Making money in SL - Some tips

Must by my day for posting..

Anyway, saw some new player worried about how to make money in SL. This got me thinking about some ideas on money making schemes in SL. I thought I would share some of these ideas with people so that those feeling particularly broke could have a chance at a small income. These ideas all require effort. So if you're not interested in a bit of effort to get your reward. Don't read on. Also, contribute your own ideas folks!

1) Advertising services - Profile
Why not talk to those top-shops that are advertising and see if they would be interested in paying you a small ammount (say, $10 a week) to put their shop in your favourites and up front in your profile. You would only need 3 or 4 shops to agree and this would be a nice little earner.

2) Advertising services - Promotions
Arrange a promotion service where you create a free giveaway (or work with a store and one of their products), then arrange to travel around and give out this gift (which should be useful and include a plug for the shop). Think of yourself as a PR guy for your clients! But of course, don't spam, be useful! You could earn $50-100 a promotion I am sure. Hell, form a small company with some friends and do these things once or twice a week.

3) Advertising services - Slave
No, not -that- kind of slave. How about doing someone's fetching and running, or working in their store to promote various products to people who come visit?

There's a couple or three ideas that could really boost someone's weekly income with just a little effort. Add you own ideas! Lets help each other out

Those are great ideas!

Yep, advertising: the next big industry! I can really see that happening.

Also, men's stuff. Yes, you have to put quite a bit more effort into that arena, but hell, it NEEDS it. Make men's clothes. I hate making men's clothes but when I started making men's skins it was suprising how many men came to look at the store. Sales are about equal between the sexes (YES, men shop as well!).

Hell, yes we do! Personally, I am a Level 70 consumer. I shop all the time and am constantly disappointed by the dearth of decent men's fashions.

That said-props to the following
Canimal
Pixel Dolls
Petals & Thorns

-Kiamat Dusk
Metrosexual

Advertising did not help me. I still went Bankrupt.

If you want to be sure you wont go bankrupt this is the only thing to do:

DONT SPEND UR CASH

hehehe

helped for me

#1 advice to anyone - whatever you decide to do, see that you do it better than anyone else, or do something unique from everyone else.

I agree Hiro, well said..





for people wanting to fetch and run for sl's biggest prefab shop, send me an Email

Hehehe... a way I've sometimes heard it described as is:

"Do something that's such a pain in the ass that either no one else knows how, or no one would go through the trouble!"

heheh torley....

that said of course, think to yourself whether the market for what you create will be at most 2 people, or 20 thousand.

If you or your friends want something and can't find it anywhere, that's a clue.

Play Tringo. Not only it's fun, you can win decent money there too (pots are usually around $100, some games can have much more - the biggest pot I saw was over $5000)

Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't give away my biggest trade secret, but...

... you know how you can list your land in places for $30L/week? That's a huge bargain, right? Well, lots of people like to do keyword searches, which are based off of the land's description in About Land. I added one word this week and noticed a ton of new people buying one of my products. (I won't say what because I won't give away THAT secret!)

So, for example - if you sell Inu Yasha avatars, you may want to include in your Land Description:
Shop XYZ! Selling Japanese anime avatars, Inu Yasha AV, Trigun, Ranma 1/2, clothing, yadda yadda yadda...

*looking for Hiro's land with the magic word description*

no matter what u sell always add clothing and furniture LOL

Sophos, don't be spilling the secret if you figure out what in my land draws my customers.

i already know mate..

you entered the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

good one mate !!

Yeah... Forseti, another thing I've found is that: the obvious is grossly overlooked. It's an ironic thing. Some of the most outstanding SL products have come from voids that needed to be filled. Luskwood avs come to mind because of their ubiquitosity.

And another general rule which I like is: don't make something you wouldn't use yourself.

Magnum, I've seen you say this several times on different threads. Would you care to explain to me exactly how you go "bankrupt" in Second Life please, as I don't believe you can. You have no supplier costs, so production doesn't mean you are having to lay out money with suppliers in order to build copies of products for sale. You have no staff costs. You have no land costs, past your original purchase and tier (and your tier would only count if you've gone bankrupt in RL and can't afford the tier). Basically, on an on-going basis it costs pretty much nothing in L$, which is the currency I think you're sayuing you're bankrupt in.

I'm perplexed - are their loan sharks in SL who've broken your avatar's legs for non-payment? Nope. Have they swooped onto your land and repossesed all your little prims? Nope again. You can't go bankrupt here. Plain and simple. You may have very little cash, but that's a million miles away from filing for bankruptcy.

