"Those who use SL for income deserve what they get"-Do you share this attitude?

hehe, as you can see I've stopped correcting people. It's a flattering mixup

It's mainly people who are really anti-commerce who might assume if you're successful that you're all about the money. That's really the impression I want to avoid. First and foremost I create stuff in SL because I enjoy it. If that wasn't the case I wouldn't be here. That's the biggest reason I downplay my earnings or their importance to me unless it's really germain to the conversation.

Great post Torrid!! *cheers*

I myself don't have the time to even try to make RL money from SL. I get by, and I've yet to ever *want* for anything in SL that I was not able to obtain. Even if it took a while. And I applaud those who take the risk and have the dedication to work to make it happen for them!

As someone who believes that SL is the platform for the future internet.. It is of course my belief that there *is* a place in this world for those who are daring enough to take a risk and try to earn some income.

I remember my days as a Sysop. And the internet beginning. I remember the excitement at this great new information source. I remember the outcry against businesses selling on the internet when they first started. Then I remember exceptions to that rule. I remember acceptance and compromise. I remember businesses failing all over the place. The internet would NEVER be a safe place to buy and sell. Then I remember ideas to improve what already existed. Now I see businesses that are idiots if they are NOT trying to make a presence on the web.

Personally I see SL in about the same stage right now as I saw the internet "back in the day".

To anyone who can make a living in SL, without stepping on other people or being a generally shitty person to accomplish it, I say more power to them. You have more guts than I do.

SL is my only income, but I wouldn't have the guts to do it if my husband didn't have a steady job. If I could do it and still enjoy it, I would. I think having to stress over it would sap the fun out of it for me. I don't want deadlines, or forced creativity, or having to raise prices to cover my bills. If people are making enough to do that without having to worry, they're making a whole lot more than I am, and good for them.

Wonderful post Torrid.

In the last 2 months i started transfering Lindens to RL money.. Canadian to boot
I have a full time job and I look at my sl income as 1 pays for my tier. 2 pays for my other online activites.. various hosts and severs i have. 3. has paid for all my repairs on my car. 4. nesting away quietyly for when the right time when I can look at my husband and say /kmb. Sometimes a full time job does not cover everything. It pays my expenses, bills, mortgage etc.. but this.. he has no access to. I sat for the longest time... not converting my Lindens. Do i do it all the time no... regularly yes. Do i feel the need to make all kinds of money no... as long as I can pay my tier cost and keep socking away a private stash for that wonderful day .. I am happy.

There is so much jealous in this game is sad. Its worse when someone who you think is your friend for the last couple of years..point blank shuns you because you do make RL money. I have been resistant to talk about it to anyone how much I actually make for this reason. or even to share with anyone that I do make RL money... its my business, only my Mom knows.. she thinks I am nuts anyways LOL.

Anyways.. I am rambling.. again. wonderful post Torrid.

~Tya

I am going to keep getting you both mixed up until I get signed hoo-hoo dilly photos from both of you so I can pin them up next to my monitor.

Be careful what you wish for

I have really enjoyed reading all the thoughtful and intelligent responses to Torrid's thread topic. The many perspectives shared by the variety of posters here have been helpful and inspirational to me.

Some nuggets that jumped out to me:

Originally posted by Travis Lambert


Originally posted by Kris Ritter


The above made me laugh out loud and reminded me about remembering to consider things in context. Also nice was the post later on pointing out the "love of money" being the evil and not the money itself. Which leads to my next nugget:

Originally posted by Nala Galatea


Money can be a lens for the human soul.

or

People's true colors are revealed when money comes into the picture.

It says a lot about the character of someone if they give you a gift and then later, when circumstances change, their gift has sudddenly turned into a loan. Or if their whole time here is spent on amassing $Lindens at the cost of enjoying thier second life (or the second life of others). Bah Humbug, indeed!

Originally posted by si Money


I agree with Huns, that this is great advice for life on Earth as well as here in the Lindens' world.

This made me think... "I wonder what the Wright Brothers were thinking when they were trying to get that plane off the ground."

Did they forsee commercial air travel and space exploration? I would think it would have been hard to imagine where we are today, back then, when it was an incredible achievement just getting into the air. The Lindens' efforts with Second Life remind me a bit of that--sputtering and herky-jerkying around as all of us put up with lag, teleports-to-nowhere, hacked software and hoochie hair gone wild!

Good G'al is it even worth it?!!?

Then something like this becomes possible:


Four friends in an alternate universe spontaneously meet up and stop to watch a sunset. Friendly chit chat is exchanged about the weather (always sunny), Welcome Area hijinx and personal appeance nods-- "nice wings!" Meanwhile in a parallel world each counterpart looks on, separated by hundreds or thousands of miles, and moves their mouse or presss the right key to partipate in this long distance experience...

