How do you buy your Lindens?

Using the blue circle or the option to buy lindens while buying an item could really add up if you're doing it a lot. Every time you do that, you'll be charged the 30 cent charge, and get a bad rate. If you were buying $1 US worth of lindens through the viewer, you'll get a rate of 186L/$. If you buy $10 US through the website at a limit order of 275/L, you'll get an effective rate of 266L/$. If you only buy them occasionally, it won't make a big difference, but if you're getting small amounts several times a week, you should probably start using the website.

The only time I've gone through SLexchange was when the Lindex was messed up. I usually only buy off the Lindex when I need to get a lot of lindens for a land deal.

Anshe Ka-Ching! also deals in L$ pretty good in my experience. SLX good. Linden$ good.

I can't recommend others sorry.

Last spring I actually did a numerical comparison between Lindex and SLX for both buying and selling, quantity L$10,000. I accounted for all fees that I could think of, including the fee for making a one-time purchase using a credit card, through Paypal, for the SLX purchases.

I didn't keep the figures, so won't reprint it here. I came up with this:

1. At the exchange rates then in effect, it was somewhat (not amazingly) cheaper to BUY Lindens on SLX. The difference between SLX's and the Lindex's exchange rate appears to be about the same now.

2. It was somewhat better to SELL lindens on the Lindex.

YMMV.

Presently, all I do is buy Lindens, and I do that on SLX. I put in long-term buy orders (it is a true currency exchange), so usually get a fairly advantageous rate.
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It took me a while to figure it out. But I finally figured out to buy Lindens at the website.

I always set the price. Typically I try to get as many Lindens per USD as possible. I start at $L300 per 1USD and work my way down from there. If I am not in a hurry I'll leave the order in for several days, just in case I get to buy some.

My best was 285 and lowest was 270.

"CX"

Buy direct from Linden. It's the only safe place and even there I'm not 100% sure, not until I hear the sound of change and lindens cash number go up on top of my screen.

When it comes to real life money in sl, it's always a gamble.

I always used to buy in-world (I hadn't noticed the little blue circle - I click on the green numbers showing how many L$ I have instead!), because SLX seemed inordinately complicated.

However, now I've got the hang of SLX I buy all my L$ that way - even after their commission, you get a better rate of exchange, certainly for buying L$ (I've never tried selling them). I tend to deposit about 100 USD at a time in SLX (so I'm only paying one set of Paypal fees - I live in the UK, so the USD gets converted to UK sterling before coming out of my bank account). I then tend to buy around $L15,000 at a time on SLX (from that USD balance) and leave it on SLX. That way I can buy stuff on the SLX website (of course you can do this the other way round by buying L$ in world and paying the ATM to top up your SLX balance).

I like to keep my in-world balance around the $L6,000 mark - and I do this by using SLX ATMs in world to withdraw Lindens when I need them.

This has the advantage that if SL did have big asset server problems and ate all my Lindens, I'd still have a reasonably hefty balance held elsewhere.