What would you pay a builder in SL?

I build in SL and make a pretty decent income from it. But I know for a fact I'm charging a whole lot less than some people who also build. However, because of this, I probably have more steady work than they do. But I've had people tell me I don't know my value. Maybe - maybe not.

As a regular "joe" in SL, if you needed someone to build a sim for you - what would you deem a reasonable amount to pay? What would you expect for that money? Besides a well done build. I'm really curious to know!

It really depends on the quality of your work, and the reputation you command.



For quite small builds and commissions, you're looking at a sum of a few thousand L$, with limited copies from the hundred L$ mark, up.

For large residences and whole sim jobs, this number can easily be thousands of USD, given the time required and skills involved.



As for corporate customers, most won't blink when a number with five or more figures is mentioned, but only if you have a reputation.

However, most of the easy jobs there have panned out at this point, leaving builds more specific to SL left on the table. There seem to be lots of "residential" and grant-funded projects, to this end.




Bottom line, price at what you feel you're actually worth, do good work, and people will come.

Prices based on building all content on a full standard sim.

Residential sim owned by a fellow resident - $1000 - $1500 USD
Commercial sim owned by a fellow resident - $1500 - $2000 USD
Commercial sim owned by a RL corp - $5000 USD + dependant upon their requirments

For complex scipting or animation requirments I would hire experts to assist

Only done 3 sims so far this year due to lack of time and needless to say when I do custom work nowadays It's generally only for real life corps. THe bonus of this is you can get them to sign a RL contract in addtion to getting payment processed in RL rather than through SL or Paypal.

I used to to do lots of little custom jobs as well, single houses, or qtr sims but it's not worth the time or effort now. If you're going to do custom then build at full sim level and for RL business.

I generally agree with the rate scale that Porky posted, for a one-person operation. Yet I have had a number of people tell me that I could charge more than that for the work that I do. I've slowly been increasing my rates as my reputation and experience increases. But right now, a whole-sim build costs between $1000 and $2000 USD from me, depending on what they want me to do, and the number of hours and number of subcontracted resources I need to accomplish it. And I am turning away some bids, referring the work to other SL Builders, because I simply don't have enough hours in the day to work on more than what I am already under contract to build for my current clients. I'm booked many months in advance.

If you charge much more than $2,000 USD for a whole-sim job, including all the buildings and terraforming and landscaping, I think most individual people and small business ventures in SL would not be able to afford it. But a Corporate client in the Real world would look at a $2,000 bid, and the number of hours you say it will take, and will think you are under-bidding on what it is worth. I have actually lost a Corporate bid before by bidding to low! They didn't believe that a bid at that price could deliver what they wanted.

Reputation and quality of past work has a lot to do with what you can and should charge. Once people can see high-quality examples of past work and can talk to earlier satisfied customers, it becomes much easier to get higher-end bids accepted. So my advice would be to start low and slowly increase your prices, until you find what the market will bear for what you can deliver. You may also want to try simply asking your prospective clients what they are willing to budget for a given number of hours of effort on your part, to make their project. You may be able to determine a mutually agreeable price point that way.

Porky, Ceera...

I'd be interested also in what sort of time frame your projects entail. How many hours does it take you to do a whole sim?

Do you have intermediate approval milestones for your clients?

(O.O).... No wonder I can't afford my favorite dresses. (T_T)

This depends a lot on the specific task at hand.

My preference is to subdivide the task into specific measurable milestones that each take two weeks or less; such as "build the marina area", "Build the lighthouse", "Castle on the cliff", "Dungeons under castle"; with each described in the bid in terms of features that should be there, estimated prim complexity, anticipated number of hours to complete the task, and the payment that will be due when that phase is complete. In most cases, I get paid when the work has been accepted by the client for that phase. A whole-sim build featuring 5 major areas of 2000 or so prims each could take me 6 weeks or so in real-time, including custom textures for the buildings, with me working about 20 hours a week on the task. (I have a real-world full-time job, so can't work much more than 20 hours a week in SL.)

In one recent case, a comercial client insisted on paying half down in advance and half on completion of the whole sim, as they didn't want theor accounting department to make out 6 to 8 seperate checks. I still have them inspect each phase on completion, before moving to the next phase.

Usually, at the end of the project, all the prims are transfered to the client's ownership by selling every last item to them. But in some cases where the client anticipates retaining my services for ongoing maintenance and renovations as their needs change, they leave the primwork in my name, so I can more readily modify everything later.

