Premium Plus and Linden Homes

[Nika Talaj]

30 minutes ago, Gingir Ghoststar said:

1. Increased stipend (though honestly, if you can afford premium plus, the stipend is just a perk more than anything. Most people who can afford premium plus or multiple memberships is not hurting for lindens)

IMHO, if you buy yearly memberships (and don't have inworld businesses), the stipend is a noticeable savings -- almost 2/3 of of the cost of premium.  I can see that if you have inworld businesses, the stipend would get lost in your cash flow.

Assuming an exchange rate of 1 USD = $L250 and conservative Plus cost & stipend guesses, we have:

Premium = $99 - (300*52/250) = $36.60 /year

Premium Plus approximately $198/yr - (600*52/250) = $73/year, VERY approximately

Edited May 9, 2022 by Nika Talaj

[Fay Starlight]

1. Multiple Homes per account. 2, not like 3 or 4, just 2. 2 homes.

Sign me up for this, less chaos for sure!

[Persephone Emerald]

22 hours ago, Fay Starlight said:

1. Multiple Homes per account. 2, not like 3 or 4, just 2. 2 homes.

/me wonders what 2.2 homes would look like.

[diamond Marchant]

For me, it's all about the money. Don't care about more groups. The current situation for owning land is, to say the least, perplexing. Hopefully, premium plus will not make this worse. Consider the analysis as presented in the spreadsheet and graph below, which reveal the annual cost per square meter (in cents) for various tier levels. Strangely, it is the lowest for members that pay no tier and members that pay maximum tier. This suggests that if you intend to spend the stipend, you should never pay for more tier... you should just have a bunch of alts, each contributing 1024 to a group. That also gives you the option of acquiring a pile of Linden Homes.

[Persephone Emerald]

^ That's a great chart graphic, but the actual total square meters would be less in each instance since the amount of land one can actually own has to be divisible by 16 (4m x 4m squares). If one has 1024 m donated to their group, the maximum tier-free land one could get would be 1120 sq. meters.  If one had 4096 m donated to their group, the maximum tier-free land one could get would be 4496 sq. meters.

My cost with 2 premium accounts was $198 / 2240 sq. m = 8.8 cents/ sq. m/ year
(before added sales tax)

With 2 Linden Homes my cost is $ 198/ 2048 sq. m = 9.7 cents/ sq. m/ year.
(including my house and regional landscaping)

Subtracting the stipend and assuming $L 300 / 250 $L/ $ = $ 1.20 US/ week or $ 62.40/ year,

   my yearly cost for 2 Premium accounts was $ 135.60 or $2.61/ week

Edited May 10, 2022 by Persephone Emerald

[Istelathis]

Hmm..  bring the price down below having two accounts and it would make more sense.  $180 for the year, which would be about the equivalent of paying for a year subscription for an MMORPG if you were paying $15 USD by the month.
  
* Group increase really doesn't seem very relevant, and an artificial barrier that shouldn't exist in the first place.  You may as well charge people to use voice, and then charge people to be able to hear it.
*Upload fees are trivial for a lot of people.
*$600L a week is nice.
*2048 land allowance is okay when considering the alternative, but the price of property in SL is insane, especially considering I have about a dozen regions for free on my own laptop.

I'm just sticking with the regular premium.  As a casual user of SL, that does not run businesses, does not have a lot of group activity, and mostly enjoys exploring, I just don't see the initiative to go beyond that.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Istelathis

[diamond Marchant]

8 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

That's a great chart graphic, but

Yes, there are "buts" as everyone has a different situation.

The analysis depends on assumptions, for example... the linden to dollar exchange rate, the amount of stipend you would actually spend (if you had to buy them), how many Linden Homes you want (group bonus does not apply here), sales tax (which might be a wash for A/B comparisons), that you are lending LL your future stipend for free, monthly vs. annual plan, etc.

I don't worry about the 16sqm rounding issue as that usually applies only to last parcel purchased by my land group.

There is also the HUGE issue of carrying (and paying for) unused tier, which happens in the larger tier plans. This was the reason I first started to get premium for alts. It was cheaper than bumping up to the next tier level.

