If This is All There is to the Solution...OMG What a Problem!

The special insiders Dev list has an interesting survey result floating around the Met-o-sphere today -- supposedly it's going to be cleaned up soon and put on the blog, but let's not lose a moment's delay in understanding the SOLUTION PROVIDERS' ANSWER TO SECOND LIFE!

Oh dear. Whenever I hear that there is some company saying it is a Solution Provider, I have to ask myself: but...why are there so many problems? I mean, *expensive* problems, too! But...turns out solutions are cheap...or, conversely (metaversely?) so inadequate that we must fear WORSE PROBLEMS in our Metaverse.
It took me the longest time to figure out that "Solution Providers" weren't like 24/7 locksmiths called in emergencies, that's just a fancy name for computer geek stuff lol.

What this story boils down to is the following:

o There are 3,900 people calling themselves "solution providers" which, as noted, is fake-talk for "grunts working the grid on projects for corporations and the corporations willing to take risks in SL"
o Devs only bought 214 islands in Q3. Wow. Just wow! And these Lindens scorn us?!
o Average revenue per employee is $17K, the median is $8K, and the 1/3 with the lowest revenue per employee average just $671 per employee -- this is NOT a way to make a living folks, ok!

And keep in mind that this list does NOT include rentals or various content businesses strictly inworld -- these are mainly outworld developers, the metaversals who sherpa in the big corporations. Suddenly, the claims that it's Anshe, for example, who is running a "sweatshop" need a second, hard look, when it looks like some of these predominantly Western devs are likely earning less in purchasing power than the people in Wuhan employed by ACS. I don't think these metaversals are likely making it even in Brooklyn, and even with their mom's checks and some helpdesking weekends!

Cocoanut -- looks like your concept of the Services Directory accounts for only a few of these folks' jobs. "The Directory gets about 5000 views/month, but it's driving business for only a few Solution Providers." Still...

The one good take-home from this is that these geeky supposedly more-than-competent devs find the JIRA complicated and tiresome, too, and don't use it. So the Lindens say they will work on that...And maybe after all this fussing with these outworld devs and getting such poor results, they might be willing to focus more on small and medium business inworld? Wouldn't it be bold to compare the median incomes ROFL?

Sorry this post is messed up but it was smuggled to me inside a copy of the Daily Worker and hastily delivered on the L train "u poslednikh vagonov". Ok, write when you get work, and don't take any wooden nickels!

Here are the results from the recent survey. This will be posted to the SL Blog shortly. This email contains tab-formatted tables which may be hard to read if you're using a text-only mail viewer.
For the Linden Lab Solution Provider Program Team - Glenn & Madhavi
___________________________________________________________
Survey of Developers in the Second Life Developer Directory, October 2007

Summary
In early October, a survey was conducted of the of 307 listed companies and individuals in the Solution Provider Directory; 85 (28%) responded. (June's response was 29% and February's was 36%.) Wording of some questions has changed, so the responses are not always exactly comparable.

Key Results
* Employees† have increased - the total is now about 3900 up from 3000 in June, 1500 in Feb. and 500 in November (total is extrapolating to the entire Solution Provider community from the sample). Most of these employees have come from Second Life (see the June survey: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/07/10/survey-of-developers-in-the-second-life-developer directory-june-2007/).
* The total†† Solution Provider community is approximately a $55M business this year.
* Projects for the quarter (365) are up slightly from June, but quarterly revenue ($3.9M) has decreased from June.
* Projects per company during the quarter range from 0 to 45; the average is 4 and the median 3. The companies average 3 employees per project.
* The majority of companies are small - the median is 5 employees and $187K annual revenue**; 70% have 10 or fewer employees and an average revenue of $54K.
* Average revenue per employee is $17K, the median is $8K, and the 1/3 with the lowest revenue per employee average just $671 per employee.

1) Employees/contractors (part or full time)
Oct 07 Jun 07 Feb 07 Nov 06
Total: 1101 933 559 224
Average: 13 17 19 8
Median: 5 6 5 5

(Wording of this question was consistent between June & Oct 07; earlier surveys had different wording. The question intends to ask how many people work for the Solution Provider.)
3 companies listed 100 or more (3 also in June); 14 (17%) had more than 20 employees, and 71% have 10 or less.

2) Projects in the current pipeline
Oct 07 Jun 07 Feb 07 Nov 06
Total: 365 307 380 148
Average: 4 6 12 5
Median: 3 3 4 4

In general, larger companies (by employees) have more projects, but the correlation is not high. The smallest 1/3 (by employees) had an average of 2.8 projects; the middle third's average was 2.9 and the largest third's was 7.3.

3) What is your estimated revenue (in US$) from Second Life projects for this quarter?
Oct 07 Jun 07 Feb 07 Nov 06
Total: 3,881,160 5,034,000 6,700,000 2,236,000
Average: 46,800 98,700 161,500 80,000
Median: 10,000 20,000 31,500 18,000

(While the question asks for quarterly revenue, for analysis, it was converted to annual revenue.)
The average annual revenue** for the lowest third is $12K; for the highest third it's $506K. Nine companies (11%) expect more than $400K in annual revenue, but 40 (47%) expect less than $40K.

