For the final part of section one of these guides, I want to talk to you about the benefits of being a premium subscriber, vs. remaining a free account.

I want to preface this, again, noting that I am not being sponsored by Linden Labs, and these are solely my own subjective opinions on aspects of Second Life, including paid features.

You probably remember from a couple guides back venturing into your account management and seeing mention of premium. You're also probably familiar, by now, with massively multiplayer online games and their subscription costs. Some of which require it in order to access their worlds.

Well, this isn't all that much different, except it is entirely optional, and only provides further benefits if you decide you'd like to stick around for a long period of time.

As a free user, you have access to most of Second Life, but not all of it. Premium residents get access to premium only sandboxes, premium gift sims with seasonal items you can use to decorate your home! And speaking of homes, premium comes with a complimentary Linden home! A space of your choosing in more premium sims where you can pick a prefabricated home among hundreds and hundreds of others in expansive neighborhoods, and then decorate!

On top of that, premium and premium plus subscribers are given more room for groups! As a premium plus subscriber, I have access to 140 group slots. That's kind of a lot!

Also, as a premium plus subscriber, you have the ability to buy a homestead sim without having to first own a private region (which is much more expensive).

A homestead is basically your own private sim with 5000 land impact and a maximum 20 resident limit. Not so bad for 100 dollars a month. Yes, land acquired outside of the allowed amount that comes with your subscription costs extra on top of your subscription (because land and sims are servers, and servers require maintenance).

Speaking of allowed land space and what-not, as a premium subscriber you're of course allowed to use your allotment of land to buy a Linden home, but you can completely forego this and use some linden to buy up Abandoned land on the mainland, and build there instead, at no extra cost (as long as the land size doesn't exceed the amount your monthly fee allows).

Mainland versus renting and what these things are, are a topic I will explore in a later guide.

And for me, the biggest draw of being a subscriber is the weekly stipend. Or, basically, as a subscriber, Linden Labs gives you back some of the money you're spending to subscribe, in Linden Dollars. Which I believe is 150 linden a week for plus subscribers, 300 linden a week for premium, and 650 a week for premium plus.

I haven't mentioned plus because benefits of being a plus subscriber are slim, but they're still there!

Here are the full details of what each subscription tier offers you, compared to each other.

I've said before, but if you plan to stick around for a long period of time, I highly recommend subscribing in order to really dig your heels in.

Subscribing

Now, how do you become a subscriber, if that's what you want?

Head back to your account management page as detailed in the previous guide on shopping and take a gander at the left sidebar. See the link that says, "change membership?" Click that.

This is what you'll see.

You can either pay monthly (what I always choose), or yearly, if you're 100% confident you'll be around for a year, and you have a lump sum you'd like to spend.

As a creator, premium plus was a no-brainer. The ability to upload sounds, textures and animations for free cuts my development costs literally in-half.

But maybe you just want to get your feet wet and see what it's like? I would definitely recommend giving Plus a shot, and if you feel like that's not enough down the line, go for Premium.

Once you have that selected, and you've subscribed, head back to the main account page and find the "get your home now" button, if you want a Linden home parcel, that is.

This will take you through a set of pages that ask you to decide what neighborhood you want to live in, and what type of house you want. After you've seleted all of that, and given your home parcel a name, you'll be provided with a location that you can immediately teleport to.

I recommend choosing the Newbrooke area, but that's just me.

Once you've teleported to your new home, go ahead and click World at the top of your viewer, and then "Set Home to Here" in order to tell Second Life that this is where you want the house button to take you whenever you click it, which is located to the left of your viewer's address bar.

From this point forward, you can decorate with whatever you like, up until you reach your land impact limit. Use techniques you learned in unpacking boxes to drag tables, chairs, beds and the like directly onto the ground. And then right click, Edit, and use the three-dimensional arrows to drag items around (aspects of building in this way will be covered in a later guide).

If you're looking for more furniture, feel free to browse the Marketplace, or click the Pin button on the side of your viewer, scroll all the way to the right and check out the Premium Members Only section, where you'll find numerous places to visit that only you can visit!

Including the premium gift selection sim!

The premium gifts are usually sets of furniture that can help get you started in decorating your home. If you've chosen Newbrooke as your home, you can also receive a box of free home gifts by going outside and clicking your mailbox. Then click the number 10 to receive your content creation pack. 11 if you want a simple home security system (to keep out unwanted visitors).

A notecard will come along with the security system explaining how to use it.

Note: Both of these packages are the type that you will want to drag onto the ground in order to open and extract their contents.

Oh and by the way, your home is now your personal sandbox sim! But you can totally keep going to sandbox sims if you enjoy the social aspect.

That's it for my explanation of the benefits of becoming a premium subscriber, vs. having a free account.

Head back to the main guides page by clicking How-to SL at the top of this page.

If you have any questions regarding this guide, or using Second Life in-general, please feel free to message me in-world, and while I am kind of busy most of the time, I'll do my best to get an answer to you! My username is: C M D R ::Ｎｏｖａ Ayashi Wu (Nova Ayashi). Thank you for reading!

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