Math question about premium accounts

I have a friend who has a basic account and is considering upgrading to premium but has a question....now I'm an experienced premium account holder but I put a fair amount of money into tier so her question was kind of out of my experience so I'd like your take on it.

As we understand it, a premium account costs 72 USD/year if you order it in one block. For doing that, you get a stipend nowadays of 300L paid every week regardless of whether you log in or not. Therefore this equates to 300x52 = 15,600L / year. By my calculations this is about 60 USD per year.

So that said, if she does no more than own 512m of land in this year, she gets to play SL with a premium account for only about 12 USD a year? This isn't counting the cost of anything she buys in-world, including the land.

Is this oversimplistic?? Like I said, as someone who's recently owned a sim and a half....these calculations don't really figure anymore lol so I'm out of practice!

Now for a theoretical question based on the above...suppose she had another friend who did the same and they went into a group and put their 512m plots together...essentially they get to have 1126m of land (512x2x110%) for about 24 USD a year?

Yes your calculation seems about right.

It's better than that, Leo. Your friend will also get L$1,000 as a sign-up bonus for going premium; plus, if you referred her to SL in the first place, you'll get a bonus payment as well.

That's somewhat related to the question I posed in this thread:

/327/ea/159872/2.html

As I mentioned there, I'm a newb with a Premium account and trying to figure out how I benefit from that vs. a free account, so there's a lot I don't understand.

Number 1 is how did you arrive at the netting? Selling the Lindens earned from the stipend?

If so, doesn't your friend end up with an account balance of zero?

Whereas a free account who spent $12 would have an account balance of $L 3000, assuming that you can buy $L 1000 for $4.08 real dollars as you can now?

If I'm missing something, please let me know. I really am clueless.

actually, i am confused by your calculation. i'm not sure where the $12 is coming from...

the premium account is $72/year... but that means it's $6/month.
you get 512 "free tier" for premium, and the rest is according to http://secondlife.com/whatis/landpricing.php

you can buy firstland for $1/m^2 ... so that's L$512, which is about U$2

So, I'm not sure where you're getting the $12/year from...

Simply annual premium charge minus annual stipend?

Unless your friend actually saves up all the Lindens from the stipend for the year and then exchanges them back to US$ at the end of the year, then she will still have spent $72.

$12 on land (your 'free' tier)
$60 on L$ (your 'free' stipend') to buy nice things with in game.

That's what I assumed, too. But the results don't make sense.

Results = You are worse off if you go Premium.

The math is actually worse than presented here. Sign up for a year? How many people would do that?

I feel like I was an idiot to sign up for a month without researching it.

Liralen, that 12$ is entitling you to buy First Land with all its benefits. Simplisitc maybe but the OP explained this.
The free account holder cannot buy mainland land.

.. oh and I paid annual premium

Thanks, Bilbo.

The ability to buy land that is not available is of dubious benefit.

I will continue to look though, and if I do find "First Land", I will report back here, at the very least to let everyone know that it is available.

Because I was premium before 26 juli 2006, I get even 500 US$..... but *coughs* I own a bit more then 512 square meters (I have 6869 square meters at the moment ).

Morwen.

Hmmm.... It is not easy, I agree. But if you want land, you can find it. Buying in the same sim is even harder, but still not impossible (I bought two spots of 512 square meters in the last month).

Morwen.

ah. now you're being too optimistic. you're assuming the Lindex exchange rate holds...

don't equate game money = real money... at least, not yet...

(moreover, think of game money like the money you buy at Disneyland -- you know the goofy and donald duck bills... you can't use them outside of the magic kingdom. unlike the $, it's not a universal tender.)

Yes my simplistic method did involve the subtraction of the combined stipend from the annual fee. It does assume a stable dollar:Linden rate of course which is of course not true. Another caveat of my post was not counting money spent in-game...

My premise for assuming the stipend saves money is that my friend does accumulate Lindens in-game by occasionally converting RL cash into Lindens...so *theoretically* (and take that with a pinch of salt!) any money extra she gains by stipend is money she doesn't have to convert from USD to Lindens...

