Surprising Survey Results on Second Life's New Premium+ Option

We asked and you answered in droves. With nearly 300 respondents collected (a very large sample size for New World Notes readers), almost 1 in 4 said they planned to upgrade their account to the newly announced Premium Plus, despite it costing $25/month or $250/year. Also, 12% were in the Maybe category.

Yes, 61% of respondents answered No, but that's not the most meaningful category:

In a free-to-play game/virtual world, typically just a small percent of users monetize to any great degree. (Generally, well under 10%.) So 25% on Yes is quite impressive.

Look at it this way: Second Life has roughly 600,000 monthly active users. Assume this survey scales to that number, and 25% of the userbase, i.e. 150,000 people, start paying $25/month or $250/year for Premium Plus.

That comes out to $37,500,000 a year in revenue for Linden Lab. We don't know the company's current total revenue, but based on SL sim tier (still the core revenue source), it's probably between $50-65 million a year from Second Life. So if SLers do upgrade to Premium Plus as much as this survey suggests, Linden Lab gets a much more stable revenue base to replace continued erosion of private sims. But let's see what the actual conversion rate turns out to be.

Here's some reader comments on the question:

Hello Fortnite -- Rogue Doulton

If they would go quarterly I would say yes. -- Mundy 

I have selected yes though I have already upgraded, something that is missing from the list of perks for premium plus [in the infographic here] is the free texture/sound/animation uploads and the potential free mesh uploads in the future. As someone who likes to create this more than tips the balance on making premium plus worth it for the cost. Paying annually, I actually save $50 on what I would be spending on equivocal land and linden dollar fees too! -- Cam De Vil 

I answered "other".

I will upgrade once mesh uploads will be free too. I tried to contact them about the concierge phone support, how does that work for people outside of the USA? I live in Europe and calling them costs me a lot. I guess they offer skype calls too but there is no information on that one. And I did not get an answer yet. I guess I get it once I am premium plus :P

Also, I think they had better name/advertise it as a "Premium Creator Pack" or something similar. It really is aimed at creators (except hair creators, they need free mesh uploads) That would have kept the pitchforks in the barn ;-) -- Mina Nakamura

More responses here, and thanks to everyone who responded!

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

There is some survey bias of course - your blog will be read but the most hardcore of SL users.

[Alelangel Verenova]

Can I take this survey putting all your credits of course to talk about on my spanish magazine? Here on Latinamerica there will be a major NO answer, basically because the exchange to our local money. It's an important amount per month, even per year to consider only for a "game". Maybe it could worth if you are a creator and you earn good money on SL, but besides that, for this side of the world, it's expensive and useless.

[Luther Weymann]

@ Adeon Writer, you are correct. One of the core problems with the marketing of Second Life is its USA-centric thinking and lack of global focus. For example, many international companies have successfully achieved enormous sales increases with “per country pricing.” In India, you get Netflix Standard 1080p with almost all the movies for $8.50 a month or about half the USA price. In Asia, GoDaddy pricing for hosting varies from one-fourth to a little more than one-half of USA pricing. The giant Unilever multinational consumer goods company sells its products all over Asia for slightly more than 60-70% of the USA and much lower than Euro pricing. And the result? A considerable increase in overall revenue and net profit for companies who understand the sales possibilities when pricing their products by what the market will bear in each country.

[PW_Arts]

@Luther: the main problems here are that LL has not worked out how to get a cloud instance that is better priced to match what the local market it's targeted to is willing to pay, and that the L$ trading system is based entirely on the US$. LL does not want to create a situation where people buy L$s through countries in lower-income nations simply because the L$ is priced cheaper in another country. The first problem is easier to fix because LL can fully control how tier is valued, but the second may necessitate the death of L$ stipends in future Premium plans (and a matching reduction in prices to fit this loss

[Wagner James Au]

Hi Alelangel -- yes feel free!

[Count Burks]

There is also the fact that you didn't deduct the Linden Dollar stipend from the gross revenue so your net profit numbers would look a lot different. Premium Plus is a new toy and might be interesting for some. It is yet to be seen how popular Premium Plus will remain in the future.