Let's talk about ... Markets!
This general concept has been kicking around for ages! There was a version tested during Glitch Alpha or Beta, but it was abandoned by TS for what I'm sure are very good reasons. But it keeps coming up, so let's talk about it!
Here is an idea for a format for Markets that I don't think would be game breaking, and doesn't run into the trouble of long-term renting and inactive stalls.
The Market as Party
Ok, so you buy a market party. It's not really a party, but I think from the dev side it would essentially be a reskinned party with extra stuff.
There are X number of market stalls in the instance (I suggest, 11 or 17, but 11 would be easier because it's a side-by-side thing and the more stalls the longer the "street" of the instance).
Each market stall can be either claimed or purchased for the time the party instance exists.
Each market stall has the following:
a) a counter the owner can stand on or behind
b) around 8 SDBs that can be filled by the stall owner and set the price for
c) a door that links to the owner's tower once the stall is claimed (this would have to be a one-way link, I think)
d) a sign above the stall that defaults to the tower's name but can be changed by the owner.
All of these stall elements have a limited number of reskin options that are available to the owner, for an iMG (or currant) cost to change them.
When the party starts, the market party owner can invite people, but the majority of market visitors reach it via market stones, which take you to a random market party currently instanced. Some of the existing visiting stones could be changed to market stones, or we could place new ones.
Stall owners and market users can extend the time on the market by paying currants, but the cost to extend the party increases exponentially as the duration of the market increases. After the market closes items remaining in SDBs are returned to their owners (maybe another use for the moving boxes?)
What does the person who bought the market party get out of it? Besides fun and social activity? I think maybe they might get a tiny cut of what is sold in the market while it is open? Or you could just make them inexpensive compared to actual parties.
I think that this encourages stall owners to hang out at their market stall, which I think is a good thing, encouraging the social aspect of markets. After all, you wouldn't leave your booth at a craft fair empty!
Here is an idea for a format for Markets that I don't think would be game breaking, and doesn't run into the trouble of long-term renting and inactive stalls.
The Market as Party
Ok, so you buy a market party. It's not really a party, but I think from the dev side it would essentially be a reskinned party with extra stuff.
There are X number of market stalls in the instance (I suggest, 11 or 17, but 11 would be easier because it's a side-by-side thing and the more stalls the longer the "street" of the instance).
Each market stall can be either claimed or purchased for the time the party instance exists.
Each market stall has the following:
a) a counter the owner can stand on or behind
b) around 8 SDBs that can be filled by the stall owner and set the price for
c) a door that links to the owner's tower once the stall is claimed (this would have to be a one-way link, I think)
d) a sign above the stall that defaults to the tower's name but can be changed by the owner.
All of these stall elements have a limited number of reskin options that are available to the owner, for an iMG (or currant) cost to change them.
When the party starts, the market party owner can invite people, but the majority of market visitors reach it via market stones, which take you to a random market party currently instanced. Some of the existing visiting stones could be changed to market stones, or we could place new ones.
Stall owners and market users can extend the time on the market by paying currants, but the cost to extend the party increases exponentially as the duration of the market increases. After the market closes items remaining in SDBs are returned to their owners (maybe another use for the moving boxes?)
What does the person who bought the market party get out of it? Besides fun and social activity? I think maybe they might get a tiny cut of what is sold in the market while it is open? Or you could just make them inexpensive compared to actual parties.
I think that this encourages stall owners to hang out at their market stall, which I think is a good thing, encouraging the social aspect of markets. After all, you wouldn't leave your booth at a craft fair empty!
Comments
I really like the idea of a door to your tower from the stall, since that establishes a connection between your home street and Ur, with a location in the game chosen by you. Also, if you want to offer more expensive items, you post them in your tower, so that you don't lose them if you lose your stall. That way stall inventory circulation (ie, getting booted from your stall) has minimal impact on those that have a catastrophic reason for not visiting the game for a while (no electricity/internet due to natural disaster, death in the family, swamped with RL issues, etc) and not being able to pay their rent on time.
I think this idea also scratches the itch of trying to get prime locations and 'watching the market' for a better stall, if you initially aren't able to get one in the location of your first choice. I loved the market and limited inventory issues of the houses because it added excitement when I wanted to move locations, especially in that time when I sold my house and bought my next one.