...and we get a glimpse of what that feeling must have been like when the wheels left the ground. If only for a moment. Wonder what will seem normal 7 years from now?

What does this have to do with making an income in Second Life? Not much I guess. Only that it's possible and very risky. The plane may be airborn--I'd still keep a parachute handy.

Originally posted by Cindy Claveau


I say ditto on the kudos and well said, Cindy, on the advice. This goes back to showing good character, honor and pride in what one does. And doing it regardless of the circumstances.

I would love to find a way for my efforts here to make a nice income that I could be proud of. I just need to figure out what it is exactly that I do.



p.s. Proud of the efforts, I mean.

speechless. Brilliant post, Salazar

Even so, they only provide the service of increasing the price of land. And I hate what LL did on the land thing, they served the entire community to the land barons on a platter.

I debated saying anything here, decided against it three times and then changed my mind for some odd reason. Here goes anyway.

Speaking for myself, SL IS a game. I pay to play it. I assume others do also - even the lifetime accounts, only they paid in advance for land privileges.

I don't, and never have, approached ANY game with the intent of trying to make money - doing so would remover the endeavor from "game status" for me.

That being said, that other people do or try) to make money from this "game" is none of my business. I treat them no differently than anyone else. As has been pointed out, the TOS specifically states that the $Linden has no intrinsic value. Any value outside the game is something someone ascribes to it on a temporary basis. I say temporary because that is the nature of human beings and their interests in my experience - that is, most people's interest in "x" today is different somehow from their interest in that same "x" tomorrow, or yesterday for that matter. Consequently, if anyone exchanges $L for USD on GOM or elsewhere, it's luck of the draw if they can find someone else with the opposing interest exchange wise at the same time. If they do, good for them.

But if someone needs to "cash" out to do some real world whatever with the proceeds from the cashing out AND can't find someone to cash out with, or can only cash out at a loss or less than they need, want or planned.... well, I couldn't care less because - to me - this is a game. It's not a for profit game to me. That some one else treats it as "not game" doesn't mean squat to me and doesn't affect my game. If it so happens that they relied on this "game" system to provide food for their table, medicine, whatever - and this will sound hopelessly heartless and cruel to some, even to many - that's not my business nor will I concern myself with it.

As an extension of the above, as related to the hack of the past couple days, having lost things through theft in the real world, I can sympathize - but, realistically, I won't think twice about the situation five minutes after reading a forum post/thread/whatever. SL's a game to me. I don't worry about games. I don't worry about others having fun with games that I play. When I do either of those things, the fun disappears for me.

Call me cruel, hearrtless, whatever. I am not a "known" player in world. I do make somethings and have given quite a few away - and people seem to like the things I gave them, But I have never sold anything on a serious basis or on a serious scale. If I did, I'd shrug my shoulders each sale and laugh... monopoly money is about as meaningful to me as $L is. I have tiered down to landless, intend to stay that way and will still be able to take adbantage of all the tools that make the game enjoyable. If I never bought another thing and had to rely solely on my own creativity and skills while in SL, so long as I ran across the occasional "other" to talk to or show things to, my game would be as enjoyable as it is now.

So.. do the peolpe who lost things "deserve it"? Nope, no more or less than any real world "victim". Do I feel "bad" for them? Not really - at least no more than I do for a neice or nephew who just broke his or her favorite toy and only until he or she gets/finds a new favorite toy. Do I sympathize at all? Only while reading the threads about it. Sorry the game has been disrupted temporarily for some of you. AS they say in golf, play on.

you skipped this part of my post...



I never said it was a good or bad idea. I merely stated that it is a great risk. The same as freelance ANYTHING is a great risk. I never said don't do it. That is not my business to tell anyone how to make money or their living. Unfortunately, some people make it their business to tell others how to live, breathe, eat and even sh*t.

Either way, the one thing I did notice is that everyone in this thread is using the money to subsidize, not survive, like I stated in my first post.

I agree with that bit. But did you notice Philip said that they only did this because in actual fact, almost none of us actually bought in the auctions ? Didn't he say only 40 people participated in last 6 months? Mor importantly, he said this was not a final decision, but that they would reverse it if he had enough complaints. Any of you sent one in ? Might be time better spent than us all bewailing it as irreversible, here in forum.

How many people had just given up, though? It's not like the auctions were a bargin even before hand, since the barons bought up the little ones too.

My thoughts exactly. What was the point when you knew the outcome before you started?

You have to wonder this??? I think it is fairly obvious.

