I’ve talked previously about how venues can’t easily make revenue from a pay to enter scheme, Seven Ultra Lounge has apparently closed down. However I was recently contacted by someone who wanted to show me how you can make a go of charging for entry to a parcel. The theme is adult RP, which may disappoint some, but the concept can be transferred to other social venues.
The place is Hillcrest College, a place where people roleplay students over the age of 18, teachers and faculty staff. To avoid any confusion that this is a place that engages in banned sexual ageplay activity there is a clear “No child avatars” rule and a height restirction bar to try and hammer home this point that has a minimum height of five foot two. Summer Haas gave me a guided tour of both the existing location and the new location on Zindra. I didn’t actually see any adult content in action whilst I was there, maybe Summer directed me away from it or maybe it’s due to the fact that this place actually has a sense of community, as Summer explained; “The sex aspect is very low key, the funny thing is the sex brings them in but the friendships made keeps them around and the the regulars don’t generally engage in sexual activity on campus”
However it quickly became apparent that the success of Hillcrest isn’t based upon merely slapping down a few poseballs and hoping they will attract people, I was taken to the epicentre of the whole operation, a futuristic engine room with a bot in a test tube that controls the invites and ejections of group members, all backed up by an SQL database to control access, there’s no use of the default access controls, you need to join a group and gain entry, it’s technically well done. However you don’t have to pay to stroll around the place, you can obtain a free group tag, although this is cleared down once a month so you have to reapply, so how do they make money? They have memberships, at low rates, that encourage people to explore the roleplay further.
Summer explained to me how it all works: “When you teleport in you are greeted with a welcome sign that explains we are a roleplay group and the standards that you will have to follow in order to maintain membership. If you agree to follow the rules you can enter a code that gets you a free temporary guest tag. This allows you entry so you can explore and see if its your thing or not. If it is, you can purchase a lifetime membership. About 450 people do that a month with about 40-45% upgrading to a premium membership, which is a monthly fee to maintain. If you attempt to circumvent getting a guest tag, the security system, which is run by a bot and SQL database for member verification, will boot you right out.”
So already I could see this was no small time operation, a lot of planning had gone into this. Furthermore there’s a noticeboard for events that runs off an RSS feed. So the key question of cold hard cash had to come around, so I asked whether they meet their tier and hosting bills every month “Yes we do.” revealed Summer. I wasn’t going to press for cold hard facts but I got the distinct impression that they were more than meeting their bills here, after all, Summer had contacted me to talk about this. They are also moving to Zindra where they will be occupying two full sims, although one of those sims is purely for rentals. So what’s the secret of success? “Marketing” Summer tells me “I have an advertsing degree in real life and work in web development so I know computers and programming as well.”
So why with free access would anyone want to pay for the premium memberships? I was shown bookcases that open to reveal secret rooms that only premium members can access. There are Fraternities and Sororities which premium members can join, there are extra roles only available to premium members. There’s an incentive to go that little bit further and become more immersed in the roleplay and at the end of the day people seem to pay because they enjoy it.
There are also commercial ventures here, people paying to rent store space or the other option is to go for a commission only deal, thereby placing your trust in the marketing skills of the location to generate sales whilst having less upfront risk. I asked Summer how many vendors went for the commission route “About half” she informed me, and with the facts in front of her as to how many sales the commission sales bring in she seemed pleased that some make this choice.
However this isn’t just a one girl operation, there are other self contained businesses within this setup. The Sorority pay for prims and then run themselves and the apartment rentals are ran by LynnDuh Paster who is able to advertise to the Hillcrest group by association. So now we have not one business but three joining together and then the vendors who all look to make money out of this enterprise, but most of all, who seem to see value in the community that has been created.
Then there’s the 2D aspect to all this, there’s a forum at http://forums.hillcrestcollege.org/ (remember this is adult roleplay, do not follow link if adult content isn’t suitable for you) . Forums are, as we have seen from complaints on the official forum and Xstreet about proposed changes, part of many online communities. Summer comments “The forum has some open areas for anyone to view and ask questions. If you sign up to the forums it opens more areas where you can participate. The forums are an interesting group because it breaks the time barrier for those members who are on at certain times of day and may never meet the other members who are on the other side of the planet.”
Does this mean all social venues could go down this route? No, I wouldn’t have thought so but an important point here is that access can effectively be free, a little like Second Life itself, and then you get people who choose to pay extra to get more involved. This is where a flat pay to enter model does not compete. People will, as evidenced here, pay for extras, but paying before you even know if you’ll enjoy the place? That restricts numbers and reach seems to be the message I’m getting here. However on top of that you need something that people want to be involved in, and in the case of Hillcrest it seems they do want to get involved and then on top of that you need marketing and then even better marketing.
Now let’s move this on, let’s off the top of my head suggest a club could have a free entry area and then for a membership fee an area where you get to see more events that people who aren’t members are either restricted from, or, they have to pay on the door for entry and that fee works out more expensive per month than the membership. How about an RP sim where you get x amount of weaponry for your membership, whereas guests have to buy weaponry or ammunition? Are these sorts of concepts viable? I’d say they are, but they take more effort than simply hoping people will buy into it, it takes hard work and know how and it seems that Summer Haas has got that in spades.
Of course there are a plethora of clubs and not a plethora of these sort of communities, that needs to be taken into account.
I will watch with interest how the move to Zindra goes, there are challenges there regarding access, but for now, this does seem to be a successful model.