Note that if  I did NOT need the stipend for shopping, I could always exchange it for dollars. On 5/10/2022, this would get me $1.16, annualized to over $60, that could be used to pay recurring tier and membership.

I wonder why Linden Lab has a tier structure that forces a member to pay for more tier than they need. Also, why is it capped at one region. The current scheme requires planning (I use a spreadsheet) and is part of the "high barrier to entry" that people experience in Second Life.

A better approached might be to simply charge people for the actual maximum sqm they use each month and compute it such that the cost per sqm declines the more you use until it reaches some lower limit.

Edited May 11, 2022 by diamond Marchant

[Marianne Little]

I am not in favor of how the group bonus works. In my opinion, this is what has chopped up land in small pieces.

I would have liked to see the group bonus added to the land impact without the need for land. It is perhaps impossible, since land = Li and that is the golden rule.

To buy just the right amount of land in a region is not easy. The solution may be to buy more, divide the land and abandon the leftovers. Taking the cost of an additional month of tier just to get it right.

 

[diamond Marchant]

18 hours ago, diamond Marchant said:

I wonder why Linden Lab has a tier structure that forces a member to pay for more tier than they need. Also, why is it capped at one region.

Further research teaches me that a resident can acquire as much mainland tier as they wish, in 1/4 region increments. The annualized marginal cost of a sqm is 3.22 cents which is approximately the same as the 3.25 cents paid by a premium member with no tier at all. This is how one becomes a land baron (on mainland).

This table comes from Buying land. It is curious that Mainland Pricing and Fees does not include pricing  beyond a one region tier.

[diamond Marchant]

Premium Plus Membership is a Good Deal

This analysis compares premium to premium plus membership on an annual basis. If you pay monthly, everything is more expensive. I have not shown group bonuses as that doesn't change the conclusions. Annual dollars spent on membership have the stipend subtracted, as one can convert it back to dollars or spend it inworld.

Assumptions About Premium Plus: Membership fee is doubled, stipend is doubled (L$300 -> L$600), and included tier is doubled (1024sqm -> 2048 sqm). As this has NOT been officially announced, it is NOT guaranteed as of the date of this post.

Analysis:
Members that want just a Linden Home and/or 1024sqm of tier should be Premium as that is the cheapest plan.

Members needing no more than 3072sqm (except for the 1024 case) should be Premium Plus as that is the cheapest plan.

Members needing more than 3072sqm can choose based on exactly how many sqm they need. The differences depend on when you are bumped to the next tier level. In Premium Plus, you always have 1024sqm more headroom. The costs per sqm is approximately the same in both plans in this range.

In both plans, the cheapest tiers are at the beginning (3.57 cents per sqm) and end (3.22 cents per sqm). This suggests a strategy of giving alts a premium plus plan, giving you 2048sqm at the cheapest rate or giving you a Linden Home plus 1024sqm at the cheapest rate.

Edited May 13, 2022 by diamond Marchant
fixed plan names

[Nika Talaj]

On 5/10/2022 at 3:36 PM, diamond Marchant said:

The current scheme requires planning (I use a spreadsheet) and is part of the "high barrier to entry" that people experience in Second Life.

A better approached might be to simply charge people for the actual maximum sqm they use each month and compute it such that the cost per sqm declines the more you use until it reaches some lower limit.

I have always believed that the complexity of SL's tier scheme hurts LL far more than it benefits it.  Until Belli came about, I had never been premium, because it simply was not worth the bother for me.  Getting mainland should be much more like renting property in real life.  I would long ago have gotten half a mainland region if tier wasn't such a PIA.

[LittleMe Jewell]

17 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

 

You should not refer to the membership levels as Basic and Premium.

In LL's eyes a Basic membership is the Free one.  Premium is the current paid level.  The upcoming paid level will be Premium Plus.

Using your chosen terms has too high of a chance of confusing people.

[Innula Zenovka]

Considering land prices on Zindra and Horizons, I suspect Adult Residential and Adult Commercial Linden Homes for Premium Plus members would be a very attractive perk for which people would be prepared to pay a substantial premium..  

