Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Very good point from reader "Alelangel Verenova", responding to my survey on interest in Second Life's new Premium+ account offering, which will costs up to $25 USD a month:

Here in Latin America there will be a major NO answer, basically because the exchange to our local money. It's an important amount per month, even per year to consider only for a "game". Maybe it could be worth it if you are a creator and you earn good money on Second Life, but besides that, for this side of the world, it's expensive and useless.

It's a very valid point! Based on recent user data, roughly 1 in 3 visitors to SecondLife.com are from Latin America and countries across Asia and Europe (see the full below) outside the wealthy G7 nations, where $25 a month is pretty modest fee for many hours of online entertainment. Here in Los Angeles, for instance, 25 bucks will pretty much get you just two (2) movie tickets, i.e. 3 hours of entertainment. In most other parts of the world, however, $25 is enough to buy a week or two of groceries. 

To reader Luther Weymann, a retired tech exec who now enjoys Second Life in his free time, the solution is obvious:

One of the core problems with the marketing of Second Life is its USA-centric thinking and lack of global focus. For example, many international companies have successfully achieved enormous sales increases with “per country pricing.” In India, you get Netflix Standard 1080p with almost all the movies for $8.50 a month or about half the USA price. In Asia, GoDaddy pricing for hosting varies from one-fourth to a little more than one-half of USA pricing. The giant Unilever multinational consumer goods company sells its products all over Asia for slightly more than 60-70% of the USA and much lower than Euro pricing. And the result? A considerable increase in overall revenue and net profit for companies who understand the sales possibilities when pricing their products by what the market will bear in each country.

Very good advice. To emphasize it, here's the Second Life website's user demographics by country, shared with me by analytics service SimilarWeb in 2019:

1. United States (30%)
2. Brazil (15%)
3. Turkey (5%)
4. United Kingdom (5%)
5. Germany (4%)
6. Spain (3%)
7. Canada (3%)
8. France (2%)
9. Netherlands (2%)
10. Italy (2%)
11. Russia (2%)
12. India (2%)
13. Mexico (1.5%)
14. Argentina (1.5%)
15. Australia (1%)
16. Japan (1%)
17. Poland (1%)
18. Portugal (1%)
19. Chile (1%))
20. Columbia (1%)
21. Indonesia (.5%)
22. Ukraine (.5%)
23. Belgium (.5%)
24. Venezuela (.5%)
25. Peru (.5%)

If I'm counting correctly, 35% of these visitors live in countries where a $25/monthly fee would be pretty drastic. So why not offer them a country-based price they can actually afford?

Image via: For Metaverse Creators In Developing Nations, Second Life's Costs To Entry Have Grown Too High.(