How much money did you start with?

To Ephraim Kappler:

Oh. Sorry for my mistake, then.

Yes those are similar-sounding names. There is an Erebus, an Elanthiel (sp?), an Elanthius, and two Ephraims floating about the fora.

Sorry to have confused you with one of the other ones.

Oh I clean forgot to mention that minor detail myself.


No worries Monica. Like I said, it just took me by surprise.

It's given me an idea, mind you: I should see if names like Desmund Shang and Elanthias Flagstaff are still available.

Ephraim Kappler makes a note to scrub up and work on his patter.


I can log in on this account ok. However, I also tried to log in on a couple of alt accounts and found that one of them can't because the password field won't accept the last character. The same password works fine for the Live Grid. So you might try changing yours and see what happens.

Other than that, I can't say what the problem might be.

Oh I clean forgot to mention that minor detail myself.


No worries, like I said, it just took me by surprise.

It's given me an idea, mind you: I should see if names like Desmund Shang and Elanthias Flagstaff are still available.

Ephraim Kappler makes a note to scrub up and work on his patter.

Yep, I got on with my banker alt.

So empty and unspoiled there!

Well good luck. Buy me a sim when you make your first million.

Lol, ok, but you'll be playin' on it from the grave

The short version:

When I first got here I started with L$0, living on freebies I found at one of those Freebie beaches for a few days and exploring. In my travels I discovered camping but there never seemed to be any empty chairs, so when I finally found an empty camping spot at some hair place I gave it a shot. I think after an hour or two I had earned a grand total of L$14 and decided that camping sucked, so I bought $10USD worth of Lindens. A few days later, I'd made some friends at a club, one of whom bought me my first (non BIAB) skin and some prim shoes.

For my first month or two in SL I'd buy $5 or $10 worth of Lindens at a time, but then I won L$10,000 in a contest at a club called DevilInside and used some of that money to open my first store. Since then I've been lucky enough to only have to buy Lindens a few times here and there.

Good for you mate, nice story. Same with Desmond's too, very cool.

What I am interested in is how much output, time skill levels etc (in products and then setting up and selling them) does it take to get a small biz running here.

Thanks I'm nowhere near in Desmond's league though. Maybe someday...

I guess the time investment, skill level, etc would depend on what it is that you wanted to do, what your interests are, and what RL experience you had. For my own part I had a background in art and theatrical costuming and scenic design, so I suppose I naturally gravitated towards shapes and avatar styling. I do take it rather seriously, so I tend to spend a great deal of time on developing my products and styling and photographing them - but that's what I really enjoy so it's not really 'work' in the traditional sense to me. If I can pay tier from it and buy supplies I'm happy

There seem to be two basic types of successful business:

a] You come up with something nobody has thought of and get in early as a market leader, which is becoming increasingly difficult for obvious reasons: I can think of several content-creators whose names are almost a byword for certain items but their products have dated badly through complacency and the fact that others have long since been producing more competitive products.

b] You have a good quality product and work very hard at customer service: some of the most successful products are not only of very good quality but the creators put tremendous amounts of time and effort into ensuring that their customers are happy.

Skill level is kind of a "how long is a piece of string?" question but it isn't unreasonable to expect some degree of quality in terms of content and finish. Customers simply will not come back if they find a similar product that looks or works better. When considering what you might like to do, it would be useful to search SL for existing examples and decide for yourself if you think you can make a competitive product.

I had some good fortune...

I lasted my first few weeks on nothing. I don't remember ever camping. Then I decided I was committed enough to buy USD$10 worth of $Ls. That lasted me quite a long time, perhaps a month.
Then I had lucky break number 1. A friend who was starting a clothing store commissioned me to make some prim parts for his clothing. I had only just started playing with building and had close to zero ability, but I managed to stick some prims together and we made some decent stuff. I got a cut of the sales and that kept me going for some time.

Then lucky break number 2. Three of us decided to start a project on some land. Only one of us was premium and he donated his land to the group. Myself and the other would do the actual work in getting the project going. Then the land owner decided he didn't have the time for SL, he told us to keep the land, he left and deleted his account. Neither of us remaining at that stage wanted to go premium so we abandoned the project. I thought the land would just be reclaimed by LL. While I was waiting for that to happen I just used it as my personal sandbox. I built a few houses and more or less made it my home for a few months. Then I realised I could sell the land and Receive the benefit as group owner, which I did and shared the proceeds with the remaining group member.

With an account full of $ls and no land I really missed not having some land to play with. So I cashed some in to buy a premium membership and I bought and sold a few parcels and accidentally made some profit until I found the parcel I still have.

I don't need much to get by on now. My stipend and income from one rental property is plenty. Sometimes I make tier from commissions sometimes I don't. I'm not bothered, it's cheap entertainment.