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Considering land prices on Zindra and Horizons, I suspect Adult Residential and Adult Commercial Linden Homes for Premium Plus members would be a very attractive perk for which people would be prepared to pay a substantial premium..  

If the only way to get an adult rated linden home is via an additional paid premium I am going to be furious.

 

[Teresa Firelight]

4 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Considering land prices on Zindra and Horizons, I suspect Adult Residential and Adult Commercial Linden Homes for Premium Plus members would be a very attractive perk for which people would be prepared to pay a substantial premium..  

I understand why Horizons is so expensive (double LI allowance). But why is Zindra so expensive?

[LittleMe Jewell]

8 minutes ago, Teresa Firelight said:

But why is Zindra so expensive?

Simply because it is the only continent that is full ADULT, every region.  

Some folks truly need Adult for what goes on there or for what they sell.  Others just think they need Adult.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

21 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Simply because it is the only continent that is full ADULT, every region.  

Some folks truly need Adult for what goes on there or for what they sell.  Others just think they need Adult.

To add to this... there are also some double prim areas in Zindra. 

[belindacarson]

1 hour ago, Teresa Firelight said:

I understand why Horizons is so expensive (double LI allowance). But why is Zindra so expensive?

Because people are daft enough to pay those ridiculous prices instead of looking for abandoned moderate rated land and buying it directly from LL for 1 l$ a metre 🙄

[Innula Zenovka]

11 hours ago, Teresa Firelight said:

I understand why Horizons is so expensive (double LI allowance). But why is Zindra so expensive?

Simply because people are prepared to pay high prices for Adult-rated Linden Land.   I don't know why they're prepared to pay as much as they do, but they clearly think, for various reasons, that the Adult rating is something for which it's worth paying a considerable premium over M-rated land.

12 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

If the only way to get an adult rated linden home is via an additional paid premium I am going to be furious.

I can understand being disappointed but why furious?   Clearly people regard Adult-rated Linden land as a premium product for which they're willing to pay extra in the land store and at auction, so offering Adult-rated Linden homes as a benefit of Premium Plus membership seems to me equivalent to offering larger/higher LI parcels, another product for which people have already demonstrated they're willing to pay.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Innula Zenovka

[Teresa Firelight]

9 hours ago, belindacarson said:

Because people are daft enough to pay those ridiculous prices instead of looking for abandoned moderate rated land and buying it directly from LL for 1 l$ a metre 🙄

the prices on Horizons have gotten so out of hand... like 350,000 and 400,000 $L for a single lot.  I cant imagine anyone paying that much real money for a virtual property. And yet people do pay it.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Teresa Firelight
Had accidently left the $ out of $L. Fixed it

[Coffee Pancake]

12 hours ago, Teresa Firelight said:

I understand why Horizons is so expensive (double LI allowance). But why is Zindra so expensive?

Horizons was 50K a parcel not so long ago, the insane prices (150K - 500k) now is entirely down to land speculators flipping land to each other.

Zindra is so expensive because almost all the land is owned by a single vendor and their business model seems to involve collecting land but not actually selling it.

12 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Some folks truly need Adult for what goes on there or for what they sell.  Others just think they need Adult.

When Zindra was announced the rules were so vague that 2 kinky couples sharing a home could be counted as public Adult. No one wanted to take the risk of the smut-police roaming around getting them banned so everyone moved .. Zindra turned out to be disaster due to it focusing a huge and active population in such a tight configuration of regions, not to mention the insane number of clubs caught up in the purge. It was for all intents and purposes unlivable and everyone left for private islands.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Coffee Pancake

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Teresa Firelight said:

the prices on Horizons have gotten so out of hand... like 350,000 and 400,000 $L for a single lot.  I cant imagine anyone paying that much real money for a virtual property. And yet people do pay it.

No, they actually don't. 

Actual residential or business occupancy on Horzons is very low.

I've been tracking land ownership changes on the regions I have Horizons parcels on (via script) and parcel ownerships changes are for the most part short lived holding groups cycling parcels between each other. Sometimes an intermediary "real" avatar is involved, but they tend to put up a home for a couple of weeks, not actually use it, and then cycle it back into one of many holding groups. The price goes up at every step.

