Written 1 September, 2011
Why it Makes Financial Sense to Be a Premium Member of Second Life
Premium membership in Second Life costs $9.95 USD a month, or $72 if you sign up for a year.
Your premium membership gets you a sign-up bonus of $1000L and $300L a week. At the current rate of exchange of 250L per dollar, that's $66.40 a year. In other words, you get everything but $5.40 US back.
You also get a free Linden house, or, if you prefer, a tier-free 512 square meter lot anywhere on the mainland. If you're smart, you can purchase land for as little as $1L per square meter. You immediately get access to adult areas of Second Life. And, when your avatar won't rez or you can't log onto the grid, you can get support from the Lindens.
If you don't want or need a house you can buy your 512 square meter lot and rent it to someone. Or you can donate that tier to group land. Eight friends pooling their free tier allotment could live for free on a 4096 square meter lot with 934 prims-- or rent it for between $20 US and $30 US a month.
Consider: If you rent that 4095 for $20 a month and split it among eight people, that's $30 USD per person-- which translates to a profit of about $25 a year per person, making that premium membership a very good deal indeed.
And consider: All eight of those people could be YOU-- your main avatar and seven alts. You would make $200 bucks a year over and above the money you would pay to Linden Lab.
Of course you could have eighty alts, or eight hundred...
I started my premium membership in October 2006, when the weekly stipend was $400L. A year earlier it as $500L/year. I make a few bucks a year just by being a premium member. I wish I had signed up my alt Dakota and maybe made a hundred or two additional alts. Within a year or two, by careful trading I could had acquired several mainland sims. By now I could be a land baron or slumlord-- for free!
Ah, hindsight!
Why it Makes Financial Sense to Be a Premium Member of Second Life
Premium membership in Second Life costs $9.95 USD a month, or $72 if you sign up for a year.
Your premium membership gets you a sign-up bonus of $1000L and $300L a week. At the current rate of exchange of 250L per dollar, that's $66.40 a year. In other words, you get everything but $5.40 US back.
You also get a free Linden house, or, if you prefer, a tier-free 512 square meter lot anywhere on the mainland. If you're smart, you can purchase land for as little as $1L per square meter. You immediately get access to adult areas of Second Life. And, when your avatar won't rez or you can't log onto the grid, you can get support from the Lindens.
If you don't want or need a house you can buy your 512 square meter lot and rent it to someone. Or you can donate that tier to group land. Eight friends pooling their free tier allotment could live for free on a 4096 square meter lot with 934 prims-- or rent it for between $20 US and $30 US a month.
Consider: If you rent that 4095 for $20 a month and split it among eight people, that's $30 USD per person-- which translates to a profit of about $25 a year per person, making that premium membership a very good deal indeed.
And consider: All eight of those people could be YOU-- your main avatar and seven alts. You would make $200 bucks a year over and above the money you would pay to Linden Lab.
Of course you could have eighty alts, or eight hundred...
I started my premium membership in October 2006, when the weekly stipend was $400L. A year earlier it as $500L/year. I make a few bucks a year just by being a premium member. I wish I had signed up my alt Dakota and maybe made a hundred or two additional alts. Within a year or two, by careful trading I could had acquired several mainland sims. By now I could be a land baron or slumlord-- for free!
Ah, hindsight!
5 comments:
yep, yearly membership is the way to go and gets you better support as well
A premium account now costs USD 86.40. There is nothing I can see on the web site to say they still give the L$1000 bonus. Can anyone confirm this is still the case?
http://secondlife.com/landing/premium. Shows 1000L bonus still in effect as of today, 8/3/2011.
And you're wrong about the price of premium members. SL website shows it to be $72 USD when you sign up for a year. See https://secondlife.com/my/account/membership.php?
Thanks for confirming the bonus is still in place. The price difference will probably be down to EU & UK members being charged VAT. Thanks for the info.
I'm totally with you on the premium account and I'm a $72 a year payer too. I even have one of those free houses. I use it for my photo studio.
The only complaint I have is that even though you can ask for extended tech support, you rarely get anything. But the economics of the annual premium is for real.
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