And at those rates, I am STILL getting paid a similar rate per hour of effort to what I would make flipping hamburgers at a fast food restaurant for minimum wage! A six-week long project that I get $1000 USD for, with me working 20 hours per week, comes out to $8.33 USD an hour. And I have expenses (and taxes) that I pay out of that, such as all the prim trees, multimedia systems, and other items that I purchase from other content providers, plus my upload fees for the custom textures that I make.

But consider it this way...

If you are investing $1000 in buying a sim, and planning to pay $295 each month to maintain it, what is it worth to you to rapidly have in that sim all the features that you desire? How much income do you lose, if it takes you 4 to 6 months to build the sim on your own and make it ready to use? $3950 USD for your first year's start-up and operating expenses. Compared to a years operating expenses for a sim, a one-time fee for a sim architect like Porky or myself is fairly reasonable. Some SL firms charge ten times as much, and more, for their Corporate clients.

I hate to say this, because I am sure you are a much better builder than I am, but I wouldn't pay you one red cent. Quite simply, I can do my own building jobs and get something that works. Occasionally, I stumble upon something quite good. My "gourd fence" on my 512 and my plant rings are a case in point. Other than that, I can put up serviceable structures, fencing, and signage.

If I were corporate and not a 512 square meter hobbyist, I still would probably not hand you the work. Instead, either I'd do the building or I'd train the talent in house. Once I had three or four competent builders I'd turn them loose. A talented builder can raise a yurt or quonset hut, plus landmarks/road, and signage. Good signage is going to be the sticking point of any public build.

Once my builders had something (draft one a very usable alpha if you will), I'd go fetch the people who can play Second Life but who don't have builder marks on them or I'd go get someone from my secretarial pool or one of the front office types. I'd then plop them down and we'd have a useability study. We might try this sooner on paper story boards, but with Second Life you can probably go live and try it in the real 3-D. I'd look for scale, readability, comfort in use.... A structure of good scale, interesting color, and not quite perfect walls and a "rough" texture is going to be far more interesting than one that is perfectly joined but off scale and huge. I'd want to make sure visitors could read all written instructions which means they wouldn't take forever to bake. I'd also test for walkability. No one should fall off a ramp or bridge. Nothing should be teleport only. You would need to walk from one end of the sim to the other.

I'd figure the sim money went to keep the porn out and make a work-safe environment. Getting that environment workable has got to be an in-house task.

Time spent on each project obviously varies depending upon the requirements. I try to get as much information up front from the client before the building begins. This can be a challenge in itself as people can be indecisive and I haven’t got time for that, so I have developed a kind of interview process that I go through before each new job allowing me to extract the maximum amount of info in the minimum amount of time.

I also impose limitation on my client, all projects have to be based around buildings/structures i.e. so I would not be interested in building a fairground or a large forest or a golf course etc. I stick to my own preferred genres i.e. Modern, contemporary, funky wacky, futuristic, sci-fi and urban. No interest in historical or period or gothic styles etc.

So after much discussion via email, in world and ideally face to face for RL clients, I will set up a final planning meeting. There I will present a scale model of the sim with very rough scaled versions of all the objects. We will then work together to position the objects in relation to each other in addition to zoning areas for paths, water, trees or whatever else is required. Generally I have a few months waiting list so the above takes place during the waiting period. We have already discussed the specifics about the buildings, texturing etc over the past month so at this stage I am ready to begin.

At this point I get 50% of the overall fee.

I like to build in private so I will build everything in my own workspace. I will not get any input from the client at this stage. I am creating and don’t need my creativity being stifled by requests for design changes or customer commentary. From experience I need to let my designs flow to produce my best and most imaginative work.

So pretty much everything is finished and I am about 80% though the project. I then go over and terraform the sim, rez and position everything, and start building the paths, roads, bridges...all the stuff that cannot be done before terraforming. At this point I invite the feedback from the customer and welcome any input on amendments. Due to my hard work at the beginning I have a very concise brief so most customers are generally happy at this point with what I have created. However they always want some things changed so the remaining 20% of the project is spent tailoring what I've built to the customer’s specific requirements. I am on site every day from this point so the client can freely liase with me.

The last project I did I probably spent 15 - 20 hrs planning. 100 - 120 hours building and not including the planning stage it took me 6 weeks. That’s 5 weeks building in private and 1 week setting up and interacting with the client to finish the job.

Thanks, guys!