Much of the dead land is never actually listed for sale and has never had any occupancy.

Parcels tend to stay on one group for several months before being shuffled .. then being moved to a brand new group attached to seemingly different avatars. This has been the pattern for years.

[Teresa Firelight]

2 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Horizons was 50K a parcel not so long ago, the insane prices (150K - 500k) now is entirely down to land speculators flipping land to each other.

 

3 Years ago, I bought one of the highly desirable Horizons locations (double lot protected on all 4 sides, bordering swim-able ocean with sunset view, also front has fairly unobstructed sunrise over water view). At the time I paid the going rate (90,000 $L) for one parcel, and a few weeks later the seller offered the adjoining lot at 60,000 $L (it is set back slightly from the water with a mini-park between it and water, but still a good rate). I collectively paid 150,000 $L for both lots, which is substantially more than $50K a parcel -- but these were really desirable locations.

Now neighboring parcels are being offered for 300,000 - 400,000 $L each. that is like up to $1500 USD...  I cant imagine how they sell at that price, but from time to time, they do.

When I bought mine, I used earnings from my in-world store, so it did not feel like "real" money. I was shocked when I discovered it was roughly the equivalent of $900 USD. I probably would not have bought it if I calculated the Linden to Dollar conversion before buying.

 

[Nika Talaj]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

No, they actually don't. 

Actual residential or business occupancy on Horzons is very low.

I've been tracking land ownership changes on the regions I have Horizons parcels on (via script) and parcel ownerships changes are for the most part short lived holding groups cycling parcels between each other. Sometimes an intermediary "real" avatar is involved, but they tend to put up a home for a couple of weeks, not actually use it, and then cycle it back into one of many holding groups. The price goes up at every step.

Much of the dead land is never actually listed for sale and has never had any occupancy.

Parcels tend to stay on one group for several months before being shuffled .. then being moved to a brand new group attached to seemingly different avatars. This has been the pattern for years.

Do you have any idea if there is any traffic in these parcels?  Unless there is an endless supply of suckers who are setting up new land holding companies, I'm completely bewildered at the "why" of this shell game.  I wonder if @Qie Niangao can explain it? 

I've always assumed that parcel prices in Zindra might be at least partially driven by entrepreneurs setting up virtual front ends to RL 900-number businesses.  But a few years ago I discovered that normal mainland is already hosting a bunch of these.

(funny story) I was debugging a fancy visitor counter, and needed to test its error handling when its database filled up.  After realizing that taking my counter into crowded venues like London or DJ clubs involved other avatars trying to interact with me, I found a small-ish group of sex bots standing in little cubicles in the sky over some mainland parcel.  So I dusted off my 2008 system avatar dressed in freebie clothing (she looks like a down-on-her-luck unemployed receptionist) and began TPing in and out of a corner there, staying for various amounts of time, building up a database.  I thot the place was all automated UNTIL the owner showed up one time when I TP'd in and demanded to know what I was doing!  I apologized and explained, and asked her if she got a notification every time I arrived.  She said yes and I was asking her more about her biz when she ejected and banned me, lol.  

So I found 3 OTHER sexbot farms in the sky and rotated between them.

There was also a home in Foxbridge for a while that set itself up as a pay-for-use BDSM house.  That did not last long.  

Now I doubt that the high prices on Zindra are driven by usage of the parcels for sex work.  I'm really curious about the land market dynamics of these two adult zones.

[Innula Zenovka]

People pay what they're prepared to pay, whether or not there's any rational basis for it.   I used to have a parcel on Zindra, right back at the beginning, which I was given for free when adult stores were evicted from the mainland and my business partner and  I kept as a store for a few years and then we sold for the L$ equivalent of $300-odd US$ to a couple who wanted to open a club. 

I can't remember how large the parcel was now but I can't imagine any rational basis on which they sat down and calculated that their expected return on investment justified the cost.   They wanted to open a club on Zindra, that's what land on Zindra was selling for at the time, and neither my partner nor I were going to turn down free money.   

Presumably the buyers kept the land until they got tired of running a club and then sold it for whatever was then the going rate to someone else who wanted to pay however much it was to run an Adult something-or-other on Zindra.