But you underestimate the challenges in-world, for-profit creators are currently facing. These factors conspire against price stability and the ability of anyone to make a profit:

* Old items never depreciate or fall apart, unlike IRL, dragging down demand for replacements gradually over time
* An ever-increasing number of available items compared to actual paying users push down price too
* Freebies of ever-increasing quality offer permanent alternatives to purchases
* Freebie aggregators whether in-world or on web sites like slexchange (or whatever their new name is) also drag down prices
* Creators who create for fun and nominal fees, not for profit, aren’t going anywhere even though times get tough
* Recessionary pressures in the macro-econonmy reduce the ability of the general userbase to spend money on SL:
http://www.massively.com/2008/11/18/second-life-land-loss-escalates/

I think that reflects more than the inept decisions around those low-rent quarter sims. I’ve already seen a lot of for-profit clubs being knocked out, which has nothing to do with land price freefall. It will hit for-profit content creators soon it it hasn’t already.

Against all of these overwhelming deflationary pressures, how can “super-brands” or alliances of creators compete to prop up prices and profits?

Oscar has it right: the most successful creators will probably be those who are not interested in making money, but simply put out quality prices at a reasonable price as they have always done.

SL is not classical economics by any means, and anyway I always thought content creators who do it for love and craft do a better job and create better products than a “brand alliance” or (even worse) some nasty real-life sweatshop brand ever could.

kanomis last blog post..The League of Virtual Vixens

Jordyn Carnells last blog post..Feelings.. Nothing more than feelings..

Also, hopefully this will infuse the fashion world with lower introductory prices because, to be honest, some of them have gotten to be completely ridiculous. I have the money to pay for them, but there’s a point where quality doesn’t meet price.