In my opinion Linden Lab should offer discounts, or lower rates beyond 1 mainland sim, and on estates for bigger business owners, apart from the small downside that playing field wouldn’t be 100% equal compared to big and small doers, there’s benefits which outweight the downsides, furthermore it could be leveled somewhat contractually.
Currently you don’t get any further “discounts” beyond 1 sim, in any way, so basicly someone who can barely afford 1 sim and who has 50 sims are in same position. Concierge support is excellent, but in no means not “big doers” only with the limit of 125USD per month.
Why there should be further discounts then you ask?
The business reasoning for Linden Lab would be that these guys bring a lot of money to them, and thus should deserve somekind of benefit from putting so much money on the table, also, giving support to 1 person, especially a business, is far more easier and cost effective than giving support to 50 people. Clear savings for Linden Lab. Also the big doers tend to buy more at a constant rate than the small business, giving discounts would just help them to ease some of the risks associated.
We know Linden Lab has done this already for Anshe Chung, it’s no big secret that she got bunch of sims for low rates back when Direct TP arrived. A lot of the “old timers” will tell you this. But today, Linden Lab does not do that kind of stuff to anyone. Arguably, Anshe Chung has gotten unfair advantage over others.
But wait! there’s reasons beyond that. There’s scammers, there’s ad farmers, false advertisers etc. However, there’s a clear distinction between a scammer and legit business : Scammers never grow beyond certain point, namely because they are scammers, people won’t buy from them anymore and thus they stop. Legit businesses however have established customer base, a working business model, and real and concrete willingness to keep things running smooth. They also give A LOT of the support to their clients who would otherwise go asking Linden Lab the same questions. They act as intermediary between Linden Lab and easens the support burden with their experience for Linden Lab.
Instead of giving something back to these people, who pays Linden Lab immense amounts, they keep doing quite the contrary (like late asset devaluation due to dropped estate pricing, thus also estate demand has lowered due to over supply).
That has to stop and turn around, in order for Linden Lab to be successfull, they should recognize the vast contribution bigger business owners do for them. Running an sim does not cost Linden Lab 195USD or 295USD, it’s all profit margin, and more a particular business buys from Linden Lab, fatter their profit margin gets to a certain point. I would argue that LL’s cost per sim is more on the lines of 50-75USD, rest is profit margin. Of course, this does not account for the development costs Linden Lab has.
For a business owning say 15 estates, just a smallish 30USD discount monthly per sim can make a drastic effect, that’s 450USD less costs each month, and this business would buy more sims faster, assume 1 per each 2 months extra due to that particular discount, and for each sim Linden Lab would profit. Assume as high cost as 150USD per sim for Linden Lab, the discounted sims would still make 215USD monthly profit, and extra sim every second month would add another 215USD profit, so in just 6months (3 “extra sims”) Linden Lab would actually be getting more net revenues from this same business. That 3 sims adds Linden Lab 645USD of profit, now with total of 18sims total discount is 540USD, an extra 105USD for Linden Lab, so why the hell not?
All i can say is short sightedness, in my opinion. Also, if per sim cost is 150USD for Linden Lab, i would say they are spending well over sensible price per CPU Core. 1 Sim uses 1 CPU Core, and you can get an dual core 3ghz xeon with 2gigs of DDR2 for around 200USD a month from open markets without any discounts. Add 10-15USD a month and 4gigs of ram. High-end servers with total 16 cores and 8gigs ram cost on open markets 600USD a month, 37.5USD per core. Bandwidth costs, but in this day and age, it’s not THAT costly (see Youtube), even individuals can get an 100Mbps line with SLA around 1,000 to 1,200USD/month, nevermind how much LESS it costs to have say 10×1Gbps pipes. One company offers 100Mbps without SLA for Just 65USD a month just as an example. I do not know the costs at that level, but definately lower relatively than what end user ends up paying. I would also argue adding each additional sim has less and less relative cost per sim.
Personally, i wouldn’t care to pay for single island 2,000USD if it means tier is 200USD a month. So even offering THAT option would be awesome.
