Linden Balance

[Shelenn Ayres]

Hello everyone! I've decided to engage in the SL economy. However, until I have enough Lindens to cover the cost of a premium account, I don't want to pay the premium membership price. So I have three questions I was unable to find answers to upon searching the forums:

1) Will my existing Linden balance before premium account upgrade be included in Lindens that can be cashed out after upgrading to a premium account?

2) Where is the break even in number of Lindens to build up in my account before upgrading to premium to cover costs?

3) What is the maximum Linden amount I can cash out weekly?

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

The minimum cost for existing in SL is zero. I have been in SL since 2008 and spent nothing at all during several of my years here.

If your definition of existing requires a Linden Home and the underlying land, the cost for that is Premium Membership @ US$72/yr. If you save up the L$300 weekly stipend and the $1000 signing bonus, you'll accrue L$16,600 the first year and $L15,600 per year thereafter. The minimum cash-out transaction fee is US$3, so the more you accrue before cashing out, the better. Any existing L$ balance you have before stepping up to Premium is also available to cash out.

If you presume an exchange rate of L$253/US$, spend nothing, and cash out every year, you'd spend $9.39 the first year (16,600/253-3-72) and $13.34/yr (15,600/253-2-72) thereafter. If you want to fund your existence entirely from L$ earnings, you'd need about L$200/mo in income the first year and L$282/mo thereafter. At the end of the year that you leave SL, you'd cash out about $58.66 (15,500/253-3).

That's about what you calculated.

[Love Zhaoying]

38 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

you make it hard to give answers if you keep adding variables in your response. If you want to know what your breakpoint is, you need to know exactly what you want, how many groups you want to provide with liabilities, how high your land tiers are going to be , and so on... other people can not calculate that for you without set and steady plan.

I'd suggest make a spreadsheet with all amounts of the current markets and compare what is most suitable for you. Nearly all periodical costs aren't that hard to find with help of google.

If you'r going to use your stipends to pay for groupsliabilities and shopping, you can't take those as profit in your calculation for the costs of premium, you can only spend it once... and you'll have to be sure to have enough funds on your payment method, and if i understand right you want to avoid that.
 

This makes my brain hurt!

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

1 minute ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

Yes existing without having a home and the ability to use Lindex to cash out is absolute zero (other than your own Internet and computer). The use case here is as you stated with a premium account. Thanks to everyone engaging in the discussion!

I had forgotten about the bonus. Now that US$3 transaction fee - this is where limits come in regarding the original question 3. It seems to me the transaction fee applies per transaction so the answer to question 3 matters in terms of how many times that transaction fee is taken by LL. 

Regarding land and tier etc (which are in themselves confusing), is there none charged for the home that comes with the premium account?

   The home that comes with the Linden Homes Premium land grant does not cost you anything above and beyond what you already pay for your Premium account.

[MoiraKathleen]

There is a transaction fee for selling Lindens (converting Lindens to the USD balance) and that fee is 3.5% per transaction. 

The minimum $3 USD fee is the minimum fee for a Process Credit transaction which transfers USD from your USD balance to Paypal or Skrill.    When I look at the Process Credit fees from my account, they are listed as being 2.5 % (minimum $ 3USD, maximum $250 USD).  

The limits I see for my premium account are (for both buying and selling) $1999 USD per 24 hours, and $1999 USD per rolling 30 days.  I have never done a Process Credit, so I don't know if there is a limit on that or not. 

Regarding upload fees, it looks like what the FS upload menu describes as 'import linkset' is how an .oxp file would be uploaded.  Like mesh uploads, that upload option does not show a default upload fee in it's description, so it may be a calculated fee similar to how mesh uploads are charged. 

 

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

58 minutes ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

How many land impact prims (prims or mesh objects), scripts, and textures can a user have to customize their home in the premium home land grant?

The other fees to consider then become the cost of uploading content. If a user creates content in Open Simulator for free using the SL Firestorm viewer they can save it as an oxp backup. Using that same Firestorm viewer, they can then login to SL and upload the backup file. This file presumably contains a collection of prims, mesh, scripts, and textures. Is only one upload fee charged for that oxp or does LL aggregate the fees based on the content uploaded? Either way, what would those fees be?

