Anya Ristow

I don't intend to do this, but I'm curious if people think this would work...

Suppose I were to buy an island and rent it out in four-hour blocks of time. Everyone renting time would belong to a group, and each would be assigned a role. The owner of the group would be a bot that'd change responsibilities for each role at the beginning of each block of time, so that during your block you'd have most of the powers of a landowner and nobody else would. The bot would also de-rez the previous renter's stuff and rez yours, if you like. Or you could use your own rezzer.

Accounting

Suppose my current renters were a Friday evening European timezone club followed by an American timezone club, each 4 hours, followed by a creator using the space for building and scripting for 8 hours. Saturday there's three four-hour blocks for clubs and music venues followed by another eight hours for the same creator. Sunday two four-hour blocks. Monday one four-hour block. Tuesday two blocks. Wednesday two four-hour blocks and an 8-hour block for another creator. Thursday one four hour block and an 8-hour block.

So, that's 13 four-hour blocks during prime time and 4 8-hour blocks non-prime time. Say we charge non-prime time at half the rate, so that's 17 units rented. Say I charge US$80 per week. That'd be US$80/17=$4.71 per week per block of time.

So, you want to run a club just two evenings per week. You'd pay about $4.71 x 2 x 4.33 = $40.79 per month for a full region. Want 16 hours per week to build on a full region? $40.79 per month, though you'd have to schedule your time. A birthday party? $4.71.

It'd be cheaper with more renters and more expensive with fewer renters.

Relevance as measured by LL would be the combined usage of all those people. I'm not sure how search or parcel naming would work out.

You'd have to build your venue elsewhere, or rent time to build it. Maybe for the birthday party you could just pick one of a few pre-built venues with landscaping, or bring a prefab. Maybe rent 8 hours to be sure you can set up in time.

That's what I came up with in a few minutes of thinking. Anyone want to flesh it out? Anyone think it'd work?

Eliza Wrigglesworth

The time for SL glitches and people wanting refunds for it would give me nightmares. Other than that, it seems like a great idea to me. (As a renter, not the owner. I have enough stress tyvm )

Anya Ristow

Another way to share an island...

Get an American, a European and a Japanese resident to each use it 8 hours per day.

Ayesha Lytton

It makes more sense to have one build and everyone splits the cost or pays for the time they use. I've always thought this could work well for clubs and live music venues. Get a few people from different time zones together and you could have events 24/7 while saving money because each "club" doesn't need its own plot of land.

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Loraan Fierrens

This reminds me a bit of the timeshare concept for vacation condos... so I'm seeing potential problems here:

I can see there being problems with scheduling the use of the parcel. For best return, you're going to want it rented out all the time, but you're going to have fallow times when no one is renting and times when there are conflicts where two or more parties want to rent overlapping times. The more the overlaps happen, the less renters will be keen on it.

It's not going to be great for the renters either. If you charge them by the hour, their time spent setting up the space is money out of their wallets, and I expect renters will be very conscious of that. I think they'd probably end up getting irritated each time they have to re-set their stuff only to have it returned a couple of hours later.

Also, I can see their being technical issues trying to swap the ownership rights around. It seems a bit fiddly, frankly.

Don't let me talk you out of it, though... I can picture there being a need for short term rentals of some sort.

Anya Ristow

In my examples the thing is rented out only half the time and it's still inexpensive for part-time things like clubs and building.

If you pay tier or rent land but have a full-time job, and sleep a quarter or more of your life, and have other things to do in RL, you aren't able to make good use of your land, anyway. It might as well be used by someone else while you aren't able to use it.

Yeah, but they don't have to pay tier while they sleep.

It'd be swapping group role responsibilities, not ownership. But yeah, there'd be opportunity for that to fail, like everything else in SL.

Beebo Brink

From a purely personal, emotional perspective, I'd hate that kind of arrangement. It's funny how the mind works, even if overall you're paying less to rent by the hour than to rent the entire parcel, each hour takes on more significance and you hear the clock ticking for everything you do.

That aside, if you miss your block or half your block because SL is down or TPs aren't working, will you get a refund? Most people will expect that if they're renting by such a small window.

Clubs may only hold events at certain hours, but they also build up a customer base from people who drift in at other times than the designated event. In this arrangement the potential patrons land in the middle of a totally different venue. As a patron, I'd find that chaotic and probably would be put off by it.

If none of these are issues -- clear contract on time-sharing fee regardless of SL conditions, club events that don't care about general traffic at off-peak hours -- then you're back to the usual challenge of any SL project, which is mostly getting word out to enough people to get customers. But we all know about that one, so it's a given.

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Ramen Jedburgh

I could almost see this working on a smaller scale on an on demand sort of basis. Basically, a way for someone to rent a private sandbox fir a few hours.

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Aribeth Zelin

I'd think I just would rather go in on a whole sim, rather than time share it.

I mean, a club bigger than 20x20 meters is a bit big in my experience - you kind of want something where people can hear each other.

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Desmond Shang

Sadly, can't work.

This is why:

Cost of carry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basically you'd have to charge REALLY high rates to cover the fractions of the day not rented, and that certainly will happen.

Also the 'spot market' for using whole regions just isn't there.

Odds are, if you look no farther than a friend of a friend, there's a huge amount of unused land out there. "Hey can I borrow your region for a few hours now and then this week?" "Oh sure, I'm glad someone will use it when I am not."

If not already in the rental biz, this is a near suicidal time to get into it, even via conventional strategies. Unless the goal is to not lose too much money while having fun somehow doing it, in which case... not a big deal.

KT Kingsley

It would require a philanthropist to implement this.

Like the word itself, they are obsolete.

Ciaran Laval

The spot market isn't there because LL bill by the month, if LL billed for usage, that market might open up.

You can rent sims from LL on a short term basis, but it ain't cheap.

Aribeth Zelin

Still say LL needs to lower the overall cost of tier

Ramen Jedburgh

Definitely. The cost of land is, and always has been rediculous. Even calling it "hosting" and "server costs".

Anya Ristow

In my example I have it rented just half the time. Under $5 for a 4-hour block of time. $41/mo to run a club twice a week on a full sim. $428/mo income. How does that compare in the land rental market?

Because nobody offers it. I can't see this working with less than a full region since its primary usage would likely be gatherings of people. And smaller amounts of money would probably be more trouble than its worth.

I don't see this appealing to the make-money-in-your-underwear crowd, or for running bot nests. I see it being for people wanting to use SL as a social space. Sadly, the spot market for that *is* very small.

For someone well-connected like you, maybe. Who wouldn't want to help Desmond out? Most everyone else? Not so much. I don't know anyone at all with a full sim sitting idle.

Anya Ristow

On the other hand, since I'm mentioning more than one land-sharing scheme, a group of SLUers could share sims on a casual "can I use it this week?" basis. I wouldn't expect it'd be available to me, but it just might work for some on SLU.