Instant year's stipend when buying a year for 72 bucks?

Hi Petunia!

I just wanted to point out for the record, that I have less than 1,000 posted messages here whereas you're about to top 1,500... so I maintain I still retain a certain amount of sanity. Although mind you, it is fading rapidly. Just thought I'd point that out in our continuing race for high number of posts. LOL

Actually, while I disagree with most of ReserveBank's philosophies, I have to give this one credit. Pretty brilliant, really.

You can place 5 alts on a single credit card (or as he pointed out, gift card, if that is indeed possible). Each alt gets 512m of land. You sell the land (sometimes for as high as L3000 or even more, depending on location). That comes to about ten bucks US per account, or $50US for 5 accounts on one card.

You hoarde up the L$ and by the end of the year, you have a total of 130,000L. You paid a grand total of $360 for those 5 accounts (5 x $72). You sell the L$ for about $464 (at the current L280/$1 selling point).

Total profit for 5 accounts for one year: $154. Return on investment: 30%. To earn $20,000 a year, a person would have to have 130 cards and $46,800US in investment capital. It would take a lot of time of course to set up that many accounts, but not nearly as much as a 40 hour a week job at Burger King. Seems to me to make perfect sense.

You could even increase your profit by renting the land for US$4 a month to non-premium members, for a total rental profit of $240 a year ($48 x 5), increasing your annual profit to $344, or $68.80 per account. That is almost a 100% return on investment!!! (I think I have those figures right. Calculating on the fly; you might want to double-check me. )

(Of course, then you have the headaches of land management, but hey... it might be worth it).

That's not a bad investment at all. I know people who would sell their stock for such an investment. And the only risk you're taking is:

1) If LL goes under.
2) If the L$ economy wipes out.
3) LL does something bonkers that changes the entire scheme of things.

I think these are reasonable risk factors for any investment-minded person.

Philip has hosted two town halls in the past year and a half. One was held to spin the fallout over LL driving an extremely popular resident-run service out of business. The other was held to announce an increase in the cost of island sims and a fundamental change in the auctions from smaller parcels being sold to region-sized auctions only, thereby driving smaller purchasers out of the auction process.

Makes you wonder what has sufficiently motivated Philip to make a public appearance...

Shush.... Your giving away the keys to the kingdom.. ehheehhe
Before you know it, Jonas will become a Bond Trader.. lol

All you have to do is setup an 8/hr work schedule. That would
come out to about 25 accounts per hour for 8 hours of work for
5 days. Such a job would net about US$20,000 a year.


1000 Premium Accounts = US$20,000 Profit
2000 Premium Accounts = US$40,000 Profit
4000 Premium Accounts = US$80,000 Profit
5000 Premium Accounts = US$100,000 Profit

Oh course, after working like a monkey on 25/accounts per
hour for 8 days / 5 days a week, 52/wks a year. You get
tired... Thats when the offshoring of your Bond-Farm
starts looking like a good idea...


Then take the profits and reinvest them into more accounts.
Linden Labs doesn't care because they just print the money
like it was water.. Its the L$ Buyers who are stuffing my pockets.
As long as the L$ doesn't hit L$362, I'm making money.

Stipend Farming is much more profitable than being a
Land Baron or widget seller.

maby Phillips announcement will be that they are raising the price of the yearly and reducing the premium stipend putting all you farmers out of business.
i could live with that though

Actually, as much as I hate to admit it, there are probably 2 steps that LL needs to take right now:

1) Eliminate L50 stippend for non-paying users
2) Reduce Premium user stippend to L250

While these steps may make sense from an economy standpoint, they might not be the best choice from a marketing standpoint. It costs them pretty much nothing to hand out L$500 and it keeps Premium users happy.

Of coruse, if they were to change things, ReserveBank would have a coronary.

Wow... I think that's the most compelling reason for removing stipends I've heard yet.

They'd lose so many customers it wouldn't be funny. While I, at this point, wouldn't drop premium (due to alnd holdings and busines sin world and I won't dump that all on my parters), I would actively tell people not to upgrade, and quit putting my monthly cash amounts into the game.

Edit: aside from the fact more money leaves the market daily through sinks than enters weekly through the stipends..that might make sense

With the current limits being at 2 accounts per credit card and 5 max per household the above math is just fantasy. Okay sure I imagine one could pull some tricks, like getting a non postal service PO Box as many of these services let you drop the "PO Box" and just use the number with an apt. or suite prefix. This'll get one at most a few dozen accounts but more then that? Come on, give LL some credit. It's not very difficult for an automated system, let alone a human employee, to skim through the new signups once in a while. Dozen of signups from the same region, bank cc issuer, etc. I'm sure sets off a red flag.

