I'm terribly sorry that I haven't written in so long. I didn't forget this place but things have been so dreadfully busy for me.
Three weeks ago I completed TUi's Instructor Program. I now work there as a teacher. If your ever not busy stop by one of my classes ^_^!.
This week I moved to the maiko stage of my geiko training. Maiko is otherwise known as the point in training where whore makeup and really tall shoes are worn. So this puts me one step closer to becoming a fully fledged cyber geisha.'
And last but not least I went and joined Starfleet. If you are counting that is three completely unconnected hobbies. I wonder how many more I can cram into one second life...
Well I have decided that for benefit of my virtual wallet, my next hobby must be something that generates some revenue. As fashion design is still well beyond my grasp, I'd though I would delve head first into the world of jewelry making. Imagine my surprise when I did some research and found that one school is charging 35,000L$ for their program. With current exchange rates that is over $100.
First off, even if all materials are provided I have a hard time believing that the owners aren't making a huge profit off of that program. My SL family owns a parcel on a Class 5 server and our rent is only 9,000L$ a month. Now maybe they have bought a full sim for prim purposes. But even with it being a full sim the goal should be a gross of 50,000L$ per class, not nearly that much per student. Perhaps they are charging that much for the textures, but I have a hard time believing that they find or create an entirely new texture set for each class.
And at those prices it would have to be a very realistic texture set.
This brings me to something I've had on my mind for a while. Greed in SL.
It is on both side, consumer and producer, and in both cases it is mildly disturbing. Let us examine the recent case of a very well known designer no longer offering support for unreceived no transfer items. I can understand not offering support more than 1 week
past the purchase date. Beyond that point its just as likely that the person messed up or accidentally
deleted the item as it is that SL ate it. But if the item is no mod and no transfer, as almost all skins are,
then really what is the harm of replacing the item?
There isn't one except for pure greed. It doesn't take much to figure out that its better for me to receive money twice rather than once. And it's much easier to just
put a message in my profile saying I won't provide customer service. Or designers who make
freebies to get people into their store but rant and rave and call people ungrateful when they don't
make purchases. Now I agree, it is bad form to ask for more freebies, yell at a designer, accuse them
of false advertising (unless they are actually doing it), or fly over a sim being obnoxious. But its also
form to play the freebie game and cry about the rules. Freebies are a give and take.
You can bet that I won't be back to your store if I feel that look down on me. And yes I fully expect
that if nobody ever buys any freebies from you, you will go out of business. But consider that
perhaps your items are too expensive for the average SLer. Or the price does not match the quality.
Its called a supply demand graph. Simply put, if you have too great a supply and not enough demand you will lose money.
If you have too great a demand and too low a supply you have an inefficient business model. The trick is to find the sweet spot where supply and demand are in harmony. If your graph is out of whack no amount of advertising or sample giving is going to fix it. And bellyaching is only going to alienate the very people you are trying to court.
Three weeks ago I completed TUi's Instructor Program. I now work there as a teacher. If your ever not busy stop by one of my classes ^_^!.
This week I moved to the maiko stage of my geiko training. Maiko is otherwise known as the point in training where whore makeup and really tall shoes are worn. So this puts me one step closer to becoming a fully fledged cyber geisha.'
And last but not least I went and joined Starfleet. If you are counting that is three completely unconnected hobbies. I wonder how many more I can cram into one second life...
Well I have decided that for benefit of my virtual wallet, my next hobby must be something that generates some revenue. As fashion design is still well beyond my grasp, I'd though I would delve head first into the world of jewelry making. Imagine my surprise when I did some research and found that one school is charging 35,000L$ for their program. With current exchange rates that is over $100.
First off, even if all materials are provided I have a hard time believing that the owners aren't making a huge profit off of that program. My SL family owns a parcel on a Class 5 server and our rent is only 9,000L$ a month. Now maybe they have bought a full sim for prim purposes. But even with it being a full sim the goal should be a gross of 50,000L$ per class, not nearly that much per student. Perhaps they are charging that much for the textures, but I have a hard time believing that they find or create an entirely new texture set for each class.
And at those prices it would have to be a very realistic texture set.
This brings me to something I've had on my mind for a while. Greed in SL.
It is on both side, consumer and producer, and in both cases it is mildly disturbing. Let us examine the recent case of a very well known designer no longer offering support for unreceived no transfer items. I can understand not offering support more than 1 week
past the purchase date. Beyond that point its just as likely that the person messed up or accidentally
deleted the item as it is that SL ate it. But if the item is no mod and no transfer, as almost all skins are,
then really what is the harm of replacing the item?
There isn't one except for pure greed. It doesn't take much to figure out that its better for me to receive money twice rather than once. And it's much easier to just
put a message in my profile saying I won't provide customer service. Or designers who make
freebies to get people into their store but rant and rave and call people ungrateful when they don't
make purchases. Now I agree, it is bad form to ask for more freebies, yell at a designer, accuse them
of false advertising (unless they are actually doing it), or fly over a sim being obnoxious. But its also
form to play the freebie game and cry about the rules. Freebies are a give and take.
You can bet that I won't be back to your store if I feel that look down on me. And yes I fully expect
that if nobody ever buys any freebies from you, you will go out of business. But consider that
perhaps your items are too expensive for the average SLer. Or the price does not match the quality.
Its called a supply demand graph. Simply put, if you have too great a supply and not enough demand you will lose money.
If you have too great a demand and too low a supply you have an inefficient business model. The trick is to find the sweet spot where supply and demand are in harmony. If your graph is out of whack no amount of advertising or sample giving is going to fix it. And bellyaching is only going to alienate the very people you are trying to court.