   I believe the prim allowance for Linden Homes parcels is 175. The LI for the house itself that comes with the parcel is free and not counted against the land owner. There is no predetermined limit on the number of scripts and textures you may use in the parcel, but, as I understand it, scripts and textures, particularly the use of materials, may increase the LI of objects in or on which they are used. I can't make a prediction of this impact that would answer your question.

   The oxp file export (and presumably, import) is particular to Open Simulator, and maybe other Virtual Worlds, I don't know. SL has no such import option. The user pays for everything they upload, per file. 10L$ each for textures, audio files and animations. The fee for mesh object uploads depends on the complexity of the object in question.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Ivanova Shostakovich
because of research.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

13 minutes ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

The oxp export then import using Firestorm for SL version does work. It allows creations made in Open Simulator to be ported to SL and creations made in SL to be ported to Open Simulator. The key is the permissions. If you are the creator, it is allowed by the software.

I can see why I read so many complaints about LL content fees if every texture, sound, or anim is L$10 and the others are calculated by complexity presumably much higher in fees. Just the texture alone could be an issue. Say you are building in SL, you make a texture in GIMP2, then upload the texture and realize a mistake or adjustment is needed. You are charged another L$10 every time?

   These upload fees have been the model for as long as I've been a resident. If you fear making mistakes, you can employ the use of local textures when you build. This lets the viewer load the texture from your hard drive locally. No one else will see it. You can apply it normally to an object. Is there is a mistake, you can edit the texture as needed and save it to your hard drive again. It will automatically update on your in-world object. 

   Another option is to log into the bets grid where everything is for test purposes. You will use a L$ there for uploads but they will have no correlation to your Main grid assets.

Edited February 2, 2019 by Ivanova Shostakovich

[MoiraKathleen]

29 minutes ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

So it looks like the frequency of cashout is every 24 hours with the limit of 1999 reset every 30 days if I understand it correctly. On transaction fees, that looks like a total of 6% selling Lindens into your paypal account for example. At .06 * 1999 that means LL takes almost 120 bucks for that transaction. But that doesn't match the data above or in the blog link. If the max is 1999 no one would ever reach 250 bucks. Maybe someone can post an example transaction that would help in understanding?

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "frequency of cash out is every 24 hours".  There is a limit as to how much you can buy or sell in a 24 hour period, and there is also a limit on buying and selling on a rolling 30 day period.  On my account those limit amounts are the same - that might not be true for people 30 day or less since they first purchased lindens, or very successful creators or real estate business people who may have requested and been granted much larger limits. 

[MoiraKathleen]

I believe that the limits are rolling limits.   One other clarification - the buy and sell limits display on one's account not because one is a premium member, but because one has made a linden purchase.  You do not need to be a premium member in order to buy and sell lindens.

[Chic Aeon]

The quick and well-known GENERAL answer to the question at hand is ---- Paying yearly for Premium is the cheapest method costing about $1.25  US a month.

 

You can turn you stipend money back into US dollars in order to pay for your next year's fee if you so choose.  You will of course need a bit of extra money. 

 

If you try and cash out a lot more money than what you have obviously earned you will raise a lot of red flags with the Lindens AND with all your very convoluted questions (honestly I have never seen a thread in this theme SO ODD) I think you may have already raised some flags to tread carefully. 

 

And as mentioned Premium membership has nothing to do with cashing out. OR certainly hasn't in the past -- as there are many full-time designers making big bucks who are purposefully NOT Premium.  Having a verified payment method is the key.

 

 

Edited February 2, 2019 by Chic Aeon

[LittleMe Jewell]

Something that may not be clear from the above:  When you are ready to pay for the Premium membership, sell enough L$ to result in $72 AFTER the 3.5% transaction fee. However, there is no need to then cash out (process credit) to your PayPal account. When LL charges you for the membership, they will first take the money from any $USD balance on your account and only go to your payment method if the USD balance is not enough.  There is no sense in paying the 'process credit' fee when LL will use the USD balance.

