Membership information

I've been doing an extensive search on Sl.com and can't find any descriptions on what the different premium memberships give you. Could someone please send me in the right direction so I can make a good decision on which membership would be good for me?

Do you want to buy land on mainland? Need Premium
Do you want to rent land on a private estate? Free acount is fine.

Do you want the ability to send in a greater range of support tickets for them to ignore? Need Premium.

Want a weekly stipend of L$300? Need Premium but remember you pay a monthly fee far far greater than this to receive it.

That's about it.

There are not "different premium memberships". There are "different billing cycles" for it -- monthly, quarterly, yearly. Monthly is $9.95/mth. Quarterly will give a discount on that and yearly will give an even bigger discount. All of those billing cycles still give the same privs to the premium account -- get to buy mainland, get L$300 per week, can file more types of support tickets, can use Live Help.

There is some higher level if you own enough land -- mainland or islands -- but that is TRUE ownership, not the "pretend ownership but really renting of an island".

There is one other thing you can do as a premium member - you can donate your tier to a group.

"Tier" is a sort of tax you pay when you own land, but you don't pay for the first 512 square meters. You can donate this allowance to a group to reduce the group's land expenses.

If you're thinking of owning land, you might try renting first, which (as has been said) you can do with the basic account.

BWAHAHAHA!

I'm not on at consistant times to apply for and have a job, and freebies are kinda cheesey, what I am looking for is L$'s. I want to rent, but don't have the Lindens to do it. Would I just be better off adding L$'s to my account and keep my account free?

Yes.

If you are not planning on purchasing Mainland, then it is cheaper to buy L$ on Lindex when you need them, than to buy a Premium membership and have less than you paid to LL paid back to you as a weekly allowance of L$ (stipend of L$300 a week). If you add up the value of L$300 x 52 weeks it comes to L$ 15,600. But for that same $72 USD (the cost of one year's Premium membership), you can buy L$18,720 on Lindex.

Well, not far greater ...

Assuming 265 lindens/US$ that is 58.86$/year. An annual premium is $72, leaving a difference of $13.14. If you are actually going to use your 512 of land (or donate it) there is another $60 in value. So if you want to have land anyway you have a net gain of around $45.

Also remember, the stipend was lowered to 300 a few years ago from 500. Those of us with accounts from before it was lowered are already in the positive column before you factor in the land.

My brain isn't running on all cylindars so I'm lost. It would be more beneficial to buy L$ as I need it then get the stipend and pay out every month?

Yes, if you are not interested in the 512 tier, owning mainland or the added Linden "support" it is cheaper to just buy L$ as needed.

There is also the argument that Basic members don't get their avatars deleted for non-payment, while Premium members can if their dues fall too far behind.

Yes.

You can spend $72.00 USD on the annual fee to buy a Premium membership, and LL will pay a large part of that back to you as a weekly allowance of L$ (stipend of L$300 a week). If you add up the value of L$300 x 52 weeks it comes to L$ 15,600. Plus, LL has then had the use of your real money for that full year, and you only got L$ in return, which costs them NOTHING.

But for that same $72 USD (the cost of one year's Premium membership), you can buy L$18,720 on Lindex. You get L$ 2,120 more for your money by NOT going Premium.

There used to be a small one-time sign-on bonus, of L$1,000, paid after the first 30 days as a Premium member. I do not know if they still pay that or not, but it still does not offset the difference.

IF and ONLY IF you do not buy land yourself, but instead rent tier out to someone else, and get paid more than about $14.25 USD by that someone for that tier rental, you break even, or possibly get more value than remaining Basic.

If you use the 512 M2 'free tier' to own exactly 512 M2 of mainland, and pay no monthly fees to hold that parcel, then it can be argued that is an additional $60 USD value for being Premium, since 12 months tier on a 512 M2 parcel is $60 USD. But it's no value at all if you don't buy a 512 M2 parcel of mainland to use that 'free tier' on.

That only happens if the account is new, i.e., created at the moment you go premium. If you already have a basic account that you turn into a premium account, you don't get the sign-on bonus.

I know this is nothing to do with the OP's question but I thought I remember reading here in the forums that you could still buy mainland with basic membership.

A Basic member sets up a group, rents tier for that group which in most cases is cheaper than paying LL tier then purchases land for the group.

Does that still work or did it ever work?

Whether it works or not, I'd point out that renting tier from a resident is never cheaper than paying tier to LL...or the tier renter could not remain in business.

Where it becomes advantageous is if you have an amount of land that falls between two of the LL tier levels. Renting just the amount you need is cheaper than paying LL for the square meters you don't own.

Bottom line is you don't get nothing for nothing. Basic or premium, if you want to do anything at all in SL you need to contribute something to the game (or platform for the purists here). That can be real currency, time, or talent. It's up to the individual to determine what is the best (or cheapest) way to do that.........I happen to think a premium is best simply because my $90 USD is paid for by my stipend of $L26,000 which works out to be about $98 per year. That's the quarterly option for payment to LL and the old $L500 per week stipend (the newer $L300 per week stipend is only about $59....not such a deal to be sure). I could get by on less than the $L26,000 which would make the basic vs premium deal less of a deal. But, then I'd have to rent or somehow pay for a place to call my own and probably have to get some "job" for my fun times in SL.

I just depends on what you want to do in SL. For me, a premium membership is the best way. For others it would be somewhat of a waste.

Correct, but I was not referring to individuals so no idea why you mentioned that.
I was referring to an example where as I had at one time 22,000 sqm but had to pay tier for 32768sqm. I then had excess tier which I could loan/rent to a third party and they would use this to rent to others at a slightly higher price per sqm. Much the same as what you say in your second paragraph but the opposite way around.

Very informative, thank you. I think it will be best for me to go the Buy Lindens as I need them route, mainly because I am not on enough to support my decision to go premium, and I really don't need the land. My RL paycheck is slim at times and coming up with the monthly premium payment every month isn't always so easy. Thank you everyone for your input

LL is going to have to do something about this, or they'll find their hoped-for legions of new Nascera residents dumping their Premium memberships as soon as they learn of this disparity.

Possibly not -- there are plenty of us that know about it and are still premium, simply taking our chances that some odd emergency will not keep me away from SL past the point that my bank account is drained of money and my credit card expires.

That's true. I should have been a little more explicit--what could hurt LL with the new people is if this disparity is resulting in more than the very, very occasional account loss (and of course with the newbies all there jumbled together, they will be talking to each other FAR more than is the case with newbies in any other period of SL history other than the first year or two.)

This came up in a recent thread, and someone mentioned the problem to one of the lindens, who replied that it isn't company policy. When she pointed out that it happens (referencing the forum), he ignored her.

I tried to search for this, but didn't find it. Does it ring a bell?

Are you talking about the thread discussing a well known forum person that got locked out of her account? Apparently that thread poofed, but the conversation picked up again in the thread about that thread:
/327/67/355319/1.html

Yes

Not true:

512sqm of tier from LL costs $5 US$ a month

65536sqm of tier from LL costs $195 US$ a month, which works out at about $1.50 US$ a month per 512sqm.

So if you have 65536 sqm, you can easily resell some of it at a profit.

Also some people sell/rent their excess tier because they have more tier than land, you can often pick that up cheaply because getting something for it is better than getting nothing.

You can rent tier for $L1 per sq.m per month. Example: 512 for $L512. That's about $1.98 US.

Also, since you need to form a group to let the tier be donated (one time cost $L100) you get a 10% sq.m bonus as well, making it less than $L1 per sq.m.