Upgrade to Premium?

I thought when I upgraded to premium I got some credits and my daily buy limit was raised??? I am confused please post. Thank you so much for your help.

I believe that upgrading from Basic to Premium does not qualify for the L$1000 bonus, but you will see your first L$300 appear in a day or so (that's what happened to me). I don't think Premium has any effect on your daily limits, which are based on age in SL if I understand it correctly. Jackie.

Oh? Well. What is the benefit of having premium? Sorry to ask. Just signed up. Thank you.

You will get a weekly L$300 stipend.

As for the signup bonus, "You will receive your signup bonus 45 days after the signup date, assuming your credit card has been accepted." (from the relevant page).

As for the buy limit, this is independent of basic/premium status. Give it some time, as you are very new. Details here: http://secondlife.com/currency/describe-limits.php



Details here: https://secure-web17.secondlife.com/whatis/plans.php?lang=en

I elaborated on my reasons for becoming Premium a while ago on my blog: http://stindberg.blogspot.com/2009/02/why-i-became-premium-after-27-months-in.html

You only get the signup bonus if your account is brand new -- meaning that you create it at the time you are signing up as a premium user.

You do NOT get the signup bonus if you have a free account that you convert to premium.

Also, there is a very low limit to your linden-buying for the first three days.

Unless you want to OWN land, or donate your land allowance to a group (which is a nice thing to do), there is no advantage to being premium. The numbers favor simply buying lindens, which you can do using a free account.

[Edited to add: I had a free account from some time in August, 2008. When I went premium in November, I called support to ask where was my bonus, and I was told that I wouldn't get one for the reason given above.]

The main benefit of becoming premium is that it allows you to buy mainland and lets you own 512 sqm without paying tier. As Paola says, you also get L$300/week pocket money.

Payment of the L$1000 is erratic and there is much confusion over whether you get it at all unless you sign up for premium straight away when you create your account. I got mine, but it was much later than 45 days after becoming premium. I wasn't really expecting it as I had been basic for six months before upgrading.

Oh, and you get better support as a premium, for what that's worth. Really, though, unless you want to buy mainland it's probably not worth it.

Premium costs you $9.95 per month, you can buy 512 sq.m of land (more than that if you pay more, of course), and you receive 300L a week (that doesn't go up if you pay more)(the 1000L as stated here, is iffy.) 512 sq.m of Mainland will also cost you about 2000L to buy. (First Land used to be free for first time buyers, not sure if that's still offered, but it was lot more iffy than the 1000L sign-up bonus)

If you don't go Premium, your $9.95 a month will buy you about 2500L. I just checked, and you can rent 1000 sq.m of Estate land for about 500L a week.

Do the math - it doesn't work out in favor of going Premium.

You do have to be careful about renting from people other than Linden Labs - there's nothing that stops them from taking your money and run, except the bad rep they'd get from it. People will tell you to research their reputation, but you can't do it here - you aren't allowed to bad mouth other players here. I've found that researching them is not really necessary if you don't give them a lot of money upfront. There are a lot of nice places that only require you to pay for a week up front. And you can tell a lot about them by examining your potential neighbors.

The one I'm currently renting from required a weeks payment to "purchase" (it's just really just a non-refundable deposit), and then one weeks rent, but it seemed especially nice (I despise flat square little islands - but you can get those really cheap). So far, it's been worth the risk (none has run off with my money, and only one later turned the land into flat square little islands. But no worries, I just rented from someone else )

Another reason I like renting from Estate owners is that they usually have, and enforce "covenants", which generally prevent you or your neighbors from building something really obnoxious. So I usually find that my neighbors builds are more aesthetically pleasing than is typical on the Mainland. However, if I want to build something obnoxious (which is usually just things I'm practicing on), all have allowed me to do so if I do it above 400 meters or thereabouts (tip - just create a bunch of flattish squares that covers your land to create a platform, link them, then change its "z" coordinate to 400 or above. If you don't know what this means, use "Search" for Ivory Towers - it's a great place to learn how to make things.)

Unless you're really picky (which you don't need to be if you're just starting out - just rent something else when you're ready for more), you don't need to pay the non-refundable deposit that I did. You can easily find something with only a 500L outlay, which is just 1/5 the monthly cost of a Premium account, likely twice the amount of land, and a lot better "play nice" rules enforcement and customer service. Just make sure that the rules are something you can live with.

Yes, check out the neighbours. If a landlord has a high degree of churn (i.e. many new renters), something's fishy. It should b a healthy mix of older and newer renters.

