There’s a raging debate over at New World Notes about land ownership and The Marketplace. The case being put forth is that of requiring land ownership to list items on The Marketplace. This isn’t something I agree with, not because I don’t think the idea has merit, but because I feel that the horse has bolted on such suggestions, the time for ideas like this was when Linden Lab unleashed The Marketplace, to make changes like this now would cause too much mayhem and ill feeling.
The Marketplace has undoubtedly eaten into the need for land ownership in Second Life, some would say this is simply evolution and that this is Second Life’s very own bricks and mortar challenge. The problems are many, sims used to rent shop space to help subsidise other ventures, such as art, entertainment and roleplaying. These ventures are struggling in the face of The Marketplace Juggernaut, ultimately the reason is that the tier is too damn high.
However The Marketplace has made some odd decisions, Direct Delivery which means you don’t even need a plot for a magic box and having a shop link in the viewer that takes you to The Marketplace being two very odd decisions by Linden Lab, both of which help to negate the need for land ownership and help to accelerate the struggle for sims who want to provide a location for someone to do something. The shop link is the most annoying to me because to be found in inworld search, not only do you need to have some land of some sort, rented or owned, but you also need to pay a Linden Dollar 30 listing fee each week. Ok Linden Dollar 30 is peanuts, but there’s a principle here, why should marketplace merchants be found inworld for free? Ok they lose some of their sales fee to a commission if they make a sale, but that still stacks the scales in favour of The Marketplace merchant.
The Marketplace is great for merchants and it’s great for those who want to try their hand in more niche areas, where inworld land ownership is prohibitive because of upfront costs. However inworld merchants deserve a bit of Linden loving too. Rather than undermine The Marketplace, how about listing inworld items on The Marketplace automatically, by use of a Marketplace vendor?
Now the same as a Marketplace sale, there would be commission on inworld sales, although maybe this should be 3% rather than 5% as you’re already paying fees to have products inworld. The vendors would then be found when someone searched for a Marketplace search, the see this item inworld SLURL link on The Marketplace would be hardwired to this location so that people could go inworld and see the item.
By virtue of being a premium or concierge member, you would be able to nominate x amount of inworld marketplace vendors for classified advertising on The Marketplace as part of your premium package, not all your items, but a limited number, again giving a boost to having an inworld presence.
Then there would be a commission to Linden Lab if people purchased from these vendors inworld too, I’ll expand on this idea in another post, but this could lead to inworld Marketplace affiliate vendors, whereby when a sale is made, the creator, the shop owner and Linden Lab all get a cut, but also, these vendors would be listed in that shop owners marketplace store, where again upon sale, Linden Lab, the creator and the shop owner all get a cut of the sale.
The Marketplace is here to stay and so it should be, the low cost entry allows us to have a more diverse set of offerings on sale, but it’s about time The Empire struck back here and gave a boost to people running inworld ventures.
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