Premium Membership is FREE!

/me laughs. Because being a beta tester here is a LOT like beta-testing heroin. *cackles*

LL would only pay attention if a TON of people suddenly cancelled their premium membership (the only real power you have in this instance). But...hardly anyone does, because they've become addicted.

Too true, Hate. Which is the entire reason I don't have a Premium membership. Rather than fork over a regular amount of money every month, I only "pay" LL when I feel like it. Which , these days, isn't very much at all.

Indeed.. I'm not addicted! I just... don't feel the need to stop ^^

I had a quarterly plan - but I was without internet for quite a while - even changed countries, so I was without a computer for a while. That meant I couldn't update my payment method, and haven't had any means to pay. So, next time (a few months later) when I payed my 22 dollars of debt, logged back, found out that - according to the wonderful terms of service - Linden deleted my inventory and took all my lindens. Which, I must add, was worth more than the lousy 22 bucks I owed to them - for a service I wasn't using.
The best part is - it can only happen if you a premium account. Basic accounts can remain inactive indefiniatly...

Instead of injecting heroin, can I inject nanocomputers into my blood so that when we can plug our brains into SL, I can more fully enjoy the experience?

Please sign me up for this.

Oh pipe down. You just saw "Free" in the title and came running.

Speaking of being out of the country, does anyone know how LL handles service members who get sent over to Iraq? One would hope that it could suspend their membership until their return. I know that gyms and stuff do that; they'll suspend your account, keep you active, but not charge you for the time you're gone.

Knowing Linden, they probably triple bill you, seize your land and Inventory and tell your next of kin you were Killed in Action.

Not funny.

LL is not a charity, it is a business. [Indeed, a business whose primary funding comes not from premium memberships (<20% of revenues now), but from tier, Venture Capital, and angel investors.]

People should become premium if they feel that the product "SL Premium Membership" serves their needs. They should not do it as a gift to LL - that is giving LL false feedback as to the value of their Premium Membership offering, and in the long run does not serve LL well.

I felt I need the premium membership - I liked the 'game', I wanted land to build on, I spent money to get L$ (yes, I didn't feel like using a nekkid woman body and dance...).

But they taken the joy away. Let me tell you what I'll do now - I'll keep using the blank account (they even deleted my friends list...) and keep getting the 300 lindens a week. But I cancelled the payment method, and will simply wait for them to notice. At that time, I wawe them bye bye, leave them with the debt, and use a free account opened up on a different email... Yes, it's shady, yes, it's even borderline illegal. But What they did was legal all the way but still annoying as hell...

And we LOVE you for it! Well, that and your 9.8 rating!

Lindal,

How would one rent out ones tier? I can understand buying (free) land and renting that, and it would be pure profit if you get any takers.

NinjaLand (my group) both buys and rents tier to many people.

We pay 0.15/sqm/week (77L for 512sqm per week or 333L per month) for those who rent their tier to us. It's finally automated and working great.

We will rent our tier to others for 0.25/sqm/week.

Being premium allows me to buy land on the mainland and be my own boss. I don't have to answer to or rely on anyone else except LL to maintain that ownership. And I can do any damn thing I want with the land and my builds.

It also entitles me to bitch and complain about lack of or poor services. Anyone who is not paying membership fee's to LL to play this game is not entitled to bitch about it, or entitled to any customer service.

If you like this game and want to help make it successful, pay your fair share to help suppoort it. If everyone playing it paid a little bit to LL to support Second Life, then they could probably afford to hire more staff to fix the bugs and provide better customer support.

Sorry, I disagree, you are not paying your share. You are not contributing much at all directly to LLabs. It probably does not even cover the cost of your inventory load on the already overworked servers. People who pay the membership fee are doing more to support SL then you are. L$ you put into the economy does benefit the economy but most of it goes into the pockets of businesses, but very little trickles down to LL.

Oh, I can't agree less. The L$ that Linden generates is fiction. It's not real. It's pure income for LL. Invented out of thin air. Doesn't actually exist. Not backed by anything. get the point?

Couple that with how they sink the money back out, through tier, service charges, and land sales, and they're making a killing. As long as SL continues to grow and LL needs to inject cash into the economy to keep the exchange rate to US$ constant, they are making money.