Maybe stalls have different sizes, and you pay more for a larger stall (3 vs 5 vs 11 SDBs). Or maybe they have slightly different configurations which adds to the options that you are purchasing - only certain products could be sold in certain SDBs (herbal stall vs crop stall vs tool stall vs food stall vs drinks stall vs all purpose stall). Or maybe each market street can only have up to two of the same type of stalls purchased, to ensure a diverse selection in the marketplace. This too would create some market flux, because if you really wanted to have a crop stall, but the only things left are herbal stalls and food stalls in your prime location, then maybe you buy one of those to get a stall, but as soon as one of the crop stalls closes, you can then change stall types, assuming someone else doesn't get it first.
Since the idea of markets is an optional / opt in aspect of the game, limited inventory of stalls shouldn't be as much of an issue, because it doesn't really impact play of the game like housing did. And as new regions are added, new stall rental opportunities will happen naturally.
ETA: Given there are about current 44 regions/hubs (excluding ancestral lands and vortex of random, but including Ilmenski Caverns and Ilmenski Deep), you'd only need a building/street with 3 aisles of 11 stalls to right now cover most everyone signed up for the forums. You could add aisles as needed, if new regions/hubs aren't being unlocked quickly enough (or you could just place more than enough stalls in game - have 7 aisles of 11 per region/hub as the default). The navigation of the aisles would be a lot like the old home street sign structure (maybe Tiny Speck has some of that old code archived somewhere). The other cool thing, is the styles of the stalls could be similar to the old home styles.
There are certainly some markets that are blur the lines - long term farmer's markets, flea markets inside buildings, etc but that is the nature of the distinction I think I want to make. I do like the idea of market buildings though.
I think Lyrical Dejavu is right to want shorter rent times and rent limits, but I get what b3achy is saying about not wanting to give up your place. What if you could renew your rent on a stall, but it gets more expensive each time you do? You can set the curve so it becomes unmanageable after the length of time you think is appropriate. I like the 2 month mark, as it coincides with an Ur year.
I am wondering if LD means Ur-days or Earth-days? because 3 Ur days is 12 hours, which feels kind of good to me if the rent is non-renewable. If it is renewable, then I think maybe one Ur-week (which is just under 3 earth days) is probably a good unit of time.
I'm also thinking that there should be a balance between browsing and letting people find you. I think that in general you are attracted or advertised-to about the market in general, rather than specific sellers at that market, because the sellers come and go. You go the market and you browse the different sellers there this time, and hope you find something great. So maybe it would be fun to have themed market buildings in different areas of Ur: The Herb Market in Kieheman Course in the bogs, the Hardware and Tool Market in Uralia, etc.
I still don't think scaling is as big of an issue with something like a marketspace as it was with housing. You don't NEED to have a market stall. There are other options if you don't have a market stall (tower selling, auctions, trade channel). And not everyone is going to want a market stall. Also, if you have an auto boot for those that don't pay rent on time, then it opens up stalls. That was the biggest problem in my opinion about houses -- you couldn't boot inactive players because you never knew if they were gone for good, or weren't playing due to RL issues (and how cruel to boot someone from their house if they were having RL issues and then when they come to game to get some respite only find out their house in the game was taken from them too). I really think there would have always been plenty of houses if the inactive players did get regularly booted, but unfortunately there was no way to determine who really was inactive (and frankly even under the old housing system, there were always some houses available, just some people didn't want those types of houses, so it was more of a preference issue than an inventory issue. I really think TS was just trying to stave off what they thought might be a future problem, but wasn't really a problem yet.). Where as, with renting stalls, if you don't pay rent you get booted, just like in real life.
Honestly, you should get a better deal if you rent long term than renting week by week or month by month rather than be penalized with higher rates. I get that you guys want to try to ensure everyone has a chance to rent a stall, but I think developing a solid market place of committed activity would be better. Some will want to try out stalls, and realize it's not for them, and won't re-rent. Others will want to make this type of thing a key part of their game play, and they shouldn't be penalized for enjoying having a stall and providing a service at a community location.
Also, if you are going to have specialized markets, I'd recommend that they not be in the locations where those resources are freely available. Herb markets should be in Drifta and Aranna, because there aren't herb gardens nearby. Let's help the players have valuable commodities in the market locations not things they can already get in the same region.
