Tiyuk's Second Life Adventures

As I announced to the Envision Estate group a couple of days ago, Envision Island is now completely full! That means all the “for sale” land I was trying to sell, is now sold. The last 15.28% went to CT Xue and Willow Zander – neither of whom go by their avatar names. Reflecting on the two-month selling effort to get Envision breaking even, I can say that I am really happy with how it turned out. I absolutely love all of my tenants; they are all very friendly and seem to be getting along just fine. I have yet to receive a complaint from anyone about anyone else!

Now that Envision is full, I am starting to get ambitions about the future….

Follow up:

As I’ve always said, I am not a landlord with the goal of making money from SL. That said, recouping my expenses is a desirable goal. Helping others afford the land they want without breaking the bank is my main goal, however.

Buy It And They Will Come?

My idea for the future is that I want to expand Envision Estate with another sim! This will run me another $1000 USD for the setup fee of the new sim. Currently I can not afford this; I will discuss my financial plans later. I am very passionate about allowing others to own land at zero mark-up. That said, there are a few issues about the current Envision policies that I might want to change when I start fresh with a second island:

What I’d Do Differently

• I sold Envision’s land rather haphazardly. I offered it on a first-come, first-served basis, but everyone pays the same price per square meter. Since I had no pre-defined idea of what I wanted the parcel borders to look like, I allowed peoples’ imaginations to guide me in subdividing the land. However, this seems to raise some issues.

Everyone seems to believe that coastal land ("waterfront property", as it were) is more valuable than inland. A few people do want inland, but it is many times harder to sell inland than coastal. Also, waterfront corners are even more heavily coveted. One of the problems with Envision’s design is that, since I want everyone to pay zero-markup prices, the people who have more waterfront property are basically getting more value for their money. I didn’t realize this inequity until after it happened; it took me completely by surprise.

My current justification for the coastal inequity on Envision is that:
1. Everyone is paying ridiculously low prices; they can’t possibly be lower unless LL lowered their monthly island tier (and that’ll never happen).

2. I sold it on a first come, first served basis. Those who bought early had more options and their seniority on the island gives them priority because they jumped first. They supported me, believed in me and Envision before I had anyone endorsing me.

• For the future, since I now have this momentum behind me, and the experience of a successful sim owner, I will create land subdividing rules for the new Envision. I will make every effort to sell parcels such that nobody gets stuck with having to own an inland parcel. Everyone will have coast. This may create some odd shaped (rectangular) parcels; to alleviate this, I will have to make the sizes fairly large. Currently, the ideal way to cut the land would be to offer sixteen squares of 4096. That way, everyone would have the exact same capacity. If someone wants a bigger area, they can buy multiple 4096s. But that would ensure that nobody gets left with inland or oddly shaped parcels.
• Instead of 4096, I could also try 2048 slices (which still reach inland to touch the middle of the island) and see how that works. They would be twice as long as they are wide, but some people can live with that. Those who can’t could buy multiple strips.
• I could also not restrict it to 4096, but adopt some other geometrically-elegant scheme to ensure that, at the end of the day, everybody gets coast.
• Before I open up Envision Mk. II, I want to allow people to pre-reserve the land they want. I won’t ask people to pay me in advance, but I will basically be guaranteeing people a slot of their choice on the island.
• Another thing that introduces land value inequity is corner parcels. Corners are valuable to most people because you get such a great view of the ocean, and you can have your camera’s view such that you don’t see other peoples’ parcels at all. People like that. In order to introduce value in corners, I will have to slightly mark up corner parcels, and ensure that the people who do take corners, have significantly large parcels (4096 or bigger) to make sure they are well-used. I’m thinking of charging $1.00 USD per month of profit on corner parcels. This is to make them stand out from ordinary coastal parcels, which will be sold at zero-profit for the purpose of equality.
• I’m definitely going to work on terraforming some more, on both the current Envision and the next. It’s kind of weird to have grass sinking way into the water. People want sandy beaches! I know it can be done, it’s just really, really difficult because of the way terrain is handled in SL.

Envision Mk. II Funding!

Currently, I don’t have $1000 to toss down the drain (if I invest that in a sim, I will never make it back, excepting the setup fees and corner mark-ups, so I need to be prepared to swallow it). I might have this on my own as early as January. However, I am currently suffering from some debt already due to my initial investment in Envision. It will be a while until I start to see the black again. The life of a college student is hard.

My question for all of you readers: what are some ideas I can try to raise money for an Envision Mk. II? I want to continue to provide excellent deals on land, with a liberal covenant and placing full control in the hands of tenants. But I need a way to get some cash to at least lessen the prohibitive initial cost of a private island. Here are some of my own ideas; others are welcome

• Hold a party “in my honor” or “for the future” and solicit tips or something. Sounds kinda cheesy, but we could have a ’sploder which is usually profitable for the owner of the sploder. If any of the current club owners on Envision would like to help me arrange something like this, I would be deeply in your debt!
• Have a voluntary price increase on the current Envision island. In other words, people can choose (or not) to donate $1.00/month to me to help me expand my land. This would work by having people tack $1.00 onto their monthly bill when they feel they are able; and if at any time they feel they can’t part with that, they would simply withdraw from the donation and give me only what is strictly required by our agreement. Logic tells me that a lot of people would choose not to opt-in to a voluntary price increase, but the few who do help me would be going a long way to making Envision bigger and better.
• I could also accept donations from wealthier residents to cover a portion of the $1000, in exchange for giving them a month of free rent on the parcel size of their choice on the new Envision (maximum of 4096 sqm free). This would help me overcome the initial cost without harming the long-term sustainability of the new island.
• I’m planning to unveil, in the next few weeks, a system for SL residents to easily procure and set up an Icecast2 stream that they can use in-world. There will be several significant benefits to this service which go above and beyond your run-of-the-mill Shoutcast stream; those interested should keep checking this blog for more information! I’m not revealing the details yet until I have something usable. Suffice it to say, this service would be purely profitable for me, because my server is paid for until August 2009, and I am not currently using most of its bandwidth. I would keep prices very affordable, by taking 50% of the cheapest streaming solution I can find out there and using that as my base price. But you can expect that my service will have extremely SL-specific features that can only be achieved by someone who has an intimate knowledge of and interest in both server-side programming and SL scripting (heh, that’d be me).
• I might find a way to introduce a “progress bar” on my blog for the percentage of the $1000 that has been raised so far. People could watch the bar, and, those wanting to buy land on Envision II would have even more incentive to push that progress bar further to its goal!
• I could ask my friends and current tenants to talk to THEIR friends about the great benefits of living on Envision, and thus encourage other people to help me overcome the initial expense (even if their donations are very small).
• I could ask content creator friends of mine to create a new piece of clothing, or whatever it is they’re good at, which is a “special” item available only to those who donate some amount of money to the cause of Envision II. This item would be no mod/no trans, so people would have an additional incentive to help me with donations if they like the content being offered.

I want to emphasize that none of the above fundraising plans are concrete. I have made no decision on whether to go forward with any of these except for the introduction of my streaming-for-SL venture.

When?!

I plan to introduce Envision Mk. II no later than February 2009. One way or the other, I will come up with the money, even if it pushes me further into debt. I want to make this happen. I will introduce it earlier if I manage to raise enough funds that the initial purchase will be affordable. I am willing to take a loss of several hundred dollars, but if I could raise $500, I would be absolutely thrilled and would open Envision Mk. II for sale immediately.

Keep watching this space for updates on my plans for Envision II! Also, if you have a better suggestion for a name for the new island, I would happily listen. Post in the comments or contact me in world…

Much <3,
Tiyuk Quellmalz