Currently the Linden home plots are 512 sqm and so they allow 175 LI.  Soon (someday, maybe), LL will be providing 1024 sqm plots (since the tier that comes with your Premium membership is now 1024 sqm).  Thus, at that point you could move and get 350 LI.  As Rolig mentioned, the house supplied by LL does not come out of your LI.

If you ever decide to buy your own plot of mainland, your Premium would allow you to own 1024 sqm of land without additional fees - though you would still have to first buy the land.  Additionally, going that option, any house you placed on the land would count towards your LI.

 

[Lindal Kidd]

10 hours ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

Interesting as I was told by several people you cannot sell lindens for dollars without a premium account... i will look into it. But the use case analysis requires the avatar not be homeless. So, if the avatar without a premium account has no home they are homeless until they earn enough to buy land pay tier and build or buy a house and all its furnishings yes?

That is absolutely not true, not any of it.

You do NOT need a premium account to sell $L.  What you DO need is a valid payment method on file.  If you want to move $USD out of your SL account and back to your pocket, that payment method needs to be a verified PayPal or Skrill account.

You do NOT need a premium account to have a home in SL.  You can rent a home or vacant land on the Mainland, or in any of thousands of private estates.

You do NOT need to "earn enough" $L to buy land and a home.  Most people use a credit card or a verified PayPal or Skrill account to buy $L to pay for their in world expenses, including rent/home ownership.  It's not easy to earn enough $L in world to pay for land and a home.  (It IS possible though; some successful content creators and landlords even use their income from SL to pay their Real Life expenses...SL is their full time job.)

You can participate all you want in the "SL economy" without a premium membership.  You can earn $L, exchange them for $USD, cash out those dollars and buy a Big Mac.  Conversely, you can use your credit card to buy $L and live like a millionaire in SL for about the price of a movie and dinner a month in the real world.

The only thing you need a Premium membership for is for its benefits.  As several people have said, paying for a yearly membership has a very low actual cost, given the value of the benefits.  See my blog post: https://acrossthegridwithlindal.blogspot.com/2018/01/premium-benefits-creep.html

You are waaaaaaay overthinking this, Shelenn.

[Ethan Paslong]

26 minutes ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

I don't understand the hostility.

as i don't understand why you didn't play it open from the start, all information you need is in the knowledgebase and you pulled it out of us, residents who spend their free time here, as if you can't find it. All answers are patiently given and you keep comming with additional remarks and change of point of view.
We in the Netherlands have a saying.... "there are so many trees here, you even can't see the forrest anymore " ... thats what this thread became.

And finally it's for a project... shakes head...

39 minutes ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

You still need L$.

no you do not need money to have a very good and meaningfull Second Life. It makes it easier, faster and convienent... but not a requirement. There are thousends of people here in SL that never spend a single real dollar.
The same for being Premium, or have a house, it's no to all, you can do without and your SL won't be a lot different than the average premium member with all benefits his subscription brings.

[Ethan Paslong]

1 hour ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

Hello everyone! I've decided to engage in the SL economy. However, until I have enough Lindens to cover the cost of a premium account, I don't want to pay the premium membership price. So I have three questions I was unable to find answers to upon searching the forums:

1) Will my existing Linden balance before premium account upgrade be included in Lindens that can be cashed out after upgrading to a premium account?

2) Where is the break even in number of Lindens to build up in my account before upgrading to premium to cover costs?

3) What is the maximum Linden amount I can cash out weekly?

 

i think it's not a wise road to travel on as you want to do it. You need a payment method to be able to get premium. LL will take the premium subscription from your account automaticly after subscribing, and will do so without announcement every time the expiration date is near. Getting in arrear because you temporally earned less lindens to convert to USD, won't be taken as excuse and your account gets on hold till you paid the subsciption you agreed to upfront. (And it won't stop the subscription while in arrear,  the dept will rise every time you miss payment. In short, you need a back up for LL to bill you.

at your questions:

1. your linden balance has nothing to do with getting premium, you can keep using it as you want, spend, sell, buy 

2. that changes every moment of the day, the exchange rate for L$ to dollars is moving all day long, as by that the amount of USD you get for your L$. The break even point also depends on what subscription you choose. 1-3 months or a year

3. you can see your trading limits at your accountpage in the section where you buy/sell L$. Keep in mind you can only use the Lindex when you activated your rl payment method by buying at least once. If you didn't you'l not be able to sell L$ to feed your USD balance at your account to pay for your premium.