Finally, if you have a market stall that gets attached to your tower (which I do like that idea), then by default you have a smaller group of players because you have to be like level 10 or 15 to just start to build a tower - maybe you put a level number on renters of stalls - level 15 or 20 and higher maybe? So that will help to keep down the fly by night stall renters.
At one point in the game, I looked at the stats on the players. It showed that only 25% of the players were level 5 or higher. The stats dropped to 14% of the players were level 10 or higher (ie, at least relatively active in the game at the time). So it's not like you need inventory for all registered players (like you sort of did need for homes)...just the percentage of the ones that want a stall, which would be just a percentage of active players.
Time limits or increased rent the longer you rent...something that puts emphasis on keeping the time shorter so the stalls will be more likely to be used & staffed, and so that they stay somewhat small # wise so its reasonable and not massive to search too. The timed party rooms their rent did increase if you extended the time...really if its not your homestreet and if its something that is meant to be occasional it should be rented or timed, BECAUSE its an occasional thing to begin with. Just because ppl dont NEED a stall does not mean they simply wont rent one just to have one whenever they do need it. You can say well you dont NEED whatever item, but that does not stop ppl from getting it in the least, if they can they will, even if they dont need it, and since this is a game it actually applies more here than IRL, since in game money (currants) means even less. I simply dont want a gazillion stalls with most of them being unstaffed, or without ppl being able to rent one .
Although i was thinking....there may be a compromise. You have a stall but if you leave it, it closes, or ppl can only buy from it when you are AT the stall...in either case it auto closes and disapears if not occupied. If that were the case everyone could have a stall all the time, but itd only be there if occupied ... also it'd be best if only mid to high lvl char had access. Say maybe lvl 25+?
I also don't see stalls as having to be 'manned' 24/7, but where you have to keep it regularly stocked. I'm sure they could build in some additional restrictions that if your stall is empty of products (or below a certain inventory level) for x number of days (like a RL week or so) then you forfeit your stall as if you didn't pay rent. Yea it sucks if you have a RL issue that keeps you away, but it's less traumatic than if you had lost your house (and all your inventory) under the old housing system, which was part of the reason they didn't implement pulling people's houses.
I'd love to have been a part of the trial 'market' system. I keep hearing about it, but apparently wasn't in the game when they tried it out. I really find it hard to believe something like this would be such a 'failure'...maybe it needed some tweaks to the implementation to be better/more feasible. I mean, many of us loved the group halls, but those never got implemented.
ETA: I also don't see the community or social aspect of the market stalls being between the seller and customer as much as I see having a centralized location for shopping in Ur would provide a place to run into other players as customers. If the seller is there, that is okay, but that's not who I'm necessarily looking to socialize with in the marketplace. In RL, I tend to avoid those stalls/shops where the owner is watching my every move. I'd probably avoid the same in Ur. I like to freely browse and compare prices without feeling like a seller is breathing down my neck.
Let's say you pay a smaller fee upfront to claim a stall. I like b3achys idea of different sizes. The rest of the rent is made up out of a small percentage of SDB sales made by the stall. If your SDBs stay either all empty for a period of time, or make no sales for a period of time, your stall starts to close and after a while becomes available for someone else to claim. You'd get a warning by mail or butler if you sell out.
I think you need (b) so that people don't camp stalls by selling million currant meat and such.
By closing inactive stalls, you encourage folks to attend to their stall and keep it stocked because it's the ONLY way to keep their spots. Maybe you can keep a stall that way for up to one Ur year.
And, it's also a way to reflect real estate popularity: the more popular stall locations could have less forgiving windows. So maybe the tool aisle in the Aranna market is really popular, so if you let your SDBs stay empty for 1 RL day your stall closes; while the less popular produce aisle in Jethimadh lets you keep your stall for up to 7 days after your SDBs run dry or you make your last sale.
And if all the stall locations are filled in a given market, maybe there could be a waiting list or lottery sign up. The size of the list could be the metric to determine how short the windows are. Or, a better way to arrange it would be that you can bid on a stall that's due to close - maybe empty stalls would display a timer of how long before they're closed and while the timer is open you can bid or put your name in for a lottery for the stall. In that case, the length of the windows before closing would reflect the average price paid to claim stalls in that aisle in the last year.
@b3achy I see what you mean about community; I think I would see community between stall owners too, if there are longer occupancy times.