Again an oversimplification since she will need to buy things in-world for her land (or maybe not much, she's a decent builder). She's already experienced in SL and therefore has a lot of *stuff* so it's not like she buys much these days.

Anyway thanks a lot for your answers, it at least shows I'm in the right ballpark lol

P.S. Liralen, when I converted to Premium about 11 months ago, I did so by requesting 12 months in one go...and I've not regretted it, I'm not dashing to cancel my premium membership with the last month to go. As I said now I've owned a fair amount of land that 72 USD in a year is actually not very much (which in some ways isn't a good thing I realise, taken in context!!).

I figured out for ever prim you own land wise, including membership and current land prices its pretty expensive each prim you own. I figured at one point it was 5 usd a prim but I forgot how I got the numbers now.
If you buy items with Lindens it does equal real money because you either have to buy them or find another way to get them.
I know this because first week I joined I went through almost my maxium limit buying Lindens.
First land is hard to find.
The average 512 lot is 8000 to 9000 if you are lucky. All the land if I want to expand in area goes for over 20000L, lowest is 10000l.
If you go to buy Lindens and type in amount of lindens you want its real money sometimes alot to buy.
You get 400L a week thats little over 1 dollar.
The initial 1000L is a little over 4 dollars
!st land cheaper but if you want to expand or find good land you may have to pay up to 140 usd to 38 usd.
if you paying 9.99 a month about 120.00 a year.
If you have tier that adds more.
If you are extremely lucky you might find waterview 2048 lot for 40000 thats 140 usd.
If you're stuck with 20000L lot that 70 usd.
It all adds up.
I figure with purchases and land I bought by the next year I will have invested 600 not just 120 usd in the game.
I don't want to lose the land I own but I really wish I could just have 1 lot more next to what I own and in order to do that I will probably have to either wait or pay 20000l to 10000l for 512 lot
If I had to do it over again I wouldn't have done premium at all.

It's not about numbers and calculations, it's about quality of life in SL.

I went Premium on the quarterly plan within a week of signup. I knew I would be staying and I wanted land on which to settle down and begin building my SL life.

As a new Premium member, I looked for First Land but was underwhelmed by the choices. Of course, beggars can't be choosers, so I skipped using my First Land option in favor of buying a 512 lot that I REALLY liked. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought an adjacent lot for a total of 1024sm and reveled in the extra prims.

By the end of the first quarter, I changed to an annual membership. And if they'd offered a 5-year plan, I probably would bought that.

I was also outgrowing that original 1024 lot, so I made the decision to move up to $25 tier so I could buy 4048m to live on and to begin a new business. Within an hour of makng that purchase, I completely lost control and bought an equivalent lot for a total of 8,056 and a jump up to $40 tier.

The $$ calculations really didn't figure into any of my decisions. I've having the time of my life, and that money is well spent, even if it never leaves SL.

err, the US$ isn't usable outside Disneyland, er, I mean the USA, either. Just like lindens, you have to exchange them for them to be of any use once you cross the border.

Actually, market pressures want the L$ to be worth more against the US$ than they currently are. LL is depressing the value of the L$ by selling a large amount of L$ each day at a more favorable rate than is available from residents. (Their goal in doing this is to stabilize the value of the L$ vs. the US$.) If LL stopped selling L$, and just let people buy and sell on their exchange, you'd be getting much less than L$260 per US$1.

Phew! I thought I was the only one Regan!

.. and LOL Warda .. Disneyland hee hee

Scenario 1: Play SL for one year, free.

Scenario 2: Play SL for one year, and buy about L$19,080 for US$72 (at L$265:US$1). You have no right to own land on the mainland. You aren't locked in to any future payments.

Scenario 3: Sign up for a Premium Account and pay for one year in advance for US$72. Assuming you find First Land and buy it, you end up with 512m2 of land, tier paid, plus L$16,088 (L$1,000 signing bonus plus L$15,600 in monthly stipends minus L$512 for the First Land). If you value that plot of First Land at L$10,000, you could say you end up getting L$26,088 for your US$72. If you lose interest in the game, you might be surprised when you get charged for another year several months down the road.