It was two years ago, and Daros and I came across some people sitting on chairs with text over their heads. We found two empty chairs, sat down in them, and ten minutes later (bored out of our brains) we stood up with 2L$ each. After that, we registered payment info

Ian, you're a very new account. The Beta Grid only gets refreshed every so often, which then allows all new avatars created after the previous refresh to get in, and also updates the inventory of everyone already on the Beta Grid, to include everything they've obtained on the Main Grid since the last refresh. Until it refreshes again, I doubt you'll be able to access it.

Someone will usually post a new thread on this forum when the Beta Grid refreshes. I think Mari did it last time. You can also keep an eye on this status page tag:

http://status.secondlifegrid.net/category/aditi-preview-grid/

The last refresh listed on there was May 28th 2008, so hopefully there will be another one soon.

I came to SL with nothing in September 2006. For my first month I was a basic account. I remember I ended up at a place called Club Arsheba where an automatic prizegiver gave me something like L$2 just for being there. That was probably my first money.

When I went Premium I got L$1000 and I bought my first piece of land 16 sq m in Sourmilk Ghyll, which cost something like L$400. Land was much more expensive in those days. This was the boom before the crash, and I worked my way up the land ladder - one day I bought 256 sq m for L$ 4000, built a little house on it and put it back on sale at L$6000, not expecting it to sell - but the next time I logged in it was sold! Then a month later the land market crashed and prices dropped by about 70% over about 2 days.

When you ain't got nothing you got nothing to lose.

Pep (Thanks Bob)

Thanks, yeh the alt that got on is older than me by a few months.

I started with a small amount for providing payment info, maybe L$100 or L$250. In my early days, there were a few places with paying dance-pads, and a friend and I used to camp those. It was actually quite entertaining, as we'd only do it when we'd otherwise be out dancing anyway, and the places we went often had a good stream and other 'live' residents to chat to.

When I wanted something it just wasn't practical to camp for (https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=14066), I bought L$5000. Later I went premium, got the sign-up bonus and bought some more L$ to buy land.

I've never camped since I started buying L$. My income now comes from a combination of stipend and the (small) profit from my store. I sold some land that I couldn't really afford the tier on, making a reasonable profit which covered my last couple of stipend payments, so I haven't paid real cash money into SL in over a year now.

The password on the beta grid remains set at whatever it was at the time the copy of live to beta was done. So if you have changed your password since that date, then you can't login to beta with your new, MG password. Your old one should still work on beta - if you can remember what it was.

Well you learn something new everyday! Thanks for that, Deira.

That alt's password was indeed subsequently changed. However, I think I might have messed up typing the original password when I first attempted to log into Aditi on that account. Neither of them work and the final character on the new password is deleted no matter how many times I attempt to type it.

It isn't a critical issue for me so I'm quite happy to try again when the Beta Grid is refreshed. Ian's problem was probably more to do with Skell's suggestion that the account is too 'young'.

I started with nothing. My first income was shortly after joining; via this forum found someone who wanted a custom tipjar script full perms, which I provided for $10K, IIRC -- I accepted the offer they made, not knowing what the going rates were.

They let me sell it as well, and that turned into a tidy revenue stream, from an inworld-only point of view.

I tried my hand at a number of different markets before landing on my current job (animations).

I still haven't put a dollar in or taken a linden out.

i started with 0 and i camped at sassy secrets.. and they had a sign advertising club Areshaba . if any of u remember that place i may have spelled it wrong. anyway a person in there gave me 50L and i thought wow thats a lot what a generous person

i didnt explain that right. while i was camping at sassy secrets i seen the sign and tp to club Areshaba and they knew i was a noob that is why they gave me 50L . i think it looked like a lot cause well u all know how long it takes to make 50L camping and when i first started i told myself . theres no way im dumping rl money into this game.. i was wrong about that

First lindens I got from money tree. Did that for few months. I guess I spent it in those freebie places. 10l hair was a big deal then. lol Good times!

When I came to SL, I went straight from Orientation to a sim that friends were in, met someone that they knew, and asked where to find a Fox avatar, and they directed me to a mall in that sim. 10 minutes after arriving in SL, I bought $20 USD worth of L$, and promptly spent all of it on my first avatar and some clothes. Bought another $10 USD worth a little after that, then settled down to figure out how to make my own t-shirts and clothes, with the goal of being self-supporting as soon as possible.

Actually my girlfriend started in SL, and I created an avatar to help her making money with camping. Within a week I went premium so I could buy us a 512 with a house on it.

Soon I started creating, purchased a 4000 sqm piece of land. Build my own mall, and started selling great stuff from BIAB's. Little did I know back then
After a few months of paying tier from my credit card, I made my own tier. And soon, profits were made.

Well eventually I ended up on estate land, and now I rent my own HS where I have my furniture and my plants business. Still profitable too. But I do not think I would have gotten where I am, without those initial investments.