How much money did you start with?

When was the first time that you recieved some linden dollars? Did you just buy a whole lot of it? Did you pluck a bill from a money tree or sit in a chair for 10 minutes? Did you win it or did you get it from someone in SL? How did you get your first lindens and what did you buy after that?

I remember receiving my first lindens from a kind person TP'd me to Yadni's Junkyard and then gave me 100L. I was shocked and delighted at the time. Then I bought a couple of those 1L boxes full of stuff at the junkyard. I remember spending that 100L very carefully over the next few days buying only the most essential things that I needed...like prim hair, shoes, clothes.

My first L$250 was from a friend who helped me out when I first started, and I think I spent it on hair. A week later I purchased US$10-worth on the Lindex. I have never camped, plucked money trees or worked for L$.

the only money I put in was enough to buy my avatar and a few odds and ends... been working in world for the rest

I had $1000L from a friend who got me started. I believe I spent it on hair, clothes and shoes. Ahhh the good old days! LOL

It's hard to remember after three years what my first L$ was, but I do remember mostly picking money trees my first few months. I got to be an expert at camera view moves, in order to pick trees as fast as possible and move on to the next one. I think I made about L$60 an hour in those days.

My first big purchase was a horse for L$800, followed by a big box of textures for 4000. I know I scoured freebie places like Yadni's in the early days. After a few months money trees got old, and I settled down to camping chairs overnight.

I just bought my Lindens (and still do). I'm too busy working in RL to have time to work in SL! Bought some nice shoes and boots, dresses (when my av was female) and started my land holding empire (grins) with a private purchase of a 512m plot.

I just bought a whole lot of it more or less from day one. Sh!tloads of it in fact. These days I just spend my Premium stipend on texture and sometimes animation uploads.

I can appreciate how some folk make a nice turnover to pay tier and one or two close friends run entire sims on the proceeds from their product lines but doing business is a long way down the line for me, if ever.

Part of me is hoping the Lindens will shift their polygons and introduce a better avatar mesh before I start taking clothing and skin textures seriously. The other part of me says I'll still be twiddling my thumbs (and various other parts of my pixellated anatomy) in 2012 - if I haven't taken a rocket ship for Blue Mars that is.

When I joined, there was a spot on the site that said "enter your payment info and we'll give you 250L$ for free!".. so, knowing that I would probably end up spending money on the game, I said sure.

Before I managed to leave Help Island, I saw a rubber duck. I right clicked on it and saw "Rate Creator".. not knowing what that did, and thinking that it was a nice duck, I selected "Rate Creator" and punched in a little note saying "nice duck!".. and was charged something like 25L$.

So, by the time I had reached the sandbox, I now had 225L$.

From there, I soon had spent $20USD buying L$. I figured I could afford 20$ a month for the system.. since I don't really go to movies or go on trips, and don't have a lot of bills like a cell phone or cable or anything, $20 a month was cheap entertainment.

Within 3 months, I was on budget, and had spent $60 USD.. This was the last time I put USD into the game, until last year when I needed to buy land and upgrade to premium. What did I spend it on? Beleive it or not, I spent the whole thing, nearly 6000L$ in one night.. on latex. I had joined a sci-fi fetish rp group, and they had a very expensive uniform. I was so totally into it and dedicated.. and so naive. It was SUCH a rush to go buy all that stuff, mostly from KDC and Amethyst... KDC still has some of the best latex out there... but I digress.

By then I had also learned what camping was, and where some "freeplay" casinos were. But that camping got me to the point were my $20USD a month was no longer needed*. I had tried dancing for tips, (my original goal in SL was to be a stripper), and even escorting, but by my 6th month or so, I had learned how to make, and sell things, and had actually earned enough L$ that I could WITHDRAW $20 USD FROM the game.

It wasn't long after that, that I officially opened my own business, and pretty soon after that, camping became more effort than it was worth.



-----

* - Re: Camping... It's important to remember that back in 2006, the better rates for camping were 5L$/10minutes. That's 30L$ per hour. Leaving my computer online overnight, for 8 hours (remember anti-idle scripts?) 240L$ a day. 30 days, that's 7,200L$ a month.. right around $27 USD.

Nowadays if you can FIND a camping chair that isn't taken by a bot, or scripted to kick you after half an hour.. you'd be lucky to find a chair that pays 2L$/15 minutes. (which is only worth 8L per hour, or 64L$ per night, or 1920L$ a month.. about $7 a month.

Bought my own.

And from time to time I tp a newbie to a freebie shop or other place for their stated need and front them some Linden. I usually never see them again. (Some want to friend me up, which is fine but the sign I succeeded is if they log in and after a few days don't even IM. They start enjoying SL too much to remember. Kinda like baby birds flying.)



I feel bad for campers but figured out most are bots so I no longer tip them.

started with L$0, $0US

camped until i had enough to buy membership. camped more until i had enough to buy land. camped more until i had enough to pay tier. started creating and selling, and continued camping - bought/sold land until i am where i am today.

all $ has been earned through SL somehow or another.

Puppet will confess.

As a newbie, under my very first non-Puppet avatar, my first L$ came from camping. A guy I met on Orientation Island IM'd me and said to come to this cool place for free money, and I did. That was pretty boring, though. Then I discovered money trees and the joy of exploring! When I got too old for the money trees, and first land was still available, I got out the credit card and jumped on the premium boat to get my 512 lot and stipend, and have been spending ever since.*

*Well, some months I cover all my tier and spending money with my store income, but other months, part of the tier goes straight to the credit card!

