How do you get land when you upgraded to premium?

Hello there SL community!

I trust you are doing well today.

Well I have read and read and then I read some more. I played and I played and then I played some more. After 5 or 6 days of this I decided that I should probably have some of my own land somehow so that I might be able to make and sell some stuff since I figure I would be good at this.

So I had read on this website that I get 512 with a premium account so I upgraded. Now I have no land or if I do I can't figure out where it is. Do I have to actually buy more or something? Is that 512 just some thing to entice me to buy some or what? And if I have to buy it don't you think thats a bit ridiculous considering I just gave them a good chunk of money? Anyway I still can't figure out how to get land. I found where I can get another 512 land supposedly but that wouldn't make sense if I can't actually use my land that I supposedly have. Where do I get land? Why is it so hard to have paid someone a whole bunch of money and I can't figure out what to do next? Nothing is clear, its all in some odd terminology that makes no sense and I can't figure out why.

So can anyone just tell me what the deal is here? I am not in a group, is that the problem? I don't know, but I am thinking I should probably not have done that upgrade. I'm obviously a noob so can someone help me out please?

Thanks!

With a Premium Account you get the tier, or monthly fee waived for your first 512m2 of land. You still have to buy the land.

As above - a Premium account gives you the ability to own 512sqm of land without the monthly fee that you'd normally have to pay for it. It doesn't actually give you the land, though. The reason you don't get the actual land included with the Premium membership is that most likely, you'll be buying the land from another user, not from Linden Labs. (Linden Labs only sells entire servers at a time, and other users buy them, partition them, sometimes landscape them, and then sell them on.)

To find land to buy, click on the Search button, then on "Land Sales", and choose "Mainland only". Search for a 512 plot and you can see how much it will cost and buy it immediately.

There used to be program called First Land under which you could buy a 512M plot for (I think) L$512, and pay no monthly tier on it, ever. They ended the buying part of it because people were creating alt accounts to scoop up the land and resell it for big profits, which really undermined the purpose of the program.

However, the free tier is still in effect. The first 512M you buy will cost you only the initial purchase price and then you'll have it for as long as you want to keep it, with no monthly charges.

Caveat: That may only apply to mainland, not private islands, but someone who knows more about it can clarify that point.

The rule that a Premium member pays no monthly tier on the first 512sqm of land they buy has always been in effect and wasn't part of the First Land deal. (Even when First Land was available, it was possible to buy a non-First Land 512 and the tier for it would still be free.)

Corundum,

Like many who've upgraded to a "premium" account, you're asking a pretty basic question...and one that's bound to have a rude answer. You must BUY your land. Your so-called "free" 512 merely refers to the monthly "tier" (rent) you pay to Linden Lab. They've set it up so that after your initial purchase...you will pay no tier on that 512m2 of land. But every bit of land you purchase in the future will increase your monthly charges to LL, if it bumps you into the next "tier level".

What it boils down to is this. With a premium account...you must purchase land from someone...then pay rent on that land to LL in the form of a tier fee. Your first 512m2 is tier-free...everything else will cost you more...in terms of both purchase price and tier fees.

Also, you only need a premium account to buy land on the mainland. If you buy land from the owner of a private island, you don't need a premium account. You pay your monthly tier to the island owner, not Linden Labs.

Of course, you are also subject to the whims of the island owner. So look around and pick a reputable one.

I stand corrected, thanks. First Land was in effect when I started so I'm fuzzy on what was in place before.

cor i dont think you should be buying land yet. i reckon you could either pay too much, buy land you later realise is in a bad region, buy island land without realising it, end up in a new region with precut 16m plots surrounding you, fall for the $1 land 'sales pitch', or get curious about the land sale menu and lose your land to a landbot.
you could rent for a while. your $300 stipend would cover rent and youd have a place to drop a house, rez things, build things, etc. the things you may 'need' land to do you arent likely to be doing for a while anyways.

my first 8 months or so i didnt have any land at all i didnt even rent a house. having a home was so unimportant that i rented mall stalls and was selling things long before i ever bought a permanent home.

some people like to have a home
I remember when I first started I went out and bought my first plot of land right away, I wanted a house to call my own, on my own land, not rent from someone (although I did that too)

I suggest shop around, see if you find a plot you like, check out the sim for a few days and then if you like the sim and location, buy it

The hard part when you're new for me was just how to get around, what was good deal or not, how to use teleport and search.
I strongly suggest you figure out the basics first. Renting and buying in my opinion can be bit risky if you're new and have no clue what you're doing and expensive.
If you need help with basics look me up.

I can't believe how many people responded in so little time! I wonder how many more will respond while I am typing this reply for however long it takes.

By SIM do you mean Physics Simulation? Because I read that in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Physics_Simulation
And so you're saying there are slums and bad neighborhoods and bad plots? How can they be bad plots? I just want to build a little area so i can figure out how to build things on and probably somehow make money if there is any systems to do this somehow or another. I can get people to come to my land and offer them whatever I have for free as open source if that is what makes things work. They can donate if they want to but they don't have to either. But I am sure if I was helping them there must be some way to profit if that is one aspect of this SL reality game. I am all about the open source concept of things I like games too. I also design websites so I find this pretty interesting. I have a little experience designing things like this and its interesting you can do it inside this simulated reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality was an interesting read too btw.

Anyway, thanks I guess I just want to explore the idea of a virtual world and it seems this one is somehow making money. So that is neat and all that they figured out how to do that. So it sounds like some people are actually playing this as a second life and that is interesting. I just want to learn about the whole deal so I do appreciate all the responses. Thank you for your time!

