Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Want discounted Therebucks? Well, too bad!

Unless you've been a little out of it lately (like I often am) you have probably heard about There.com's Therebucks buyback program for developers. What a surprise, eh? Isn't that something they said they'd NEVER EVER do? I thought it was...

Yeah so, There is buying Therebucks back from developers in a brand new program that pays them $1 for 1800 Therebucks which is a fantastic rate, since that is the actual face value of Therebucks. When it was first announced, it sounded like there might be a limit of $100 developers could sell to them at a time, once a week, as well as a transaction fee and a cap on the amount of Therebucks There would purchase each week, however SO FAR it seems as if they have purchased ALL of the Therebucks people have sold to them.

My reactions to this are...complex to say the least. I had someone in the There.com forums tell me "you know you will be in line to sell your Therebucks just like everyone else", but the truth is, since I am a developer but I am ALSO a reseller, I am always selling my Therebucks, usually as fast as they come into my account, so I'm not sure if I see myself EVER selling Therebucks back to There. Not because I don't want to, or because they could decide not to allow me to, but simply because I'm trying to sell them through http://jinx.tv and they aren't going to sit in my account long enough to ever go through There's buyback system. The only reason I could really see for selling to There is if I specifically set aside some Therebucks to sell to them just to try out the system, or if I was no longer able to sell Therebucks to There members looking to get more for their money. Yeah, right...I think discounted Therebucks are going to be more in demand than ever! And this doesn't kill the reseller market because there are always people who make Therebucks through garage sales or selling off rare items they collect or other non-dev activities.

So does this ruin my business or my livelihood? Well, not really. At least not yet as far as I can tell. I mean, if I'm in stock I'm in stock, and you can find out through following me on twitter when I'm in stock so even if I were only selling once a week or only selling a few hundred dollars worth a week, http://jinx.tv will still be there. Perhaps I will try creating some new content for There to increase the amount of Therebucks I earn myself to sell - although I've gotten into farming/gardening quite a bit lately so I may not have tons of time to do this. I'm probably better off making content for http://imvu.com, since I make more money selling IMVU credits than I do Therebucks and have for a long time, and it's easier to make money off content made for IMVU. Still, I did make a little list of things I'd like to make for There whether it's the best choice financially or not - just because I LIKE making stuff for There and I must admit I feel more of an affinity for There than IMVU.

In the short term this has actually been great for me...I was able to pay my February rent with no problem, where lately there has been such a glut of Therebucks I've been putting all my money into buying them from people and falling a few days behind in paying for them. Now I'm back to paying for Therebucks right away AND paying my rent on time, which is nice. I've sometimes wondered why I put SO MUCH effort into buying and selling Therebucks when it really is not very financially rewarding for me and IMVU is less effort for more money. One of the reasons is to not put all my eggs in one basket, if you know what I mean, but also There is just so much part of my life at this point, I can't imagine NOT buying/selling Therebucks. Probably a funny thing to hear from someone who VERY rarely logs into the There client.

Okay, so enough about me, how will this affect other people? Developers should be happy. One developer, after the announcement, said they were "so happy I could cry". For realz? I don't see this as THAT exciting for devs. It's not like they couldn't cash in their Therebucks before...they are just getting a slightly better rate, and that rate is at the expense of people who are used to buying Therebucks at a discount. I estimate that about $10,000usd of TBs go through the reseller market a week. I guesstimate that about $6000 of that (at least) is from developers. Let's say they sell $5000 of that to There for $1 per 1800tb. That is $5000 less of TBs for people to buy at a discount. At the least.

Geez...is There really going to buy $5000 worth of Therebucks a week from devs? If they don't, the backlog could add up quite quickly and frustrate people selling to them, and if they do...where are they getting the budget to buy $5000 worth of TBs? Perhaps this is the result of There being owned by a capricious multi-millionaire? I suppose after their initial seed money for this project, they figure that their Therebucks sales will increase, and they can use the increase to pay for the next lot of Tbux that they buy? That's how I imagine it working, so There isn't really losing $5000 a week, but a smaller amount, especially if paying it out is assigned to an employee they already have who simply has an increased workload, so There has no additional labor costs from this. It still equals a net loss for them, albiet a small one.

Okay so, let's say you are a member of There who frequently buys discounted Therebucks. I have people who regularly buy certain amounts from me. Like, say, $100 worth a week. I haven't done a survey about this or anything, but I'm guessing $100 is their budget for the week, and not that 200,000 Therebucks is their budget. They don't magically have more money to spend on Therebucks just because  they aren't getting them at a discount, so if they have to buy from There, they will now get 180,000 Therebucks for their money (and There will get $100, which they will spend to pay developers for their Therebucks in the buyback program). Okay, so now you have 20,000 less Therebucks to spend a week. Let's say you normally pay 100,000 to There a week for rent or neighborhoods or other non-flexible things. You now have 80,000 instead of 100,000 or 20% less to spend buying developer stuff. Hmmm...okay so, that means developers will now make less than they would have otherwise. Because they'd rather sell to There at "full face value" and have their Therebucks go into the ether than sell their Therebucks to members at a slightly discounted price.

So, let's see....resellers lose money, members have less Therebucks to spend, There loses money, and even the developers who feel they are getting more for their Therebucks are probably losing money.

Nope, this buyback program doesn't make any sense to me at all. It doesn't even cut down on chinese gold farmer scammers - it will probably make their sites even more tempting to members!

I used to date this guy who would always say to me "don't poke the bear!", which basically meant "don't bother me when I'm in a foul mood", but it may be somewhat appropriate here as well. I kind of feel like by making this post I am poking the capricious multimillionaire owner of There bear, who I am starting to feel has some kind of beef with me. Oh well...what can you do?

If you have anything to say about this, I'd love to hear from you!

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