The Second Life Marketplace has a rule that only digital goods that are intended for use within Second Life can be sold on the Second Life Marketplace. I think LL need to look at this again and encourage other kind of content to be sold via their marketplace. I’m sure there are legal issues that would need to be ironed out, but with a list of carefully selected partners, LL could offer some items that aren’t digital only.
What are you talking about Ciaran? I hear one of you ask, well put it this way, I’m going to use Adobe as an example again, purchasing Adobe Photoshop from the Second Life Marketplace might well be something people want to do, they come to Second Life, they want to create, they learn that Adobe Photoshop is a useful tool, they purchase Adobe Photoshop from the marketplace, Linden Lab get commission and Bob’s yer uncle!
Ah but there’s not that many eyes on the prize to make that worthwhile? Maybe true, maybe not, but this can go further than Adobe Photoshop, how about deals to allow Renderosity or TurboSquid artists to sell their items via the marketplace? Renderosity has it’s own marketplace of course, so there would have to be something in it for them, and there is, because basically it’s another form of advertising for them, on a marketplace where people would want to use their wares.
Linden Lab should be reaching out to people who have something their customers want and looking to engage in partnerships with them, affiliate deals, growing the Second Life marketplace into areas where USD$ purchases become more common and therefore LL’s commissions are direct bankable income. This could raise awareness for the marketplace and with awareness come the advertisers who want to try and appeal to people with their eyes on the marketplace and another potential income stream opens up.
Of course this is probably far from feasible right now, and as I said, legal may have a word or two to say about it, but Linden Lab need to extend their reach and appeal, even if people selling on the marketplace aren’t interested in engaging directly with Second Life, if they have content Second Life users want then there’s a potential market there, one that could bring Second Life and Linden Lab some extra income if managed correctly.
I know some people baulk at the idea of advertising but I want to see it, I want to see companies advertising on the Second Life website, I want to see Adobe, Turbosquid and Renderosity at the very least advertising on the Second Life website, because they have content and tools that fit well with helping Second Life content creators continue to make content that helps the world grow.
This isn’t something that could happen overnight, but really, there’s potential for Linden Lab to seek partnerships with companies out there.
Twitter doesn’t give enough room to really comment. While you idea does have merit and would be convenient for the users. Several things to consider, under the current Marketplace distribution model, all the products are inworld where you store your magic box. Products are delivered inworld. LL would first have to secure authorizations to sell, LL would then have to figure how to store the product and distribute it outside of SL. Using Photoshop, it comes in two flavors for basic Photoshop, Mac and PC. You can buy the PC Version (65048332) for as low as $649.00 on Amazon. Cost through the channel for a VAR are $640.00 (I work as purchasing manager for a VAR). So the mark-up is not that great. Now, what might be a better idea would be to link to someone else already selling Photoshop and work out a commission for purchase that come though the Marketplace.
Sure and that person already selling Photoshop is Adobe! They have an Island, really they should promote themselves, I’ve seen them spend over L$500,000 for an inworld classified to promote an event so they understand the potential.
However agreed that it would take a lot of work to make any such model work, I didn’t realise the markups for VAR’s were so low, although I know in some cases they are dictated, we asked three companies to give us a quote for some software recently and all three quoted exactly the same price under instruction from the software house, which isn’t really fair on resellers.