As last, if you have USD parked on your account, LL will take that first as payment, and only when your USD balance is too low it will try to bill the registered payment method. If you manage to keep your USD balance up and filled, the back up payment method wont be used.

[Shelenn Ayres]

55 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

i think it's not a wise road to travel on as you want to do it. You need a payment method to be able to get premium. LL will take the premium subscription from your account automaticly after subscribing, and will do so without announcement every time the expiration date is near. Getting in arrear because you temporally earned less lindens to convert to USD, won't be taken as excuse and your account gets on hold till you paid the subsciption you agreed to upfront. (And it won't stop the subscription while in arrear,  the dept will rise every time you miss payment. In short, you need a back up for LL to bill you.

at your questions:

1. your linden balance has nothing to do with getting premium, you can keep using it as you want, spend, sell, buy 

2. that changes every moment of the day, the exchange rate for L$ to dollars is moving all day long, as by that the amount of USD you get for your L$. The break even point also depends on what subscription you choose. 1-3 months or a year

3. you can see your trading limits at your accountpage in the section where you buy/sell L$. Keep in mind you can only use the Lindex when you activated your rl payment method by buying at least once. If you didn't you'l not be able to sell L$ to feed your USD balance at your account to pay for your premium.

As last, if you have USD parked on your account, LL will take that first as payment, and only when your USD balance is too low it will try to bill the registered payment method. If you manage to keep your USD balance up and filled, the back up payment method wont be used.

I appreciate the time you took to respond thanks! I want to break it down without consideration of exchange rates etc. If I read this correctly, your short answers are 1 yes 2 depends 3 check. If those are correct, do you have a link to a LL webpage to verify 1 is yes? On the other questions, I was looking for answers regarding Lindens so I will clarify by asking for worst case Linden numbers (most expensive use case). Good advice on parking USD on the account!

For example, from the pricing page it appears a premium account holder gets L$300 weekly for a maximum US$9.50 per month. This translates to L$15600 annual for US$114 annual or around L$137/US$1.00. This is far below the average exchange rate which today is L$253.1453 / US$1.00.

So the monthly stipend raises some economic questions. If there were "no limits" on trading, and I sold my stipend of L$1300 at that rate, it appears I would get around US$5.14 in exchange. Now, if I purchased the premium for the annual price, the monthly cost falls to US$6.00 making the use of SL roughly US$0.86/mth without consideration of transaction fees and limits.

It is also not that simple of course because not only are there are trading limits and transaction fees involved but there are also costs like group membership, land fees, tier etc. I have yet to find a really good analysis of average costs to use SL and engage in the economy. My post is really just a starting point in an analysis to: 1) determine by worst case how much L$ needs to be earned to sustain life as a premium user of SL and 2) the most cost effective approach to do so.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Shelenn Ayres

[Ethan Paslong]

1 hour ago, Shelenn Ayres said:

I appreciate the time you took to respond thanks! I want to break it down without consideration of exchange rates etc. If I read this correctly, your short answers are 1 yes 2 depends 3 check. If those are correct, do you have a link to a LL webpage to verify 1 is yes? On the other questions, I was looking for answers regarding Lindens so I will clarify by asking for worst case Linden numbers (most expensive use case). Good advice on parking USD on the account!

For example, from the pricing page it appears a premium account holder gets L$300 weekly for a maximum US$9.50 per month. This translates to L$15600 annual for US$114 annual or around L$137/US$1.00. This is far below the average exchange rate which today is L$253.1453 / US$1.00.

So the monthly stipend raises some economic questions. If there were "no limits" on trading, and I sold my stipend of L$1300 at that rate, it appears I would get around US$5.14 in exchange. Now, if I purchased the premium for the annual price, the monthly cost falls to US$6.00 making the use of SL roughly US$0.86/mth without consideration of transaction fees and limits.

