How to buy Lindens

I wrote about how to sell Lindens almost ten years ago, but do you know how to buy Lindens? If you still click the Buy L$ button in the viewer to get money to spend, you should read this blog post to find out how to get the most Linden dollars for your money.

First, go to the L$ Exchange Settings in your SecondLife.com dashboard and change the Interface Mode from Basic -> to Advanced.

Then, go to the Buy L$ page and look at the Open Buy Orders chart to find the lowest exchange rate, which is L$252/US$1.00 (note: the exchange rate changes over time but is mostly stable). If you want to buy Lindens right away, write down the exchange rate that’s one linden dollar lower than the lowest one on this chart. So, to get Lindens right away, put down L$251/US$1.00. Use the lowest top Exchange Rate if you don’t mind waiting a few hours or a few days. If you set the exchange rate that’s further down the list, the longer you will have to wait for your buy order to be fulfilled. Be aware that buy orders with ridiculously high rates are probably not going to be filled.

I’ve found that the top Exchange Rate on the Open Sell Orders chart usually matches the Instant Buy (Market Rate). Using Market Rate, you won’t lose as much money as you might think, but you will still lose some. See the table below for how much it costs to buy $20,000 worth of lindens at Market Buy vs. Limit Buy. When you use Market Buy, it costs you about $3.16 more.

To sum up, when you buy, you want to get the MOST Linden dollars per US dollar. When you sell, you want to give the LEAST amount of Linden dollars per US dollar.

Does this tutorial help you understand how the Linden Exchange works? Let me know in the comments!