Premium Stipend Suggestion

I was thinking about this for a few days now, and it seems like a good a time as any to post it for some comments.

Without taking a side in the ongoing debate about stipends, one way to reduce the influx of stipend lindens is to allow premium members the option to turn off the weekly stipends in exchange for some other bonus. Perhaps allowing an additional 512 M of land to be held at no cost would work.

This would allow newer members who rely on stipends to continue to collect, but reduce the new stipends being added into the game.

The direct cost to LL would probably be slight, and if it helps with the economy overall, the indirect benfit to LL would hopefully exceed the small loss in tier revenue.

While I personally love that idea, it has the negative result in taking cash out of LL's pockets since land tier is what keeps the servers running.

However, a cool idea might be the ability to automatically donate to The Shelter, Yadni's or the Ivory Tower to help with their expenses since newbies will no longer get stipends.

If I may, both ideas might be a bit on the off-side.

Making donations to something like the Shelter or YadNi is a great idea... but it doesn't remove L$ from circulation (ie sink them) which is what is badly needed.

The idea of Premiums swapping half their stipends for another 512m of land would be great, but it would have two major problems:

1) It would cost LL. While them "printing" 250L costs them nothing more than computer posting time, land requires servers and electricity and maintenance.

2) It would cause an immediate economic upheaval as people stopped renting land to opt for their own 1024m plot. Most of the good land barons out there are offering their renters a really good deal-- a deal that would immediately disappear if LL offered 1024m with a Premium membership.

That would be bad for LL too, because when Land Barons can no longer rent land... they stop renting it from LL. LL has already acknowledged that land barons help them, because they're the main bread and butter of LL. They'd be foolish to do something that would hurt the ones who pay their bills.

Ain't Gonna Happen JimBo. By increasing the non-paying tier, it takes
"REAL" USD dollars out of the revenue stream from Linden Labs. In exchange
for free money they print like water that cost them nothing.

Believe me, if it means reducing any US Dollar Revenue, you can forget it.

Of course, the other option is for Premium Account holders to voluntarily stop their weekly stipend payments.

It's time for those of us who say stipends are bad for the economy to put our Lindens in our pie holes. Visit this thread to do just that:

/130/a0/109283/1.html#post1056787

I expect Linden Labs to honor their aggrement to Lifetime $225 account holders and continue to pay us 500 lindens a week.

Most sane intelligent people know that this is neither the problem, nor the solution. That's probably why you'll only get about half a dozen 'volunteers' - and none of them will actually do anything about it, they're only saying it to support their trolling alts.

There is no way to tell whether someone is a Basic or Premium unless on their profile it says they have donated land to a group. Chances are most of the pro-stipend killers are just basic alts anyway.

Hence no, I am not giving up what I deserve and pay for.

Lewis

The change in land tier was only one possibility, the real suggestion was giving up the 500 dollar stipend in exchange for _something_ of equal value. I was hoping that others with more experience would have some other ideas.

But as far as LL not doing it because they want the tier income at all costs, that ignores the fact that LL is already willing to let accounts hold 512 M at no cost. Increasing that amount to 1024 would mean very little to the rich, but would help the smaller players. While the smaller players would not contribute USD, the loss is about 5 bucks. If the help to the overall economy is greater than this small loss, the there would be no cost to LL.

The change in land tier was only one possibility, the real suggestion was giving up the 500 dollar stipend in exchange for _something_ of equal value. I was hoping that others with more experience would have some other ideas.

But as far as LL not doing it because they want the tier income at all costs, that ignores the fact that LL is already willing to let accounts hold 512 M at no cost. Increasing that amount to 1024 would mean very little to the rich, but would help the smaller players. While the smaller players would not contribute USD, the loss is about 5 bucks. If the help to the overall economy is greater than this small loss, the there would be no cost to LL.