So, today I am disappointed with XStreetSL.

I read, in some detail last week, the plans to charge people to list freebies, citing them as promotional materials. There will be a minimum monthly listing fee of L$99 per item and a minimum commission charge of L$3 per “sale.” Now, while that may not seem like much, think about it… I shift hundreds upon hundreds of the freebies I have listed on XStreet every single week. Yes, they are promotional in so far as there is a note card in each box with the link to this blog there. But I obtain no financial gain from it. I don’t advertise on my Second Life blog… it’s a hobbyist thing. So why would I pay for the privilege of giving things away?

To be honest, even if someone does have a LM to a store in their freebie, so what? Freebies are awesome for newbies and really help new residents to get into Second Life, which is a notoriously difficult to get to grips with platform. Who wants to spend money in here before they can even work the controls? And while I know people have concerns about the fact that the freebie market might be affecting sales of priced products, is that not just the way capitalism rolls? Most Second Life blog posts I have read about this from residents who have freebies listed say that they will be desliting when the policy comes in. I will be too, unfortunately. I simply will not line the pockets of Linden Lab for the pleasure of giving items away. I would hazard a guess that freebie shopping on XStreet makes up a big proportion of traffic to the site. And I would hazard a further guess that the number of freebies on the site will drastically decrease, which in turn is likely to see a decrease in traffic to their site. Not that Linden Lab give a shit.

Way to go Linden Lab. /end sarcasm.

Tags: freebies, second life freebies, XStreet SL freebies, xstreetsl
Categories: Random Thoughts and Musings

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts and Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.