That's about how I would envision doing a job for a client too, so that's very nice validation. The time period seems about right too...I expect that I spent about the same number of hours on our Lebettu sim build, although spread very differently.

wow $1000?

All i get for building anything are like *hugs*

Lucky! (>_<

I get made fun of. (T_T)

Oh my!
I think I better up my fees alot hehe.
I love to build anyway..

There are several levels of pay you can incorporate into your mental rate sheet...

* Pay you get from a RL business with a real budget...if you are confident that you are a skillful builder, you can charge L6500-L8000 an hour (these are subcontracted rates--meaning a bigger company bid this and hired me as a freelance builder).

* If you get a job from a bigger company, based in SL, and they have you doing a large majority of the designing and building, you can charge 2K an hour.

* If you want to take random jobs from SL folks that don't have a lot of money to throw around, I suggest you bid each job on a case by case basis. For example, if I were to model and texture a medium sized, low prim home for someone, I'd probably charge them 6K total. That might sound expensive, simply because there are many prefabs out there for much less...however, bare in mind this price tag comes with originality, one-of-a-kind design, and direct interaction from client to designer.

On the graphic design end (which I do just as often) I tend to have a basic set of rates...for a logo I charge 1K. For a sign or banner I charge L600.

Just remember...SL is SL...so don't go all diva on prices. You have to strike a nice balance between what you're worth, and how the average SL resident is effected by the SL economy. If you are working SL to SL, your prices should be much lower. If you are working RL to SL (with a budget) you can create a medium between RL and SL hourly rates. Just be honest and aware of how qualified you and your work are in relation to other designers and their prices. If you're not in SL to pay RL bills, you can get away with more reasonable prices. If, however, you are really trying to make USD profit, you will want to raise your rates a bit.

this is an interesting thread, i often wondered why people have said i should charge more for private builds. personally tho i don't think i'm quite as good as any of the people on this thread. Mostly i can identify with michaels comment here:



These are mostly the types of jobs i get, waterfalls, caves, small buildings lots of terraforming and particle jobs, just small - medium things. I charge differently from job to job at around the same price michael has suggested. It's nice to get the person who your doing the job for put in some input about what they would like, as long as they don't hover around always adding comments that is, those people get told that i like to work alone and i just bring them in at different stages. So far tho i'v not had any problems and at the end of most jobs i end up with a bonus.

It would be good to get paid to do a full sized sim for a change, so far i'v done alot of work on the one i share as well as a bunch of open water sims and small to large sized parcels both mainland and private. One day i will, i'll be happy on that day

-Crunch

If those people are your employees then you are likely paying them already significantly more than Ceera is charging per hour, and on top of that you have to pay them while they learn how to build in SL. A builder like Ceera has hundreds of hours of building experience behind her, and you'll have to pay your in-house team for that time as well. Unless your team is going on to build many future projects in SL, I doubt it is worth it.

In fact, at the rate Ceera is charging, it will never be worth it, because the corporate employees, even when fully trained, will cost more per hour.

Conclusion: Ceera, you need to charge more. Incidentally, my standard rate for anything is US$60/hour, although the projects I generally do don't take that much time to complete.

Okay, call me crazy but I just gotta say it. I think builders are asking ridiculously high prices for something that is really quite easy to do. I'm a good builder....I have quite a list of sims I have developed - I don't do small scale - only sims. I love to build and I'm fast, detailed and I have a great reputation. But I would feel guilty as hell if I charged over $1k for the regular SL player who cannot build and wants something memorable. (If you can build, then obviously this was not a question for you).

Corporations, okay - I don't mind charging them more...and I have. They expect to pay it...but I'm not talking about corporations in this case. And I've seen some of the builds people are asking 5-10k for!!! THEY DON'T DESERVE IT!!!!

I guess I just think it's a little arrogant and excessive. And I've lost my train of thought with this thread....so carry on. *laughs*

Building's not that easy for many people - aside from the huge number of bits of hassle involved (prim alignment, prim drift, disorganised texture lists, slow texture preview, etc), just selecting what particular prims to build in order to look good is tricky for some people and I've never seen anyone even trying to teach that (it's noticable by its absense from the Ivory Tower).

So charge low if you wish, but I don't think you should feel it would be wrong to charge more if customers were prepared to pay it. In fact it can be beneficial because remember, if building is cheap then the incentive for people to learn to build is less too.

Building in SL is a whole lot like cooking in RL...