That's what you say. We all know that you're really conjoined twins. After seeing Stuck on You, you decided to do the Blue Screen trick to hide your secret. We're onto you!

I just want to know which of you is playing Matt Damon? Whoever it is, TP PLZ!

If their conjoined, would it matter?

Matt Damon is teh sexy... But I dunno, being a conjoined twin would slightly negate that for me.

Hmm my take on this is I guess pretty Basic as to what content creators deserve as far as the negative.

Do they deserve to lose Income if their content doesnt Sell - yes

Do they deserve the right to Linden Labs ensuring them a market to sell in - no

Do they derserve an honest attempt by LL to keep SL a decent market - yes

Do they deserve to have their IP stolen by people who break the rules - NO

Do they deserve that consequential loss of Income due to infringement - NO


Does what they deserve have anything to do with whether they make $100 or $5000 in Second Life - no. The rights should be maintained for all.

Does what they deserve have anything to do with how much of their RL income is derived from SL - no. It should be independant of someones RL situation.

How someone pays their RL bills is their own problem. Its neither sad nor pathetic to get income from Second Life that pays the bills. No excuses need to be made either. If someone devotes time developing something people are willing to pay $L for and other people are willing to buy $L for US$ then this is awesome.

Its not a job really, if a content creating player tried to get Unemployment from Linden Labs becuase they lost all their business - I would say they are out of line.

But if they make enough money to live on - Who are we to judge?

Yes its risky. There are a lot of ways to make money in this world that are risky.

Did the people who lost BUNDLES of money in the Stock market DESERVE IT when it went into a much accelerated downward spiral after Sept 11?.

Sure the Stock Market is risky - they knew the normal risks , if they had lost money under normal business conditions - such is life.

But to say they deserved to have money taken from them outside these risks that is mean spirited.

Now then - those who lost ways to make RL money becuase of this Hacker have my sympathy. I hope their business' survive and they continue to make whatever income they did before this callous theft of their Ideas.

Infringement vs Theft.

I lot of people say this hack resulted in Infringement not theft.

All right - if you copy something from someone and then sell unauthorized reproductions it is Infringement and the creator is losing money from sales they could have made.

If however they use this copied code in another item, CLAIM they created the scripted item and sell it, in effect becoming a competor of the original creator. Then in Effect they are Stealing - literally - the Originator's Ideas.

Thats my opinion anyway.


------------------------------------------------------
Dont bother with lengthy dictonary rebuttals - people who write dictionaries arent trying to understand moral issues when they do so

Yep, all of that is true. Freelance art is a risky way to make a living. I see it as a scale with freedom on one end and security on the other. I prefer to live with it tipped as far towards freedom as possible.

Before I went into business for myself I was a staff animator at a multimedia production house. One day I did the math and figured out that I was spending over a month out of every year in my car on my way to and from work. Ten years later my time is my own as long as I meet my deadlines. A tank of gas lasts me a month. The only traffic jams I deal with involve the cat trying to make me fall down the stairs on my way to the espresso machine. And the best part is, I make far more money for far less busywork than I ever did on staff.

It's up to each individual to decide how they want to live their lives, and how much security they're willing to go without in favor of freedom. SL, and the demand for my products within it, actually make my life more secure. I don't consider it to be much different than any other client or income source. Each venue in which I'm able to convert my skills into income becomes an agent of stability without a sacrifice of freedom. That's how I see it anyway

Very true, I am just one of those more cautious people that tends to stick to a job that weighs more into security. To each his own and either way is right for each person. You just have to take into account the motivation behind people complaining about how you choose to make money and you will see a big-green eyed monster



95 and 495 does suck doesn't it? LOL

You can say that again! Most of my commute was spent sitting at the 270 spur or the Amercan Legion (of doom) bridge. I so don't miss it

Out of all of these posts of opinions and advice should be a document that is handed to "new business owners" within SL. I'm pretty sure the advice of the SL elders who have had businesses for any amount of time would be appreciated, the scripting advice, the disaster recovery advice, and the customer service advice would benefit many.

LL may advertise Second Life as "Create Your Own Business!" and "Exchange Linden's For USD!" But for many entering SL, it's a "learn it the hard-way proposition" that sometimes fails if they really don't understand what they are undertaking and at what risk -- risk involving investing their RL dollars and putting in hours of hard work and sweat as any start-up company would require but doing it on a platform that is known for it's quirks and limitations.

Someone should make a document of all of this advice and make it readily available to all new business owners.

Excellent post Torrid Great insight into your view of SL which I for one really appreciate you taking the time to give. (I wish you would post more often.)

If ppl do make money off their original sl creations; I think that is realy great.

As for the exploits recently, the blame lies solely with those who hacked any code.

Cat