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Hey Guys, (especially Nobody)

I had already decided 'i am out', before this latest linden lab announcement came out. Admittedly i am not now completely out, the land holdings had not fully sold. Why am I out..

* Competition, land and space become so cheap and empty that other land owners were prepared to sell services at no profit. I know all about building 'a beautiful place/customer service/etc etc' indeed at time of closure great spaces was profitable. But it was heading to decline. I suspect beneath the economic models of a lot of peoples businesses there is a decline. Now before you say 'zal's whining he doesnt know how to run a business, he was scared of competition'. It was a considered exit. I decided that the Return on investment allowing for time/fun/potential gain was now too low.

* Is 'purchase of land an asset'. Does that matter. Which ever way you look at it from a model perspective its a cost. So if you consider it a sunk cost, and your sale out value is now significantly less than your purchase price (devaluation) then you need to consider that cost as part of your operating model. So if you bought before you have probably just received a double hit. Notionally i expect people planned exit of ownership at profit, for many its now significant loss. So this will place the income per prim to go up to make good that model. Assuming you were not on a ridiculous business model, say 3L per prim, per week, 75% occupancy, 30% of prims used as 'sim build/decor'. That would probably make you income of around 360$ per month. So you pay back vs investment on mainland is now 20 months, not 10... still not bad. Not great though if you then say well my time is worth less that $200 a month? how many hours? even at minimum wage... oh yeah its a game.. so its 'free money/spare time'

* Land value is good when its cheap. Thats great, if you are buying in. However, plan that the value of your land will be halfed at any time your costs may double, or half, you may or may not be subject to tax. If you have a large established holding, suddenly you will be facing a whole bunch of people on a new economic model. And an advantaged one at that. Do you put up prices to maintain your recovery of investment.. you can not, do you take the pain... guess so, do you vote with your feet?

* In my r/l job we have just been doing some analysis of our customers, and guess what a very small amount of customers, contribute a large amount of the economics. These are established customers, not 'new recruits'. So my advice is... if you are as a business betting that during a global economic downturn you will recruit more customers, versus upsetting the status quo of your established paying customers... thats interesting as a business plan. I wouldn't support it at my board.... A bird in the hand and all that.

* Why are businesses not using SL.. Simply, level of service to the end user experience is too low. Its basically shocking. we are running at what, 90% availability, bug laden client, uncertain transactions... i would not recommend it as an experience for my commercial customers, i suspect i am one of very many saying this at board meetings across the world.

* sparseness... 59,000 people on... remove land bots, campers... thats got to be how many? 5,000? versus the number of sims, i think nobody once worked out the population online made an average sim density of 1 or 2 people. Its not much of a community if you never see anyone, its not a social network, if new people can not socialy network. Theres how many empty houses to rent, how many empty mall shops, how many people creating content getting upset over linden not helping with the core offerings?

So in summary, i am out of the business market, still looking to dj, still have a club and some land for now. I might buy an open sim or two, back to back, so i can build a dez-res because i like the excuse to do stuff in photo shop and script... in conclusion

Business in SL is shafted until someone who gives a crap about existing customers, rather than chasing an idealistic coders dream wakes up and smells that they have no user base but camping bots. A good way to start a wake up is... STOP BUYING SIMS AT AUCTION! the biggest indicator will be when sims stop selling...

I am i upset about the land price drop, yes, it hit my pocket, all i can do though is *sigh*. All in all i have not netted a bad profit over my business time in SL. Do i feel sorry for people trying to enrich, add content and make SL a world for people. Damn right i do. What incenses me is that Linden did not EVEN ask people *before*, they just took some random stats which if you look in GAME at prices and amount of land available are just plain Cock and then told us hey we did this smart thing (you daft people who dont know whats happening), and for your own good... here is our answer... Gee Thanks.. W*nkers

Zal Chevalier
(ex-land owner. Http://www.myspace.com/zalchevalier)