All the L$ that I buy from them, which is imaginary yet bought with real US$, goes to business owners, who invariably give most of it back to LL in the form of tier, advertising costs, etc. As we all know, very few turn any significant profit.

And so the cycle continues.

The $ value I spend on L$ is significantly more than any monthly premium charge.

Literally, how do you do it? Is there a button somewhere I didn't see? Do you have to be premium to rent tier?

Thanks!

She's paying more than LL requires her to (which is zero). Every time LL converts $US to $L they get a slice, and if the $L goes back to RL, they get a slice again. (If it doesn't, they get to keep the whole sum, but frankly, that model doesn't fly when you toss it.)

Furthermore, she's contributing to the SL economy, giving content providers incentive to create new content, making SL more enjoyable for all.

It's up to LL to choose their business model. I believe it would be a poorer experience without people like Hate. Less lag, perhaps, but less everything else as well.

I wondered about how people do that I pay 25 dollars a month for tier, plus finally was able to upgrade to yearly membership.
Most of the land I own now is covered by friends donations but over the last year I spent about 1000 usd.
Only advantage I see in not having premium account is not spending money because you can't or won't spend it here.
For what I spent here I could have gotten a newer cheap computer, cheap low pixel camera and drawing tablet that I can't afford in real life but I had lot of fun here too and its nice have space to do what I want with it.
I definitely could use additional funds for texture uploads if I did renting out my spare tier but I wondered what the risk were if there is any.
I thought about making a sign saying "Will Draw you anything for uploads and tier payments" but getting noticed might be pain in butt or more expensive then worth.
I am not sure if I could really draw everything yet. I couldn't make skins for people.

No, actually. $Ls are a commodity. They have value. That's why you buy them. And they're not pure income for LL. When you buy on the Lindex, you buy from other players, not LL. They just get a tiny cut. A commission. You are paying them peanuts every time you buy Lindens, compared to what premium account payers pay. Premium account payers who also tend to buy Lindens as well.

I wasn't clear in my post. When L$ are exchanged, you are right (excepting the service charges). But LL currently injects more L$ into the system than are sold by other residents, to keep the exchange rate hovering around $265. And that "money" comes from nowhere.

Even so, consider all the sinks in place. L$ is drained out of the economy that way. Yet it finds it's way back in... See last paragraph.

The premium membership is nothing more than another income source amongst many. To claim that certain sources are "allocated" to certain costs is something only a few Lindens could do.

ArchTX, you seem to be under the impression that LL's revenues support it, so if they have more revenue, they will have more to invest in the game. LL's expenses are greater than the revenue they make, and so if residents pay more, all that will do is decrease the rate at which LL burns through its cash on hand. (Cash that came from investors). Additional revenue will not necessarily be re-invested in the game - as Hate points out, it is impossible to say what LL would do with it. Most likely it would simply go to decrease LL's "burn rate".

At no point has LL begged any of its fervid members to give it money. It goes to people with REAL money for that.

Hate is correct. By contributing to tier (~70% of LL's current revenue), and feeding the economy, (which economy is the source of most of the venture capitalist's interest in LL) she is making a very significant contribution to LL's success. I make the same contributions.

You do not need to be premium. I've got several customers who used to pay VAT to LL and now rent tier from my group.

You invite me to join your group and tell me how much tier you want to rent (For example, you need 466sqm of tier donated to a group to own 512sqm). I donate the tier. You pay me for the amount of tier you've requested on a weekly or monthly basis.

For those who want to rent their tier to me, it's just the reverse. I send you an invitation to my group and you donate your tier, and I pay you.

Please. The vast majority of Linden income comes from tier. Premium memberships in and of themselves are a drop in the bucket. There are only 90k people paying anywhere from 72-120 USD a year. Folks, they maybe make $1M at best off membership fees, whereas they make hella more than that per month off tier alone, and land sales. LL knows where its bread is buttered, and if premium meant anything to them, they would do more to attract premium members. The island model works so nicely that they can just pay lip service to getting premiums. They are just too greedy and short sighted now to open up mainland ownership to everyone, because they want that extra mil. In time, when they get used to their scale, the scales may fall off their eyes and they'll realize how much MORE money they can make with a viable business model that permits everyone to own mainland.