I'm new and I'm spending cash in SL. I want to do more!

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I don't know how new you are. If you want to spend money, that's fine, but you should take a few months learning how things work in Second Life before throwing down a major investment.

It's not easy to discover what is a good value and what is a rip-off. If you are ripped off, typically you have no recourse. Linden Labs doesn't get involved. Not to mention that Linden Labs will rip you off too. (Just read these forums for a few days.)

If you throw down a lot of money in your first weeks of Second Life, you are going to burn a lot of money. Wait a few months to figure out how things work in Second Life, then you can make smart choices with your money.

To me life in general requires you to fall down and get right back up, I lost money right away in Sl buying and selling land and stuff lost money, learned alot real fast. No risk No rewards!

Spend the money if its something you want to do, you can get land anywhere pretty cheap, water easy too, buy a yacht and stick it there. yes you can buy land and put whatever building you want and sell anything you want (legal not stolen of course) and no permit required. Not saying its easy to get customers since as you noticed a million people do that now lol.

Anyway have fun, spend what you can afford to lose and youll learn fast in Sl.

mikeD Streeter

Oh and as for hints, go to places that are popular (campers dont equal popular) and see what they do for ideas.

Lag sucks find empty places to drive.

btw some of my sims are combat, fighting with swords for money can be a blast and we raid other sims all kinds of fun. The Roman Empire, The SPartan Empire and a bunch of supporting sims

Ya might want to cut down on the caffiene.

You can buy and/or rent property where you have full rights to the land..........you can rezz all your toys and play, open your club/shop, and build your home. There are limits to how much you can rezz on the land determined by the size of the land you "own" or rent..........prims are allocated according to the land you have rights to. Generally (and very basically) it's 117 prims for a 512 lot, 234 for a 1024, 478 for 2048, etc etc. Yes you can leave your yacht in the water.......as long as you have the rights to the "land" that the water is located in.

There are a couple ways to get land. Rent or buy from a private estate or island owner. Or you can buy land from Linden Lab. You must be a premium member to buy land on Mainland.......which is the only place that you can purchase land directly from Linden Lab. Also there is a thing called tier that gets added to the cost of your SL land. If you rent you are really just paying tier to the person you are renting from. If you buy from a private person then you pay that person his asking price, plus any tier due for the amount of land involved........you also pay that to the owner. Then there is Mainland which you buy from Linden Lab (you must be premium for this iption) plus any tier for the land above 512 square meters in size.

It's pretty complicated at first but once you catch on it's pretty clear how it works. But, as suggested by Amity above, it might be wisest to spend a little more time learning the ins and outs before jumping in with both feet. So some searching in world for land and tp to them and look around.....see what's available and get a feel for how much it might cost. Read these forums to see a few of the pit falls to avoid. Ask around about how the "landlord" is if you are thinking of private land..........I can tell you that Mainland can be chaotic at times with no covenant to keep builds and business restricted to themes or whatever.

Don't get me wrong.......I love my Mainland plot. I actually hate covenants so if you like unrestricted then maybe Mainland is the way to go.

1a. Yes you can put a teleporter on it. I don't see why not. I've seen quite a few live aboard yachts for sale in SL. They are cramped though.
1b. Yes you can leave it in the water. Provided of course you are the owner/renter of that parcel of water.

2a. You don't need permits. There's no zoning in SL.

A covenant is a zoning restriction on private land. Read those covenants very well before agreeing to buy/rent.

The Yacht I'm looking at is big 4 stories big with a helio pad.

Get yourself a really hot girlfriend to spend money on! Um...consider red heads first

If you want to throw away the money give it to new residents, that would make them happy.
If you want to buy an island just because you have money...you will end doing nothing with it and spending a 300 US$ monthly tier.

As someone said up there: explore a bit more, learn about SL society/business so you can understand what's a good product or not. There's something that money can't buy: knowledge.
So instead of spending money just because you have it...use your time to learn SL...then figure out what to do with the money, if you have a lot of money and enough knowledge you can end being a millonaire.

My philosophy is: never cash in, always cash out.

Sounds like you need an Island Sim of your own. $5K-USD will get you a nice island and carry the tier for a year. You can then arrange it like you wish with room for all of your toys. I would wait and order it in May or June when all the flap dies down.

If you need an Island Manager with a little experience send me an IM.

"CX"

Blondes are more fun! (where did I put that blonde hair....)

No they're not. Try a Green Haired Girl for a REALLY Good Time.
(Yes, I've gone Green. It's the ecological thing to do!)

Yes, you can - provided you have the land area available to support it. (I know that's a slightly odd thing to say, because a yacht would go in the water rather on land. On SL, the term "land" is a general term which effectively means "space"; so the area of water required to hold your yacht is still considered "land", it just happens to be land that's below the water line. )



Although there are objects called "teleporters" available in SL, I'm not positive that they do what you're thinking of here. If you mean "can you teleport to and from your yacht using the regular teleport tools", the answer is yes, and you don't need a special object to allow you to do it.



Yes, you can. You will essentially buy an area of underwater "land" (or buy the land and then edit it so that it's all underwater) and then place your yacht there. You don't need a helicopter to get onto the land as you can always fly or teleport, but using a helicopter might be a lot of fun.



You do not need any special permit to run a business in SL (although of course, the objects you're selling must be legal for you to sell, which means they must be either all your own work or you must have permission from the other people who contributed to them). You just need to buy a land area to hold your store, put up your products, and then start marketing like crazy.



You can drive vehicles along the roads in the mainland and city sims, but you're right that many of these are quite laggy - unfortunately, there isn't a lot that can be done about that.



Yes, this is a bug which I believe is being worked on.



Unfortunately, SL business isn't a game, it's real business, where there are real professionals making their real living in it. If you want to have fun, you can, but focus on the fun rather than the coin. Create things because you enjoy doing so, and put them on sale for others, but if you don't want to work full-time on building and marketing your business then you won't be making a huge amount of money (although it may well be enough to keep your avatar in new outfits and vehicles for a while )

BTW Lindal - quite the frisky look it is at that

/me winks.
And I've got a yacht, too. Just a tiny thing, to be sure...only three decks, not four, and no movie theater. But it suits my humble needs.

I shows me someone is paying attention and willing to put the effort into helping.

If you've got the cash and the drive, just go for it. When the new Land Store opens up in a week or so, get your own estate. You can use part of it for your boat, and part for a shop, and part for a club. You should even have enough prims to build a motorcycle track up in the sky. When the new Land Store opens, they will only be $1000 US and $300 US per month after the first month. It sounds like you're in a position to really appreciate the freedom and control that owning your own sim brings.