This was posted in a thread I started a week ago or so but its fitting here as well. This is this months business blurb on SecondLifeNow

==========================================================

It does not take a genius to point out that marketing a new business in Second Life® is much like launching a new marketing campaign in real life. With a lot of impulse buying being part of human nature, our minds often trick us in to making purchases simply because of recognition. The one major advantage of course is that advertising costs little in our virtual world.
Marketing your Second Life® business is similar to marketing a web site in the early days of the Internet. Those that are user friendly, contain flashy designs, and provide reasons to keep coming back will always be on top of its game. The more new products displayed in your shop, the more repeat business you will gain, and it’s a simple concept that most of the top retailers in Second Life® apply to their business model. A shop that is not easily accessible has an obscure entrance, or lacks organization is more likely to never be visited again. Just as in real life, brand is everything. When you have a positive image and a logo or design that is easily recognized, people will buy your products repeatedly.

You may find Second Life listed under the game category, but make no mistake about it; the average citizen is a very savvy consumer conscience shopper. Releasing a product with flaws and bugs can have a huge negative impact on your brand, which will last forever. While first to market is still a key issue, product quality is equally as important. In real life it is important to have Focus Groups and marketing analysis, the same holds true in Second Life. Let people you know test your products and listen to what they have to say.

The biggest challenge is appeal. In real life, you buy soap to get clean, shoes because your old ones are worn out, and food because you are hungry. In Second Life®, the only reason someone will be purchasing your product is for luxury and recreation. No avatars have any real needs, so most of the things they purchase are simply because they like to play with gadgets, express themselves or even simply to have a conversation piece. Because of this fact, originality is extremely important to your marketing efforts.

The last tip I will add in this short tid-bit is remember it’s a small world after all. Your personal reputation in Second Life® can make or break your account balance. The majority of the population will not purchase a product tagged with a creator they have a negative opinion for. Remember to always represent yourself with integrity, understanding, and tolerance.

OOk I really dont apply totaly to that rule as I make Lingerie...but I do it to see it on women not on me...LOL

Pirate all in all great Ideas, I had one almost 6 months ago that would require newbs to be like a sales force they would have gotten a percentage of sales based on who they got to buy what.

The problem it seems I have ran across tons of Ideas of creative things for new members that got shot down immediately on mention. Now those very same Ideas are being brought to the forefront of peoples minds as being acceptable. Ironic how a society evolves as it casts it's foward thinkers to the wolves and latter embraces the very things they cast out the thinkers for.

Oh well I digress...

Shadow

Things Change

Hahaha... yeah, point taken. This is why I embrace contradictions. But look at it this way, Shadow: if you clicked the other Gender button, would you wear what you make? *grins*

an easy way to make money if you have wits and patience is to buy and sell land.

place below market rate bids on the auction. try to win half a sim to a full sim within a week. then parcels the land into shapes and sizes that are more likely to sell (and create better neighbourhoods according to your subjective vision) and then resell them at market price. be carfeul not to to bid within 1-1.5 L$ of your estimated market price or you just break even or lose money.

recycle L$ to USD - rinse and repeat.

Actually Jauani the best way to do that is buy 10 sims set them to group and get the 11th one free. Rent them all out to cover monthly tier and at the end of 10 months you can buy another sim from the money the 11th one earned.

Continue this cycle till you have 30 sims paying for themselves and 3 paying in free money above and beyond.

Eventually you could own 110 sims and have 10 making mad money for free for you.

But I havent really thought this all through either...

Shadow

Here's what I did, results may vary:

I started out with my 512m plot when I was new to SL. Started making things at the time I could do kinda easy but also ventured into products I had to learn more about SL and other programs needed to make them. I started simple and sold tshirts, stained glass windows and other textures I found surfing the web. Once I thought I was good enough at making other products like furniture and such I bought a bigger piece of land. Then I invited a friend or two to help me open my store. I didnt have enough products to fill the store and I also felt my friend made better quality things. But for the most part our items didnt compete directly with each other and we ran the store together. We held a few events and such, business was getting fairly well. Then I bought even more land and opened a bigger store. At that point I went around SL looking at other peoples stuff I liked that kept with my stores theme. Then I contacted those people and offered them a free spot in my store. Eventually I had a store that wasnt too cluttered and had things for sale in it that I felt the target audience the theme was geared towards would like. Business picked up for everyone involved.

The thing Im really proud of is that the store has been at the location since last September, has no plans of moving and to this day I have not charged a single L$ to the vendors in my store. And I moved it in Sept only because I was out of prims and needed to expand a lilttle. And I had the 2 stores running at the same time for a short period allowing the merchants (werent that many) to relocate without disruption.

I guess my point is find out the talents of your friends if you need help getting started. Work together and help each other out. For example, I hate scripts. But I wanted to make a calendar that would change the texture every month to the current months texture. It ended up being a fairly easy script but I didnt even want to dig into it. I had a friend good at scripts so I asked for his help. He gave me the script, I used it to create my product and at the end of the month I pay him 50% of the sales from that product. We both benefit. Ok, Im rambling. Enough.