I look forward to reading and learning more and appreciate your help in doing so

A sim if I understand correctly is 65536 m2 of virtual land.
There can be things in the area you buy or rent that can cause your computer and server to slow down, including even closing entire access to your home so that you can't teleport to the sim.
A casino or high traffic business could move in and drain the enitre sim's ressources.
The max occupancy for each sim is 40.
Also when you have smaller lot and there lot of building around you it can be quite difficult when you're new to move, to see, to even move around or control things in edit mode to build especially when you're just starting out to build or at least that one was one of my problems about being in crowded area. Sometimes even with 14448m2 I feel crowded by my neighbors builds sometimes.
Also often there someone who got these ugly rotating annoying lights. In my neighborhood next door I have some who has rotating sale sign under badly placed signed and huge spot light. On other side its entire sim sometimes the lag is so bad on the land level I get literally sucked into the other sim.
I tend to build and hang out bit higher where there is less lag or problems moving and building.
If the lag is so severe that your fps are 5 or below its hard to walk, its hard to build, sometimes its hard to even stay online without crashing, everything appears with textures and it sometimes takes bit for textures, images or even sometimes your objects or inventory to show up.

Your premium account supports 512 of MAINLAND land without any extra tier cost, but you still have to actually buy the land.
When in second life
press the search button at the bottom of the screen
select the land sales tab
change the types dropdown box to "For sale - Mainland"
press the search button to bring up the list of land

Spend time looking at different bits of land (a few weeks). You are looking for a plot 512 in size with a price approximate 5120 L$, but it will vary depending on the quality of the land and area and how much the owner wants to overcharge, so look around first for a while. Remember it must be on the mainland.

1. You need to understand the difference between pg and mature

2. land touching linden owned protected land (like a road) is more valuable since you wont have neighboors touching you on that side.
For example my land is surrounded by more protected land than normal land (grass road on one side, protected hill leading to a railway on the other) so I have no neighboor problems.
Check the land is really linden owned protected land yourself, dont simply believe the advert for the plot
Also an empty linden owned sim is often NOT true protected land but simply land that they havnt divided up yet.

3. land touching linden owned "protected land" water is even more valuable as it gives a nice view as well.

4. Snow is less valuable as it doesnt look as nice as green grass

5. land in sims with casinos/clubs/camping places is less valuable due to the lag and shouts they usually cause.

6. Flat land is more valuable that steep land.

Generally the land sellers (due to the volume they sell) may charge the same for all the parcels of land in a sim that they sell. So you can use guides like this to pick which are the best bits.

Click the map button. Each square on that map is called a sim, and each one has a name. A sim is a 65536 square metre portion of land, being 'simulated' by software installed on Linden Lab's servers. Ie. You could stand on the border of one sim, looking into another, but the one you're standing in might be located on hardware in San Francisco, and the other on hardware in Texas.

/trying to break it down into simple terms but probably failing.

Those servers (like webservers required for a website) have continual operating & maintenance costs. So the more land you own in a sim, the more you have to pay to Linden Lab per month ("tier" to help them cover those costs. As you've discovered, the first 512m2 of tier is "free" with a premium account. As for the parcels of land themselves, you have to pay a one-off fee for them (comparable to 'setup' costs from a webhosting point of view?), but these prices are very market driven. Ie. they go up and down according to availability (amongst other factors).

As a fellow newbie, what I opted to do was simply rent land until I became educated enough on the issues to make a longterm decision. That also will give me time to see the impact of the new lands being opened up this summer, which may bring prices down a tad.

In the meantime, there are various groups that offer very low cost subsidized land rentals to new players, I am currently renting a beautiful 1024 riverside lot on the mainland from Ravenglass for only $L250/week, they also have 512 plots for $L150. (You can come see if you want to be my nextdoor neighbor by using this url: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Columbia/230/93/21, feel free to IM me inworld if you have questions)

I'd probably stay there forever if not for the fact these are restricted to players under 120 days of age, so a few months down the road I'll need to go search out a better longterm arrangement. At this stage, I'm not yet persuaded that land leasing isn't the best option for me, since in many cases the rental fees are not much higher than the property owner's tier fees for the parcel and don't require a large upfront cost. On the other hand however, a landlord might suddenly decide they have other uses for their land and decide to kick you off.

In any case, land ownership is a very important decision requiring you do some research first, so kudos to you for proceeding cautiously and seeking advice from some of the longtime ressies here. I learn a lot more everytime one of these posts shows up.

Sim stands for "simulator" - ie, a single computer (or actually a single processor core) in the server room at Linden Labs. When you look at the map, each named square of the map runs on a different simulator. Some people call sims "regions", which is a less technical name for the same thing. Most regular online games call them "zones".



Bad neighbours, essentially. When buying land you have to bear in mind that the rules on SL are that you have absolute control of your land right up to your parcel order - but so does your neighbour. And so if they decide to put a 10x10m wall right on the border with a pornographic image on it then, well, LL's attitude is that it's their land and thus their choice, so as long as it's a Mature sim that's fine.



If you just want to learn to build then most areas will be fine, although bear in mind that you can practice building in a sandbox without needing to spend any money. Unfortunately it is very difficult to make money in SL by being generally helpful to people. SL used to have a system for this ("dwell" but it was money from thin air, which caused severe inflation and devaluation; so now the only way to get money is if someone else will give up that money to you. You can ask for donations but unless you have a very popular location you are unlikely to recieve very many. Likewise if your area becomes popular you can sell advertising. But generally, if you want to make money, you will need to sell something.