It is also not that simple of course because not only are there are trading limits and transaction fees involved but there are also costs like group membership, land fees, tier etc. I have yet to find a really good analysis of average costs to use SL and engage in the economy. My post is really just a starting point in an analysis to: 1) determine by worst case how much L$ needs to be earned to sustain life as a premium user of SL and 2) the most cost effective approach to do so.

you make it hard to give answers if you keep adding variables in your response. If you want to know what your breakpoint is, you need to know exactly what you want, how many groups you want to provide with liabilities, how high your land tiers are going to be , and so on... other people can not calculate that for you without set and steady plan.

I'd suggest make a spreadsheet with all amounts of the current markets and compare what is most suitable for you. Nearly all periodical costs aren't that hard to find with help of google.

If you'r going to use your stipends to pay for groupsliabilities and shopping, you can't take those as profit in your calculation for the costs of premium, you can only spend it once... and you'll have to be sure to have enough funds on your payment method, and if i understand right you want to avoid that.
 

[Shelenn Ayres]

52 minutes ago, Ethan Paslong said:

you make it hard to give answers if you keep adding variables in your response. If you want to know what your breakpoint is, you need to know exactly what you want, how many groups you want to provide with liabilities, how high your land tiers are going to be , and so on... other people can not calculate that for you without set and steady plan.

I'd suggest make a spreadsheet with all amounts of the current markets and compare what is most suitable for you. Nearly all periodical costs aren't that hard to find with help of google.

If you'r going to use your stipends to pay for groupsliabilities and shopping, you can't take those as profit in your calculation for the costs of premium, you can only spend it once... and you'll have to be sure to have enough funds on your payment method, and if i understand right you want to avoid that.
 

I will clarify again since engaging in a discussion is not helpful - hence I am not clear.

The analysis is to determine the minimum outlay to sustain life without owning land beyond the home provided under the premium account and how many L$ to earn by other means (not buying L$) to find the break even needed so no monies beyond the premium account fee is needed. Any L$ above that amount is disposable income and not considered in the analysis. For the analysis, these definitions apply: Sustaining life is just existing while living life involves spending beyond just existing. We are only concerned about sustaining life.

Here is the use case of a user who has only the US$ available to have a premium account and some assumptions for the analysis. Since we have already determined best value is annual, let's go with your best value approach and work backwards:

Assumptions:

No L$ will be spent from the stipend (not for groups, shopping, or other fees charged by residents or merchants).

US$72 is spent to purchase a premium account and another US$72 is banked for the coming year. Total best value investment is therefore US$144

The average exchange rate over a year's period is L$253.1453/US$1.00

 

L$15,600 are exchanged at an average of rate of 253.1453 to get US$61.62 which is short US$10.38 of the US$72 annual premium.

Reversing the exchange to see how many L$ would have been needed we get about L$2628 or L$219/mth which would have to be earned or gifted in some way to that user.

 

Clearly LL has to make money from each user's existence since $10.38/year/user is not profitable. But for the user attempting to sustain their life, clear fees of all kinds need to be transparent to that user. I find LL is not clearly transparent in all its fees and that is likely intentional. Yes, Ive delved through the complex maze of tables, prices, etc that LL provides. My end goal is to illustrate via this analysis how to sustain a life in SL without spending any US$ to do so beyond an initial investment.

 

Hence my original questions:

1) Will my existing Linden balance before premium account upgrade be included in Lindens that can be cashed out after upgrading to a premium account? (yes or no)

2) Where is the break even in number of Lindens to build up in my account before upgrading to premium to cover costs? (looking for numerical L$ answer clarified above)

3) What is the maximum Linden amount I can cash out weekly? (looking for numerical L$ answer assuming maximum allowed limit)

 

The answers were then expected to lead to more questions regarding other fees including transaction fees for trading or existence. But I was holding those pending answers to the above. I asked these questions in world without resolution. My hope is to get resolution in the forums.

 

Edited February 1, 2019 by Shelenn Ayres

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

6 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I have been in SL since 2008 and spent nothing at all during several of my years here.