I also think that having the market building setup wouldn't necessarily preclude market parties. I just like the idea of short-term markets popping up in random places, I guess! In this case, I think the party would generate some kind of portal (maybe a door like from the door drink) from a street in or or a homestreet. The market party would have 1 aisle worth of stalls, and would have a timer. There would probably also need to be a long cooldown on streets that have hosted a market party recently, but you could always throw one from your homestreet. I still think the stall's cut of the profits would go to the party owner, but the stalls themselves would be claimable for free, but the party's owner could boot stall owners. Or maybe you have to be a party member to claim a stall.
The Market as Location (Building)
Market Buildings are located in regions across Ur, especially in Regions which get less traffic. They are typically in central locations within the region. The market building functions on the Ur street as machine rooms, bureaucratic halls and apartment buildings do.
Each building has 3, 5, 7, or 11 floors. Each floor is an aisle of 11 market stalls, and each floor has a general theme that is suggested but not required. Each market building has some of the same aisle themes, but not all of them are found in each location.
To open a stall in the market, you locate an empty stall and pay a nominal fee, or one that is closing and put in a bid on it. Each market stall has the following:
a) a counter the owner can stand on or behind
b) either 7 or 11 SDBs that can be filled by the stall owner and set the price for
c) a door that links to the owner's tower once the stall is claimed (this would have to be a one-way link, I think, to avoid the free TP problem)
d) a sign above the stall that defaults to the tower's name but can be changed by the owner.
All of these stall elements have a limited number of reskin options that are available to the owner, for a currant, iMG, or credit cost to change them. Changing them would work much like it does in the houses and towers - you could maybe even use your wallpaper options here.
If your SDBs stay either (a) empty for a period of time, or (b) make no sales for a period of time, your stall is closed and becomes available for someone else to claim. Otherwise, if you maintain your stall and the items keep selling you can keep your stall for up to one Ur year (2 RL months). You'd get a warning by frog or butler if you sell out or go inactive. The period of time between when your stall goes empty or inactive and when it is closed is determined by the average price paid for stalls in that market aisle for the past Ur year - the higher the demand/price, the shorter the time. The shortest period is 24 RL hours; the default is 3 RL days. So, eg, the SDBs empty, 24 hours later they are still empty, frog mail warning you, and 24 hours later the stall is closed. Or 3 days of emptiness or inactivity, warning, 3 days later stall is closed. During the period between the warning and closing, the stall is shuttered and marked as closing, with the option to bid on it should it close. If the owner restocks during that time, then the stall reopens and the bids are discarded. If the stall is closed due to lack of sales, it can't be saved. Bidders are notified of the result.
The central directory for the market, available only on the website and not in game, lists the names and owner of each of the stalls in the market and what is currently on offer there. There is also a real estate page showing unoccupied and closing stalls. When stalls are closing, there is a sign on them that announces it and how long until it becomes available, and how many bids have been placed on it. The market itself has a directory showing what floors are which theme. It may also indicate which floors have unclaimed or closing stalls.
The market takes a small percentage of the sales made by your SDBs.
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Reflections:
This satisfies the desire to scope out real estate and get into the good locations, and I think the bidding could be interesting! I think the 2 month occupancy should also make it "worth it".
The fact that you have to be more dedicated to keep the stalls in the more popular aisles adds the right kind of direction to the community.
Real numbers: Ur at close had about 1500 streets, and about 150,000 registered players (although most were inactive).
Each building as proposed would have between 33 and 121 stalls. If there are markets on 5% or 1 in 20 streets, that would be about 75 markets - giving between 2500 and 9,000 stalls. 1% woud give us 15 markets. So the question is, is that enough? Is it too many markets, and not enough stalls? Even if all the registered players were active, that would be at most 21,000 people above level 14 who'd be eligible to run a stall. Does that tell us anything about feasibility?
@"Scarlett Bearsdale" - I can get behind a 2 month lease period as something that seems like a good 'long enough' to make it worth while period (thanks for taking my comments into account). And again, if someone opted to leave the stall early because it wasn't for them or they neglect it and it becomes empty, it gets recycled into open inventory aids in the stall turn over. (Maybe if they leave the stall early, they get a percent of their rent back based on how long they were there? We got 80% of the cost of house when we sold them.)
Also, I don't disagree that there would be some socializing between stall owners. Honestly, part of why I'd pick a location would be to be near my game buddies...same dynamic as why I picked my home streets. But I'd be on the aisle/street faffing off with them rather than manning my stall...lol.
