Do you think this could work?

Im thinking about renting tier to people who are in between tiers or for people just wanting to pay tier in lindens. You could own a 1024sq.m parcel for 2048$L a month which is about $8 dollars, $7 cheaper than with LL. Or you could have tier for 1/2 sim but want just an extra 1024sq.m which you could rent the tier from me.

What do you think? Prices are not final yet i don't know if to do a set price or dependent on how much you need.

Some land traders rent out tier but for prices that are much less than what you offer.

You're forgetting that when the Lindens say $15 for 2048, they also include the free 512 that comes with a premium account, so that would mean your $15 gets you 2560 in fact. Also the going rate on GOM now is $4.08 for 1000 L.

Thats not a final price just checking for flaws in my thinking and to see what people think of the idea.

It's already being done by a number of people.

However, if you do it, try to build a community around it. I think it's quite likely that LL will probably frown upon people just randomly renting out their tier without adding any value.

Huh? Like they can have a say in what people decide to do with their paid tier? I don't think so. And if they do, they will find themselves rapidly losing customers, so they have to weigh that.

First of all, few people are likely to get in the tier-renting business. It is just way too risky. It is so hard to collect, and so hard to trust people with land and tier and groups, much of the time, they screw you.

What I would like to see is the appearance of a reputable tier-provision business. It would provide both non-profit and commercial tier, a kind of Builders' Association. It would have to be made up not only of the most trusted players with long-term high profiles and reputable business practices, they'd have to be wealthy enough and patient enough to build in the considerable buffers they'd need against all the abuse, fraud, and idiocy that the ordinary player can subject them to.

Anything that players can do to rally together and pool their tier and help end the Tier-Anny is all to the good.

If this becomes the "any reason or no reason" that the Lindens expel you from the game, well, they are then rooting against player cooperation and player solidarity and preventing their world from growing, so they are no better than tsarist-era landowners who made serfs endlessly pay quit-rent. And their era, too, will come to an end.

Well, it is risky. I guess you do have to buy the land from LL up front, so they are getting something out of the deal.

Well the first idea i had was not to just rent places out but to rent tier to people if it's not worth tiering up.

E.G Blaze has half a sim at $120/month, but he sees this brilliant 5000sq.m plot which hes just gotta have but realises he will have to tier up to $195 which is a $75 increase OR he can pay me $L7500 (example) a month for me to provide tier thus saving $30 assuming exchange rate is $4.

Now these are just rough estimates at prices etc but i can't see why Blaze would not go for that deal unless

- He doesn't trust me (doesn't know me so no reason to trust me)

- He thinks he will get more land and get better value for money.

This is assuming blaze owns a big plot, for smaller plots you could actually save money by renting tier for 1.5sq.m

If LL don't like then they can always offer an extra tiers between 1/2 and a full sim for example.

Yes, that is exactly the use I would think to put this service to -- the person who faces, say, an emergency buy problem because somebody is selling out next to their land, and they worry about what the next owner will bring -- a griefing club? An idiot white cube of death? Or let's say somebody has been carefully trying to take over a sim, waiting for it to settle down after all the first-land clutter and frenzy of land flips by barons and would-be barons -- they need to be in the right place at the right time to get this. So, this service would enable them to do things like postpone their tier bill until it "hits right" for them, i.e. they might wait to make a sale of other property, and take past their bill deadline to do it, because Lindens whallop you with tier for the coming month, based on what you used in the existing month, so you have to scurry and tier down by the end of the month before the bill date, or you get whacked again the following month, even if you were only 1 meter over tier for one hour of one day (that's why I find that tier system so ebil).

I don't see what blaze means by "getting it from the Lindens up front". Of course somebody in this equation has to buy the land and pay the normal Linden tier, or have paid-up normal Linden tier to rent out.

What I have found in attempting to do this for people is that they screw you. They might have you take a piece of land into your group, become a member of that group, and put in their tier. So far so good. Or they might ask you to cover their land with your tier, which is in your group, with you as officer, so that you can sell it out from under them at any time, when they, with member-only status, cannot sell it. So far so good.

But...things happen. People suddenly pull out their tier in the middle of the night, leaving you with a huge gap to cover instantly or face Linden seizure of your land! You get 24 hours grace on this, and the Lindens e-mail you a warning first -- but what if you are offline and you miss it! It's a terrible risk. I don't know whether the Lindens seize ALL the land in the group, or only the amount that is not covered, but who wants to find out the hard way??? That's why I'm saying only the most stable and large business with plenty of room to keep *as much* tier as a buffer as they rent out, let's say, can afford.

From your perspective, if you've put tier out on a land that a person then later doubles back and doesn't take, the worst thing that happens is you have a dog piece of land you can't sell because it was important to that person, being next to them or whatever, but it's unmarketable to you. So you might take a loss on it. And you'd have to have a business then that trades land that makes a solid profit to cover the losses that will happen from having to eat dog land that has been tiered but then dropped by your customer.

Sure, they will have paid for the tier. But the margins are so slender! If someone wants to pay tier -- they usually just pay the Lindens. The transaction is anonymous, that is, only the Lindens get your credit card and name, and not a player who might attack you on the forums or grief you in the game. It's just more solid that way. You would have to offer tier at a price less than what people pay the Lindens, but high enough to cover your own tier costs. Look at those numbers, and even allowing for 10 percent bonus on land groups, yo are talking about skinny, skinny margins.

Still, I believe it is a good thing to rent out tier in this game. I have rented it from others and rent it out to others, but I tailor it to very specific situations with people I know over time and trust more or less.

This is a game where idiocy, opportunism, and malice run unchecked. Be careful.