transfering the L around....

hmm seems I am having a brain fart this morning.....

ok so I believe I did this before not sure.
Can I put some L that I have into my account on the web site so it reflects there instead of in world?

kthxbi

You can sell them on Lindex and then they go into your account as US dollars. Is that what you mean?

well thanks
but No I dont want to sell them. I would like to keep the L in my name just as credit on my account. So it could say pay tier or whatever. Also I dont like to keep any decent amount in my account in world at anytime, just dont trust anything that can steal or take your L.

Well to pay tier to Linden Labs it needs to be US dollars. If you have a US dollar balance they will automatically take from that first before charging your credit card.
If you are just talking about stashing linden dollars somewhere... you can give them to an alt... or.. give them to me to hold onto for ya.

You can not pay tier to LL with L$. You have to sell them on Lindex, which will put the profit in your account's $US balance. Your account's $US balance is what tier is drawn from first, then your payment method (credit card).

that's what "selling" them is. you basically trade them for US dollars, but they sit in LL control - after that step, you can leave the money there for tier payments, "buy" them back, or cash them out for real money.

ah ha ty ty

If you want to keep them as Lindens instead of USD for tier, but not have so easy access to them you can either give them to an alt or put them of for "sale" at Lindex but at a price noone is willing to pay. If you offer say 200L per dollar its highly unlikely that someone will buy (and if you should be so "unlucky" as to sell, you can easily buy back for a better price).

Xstreet still does not have a shared balance with y our SL account - you could always deposit them there.

You can have dollar credit on your account.

If you go to My Account on secondlife.com

and click on Increase Your Credit (on the left menu)
you can pay dollars into your account.

.

interesting, I always thought real life money only moved one way with LL, can a basic account also get USD for real from LL by giving them L$?

I suppose the idea is that you have a reserve of dollars, and if LL has to charge you money, they pull if from there. Also, if they need to give you dollars (for sale of Lindens), they put it into that pot.

.

Make and pay an alt that you only use as a sort of bank.

A lot of people do that

how do basic accounts can swap L$ for USD with LL? and do they respect exchange rates both way? (like, would it be possible to make a profit in L$ by swapping back and forth at the right times?)

Yes, basic accounts can sell L$ on the Lindex and get USD. There are fees associated both with converting L$ to USD and for getting the USD out of SL.

Just like anyone else. Sell the L$ on Lindex, either market sell or at a specified asking price. The L$ get converted to $US in your $US balance when sold. Then go to the "My Account" page and cash those out via PayPal, for real money. I do it at least twice a month, every month, and in the 3.5 years I have been in SL I have always had Basic accounts, never Premium.

The two most popular ways for doing this are with the LindeX and on XStreet SL.

It is possible to make a profit. However, the L$ is relatively stable, so timing isn't easy. Instead, there's a spread between buying and selling rates that results in a profit until the fees are taken out. For small quantities, the fees would eat up all the profits. However, the fee for buying L$ on the LindeX is a fixed amount, 30 cents US, regardless of the size of the transaction. Hence, for large enough quantities, the fee per L$ is small enough that you can turn a profit.

For the longest time, the spread would be 11L$, and you could make a profit on $50 or $100 investment, US. However, in recent months, the spread has been only 10L$ (with rare exceptions), so you need to invest significantly more to turn a reliable profit.

wait, is that other residents buying my L$? I thought someone here said Linden Lab would also give USD for people in exchange for L$...

Linden Lab runs the Lindex exchange. For the most part, it is other residents who buy and sell L$ there. Linden Lab does, on occasion, buy or sell large chunks of L$ themselves, to regulate the price of the L$.

so in some occasions you might get real money from LL, but it is more common that you're just getting money from other people while LL keeps the money oiiginally used to buy the L$?

Yes. If you buy L$, you are usually buying from other residents. If you sell tghem, the same applies. Linden Lab only buys or sells L$ for money as a means of regulating the microcurency, so it doesn't have rampant inflation or deflation.

Sales of L$, in either direction, are not a direct money-maker for Linden Lab. But they DO get a very small commission on every sale, in either direction, between residents. They also get a small commission fee when you cash out for real money.

The big places where LL gets money direct from residents is on Mainland auctions for new or reclaimed land, Mainland property tier payments, and on Premium Membership dues. When LL auctions a new Mainland sim or reclaimed/abandoned Mainland parcel that they own, that is pure profit for them. When you pay your monthly fes for Mainland, or for owning a Private SIm, that is pure profit for LL. When you purchase your own private island, Homestead or Openspace Sim, after the actual server costs are accounted for, it's mostly profit for LL. When you buy a Premium membership, they pay most of that back to you in weekly L$ stipend payments. (They keep the real cash, and pay you in L$, which cost them nothing.)

According to the Sink/Source data for May, they sold 134,400,000 L$ on the Lindex that month, or a bit over half a million USD. I'd call that a money maker.

I've never heard of them buying L$, though I suppose it could happen, particularly if people start leaving SL in droves. Usually there are more people signing up, and hence ever increasing demand.

I played with a spreadsheet and it seems that to profit from selling all the L$ in my main account and then buying them back, I would need to sell at 172 per USD and buy them at 182 USD, for a profit of L$15 aproximatly for each round, increasing per round, (I could have a bigger profit, but then the buy and sell price would start to get too distant), but this wouldn't work if I sold and bought from the same person because then the person would be loosing aproximatly L$342 per round also increasing per round :/

edit: the the issue with the other person's loss of money also means it would be possible to partner with someone and exchange L$ and dollars back and forth to try to have both profiting, doing it like that both loose money

ps:my math is probably wrong

edit2: aparently the way LL set their fees, there isn't a loophole where no matter the direction the money goes it always comes with profit for both parties. But don't take my word for it, please do your own math in case I messed up somewhere

I don't know about your math, but if you were to buy L$100,000 at the current best LindeX rate of 269L$/USD, then turn around and sell it at the current best LindeX rate of 259L$/USD, you'd make a profit of 6 cents US.

I have the impression there is a point where things flip and you make profit selling cheaper than you bought, but things still won't be symmetric :/

and yeah, I hadn't noticed that the results showed simply the obvious truth that usually you profit if you sell for more than you bought it for Xp