Back when I joined I got that 250 $L for providing payment information. I also got a 50 $L a week stipend as a basic account. About three weeks later I went premium and recieved a 1200 $L sign up bonus.......or maybe that was only 1000$L (I forget). Meanwhile I did a little camping but not much......tried the money trees but thought both endeavors were pretty much a waste of time compared to the other things I could do. I used my accumlated "bonuses" and stipends to purchase my First Land and a small prefab house. I was given a freebie skin which I learned to put a decent shape on and went out and found a "job".......well, it was a stripping job which also payed 3 $L per 10 mins plus tips so I guess that was camping. I was able "earn" enough to buy some prim hair and decent clothes. I think it was about 6 months before I purchased any $L. All in all, I got along quite well on my stipend, tips/earnings on a dance pole, and bonuses provided back then. I was happy.

years ago the parrot on the OI gave you some Lindens if you spoke to it, I think that was my first ever L$.

This:But not this:I've pretty much just been dropping US$10 or 20 into the kitty whenever needed ever since.

I had actually tried out SL with a previous account, and so Yumi arrived straight as a Premium in 2005, which started with L$2500.

The first L$ I actually earned? Somebody was calling on the Scripters group to make a board that would advance through a series of pictures for a fee each time, and that sounded simple enough to experiment with, so I blundered through the LSL wiki and got something like that working. I didn't accept the job until I already had it working (because I wasn't confident I could do it and I didn't want to waste the other person's time). I didn't charge a fee, though: I got a small cut of the fee paid every time a picture was advanced. So the first L$ payment I got was probably L$2. But over time, I got quite a few of them until the boards went out of fashion.

I went premium when I joined and rcvd $L500 per week. Because of RL circumstances I had to drop back to basic for about 2 years. Because of a bug, LL continued to pay me the stipend for an additional year
I recently went back to premium and even thou it is only $L300 per week, you still come out ahead if you buy the membership on an annual basis. Even if you do not own mainland land it is still better and you can donate that 512 tier to someone who does good deeds in SL.

my first 75L$ came from my best friend enough to buy me a starter kit, then a stranger/angel gave me 120 L for me to buy that lingerie i was staring at and she even gave me another 100 as pocket money...then my best friend gave me another 1000+1000+500+500+500++ lol but i wanted to earn on my own so thats when i started camping, later on when i finally figured out how to make tattoo, my first customer which was my groupmate gave me 50L as a tip for a customized tattoo...hee hee

I've earned about 55 lindens all up, I put cash in.

I'd love to get to where I can sell some of my stuff.

Didn't you say you owned tons of sims?

I joined as a basic account intially and my first linden cash came from a very friendly girl I met on OI that just handed me 2000L and explained how the whole shopping thing works. It was by far the coolest thing anyone could have done.....and I've been trying to pay it forward ever since.
I went premium after a couple weeks and probably got the maximum amount of L's I could but I also camped quite a bit at a club that paid out handsomely if you just kept your avatar there. For a while it was fun.....made some good friends from those days.....but the club owner (we soon learned) was a sleaze who preyed on what he believed were young girls IRL.....and many of us vacated quickly. The great camp pay out didn't last anyway....as we all know, now it is down right painful to try and make decent L's camping.
But alas....I just buy L's when I absolutely need to and try like heck to make enough in-world to balance it out......hahahaha....riiiiight.... easier to just buy em.

I earned maybe L$50 by playing automated Trivia while camping for free hair at Calla's.

I quickly decided that I would grow old and die trying to save up money at that rate, so I bought L$ on XStreet, and I've continued to budget about $50US or so per month as my "SL Entertainment Fund".

Kudos to Des, 3Ring, and others who managed to make it from scratch.

I think it must have been the 1000 L$ I got for opening a premium account. I bought my first land for 512 - it was when we still had the "first land" scheme and a sky box for about 250 and spent the rest on hair and shoes.

The Beta Grid is an inexpensive way to make a start if you need to experiment with developing a product line. Residents get 5000 lindens to spend on uploads there, which is very useful if you're strapped for lindens.

To get there, press 'Ctrl+Shift+G' when your log in screen is opened and choose 'Aditi'. Choose 'Agni' when you want to log back into the Live Grid.

The Beta Grid isn't connected to the Live Grid so the balance of cash and any textures, scripts, animations or objects you make there will not be in your account or inventory when you log back into the Live Grid: you have to upload the final versions to your account all over again but at least you can be confident they are fit for the purpose.

Be aware that there is no communication with the Live Grid so residents will not see you online and you won't be able to IM them. I find that feature quite restful: the Beta Grid is strictly for work.

The Beta Grid is an inexpensive way to make a start if you need to experiment with developing a product line. Residents get 5000 lindens to spend on uploads there, which is very useful if you're strapped for lindens.

To get there, press 'Ctrl+Shift+G' when your log in screen is opened and choose 'Aditi'. Choose 'Agni' when you want to log back into the Live Grid.

The Beta Grid isn't connected to the Live Grid so the balance of cash and any textures, scripts, animations or objects you make there will not be in your account or inventory when you log back into the Live Grid: you have to pay 'real' lindens to upload the final versions to your account all over again but at least you can be confident they are fit for the purpose.

Be aware that there is no communication with the Live Grid so residents will not see you online and you won't be able to IM them. I find that feature quite restful: the Beta Grid is strictly for work.

Wow, that sounds interesting. Sounds like some giant sandbox or something, I'll come check it out. Thanks.