Paying For Free SL Love
by Jessica Holyoke on 24/06/09 at 1:13 pm
How Linden Lab profits from adult verification
by Jessica Holyoke
The Internet and Virtual Worlds have tried to monetize pornography in different ways. Red Light Center, and other pornography web sites charge a monthly fee to access the naughty parts. IMVU has made the same types of overtures. In the past, I've seen one time payment of an access fee to guarantee that you are an adult. But Second Life was always good about relatively free love. You would pay to look good and for bits that work, but otherwise, you didn't have to pay to have access to sex. What if Linden Lab came up with a new model to get money from Adult Content?
When Linden Lab rolled out the initial discussion of Adult Verification, they stated that while it would be free for paying customers, they might charge for the basic residents that don't pay a fee of any kind to access Second Life. So far, in order to encourage use of the AV system, its been a free service. How does the Lab make money from it? For that, you can look no further than the new search and classifieds system.
As it stands right now, as reported many times by Ciaran Laval at your2ndplace.com, Search will be dependent on what type of content you tick that you want to see. PG, Mature and Adult have to all be ticked in order to see all types of advertisements. The better option for a marketer is to buy classifieds and land to hit all three search types. Previously, if you wanted to search and include Mature content, you would see Mature and PG content. Now you need to say specifically that you want all three types to see all three options.
A prudent marketer would make sure their ad appeared on all three searches – paying classified ads under all three categories. This means more Linden dollars pour down a L$ sink. To the Lab, classified ads, texture uploads and the like are what keeps the Linden dollar exchange stable by taking L$s out of circulation – which is why they don't say they profit from the sinks. Of course businesses would need to buy more L$s to replace those used in advertising, so more L$s would be purchased off the Lindex L$ exchange. When residents aren't selling L$s to match those who need to buy spacebux, Supply Linden – the Lab's printing press – is free to print more, creating pure profit for the Lab.
Some people have suggested marketers will also need to have Land in all three ratings. Maintaining a PG, M, and Adult rated in-world presence raises demand for land – either rentals or purchased – which means more used server space and more profit for the Lab. More land increases the number of times a fee is charged for a parcel to be placed in search, which further increases the Lab's profit.
…and suddently the Lab is making money from Adult Content.
Darien Caldwell
Jun 24th, 2009
Actually your understanding of how this works is a little wrong. If you have adult content, you can’t advertise it in PG or Mature listings, no matter how much you may want to, or how much you’re willing to pay. So no, you won’t be placing it under all 3 categories.
As for people selling say, something PG, I don’t see a lot of incentive to place it under all 3 categories, as how many people are going to be searching with *only* adult checked? No reasonable person that I know would.
There may be a few who waste advertising dollars with making ads for all 3 categories, but I certainly don’t expect it will be the norm. It just doesn’t make good business sense.
Jessica Holyoke
Jun 25th, 2009
I think I have it right but I have a better, more concrete example;
Gorean builders have a wide variety of products. While slave outfits might not be suitable for PG land, the Free Men and Women clothes would be, as would be the chores, homes and furniture, as well as the weapons. But Gor is listed as one of the adult keywords that you need to be age verified to use in search. So a clothier or builder in order to capture the Gor audience would need adult land and adult advertisements in order to capture the main audience. But to also capture the PG and Mature users who could use the same clothing in a different situation, those creators would need to use another keyword and use PG or Mature land and use a PG or Mature advertisement.
And the same would be true of other builders as well. I could now make a pg, mature and adult bed with pose balls. Before they could all come to my mature shop. Now if I want to have a bed available to a PG audience, I would need a PG advertisement and PG land to sell it.
I know you can’t market adult items to a pg audience and I know that most people can use search properly. But to me, for the content owner, if you have content that falls along all three ranges, you might have to advertise and market from all three areas. Which artificially inflates demand for advertising and for land.
Nicholaz Beresford
Jun 25th, 2009
I think the trick (intended or or not) is a bit more clever. Most people will possibly just go the “payment info used” way, and what I’ve seen from friends (in the old days), the biggest hurdle is to decide to put the info there. Like “No way, I’m not going to pay for anything in here.”
Once you have the payment info there though, it lowers the bar considerably towards spending money inworld … “heck, it’s just a few US pennies for that thing and the money is just a click away.”
Ciaran Laval
Jun 25th, 2009
You guys are even more cynical than me!
Nicholaz does indeed raise an excellent point about the concept of people putting payment info in place and actually using it.
As for search and reach, I felt Linden Lab were just pandering to those who were against the adult content policy changes by allowing PG content to be excluded by search but maybe it is a ploy to get people to buy more classifieds or land.
Jessica Holyoke
Jun 25th, 2009
Nicholaz,
The only thing about your theory is that payment info is still asking a resident to provide personal information. They could either use payment info to verify or they can use the identity system provided by aristotle. So there is a slight flaw in the plan.
Ciaran,
Yes, I am very cynical.
Nicholaz Beresford
Jun 26th, 2009
Jessica,
not sure what your point is there. IMO many people will want to access adult stuff, and most people will verify for adult stuff by putting payment info on file because it discloses less of their personal info (or they disclosed it to those sources (PayPal or CC company) already anyway). It’s something that people are used to, because they have done it with online shopping anyway a dozen or hundred times.
And more payment info on file (and used) will very likely lead to more money spent inworld.
Nick
Jessica Holyoke
Jun 26th, 2009
Nick,
If a company wanted to encourage people to place payment info on file, then I think they wouldn’t have an alternative that doesn’t depend on payment info that is as simple as using payment info.
The stuff about the personal information was one of the big deals when AV came out. No one would want to adult verify because it would brand them as a pervert.
Jess
Nicholaz Beresford
Jun 26th, 2009
Jess,
)) If a company wanted to encourage people to place payment info on file, then I think they wouldn’t have an alternative that doesn’t depend on payment info that is as simple as using payment info. ((
Ahh, gotcha. You’re probably right, it’s even why I said “… trick (intended or or not) …”. Having people spend more money by lowering the bar to spending it, is likely an unintended side effect.
Nick
Karl Reisman
Jun 26th, 2009
As a veteran of the days of Sl before free accounts, might this result in “griefer free” areas in adult lands again the way it was before june 6 2006? This might work, but then again… I was one of those that was against unverified accounts at the beginning, but only 3 years later do they rectify theirmistakes, long after cross country flying or driving was exssentially broken.
–Karl