How does LL get their money?

[SLtesterL2]

Just a random question. How do they get it? Is it just from selling land and having a slice of LindeX? If so props to them (claps)

[valerie Inshan]

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2012/06/linden-lab-market-capitalization.html

[Ansariel Hiller]

Actually they make the most money with the group liability they charge in their testers' and developers' groups!

[Christin73]

Premeum accounts and Land tier fees seem to be where they make alot of money off of.

[valerie Inshan]

As of June 2012:

22,754 private sims in existance.

58.4% of Private Estate regions are Full Regions, 41.0% Homesteads & 0.7% Openspaces

295$ a piece per month for .584*22754 makes 47.0Million in revenue annually. 
125$ a piece per month for .410*22754 makes 14.0Million in revenue annually.
A generous guess of 1/2 occupancy for mainland 7113 sims at 195$ a month gives 8.3Million in revenue annually.

Land alone is 69.3Million

premium income: unknown
Upload income: unknown
L buy/sell income: unknown

 

[jwenting]

upload fees are counted in L$ which were first sold by LL so don't count

[Perrie Juran]

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valerie Inshan wrote:

As of June 2012:

22,754 private sims in existance.

58.4% of Private Estate regions are Full Regions, 41.0% Homesteads & 0.7% Openspaces

295$ a piece per month for .584*22754 makes 47.0Million in revenue annually. 

125$ a piece per month for .410*22754 makes 14.0Million in revenue annually.

A generous guess of 1/2 occupancy for mainland 7113 sims at 195$ a month gives 8.3Million in revenue annually.

Land alone is 69.3Million

premium income: unknown

Upload income: unknown

L buy/sell income: unknown

 

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Not transferring Linden Dollars to Merchants after a sale......................maybe that is where they got all the Linden Dollars they gave away for Valentine's Day.  Nevertheless, we have to mark this also as:  Unknown.

[valerie Inshan]

Yeah, these figures are opaque, to say the least....

[Qie Niangao]

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upload fees are counted in L$ which were first sold by LL so don't count

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Right. I mean it's certainly right not to count LindeX L$ sales separately from such L$ sinks as upload fees, because the only way an L$ sink helps the Lab is if it causes people to buy enough more L$s on the LindeX that they have to mint more.

There are two different ways the LindeX generates revenue. One, as mentioned, is as the L$ source of last resort: when demand outstrips supply enough that the L$ value will climb too high, the Lab sells L$s on the LindeX. The other way is through the transaction fee and commission on cashing out.

The vast majority of their income is monthly tier, and (much less) the various fees for buying and changing Estate sims.

Next would probably be Marketplace commissions and the absurd exchange rate for those silly enough to buy on Marketplace using US$s.

We don't have statistics, but I'd guess that the LindeX generates somewhat less revenue than Marketplace.

Premium fees must be only a tiny share.

[Porky Gorky]

Lets not forget all the couple of hundred dollars they have earned from selling their other crap products.

[solstyse]

Same way as any government. Taxes.

Land costs quite a bit more in SL than a similar amount of server space anywhere else, and you can only get land from the Lab. So everywhere you travel to is money in LL's pocket.

Uploads cost a negligable amount of money. you can sonsider that "sales tax."

From the exchange, there is a small commission that goes to LL. Consider that "income tax" for the seller.

When you buy lindens, or change them out, there is a small "exchange fee"

So they have their revenue sources. Some would argue that the bottom line could be increased by tweaking these prices a bit, but LL seems to be quite successful.