But one question is to figure out what is the mission of having these stalls in game? Is it to create a marketplace community in Ur? Is it to encourage socializing? Is it to just provide another venue for selling stuff? Is it to build a more permanent connection between homestreets and Ur again? I lean toward the connection between Ur and Homestreets and building Marketplace communities as being the two primary missions.
I seem to remember after posting my stats on player levels, someone marveling at 14% for over level 10 players, since most games only get about 10% of their registered players to be active (have no idea where that stat comes from, but that's what was said). It sort of fits since level 15 and over players dropped to about 8% of registered players. So, 10% of registered players is probably a good stat to consider as number of active players (I think we even see that stat play out in the Alpha testers). Also, remember we were able to have alts and there were some crazy people like me who had over 5 alts. I know I was on the extreme, but if you cut some of the numbers by 25-30% (assuming 1 in 3-4 had only one alt), you might have a better feel for actual player numbers.
Also, don't forget, we are getting Ur back in all its glory with a much smaller starting player base (we're at just under 1100 profiles on the forums right now, but I'm sure that will grow when the game goes into open beta). Once the game is stabilized, I suspect there is a desire to build more regions for Ur (granted in the distant future). But I think that gives time for scaling up things like the marketplaces as Ur continues to grow both in regions and player base.
Does anyone have an idea of how many houses were available in game before they switched to the new model? Just thinking that might be an interesting number to compare...
ETA: Market Parties...hmmm, feels like a 'blow out sale' to me...or a black Thursday sale...or an exclusives showing (like for fine jewelry)...or maybe a modeling show with a runway...or customer appreciation sale...I do like the idea, but as an augmentation of the permanent locations.
EETA: Answering my own question: There were 16 (out of 27) Regions that could take housing in late 2011 (thanks internet archive!), and there were 3-6 streets in each region with houses from a mid-2011 map (so that doesn't take into account more housing units being added as needed). Each street had 25 blocks, and each block had 12 houses (at least GM and GF streets did). So that is 300 houses per street. At 16 regions and 5 neighborhoods per region (doesn't include apartment buildings), that is about 24,000 houses in game in late 2011. I think I mentioned there were currently 44 regions that could probably take market stalls, and if each region only had 1 market building/street, then it would be around 13,200 stalls. If we bump the number to 2 / region, then we have 26,400 stalls. Looks like everyone who would be eligible could get one even at 150,000 players.
I think these are great questions! I'd say that there are a few missions. One would be yeah, a different forum for selling/facilitating the exchange of goods and services between players. (Oh! one kind of stall could be a services stall, where you make yourself available to like, make potions or cocktails on demand or whatnot for players.) But I think that's just the surface level.
Another purpose would be maybe an iMG or currants sink - I imagine that it might be hard to make back your initial stake if you bid really high on a popular stall in order to secure it. There might be a group of players who are more interested in the roleplay than actually turning a profit. Maybe iMG in terms of gaining the ability to customize the stall in the form of a really expensive upgrade card; maybe it also could cost credits if we have them, the way other furniture upgrades sometimes do. I'd like to be able to hang wall decorations on the back wall of the stall, that would be a fun way to customize. Maybe place table decorations on the counter - a great use for those cash registers.
And there would absolutely be a few different kinds of communities and emergent gameplay arise out of shopping and selling. I do think that one aspect of the idea is to get people into a space together more often - for it to be another place you can go where you'll find other players pretty reliably. (For that reason I'd rather start with too few buildings, with higher demand, so that the experience of shoppers is not lonely, and then expand as demand requires. I think that we would also find that stall owners become market shoppers, as they visit the location to keep their stock up and start to learn about the ever shifting landscape of stall types around them. It will be fun also to see people follow popular stalls as they move from location to location.
I like that it may provide a sense of connection between Ur and homestreets, but I do think that the link to the tower could only be one way - otherwise we run into the free-TP issue. Is a link from Ur to homestreets enough, if you can't go back the other way? I'm thinking of it this way - it's a door from the stall to your tower, but it doesn't install a door in your tower going back to the stall. I think you should be able to make TP scripts to right in front of the stall, though, so that could end up being a marketing strategy for someone.