There are, of course, other scenarios. But the point here is that signing up for a Premium account and paying for one year in advance is a good deal if you want to own land on the mainland, and an excellent deal if you buy your First Land; then you end up with L$7,008 or US$26.45 more worth of land and L$ than if you simply bought the L$--on top of having the right to own land.

If you don't want to own or rent land anywhere, you'll get plenty of bang for your buck simply buying L$ (though you'd get more going Premium, buying First Land, selling it, then down-grading your account just before your year expired). But if you do want to own or rent on a private estate, you'll end up with correspondingly less L$ (but probably more m2) than scenario 3.

Finally, there must be a certain sense of satisfaction in playing SL without ever paying a cent, especially if you're able to somehow generate some income and eventually find a lovely home/shop to rent.

I don't see why any of these scenarios can't be the "best" for some people. I wanted to own land on the mainland--so scenario 3 was a no-brainer. But I can certainly see the logic in the other scenarios.

You need a Premium account to own land on the Mainland at all. First Land is a bonus, but you can't buy any other land without a premium account either.

As I understand it, it's quite deliberate that the Premium stipend is worth less than the same amount of US$ would buy on LindeX - it's to allow for the fact that you're also getting those land credits, which have value.

Here's a cost breakdown the I created. I have it as an Excel spreadsheet, if anyone wants to try running other values through it.



Comparing the various options, becoming Premium only makes sense if you really WANT to own mainland property. For anyone else, it's cheaper to stay Basic and buy L$ when you want them.

A Premium member who signs up, buys First Land, sells that First Land for 15 times what he paid for it, and then collects his stipends for the year ends up with about fourteen and a half dollars more in his pocket at the end of the year than he would have if he was on a free account and just purchased the same number of L$ that the Premium account received over the course of the year. However, if that Premium member is unable to buy First Land, or does not sell their First Land, they lose money compared to the free account. And after the first year, the Premium account ALWAYS costs more per year than a Basic account that buys the same number of L$ over the course of that year.

Personally, as a Paid Basic member, I can buy all the land I could possibly want on private island sims, and I can buy L$ as I need them. I see absolutely NO reason to upgrade to Premium, pay more money, just to have the "right" to buy land that is much more heavily troubled by griefers, casinos, land scammers and other problems that the Lindens turn a blind eye to.

And if I want, and could afford it, I could even buy a whole sim, so there was no "landlord" between me and the Lindens. Yes, a non-Premium account CAN buy a private sim!

So I see no value at all in Premium accounts, as they stand now.

Could the Island price rise have been intended in part to rebalance this?

No, the raise in Island prices was mainly because they hadn't priced them right in the first place, and Zee Linden did the books and realized they were losing money on private sims. That, and the Lindens likely figured anyone addicted enough to SL to buy a sim on their own would pay whatever they asked.

The current Island prices translate to a cost of roughly 6.8 L$ per square meter to buy a whole sim. Still a great deal cheaper than buying the same amount of Mainland. But the tier fee for an entire sim of Mainland is still what the former Island maintenance fee was. So maintaining an enitre Mainland sim now costs $100 USD less per month than maintaining a private island. Given that land is selling for L$15 or more on the mainland, If I wanted a whole sim, I could buy a private island and hold it for about 16 months before the total cost of ownership plus maintenance exceeded owning and maintaining the same amount of mainland. And that assumes that my island was no more profitable than the mainland sim. Given the advantages of zoning and the like that a private sim owner has, private island property should be more profitable to operate.

Just one small correction to that conclusion:

You aren't buying LAND on an island unless you purchase the entire island yourself from Linden Labs. You're actually buying a *promise* from the real land owner that they won't dissolve their SL account or get in a snit and kick you off the island, keeping your purchase money in their pocket.

Which is not to say that there aren't perfectly good reasons to rent island residences, especially from a reputable and stable island owner, but don't portray that arrangment as a land purchase, because it's not.

Mainland does, indeed, have a lot of disadvantages. But my own preference is to OWN land, not just borrow it. So for me, Premium membership is a prerequisite for playing SL on my terms.