willing to meet the challenges of changing the body mesh to something much more detailed and properly proportioned.

A lot of people will pass on buying land, but most everyone would pay to look good. My dream would be to have the quality of items available at Daz3D animated on a SL avatar.

[Ezra]

I still believe Premium should be tossed. It's just an avenue to compete with creators. There's already Linden Homes vs. small parcel leasers that could use those tenants, Linden Realms and Wilderness vs. game and exploration sim makers that could use that traffic, Premium Sandboxes vs. estate owners that've long since offered restricted sandboxes as a plus.

Worse, the only way to improve the value of Premium further is to compete with creators in ways similar to A.J.'s premium avatars suggestion. It's a slippery slope and no one feels like competing with Linden Lab over segments of sim and marketplace offerings they randomly jump into. How long until "Linden Pets", "Linden Gor", "Linden Night Clubs", "Linden (product) Fair" etc?

Linden Lab can't continue having it both ways; on one side of the mouth Rod appearing on things like Drax Files bragging about how out of the way Linden Lab is and how that's contributed to user creativity and the virtual economy, but then on the other side promoting Premium, slapping Linden Realms frontpage, and whatever's to come in the future.

Or maybe Linden Lab can get away with it further with Second Life, because it still doesn't have a true competitor. They wouldn't be able to get away with it in any other space though, like their recent purchase of Desura. A Desura "Premium" wouldn't fly, where for $9 a month a few would receive free access to Linden Lab games and increased support while those spending tens and hundreds a month on the marketplace are alienated because they aren't interested in Linden made stuff.

Now that Linden Lab is competing with other companies in other ways, hopefully Rod will learn to run Linden Lab like he claims he does and quit the doublespeak. Steam users won't tolerate it if Linden Lab pulls the same stuff with Desura, but I suppose Second Life users are stuck with it until region counts drop low enough for Linden Lab to start worrying.

[2103]

Even at 50% off, there is still sero benefit to being a premium member. I can already rent anything from a 512 lot to a entire sim for not much more than it would cost to buy a sim with a premium membership.

How many polls have to be done to show people don't want, can't afford, or just don't have a need for huge parcels of land so this land arguement will go away?

[Pussycat Catnap]

-/shrug

Wonder why my comment was deleted...

Mainland land barons might see more demand for 512s - but estate owners won't see more rentals.

And 512s already suffer due to linden homes.

There is no value in having a 512 lot for a home. Either a homeowner is going to want more land to play with, or they don't care much about the land - just wanting a place to open boxes and be AFK without getting bothered... And if they just need a box / AFK spot, a linden home works.

The only space where 512s have viability is in small boutique shops that boost up a marketplace presence with an inworld branded "experience". Some place where you only rez 5 to 10 of your iconic products in a tightly controlled experience to show off your style.

- With Marketplace, I think smaller shops like that are actually now better than the large mega stores.

But the people who want that are probably already premium.

This will really just boost the number of linden homes being filled / made.

Some might use it as a time to change which alts are also premium, if they have several. I might do that, if it can apply to former premiums.