I don't think you can do 25 accounts per hour. And you've calculated no overhead costs (like no timely cost getting the credit cards, etc). And why do you think Indian people work for free? Their cost can run from 3-400 USD to 8-900 USD i think, but you still didn't count on any organizing and supervising cost. If they run off with your credit cards and all your money, who will you call, mommy?
Each Indian needs a broadband connection, or at least a netcafe. Each one needs a machine (will you give them the money in advance? will you travel to india?)



Here's a better business:
- A cup of coffee costs about 15 cents
- Yet it sells for 2-3 dollars (let's say)

Oh, wow, what a business! Just sell one million cups of coffee, and you've raked in TEN MILLION USD in profits! It beats your petty farming business idea like 100 times!

PS: Tell you what: real life banks 'print money' (they actually multiply it) each and every day.

To bring you up to speed on how the globalized world works,
I offshore to an Indian Firm, the staffing issues are their
problem.... I just pay a flat rate for work done. I have no
concerns about their bandwidth, salaries, etc...

Red Flag? Please.. Don't be silly..

a) LL has no incentive to police such, because they are getting
US$72 for every premium account and in exchange, giving me
a free supply of L$26,000/yr which cost them nothing to create.
They just pull it out of thin air... I just sell it to whomever wants
L$ and is willing to pay US$ for it.

b) You've be suprised with what you can get away with when you
you try.


Don't worry, Yiffy, you couldn't understand since you aren't in
the farming business.

RBD is teh funny.

I take it by your above comment and previous posts in this thread that you're involved in farming L$ using lots of accounts? If so, I'd be interested in hearing how many accounts you have since LL doesn't police or care according to you.

If memory serves me, there is a limit to the number of accounts allowed per IP address.

LL has no obligation to refund your money if they cancel your 1000 accounts. It's in their best interests to do so (as it would stablize the economy).

RBD, be nicer to the other forum members.

Seems like you don't know much about the real world.

But don't expect Indians to do it for free, or just a bowl of rice per day. You might have no concerns over salaries, machines, bandwidth, but they'll still be on the cheque. And I can tell you something: it'll be far from free.

And I don't suppose that you'd just be sending them over 1000 credit card numbers. If you did, expect a long time in jail for cc fraud

Get real, and get your feet on the ground.

RBD *lol*

which school did you visit? Surly not a business one.

I guess you never heard of Public Proxy Servers?
A new IP address with every use...

http://www.publicproxyservers.com/

Umm No Zonax, its a business, not a criminal enterprise.
You buy PrePay Debt cards with real money. You setup the
accounts and pay $72 like everybody else. You then send
your spreasheet of account logins and passwords to a firm
in Indian which will have their minions login into your accounts
send the Linden Dollars to (1) master account, and then
sell all the L$ in the master account on LindenX.

Pretty simple process if I do say so myself. Too bad you
are unable to comprehend.

Yes, the limit is 5 I believe per household and two per AV unless special clearance is obtained. I would be rather cautious about this concept as it appears to be outside what Linden currently allow but it is not for me to judge

You're doing it wrong dude. I can make you a script to automate that in five minutes. I mean, it's not like llSetTimerEvent and llGiveMoney are rocket science
You would never, ever, need to log in to any of those accounts again. Unless somehow the object lost debit permissions, in which case you would have to login to grant them again.

Sounds like you've got it all worked out.

Enough talk, go to it! Make that 20k/40k/60k USD. As pointed out, you don't even need sweatshop workers, a basic LSL script running inworld does the same thing. Go out, buy a bunch of plastic and start signup up accounts. Prove everyone wrong and show that you're right about LL not caring so long as they get that 72USD per premium account.

Keep talking over and over about what most believe is nonsense. Or, prove us wrong.

Hi Jon,

This comparison is a little off balance. I'm not buying a bond, I'm buying a service. When I buy a US government bond for real US dollars, I'm getting real US dollars when it matures. When I buy a premium Second Life account for real US dollars, I'm getting fictional funny money.

I may or may not be able to turn this fictional funny money into any real US dollars at the end of a year. Linden Lab may not even be around at the end of a year. When US bonds are purchased for real US dollars but pay back "Linden Dollars" or some other fictional funny money, we can talk about this being some sort of RL investment. For now, it's a subscription to a game, which includes a dispersal of fictional game funny money.

Correct Shaun.

It is a type of so called "junk bond" with no security.

More to the point RBD is suggesting that the successful implimentation of this money making idea is okay when he/she has yet to address the issue of it being technically against the spirit and letter of Lindens standard TOS.