And - I'm seeing the intial fee as the up-front cost to claim the stall, and then the ongoing take of your profits as the "rent" - so I'm not sure you'd get anything back when you close shop, because in a sense, you're not closing "early" you're just not sticking it out? It doesn't really matter much though, it would work either way. That's just my inclination.
Finally, I think that like Towers, Temples, Group Halls, and the like (even Routes, in their way,) they would just generally serve as a locus for player activity after quests and skill acquisition have wound down. They provide a site where player-driven and player-originated activity can arise, which is something you need in a sandbox game, with enough tasks to complete and things to fiddle with to draw players there on a regular basis. And since they're optional, players who aren't interested in playing store can choose to do other things.
As some examples Maplestory has shops it is a cash shop item but even with that there are TONS of stalls, it does time out after a certain amount of time. I do realise were talking a larger game but it would be much worse there if the item was free, for something like this to work you need limits of some sort. Mabinogi and Uncharted Waters you cant have a physical shop unless you have a sub, you can sell from the street though, but only if your online...i can keep naming games but i think you see what Im getting at. Could simply have it that it not only needs to be stocked but you have to be online as well in order for the shop to show up...it needs limitations of some sort
But I thought I was pretty clear about that? "If your SDBs stay either (a) empty for a period of time, or (b) make no sales for a period of time, your stall is closed and becomes available for someone else to claim. Otherwise, if you maintain your stall and the items keep selling you can keep your stall for up to one Ur year (2 RL months)."
I like the idea that your stall is only available when you are logged in, but it would have some pretty fundamental effects on what that would mean for the market space. On one hand, you could create instanced market "aisles" with the stalls that are currently available - but this would mean that you'd lose any sense of real placed-ness. You wouldn't have the same neighbours visit to visit, you wouldn't know "where" to go to find a certain stall, etc. On the other hand, you can create relatively stable stall locations that can be occupied for limited periods of time, but that leads to potential scaling issues.
I'm imagining the markets interfacing with the streets theyre on like enchanted forests, or apartment buildings.
Any kind of housing with a set # of housing slots will not work unless the time you can rent is limited in some manner there needs to be windows for everyone to rent. And long rentals or perm rentals it makes not difference there will be availibilty issues. The only other route that works is everyone gets a stall 24/7 but it does not show up unless its stocked. A set # scenario does not work unless it has time limits, and at that they need to be short. I veiw markets as an occassional thing so something along the lines of can rent for say up to 3 days but cant again for the next 5, can change the # but limit it to x amount of days per week and then you cant again for x amount of days in the same week. Meaning everyone cant rent a stall every week as long as there is a spot but it leaves windows open for others to casue they will be blocked from doing so for a short time after renting a stall. Im more in favor of giving everyone a stall but it doesnt show up in the Market section unless its stocked. I dont like the idea of fighting over housing which if long term renting or perm renting is allowed of set slot market stalls there will be avaibility issues
Any housing section that scales with population needs to be in its own section, Housing, Group Housing, Markets, they all need their own sections, which we enter in whatever way, but they need to be their own. They wont work in wolrd due to scaling issues. Things like Temples, Burecratic Halls, Subways...things like these work in world becasue they have set locations and are mostly unnaffected by how large or small the population is. Markets need to be in their own section id prefer it to be acccessible have an entrance, either its an option on visiting stones, or theres one near subway entrances. Would make the most sense to me but Markets need to be in theri own section with a way to enter it from inwolrd.
In any case to keep the # of stalls down if your stall becasome empty when its restocked it most likely will not be in the same spot. Theres no point in having inactive stalls dissapear and leave empty slots if the spots arent taken by anyone else. But New Housing if no one is on the street it does not exist so maybe something simmilar ?
But I do think it'd be a good idea. I'm also up for player-hosted planned parties, since there's a calendar--why not make it a more social thing--I can purchase a party at a certain time and WOW has a dark-themed Carnival that happens once a month, why not us?
This is so me. Back in Glitch I built my tower into an Herbal Apothecary and throughly enjoyed stocking it, but more so enjoyed theming the tower to be an herbal apothecary. I dressed to go with it and so on. I even bought ad space in someone's glitch newsletter. I never did it mainly as a way to gain currants, but mostly as an extension of my Glitch.
Of course, I could continue to do this when Towers come back (and reinstate my beloved Tower Turnpike route!) but other avenues would be awesome in the future.