   What? You've been saving up your allowance? Honey, get something nice for yourself.

[Shelenn Ayres]

5 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

The minimum cost for existing in SL is zero. I have been in SL since 2008 and spent nothing at all during several of my years here.

If your definition of existing requires a Linden Home and the underlying land, the cost for that is Premium Membership @ US$72/yr. If you save up the L$300 weekly stipend and the $1000 signing bonus, you'll accrue L$16,600 the first year and $L15,600 per year thereafter. The minimum cash-out transaction fee is US$3, so the more you accrue before cashing out, the better. Any existing L$ balance you have before stepping up to Premium is also available to cash out.

If you presume an exchange rate of L$253/US$, spend nothing, and cash out every year, you'd spend $9.39 the first year (16,600/253-3-72) and $13.34/yr (15,600/253-2-72) thereafter. If you want to fund your existence entirely from L$ earnings, you'd need about L$200/mo in income the first year and L$282/mo thereafter. At the end of the year that you leave SL, you'd cash out about $58.66 (15,500/253-3).

That's about what you calculated.

Yes existing without having a home and the ability to use Lindex to cash out is absolute zero (other than your own Internet and computer). The use case here is as you stated with a premium account. Thanks to everyone engaging in the discussion!

I had forgotten about the bonus. Now that US$3 transaction fee - this is where limits come in regarding the original question 3. It seems to me the transaction fee applies per transaction so the answer to question 3 matters in terms of how many times that transaction fee is taken by LL. 

Regarding land and tier etc (which are in themselves confusing), is there none charged for the home that comes with the premium account?

[Shelenn Ayres]

5 minutes ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

   The home that comes with the Linden Homes Premium land grant does not cost you anything above and beyond what you already pay for your Premium account.

How many land impact prims (prims or mesh objects), scripts, and textures can a user have to customize their home in the premium home land grant?

The other fees to consider then become the cost of uploading content. If a user creates content in Open Simulator for free using the SL Firestorm viewer they can save it as an oxp backup. Using that same Firestorm viewer, they can then login to SL and upload the backup file. This file presumably contains a collection of prims, mesh, scripts, and textures. Is only one upload fee charged for that oxp or does LL aggregate the fees based on the content uploaded? Either way, what would those fees be?

[Shelenn Ayres]

I am reading related blogs where creators as recent as 2017 and 2018 have posted anger about a max limit of 1999 to cashout and credit processing fees of US$25 - it only begins to get murkier because the LL page to look at limits does not reveal a table or schedule to strive for but a simple realtime snapshot of your own limits. For a user without a premium account the limits are at 0 of course.

Here is a reference if anyone cares to look at attempt to explain to me how it really works as of today since I can't find the answers when looking at account details of a non-premium account. https://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2017/06/second-life-linden-lab.html

 

[Shelenn Ayres]

14 minutes ago, moirakathleen said:

There is a transaction fee for selling Lindens (converting Lindens to the USD balance) and that fee is 3.5% per transaction. 

The minimum $3 USD fee is the minimum fee for a Process Credit transaction which transfers USD from your USD balance to Paypal or Skrill.    When I look at the Process Credit fees from my account, they are listed as being 2.5 % (minimum $ 3USD, maximum $250 USD).  

The limits I see for my premium account are (for both buying and selling) $1999 USD per 24 hours, and $1999 USD per rolling 30 days.  I have never done a Process Credit, so I don't know if there is a limit on that or not. 

Regarding upload fees, it looks like what the FS upload menu describes as 'import linkset' is how an .oxp file would be uploaded.  Like mesh uploads, that upload option does not show a default upload fee in it's description, so it may be a calculated fee similar to how mesh uploads are charged. 

 

So it looks like the frequency of cashout is every 24 hours with the limit of 1999 reset every 30 days if I understand it correctly. On transaction fees, that looks like a total of 6% selling Lindens into your paypal account for example. At .06 * 1999 that means LL takes almost 120 bucks for that transaction. But that doesn't match the data above or in the blog link. If the max is 1999 no one would ever reach 250 bucks. Maybe someone can post an example transaction that would help in understanding?

