“There’s only one reason to get a premium account: You want to buy land directly from LL, most likely entire sims.”

No, actually there is more than one reason. I bought two premium accounts because they pay for themselves as yearly accounts (with the grandfathered weekly stipend of L$500), not because I didn’t want to rent land from somebody else or to somebody else. I own land because it is equity and I can turn and sell it again, not because I want to move out and rent it to somebody else for a profit. In fact when I tiered down from $25/month to $8/month recently I sold the land beneath market value. You could have bought this land. It was available to anybody.

Land owners, especially sim owners tend to have more tools available them too, which makes owning your own sim even more desirable.

I am curious what the sense is in renting land from Anshe Chung or anybody else when you can buy it for yourself unless you want to rent land in a sim owned by her? Harold rents land and I think he rented land from Anshe at one time too. I have nothing against Anshe Chung (so please don’t make this about her) or any other land owner who makes money renting land to others, I just prefer to own rather than rent, both in the virtual world and real world, and I own much less than a total sim. You’re now paying more than twice what I paid for land almost every month in 2006

I recognize that “free accounts” can and do participate to the economic situation of the virtual world. They are represented in the economic stats Harold linked to above and absolutely do matter. I was looking at this more from the stats that Linden Lab provides to media and what subscriber numbers should they be actively providing the media. It definitely helps Linden Lab to hide behind some foggy total resident number, versus providing the number of people who actually are paying them something, anything.

Frankly, I don’t understand a willingness to pay $50/month for land but not have a premium account which can be had for $72 per year? Why not? You don’t want a weekly stipend? Don’t want to give Linden Lab any credit card information? Why not?

That’s not criticism toward you, AD, nor do I work for or have friends at Linden Lab, it simply curiosity on my part. Please explain when you get a second what the renter’s perspective is in a virtual world?

Maybe that would make a good post, Harold, explaining why you chose to rent instead of buy when all that equity — the placement — would belong to the landowner, not you. I remember a post from somebody in the past about this (maybe you?) Maybe I should just use the search.

There’s only one reason to get a premium account: You want to buy land directly from LL, most likely entire sims. This is for land lords, not your average user. The sims are full of people on “free” accounts that pay a very great deal of money for their land. You should absolutely count free accounts!

AD

“The orange graph shows that the number of Premium Residents has grown from 5,000 at the start of 2005 to over 36,000 at the end of November 2006″

That’s how many are buying land via tier and is a long, long way from 2.3 million residents, isn’t it?

No one else reports those numbers.

Is it fair to compare 7 million beta-and-box-and-free vs 100,000 people paying for a plot?

I am frequently in Secondlife and I buy a lot of products in Secondlife and I feel I am as much a “user” as any Paid member. With some of the customer service changes I have been reading and writing about I think maybe it will finally become time to pay for an account, but at the present time my feelings would be hurt not being counted. It isnot my fault that LL has never given enough incentive for me to pay for an account.