Some people can quite easily cook all the meals that they like, and see no reason to pay a cook and staff at a restaurant to make something they can just as easily make themselves. And for a lot of things, they may be right in that thought, even if what they cook isn't good enough to charge other people to eat at their place. Or they may be better at their specialties than a lot of fine chefs. More power to them, I say.

Some people can cook well enough to get by, but appreciate a nice meal out once in a while, cooked by someone with more skill and experience than they have, or simply by someone with access to different recipies and materials than what they normally keep around the house. I'm a pretty good cook in RL, and I can make a pizza or a fancy cake if I want to. But I don't normally stock the incredients in my kitchen to make a really tasty pizza. So I'll happily go out on occasion for pizza, or a really nice steak, or ethnic foods, as a change of pace.

And then there are some people who love great food, but couldn't make hot dogs or hamburgers without burning something...


In SL, some people find it easy to build or to make textures. They don't need someone like me.

Some people can do as well as they need, and enjoy making things for themselves. They might only rarely need a pro builder.

But there are a lot of people who want to have things in SL that no one is selling "off the shelf", and who can't build, or who consider their time better spent doing something else. Paying someone like me gets you a builder with thousands of hours of experience, custom textures for your build, and a completely fresh and unique look for your sim.

True, a lot of people look at what a pro builder charges, and say "You're crazy! I'll do it myself." And many more are marginal, and I've told people before "You don't need me for this. Here's the trick to doing that yourself, or here's a reference to a Builder whos is within your budget."

But the people who DO need people like me? Well, I have quite a few VERY happy customers, and I am seldom lacking for paid work. It's not uncommon for one of my clients to offer me an extra tip at the end of a project, because they are so pleased with the end result.

Actually, a lot of employees are on salary. That means if they have to spend a few extra hours learning software....

I might choose people with Second Life Experience. I might choose the "art major" in whatever department to make my textures. We all ready have scanners. I work where there are two "slow seasons," so making a building crew from existing talent is doable.

Also, depending on what we put up, building is an ongoing committment. My yurt has been through two textures and it replaced a quonset hut that was badly proportioned. I'm a real life web mistress who also does other things (I was hired to do both the other things and to manage a web site) and the web site is always getting added to and tweaked.

I'd reward inhouse builders with their own free 512's on which to practice and do as they like within broad limits. I might even budget for texture upload money. I'd do this only after they'd done some time in the sandboxes.

What I'd want for a public/academic site is a structure with moveable interior walls, chairs, and benches wich is asking for trouble unless a building crew goes in once a week and slides things back into neatness or removes all the junk that autoreturned. What might be even more fun is a small sandbox. I know at least two academic sandboxes and they do stay clean. On the other hand a modifiable structure, would avoid the usual sterile corporate build.

I know we can't name names here, but I've seen some awful corporate/academic/nonprofit builds. The worst was quite informative and very neatly made, but it had just sat there for two years.

Oh yeah - that's sad! I've seen some beautiful creations out there that just go sitting with no traffic or attention for a long time. You know, we should form a builders union and have agents and managers and groupies and stuff.

IMHO building good sims isn’t just about being able to align prims perfectly and create a flawless object. A huge number of people in SL are good builders. I am not a builder; I am a designer and graphic artist. I can align and texture prims perfectly as well, I can create sculpties and my own textures but that’s just a minor part of my creative process. You commission me to build a custom sim and I will create something spectacular that is unlikely to be found anywhere in RL or in SL. In every project I undertake I try to push the boundaries of design and functionality within SL. All of my constructions are 100% original and you would not be able to go out and buy the stuff I build off of the shelf, and that includes from my own prefab brand.

So yeah, there are lots of great builders who can quickly bang out standard designs at a very high quality that appeal to the masses and I suspect you are one of these types of builders and I’m sure you are just the right kind of person to build all those lovely malls and clubs and mansions that we see about the place. In fact allot of the custom work I get offered gets referred to these types of custom builders as I am just not interested in taking on these types of projects.

Based from this thread someone approached me last night with an idea for a sim they want me to build. Their idea was basically an elevated hotel, about 50 m above a sandy breach. We chatted for an hour and I managed to talk them into a concept I have for a hotel, they are very eager to progress and I have provisionally accepted the commission, so let me give you an idea of this project. Only spent an hour with the client so far so the majority of the project still needs to be worked out.

