The topic for today seems to be freebies. Are they the bane of SL? I commented on a couple of posts, but since I am long-winded and rambly, I figured I need a post of my own, too. ;)

My opinion on taking advantage of freebies as a consumer in SL is that it is not inherently rude or abusive of anyone’s generosity to pop into a store to pick up a freebie, or to pop into a group to be able to do the same. There are ways for creators to stop people from doing this (locking the group to new sign-ups for a limited time, using a subscribe-o-matic or similar system with no redelivery of attachments, etc), and if that is not done then I think it is natural to assume that they expect anyone who wants to to get it. What is rude and abusive, of course, is to say anything other than ‘thank you’ to a creator for a freebie. You do not get to complain about it in any way, or to place any demands on the creator.

The concern about freebies for me is instead how the affect the market and what creators can do about that. Certainly, when I joined in June 2007, free, quality skins were not given out. But it cannot be assumed that all—or even a majority—of the people who get by with just freebies would have become paying customers if it wasn’t for the freebies. Consider RL piracy. How many sales are actually lost because people download music? It has affect sales, it seems, but my suspicion has always been that the majority of those who download are simply opportunistic, and they are grabbing things they would never have bought anyway. I suspect that a large chunk of those who get by on freebies in SL never had any intention on spending money on an on-line game.

However, freebies probably have impacted sales to some degree. But what also complicates this equation is the fact that not all content creators are in SL for the same reason. Some are trying to make a living. Some are trying to make enough to support their own shopping in SL. Some are just in it for fun. It is very hard for someone who is trying to make a living to compete with someone who is just in it for fun and who is releasing freebies simply because they like making people happy and are pleased to see as many people as possible pick it up. And this is an unavoidable complication. Each creator has to be able to do what they feel is best for them or what they enjoy the most, without feeling as if they’re ruining things for someone else.

Is there a solution, then? I don’t know, I am definitely not well-versed in business management, but I guess it comes down to creating incentives for people to spend money and keep coming back to you. In some cases, those incentives may mean you make less from a particular sale than you would have, but that sale may have been one you would not have made at all otherwise. Then it is not a question of having made L$150 instead of L$300 but of having made L$150 instead of L$0.

Limited-time sales on selected items can be good, as it can create a sense of urgency, which makes people think less about their purchases. Sales are often what gets me to try out new stores. From stores that already are among my established favourites, I have a weakness for limited editions. Not in the sense that I am willing to pay twice the price for a limited edition, but in the sense that I may buy it where I wouldn’t normally have done so just because it is a time-limited offer and I can’t just say ‘oh, it will always be around, so I can always get it later’. I also like gift cards, and I find that having an L$ 100 or 150 gift card is a good way to encourage me to spend a bit more, so I think those can be useful as gifts too as long as the delivery is setup so that only one per person can be had.

I would also consider myself a pretty loyal shopper, in that I have developed a list of places I spend most of my money at (partly because otherwise there is too much choice ;P). So to me, it seems as if loyalty cards would be an interesting and potentially useful approach, and I’ll be very interested in seeing what the effect is if we end up getting them at Adam n Eve. Innovation of that kind is definitely needed.