[Shelenn Ayres]

7 minutes ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

   I believe the prim allowance for Linden Homes parcels is 175. The LI for the house itself that comes with the parcel is free and not counted against the land owner. There is no predetermined limit on the number of scripts and textures you may use in the parcel, but, as I understand it, scripts and textures, particularly the use of materials, may increase the LI of objects in or on which they are used. I can't make a prediction of this impact that would answer your question.

   The oxp file export (and presumably, import) is particular to Open Simulator, and maybe other Virtual Worlds, I don't know. SL has no such import option. The user pays for everything they upload, per file. 10L$ each for textures, audio files and animations. The fee for mesh object uploads depends on the complexity of the object in question.

The oxp export then import using Firestorm for SL version does work. It allows creations made in Open Simulator to be ported to SL and creations made in SL to be ported to Open Simulator. The key is the permissions. If you are the creator, it is allowed by the software.

I can see why I read so many complaints about LL content fees if every texture, sound, or anim is L$10 and the others are calculated by complexity presumably much higher in fees. Just the texture alone could be an issue. Say you are building in SL, you make a texture in GIMP2, then upload the texture and realize a mistake or adjustment is needed. You are charged another L$10 every time?

Edited February 2, 2019 by Shelenn Ayres

[Shelenn Ayres]

9 minutes ago, moirakathleen said:

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "frequency of cash out is every 24 hours".  There is a limit as to how much you can buy or sell in a 24 hour period, and there is also a limit on buying and selling on a rolling 30 day period.  On my account those limit amounts are the same - that might not be true for people 30 day or less since they first purchased lindens, or very successful creators or real estate business people who may have requested and been granted much larger limits. 

Based on what you show, you can trade up to 1999 per 24 hours but there is a rolling limit of 30 days that is the same. So I presume that means if you cashout the entire 1999 in one day you cannot cashout again for 30 days. If you cashout 1/10 of 1999 on 10 days each within the 30 days period when you reach the 1999 total you are then restricted until the next 30 day period. That's what I mean if that helps? I am not sure of these things - just trying to understand them so I can present a full analysis for new users.

Edited February 2, 2019 by Shelenn Ayres

[Shelenn Ayres]

35 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Something that may not be clear from the above:  When you are ready to pay for the Premium membership, sell enough L$ to result in $72 AFTER the 3.5% transaction fee. However, there is no need to then cash out (process credit) to your PayPal account. When LL charges you for the membership, they will first take the money from any $USD balance on your account and only go to your payment method if the USD balance is not enough.  There is no sense in paying the 'process credit' fee when LL will use the USD balance.

Currently the Linden home plots are 512 sqm and so they allow 175 LI.  Soon (someday, maybe), LL will be providing 1024 sqm plots (since the tier that comes with your Premium membership is now 1024 sqm).  Thus, at that point you could move and get 350 LI.  As Rolig mentioned, the house supplied by LL does not come out of your LI.

If you ever decide to buy your own plot of mainland, your Premium would allow you to own 1024 sqm of land without additional fees - though you would still have to first buy the land.  Additionally, going that option, any house you placed on the land would count towards your LI.

 

good point

[Shelenn Ayres]

3 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

The quick and well-known GENERAL answer to the question at hand is ---- Paying yearly for Premium is the cheapest method costing about $1.25  US a month.

 

You can turn you stipend money back into US dollars in order to pay for your next year's fee if you so choose.  You will of course need a bit of extra money. 

 

If you try and cash out a lot more money than what you have obviously earned you will raise a lot of red flags with the Lindens AND with all your very convoluted questions (honestly I have never seen a thread in this theme SO ODD) I think you may have already raised some flags to tread carefully. 

 

And as mentioned Premium membership has nothing to do with cashing out. OR certainly hasn't in the past -- as there are many full-time designers making big bucks who are purposefully NOT Premium.  Having a verified payment method is the key.

 

 

Interesting as I was told by several people you cannot sell lindens for dollars without a premium account... i will look into it. But the use case analysis requires the avatar not be homeless. So, if the avatar without a premium account has no home they are homeless until they earn enough to buy land pay tier and build or buy a house and all its furnishings yes?