Best ask one or two renters (whose profiles are indicating that they seem to be reasonably sane people) about their experiences.

And stay away from "rate your SL landlord" sites. There was someone who recently started such a site. It turned out as an unmitigated disaster right away, as everybody and his uncle was scrambling to downrate the competition.

you also get access to Live Chat for support. if you pay yearly for premium the cost is 6$ a month....

With most of that cost offset by the L$300 weekly that they give you back.

I have a basic membership right now, but i have been contemplating upgrading. for a decent amount of prims, you could rent for about 300L a week (300 x 4= 1200 / 250= $4.8 a month)
however... if you do like im going to, $7.50 a month quarterly + $5 to own 1024sqm., thats
$12.50 a month, minus the $4.80 they give you in lindens, thats $7.70 a month, so for only about $3 more a month, you can have 1024sqm of land to do with whatever you want. Sure, you could rent for cheaper, but you will have your own piece of land to design however you want, and better support from LL.
Only reason I havent upgraded yet is because of the current payment issues they are having. I got a nice piece of land i got my eye on, I hope no one else gets it before they fix this. >.<

BTW - I did all the calcs a variety of ways. If you are buying mainland, your best bet is to have at least one alt and make a group so that you get the 10% tier bonus. In addition to that, if you are paying at least quarterly for your membership, it is actually cheaper to make the second account premium also and if you want to go with more than 1024m of land, there are points where it is cheaper to add another premium rather than increase the tier on an account (and even cheaper if you pay yearly) -- calcs shown below. As an additional FYI though, I have recently calculated and discovered that the absolute cheapest, if you trust it, is to have one premium account and then Rent the remaining tier that you want.

One premium @ 22.50/qtr x 4 qtrs = $90.00 / yr
L$300/wk x 52 wks (265 L$ rate) = -58.86 / yr

results in a NET cost of $31.14 per year per premium acct (31.14 / 52 weeks = .60/wk usd, 31.14 / 12 = 2.60/mth usd)
@265 L$ rate, 8,252 L$ per year net cost (8252 / 52 weeks = 158/wk L$, 8252 / 12 = 688/mth L$).

If rent tier at .25 L$ sqm/wk, then 512 sqm (at 265 L$ to usd rate):
512 * .25 = 128 L$/wk (.48/ wk usd)
* 52 weeks = 6656 L$/yr (25.12/yr usd)
/ 12 months = 555 L$/mth (2.09/mth usd) PER 512 RENTED

Calcs show that it is cheaper to rent 1536 tier at .25/wk L$ than to add the three premiums.
Also is cheaper to rent the additional 1639 tier at .25/wk L$ than to take the primary account tier level up to the $15 level

~~~~~~~
1024m
- one premium: 31.14 / yr + $60 ($5 x 12 mths) tier = $91.14 / yr
- two premiums: 62.28 / yr + $0 tier = $62.28 / yr

~~~~~~~
1536m
- one premium: 31.14 / yr + $96 ($8 x 12 mths) tier = $127.14 / yr
- two premiums: 62.28/ yr + $60 ($5 x 12 mths) tier = $122.28 / yr
- three premiums: 93.42 / yr + $0 tier = $93.42 / yr

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2048m
- one premium: 31.14 / yr + $180 ($15 x 12 mths) tier = $211.14 / yr
- two premiums: 62.28 / yr + $96 ($8 x 12 mths) tier = $158.28 / yr
- three premiums: 93.42 / yr + $60 ($5 x 12 mths) tier = $153.42 / yr
- four premiums: 124.56 / yr + $0 tier = $124.56 / yr

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2560m
- one premium: 31.14 / yr + $180 ($15 x 12 mths) tier = $211.14 / yr
- two premiums: 62.28 / yr + $180 ($15 x 12 mths) tier = $242.28 / yr
- three premiums: 93.42 / yr + $96 ($8 x 12 mths) tier = $189.42 / yr
- four premiums: 124.56 / yr + $60 ($5 x 12 mths) tier = $184.56 / yr
- five premiums: 155.70 / yr + $0 tier = $155.70 / yr

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
4096m
- one premium: 31.14 / yr + $300 ($25 x 12 mths) tier = $331.14 / yr
- four premiums: 124.56 / yr + $180 ($15 x 12 mths) tier = $304.56 / yr
- six premiums: 186.84/ yr + $96 ($8 x 12 mths) tier = $282.84 / yr
- seven premiums: 217.98/ yr + $60 ($5 x 12 mths) tier = $277.98 / yr
- eight premiums: 249.12 / yr + $0 tier = $249.12 / yr