The median is 5 employees and $40K annual revenue**. One-third have 3 or fewer employees and an average annual revenue of $33K; and 72% have 10 or fewer employees and an average annual revenue of $54K. The 24 companies (28%) larger than 10 employees had an average annual revenue of $530K.

Average annual revenue** per employee is $17K, but the median is $8K. The average annual revenue** of the 1/3 with most revenue per employee is $43K; for the lowest 1/3, it's $670.

4) How many regions were purchased by you or your clients during Q3 for projects you worked on?
Oct 07
Total: 214
Average: 2.5
Median: 1

During Q3, about 2000 regions were added to Second Life, so Solution Providers directly represent about 11% of the growth of Second Life. This number (214) is about 4x the regions 'purchased' by Solution Providers in previous surveys (many Solution Providers don't purchase the regions they work on- see http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/07/10/survey-of-developers-in-the-second-life-developer directory-june-2007/).

5) What percent of your business comes from the Solution Provider Directory?
% of business Count %
0 41 53%
1-25 23 29%
26-50 4 5%
51-75 2 3%
>76 8 10%
Average is 16%, the median is 0%.

The Directory gets about 5000 views/month, but it's driving business for only a few Solution Providers. Almost half get some business from the Directory and 13% get more than half of their business from the Directory. However, 53% get no business from the Directory. There is clearly room for improvement here.

6) Have you (or anyone in your organization) used Issue Tracker (public JIRA or pJira)?
Count %
Not relevant 9 11%
What is Issue Tracker? 12 14%
Don't have time 15 18%
Too Complicated/confusing 11 13%
It doesn't make any difference 5 6%
I've filed at least one issue 23 27%
I report and/or vote regularly 6 7%
I've participated in triage 3 4%

Issue tracker is used by just over 1/3 of Solution Providers; almost half find it not useful (to complicated, don't have time, not relevant, doesn't make a difference), and 14% don't know what it is. We'll up our efforts and promoting Issue Tracker and work to make it easier to understand and use.

7) Comments about Issue Tracker
Thirty respondents made comments.
'Hard to use' (27%) ("Make it usable"; "More user friendly interface"; "Dumb it down").
'More timely' (13%) ("Pay attention to the issues"; "Read it"; "Faster response")
'Better explanation' (10%) ("Tell me what it is")
'Notification' (7%) ("Maybe if I could watch various aspects of it via RSS.")
'Access' (7%) ("Put it in the Client"; "Accessible inworld")
Other comments included 'clearer categories', 'search doesn't work', and 'put more information on the top screen.'

8) Which Linden Lab sources of information do you use?
secondlife.com 78 92%
blog.secondlife.com 72 85%
wiki.secondlife.com 63 74%
Developer emails 52 61%
secondlifegrid.net 48 56%
forums.secondlife 47 55%
Knowledge Base 35 41%
lindenlab.com 22 26%
RSS feeds 17 20%
Other 11 13%
Second Opinion 10 12%

The most used source of information is secondlife.com, followed by the SLBlog, the SLWiki, and the Solution Provider email list. The new SLGrid.net page and SL Forums are used by just over half of respondents. Surprisingly, only 20% use RSS feeds, but this may reflect that they're only available from the SLBlog. Four people mentioned " lslwiki.net" under Other; the others used a variety of external sources or searching.

9) In which category are you listed in the Directory?
Count % Listing%
Full-service 49 55% 49%
Consultant 30 34% 25%
Tool Dev. 2 2% 4%
Software Dev 5 6% 1%
In-house 3 3% 20%

We asked this to see how the resondents mapped to the make up of the program. Full-service and Consultants are slightly over-represented, and In-house developers significantly under-represented in this sample.

10) In which country is your headquarters/main office?
Count % Listing%
US 36 43% 47%
Germany 13 16% 7%
UK 12 14% 14%
Australia 3 4% 3%
France 2 2% 3%
Ireland 2 2% -
Italy 2 2% 4%
Netherlands 2 2% 6%
Portugal 2 2% 1%
Spain 2 2% 2%
Canada 0 0% 5%
One response per country: Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland.
By region:
Survey% Listing %
US 43% 54%
EU 51% 41%
Asia 4% 5%
SA 2% 1%

Respondents were from 17 countries; while the country with the most was US (43%), 51% of them were from Europe, 4% Asia and 2% South America. Germany was second with 16% of respondents, followed by the UK with 12%. Again, this reflects but is not exactly the distribution in the Directory - the US is slightly over-represented, which may be partly a language issue. Germany is vastly over-represented, and Canada is under-represented. By region, however, Europe is only slightly over-represented, and the distribution is close to that of Listings.

_______________
†Employees is used in the broadest sense of people who work for or with the company; the question wording this survey was "How many people work with you/your company on a regular basis? (Please count contractors, associates, and others who work for you part or full time.)"

** Annual revenue is estimated from 4*quarterly revenue for Q3 provided in the survey.
____________________

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

whats the stats on surveys in general in respect to the tendency of people to inflate their income in an attempt to make themselves feel better?

i see all this stuff in the "press" yet i seldom see anything new in secondlife. things never seem to add up accurately around here. Especially where any numbers published by Linden research are concerned.