So private sim. 64000 sqm. Imagine the sim, an island, water and beaches on 3 side’s large mountain on the 4th side. The bulk of the sim will be a hand. Yep not a typo, I mean A HAND. Imagine a tennis ball on the floor; you reach down to pick it up. Rather than grasping the tennis ball let your fingers continue down to the ground until your hand is forming a dome over the tennis ball. So forget the tennis ball, the remaining shape of the hand is what we I will be creating. The hand will be about 150 m long from finger tip to wrist and 70 - 80m wide, the fingers will be chunky, 50 - 60 metres long and 10 - 15 m diameter. The hand will be connected to a wrist and the wrist connected to the start of a forearm that retreats back onto the mountain.

So it's almost like the hand punched through mountain and came to rest in the middle of this sandy beach.

This will form the basis of the build. As the hand is creating a dome then there will be swimming pools, recreational/bar areas underneath and extending to the shore line. This area will have a tropical feel and be nice and 'beachy' the 2 longest Fingers will be sitting just over the waters edge so they will be water slides. Imagine it ....60m water slides, starting at the knuckle that connects the finger to the hand, all the way down through the finger and emerging from the finger nail into the ocean. The thumb will be the largest section touching the ground so this will be our hotels reception area, there will be a lift then leading up the thumb into the back of the hand. In the back of the hand you will find usual hotel amenities and work your way into the wrist and forearm and you will find the hotel rooms. No real details of the content for the interior yet, the clients brief is just 'ultra modern'. So initial thoughts on that are that on the inside of the hand there will be masses of glass on the walls floors and surfaces so you can see what’s going on out side and the island below. I think the rest will be very white and minimalists with occasional bursts of colour but need allot more input from the client on that. Looking at the hand from the outside it will look like a real hand. It will be mainly made out of sculpties and textured with dynamic shadows with real wrinkles, knuckles freckles, hairs; basically it will be modeled on my own hand.

So that’s the project. The most challenging aspect will be to create the shapes for the hand so it looks 100% realistic but I am very confident that with some sly texturing this is achievable. This hand is going to be massive so it will have to loek perfect!

I haven’t priced the job yet but I gave the client a ballpark figure of $1000 USD as it’s for a resident.

I suspect the project will take a couple of hundred hours, every single texture would be made from scratch, nearly every sculpty would be made from scratch. Price would include everything from all the furniture and trees to waves sloshing on the beach and animated crabs scurrying about the rock pools.

The whole point of this is to try and justify why I would charge so much. This is big headed I know but I see myself being better than the main mass of custom builders in SL. Not better at putting prims together or creating textures per say but better at designing an original concept and having the vision and skill to bring that concept to life.

So to the OP of this thread. If you think you are as good as me then you are vastly undervaluing your time and your work. This project will cost $1000 USD. and will take 150 - 200 hours. Lets assume thats 175 hours. So I will be paid $5.7 per hour thats £2.80 in real money. It's pathetic. Minimum wage for over 21 in the UK is about £5.75. The only reason I do it is because I enjoy it so much so I am willing to see such a low return for my time. However if a rl company comissioned me to build this sim I would charge the $5000 - $6000 USD because then it becomes work and I expect to be paid a reasonable wage.
So it sounds like the OP isn't charging anywhere near the same rates as Ceera or myself. Obviously they enjoy doing custom builds for others for very little return which is admirable. But if your working for what, $1 USD per hour then whats the point of chargin anything at all? might as well just do it for free.

Sorry for the epic post.

It sounds like a great idea but at the same time I can see why some people might not want this at all. Essentially you have defined the entire concept for the build. I hope that your contract included you taking some responsibility if visitors didn't want to visit and stay in a freaky hand-shaped hotel!

I have had a builder do this as well, but they were doing the building for free as a favour, so I couldn't really complain. But at the same time it is awful to know that a build is totally not the concept you wanted but you can't change it because it was professionally built and doing so would thus lower its quality.

Your right Yumi, this can be a occupational hazzard. For the really conceptual designs I try and create a very detailed scalled model in additon to sketches by hand and computer rendered images that are all discussed in the planning stages. By the time the first payment changes hands then the client will know exactly what the build should look like. In some instances customers have decided not to go ahead at this stage as they had obvioulsy not had the same vision as me. But thats cool. I will store the design for future use. Ive never had any complaints once a sim has been finished and I have allways delivered exactly as the brief described. As far as making the sim a success or if the public will like my build? I dont care. As long as the client likes it then thats all that matters to me.