60 Days Tomorrow

- - -

I guess if your objective is strictly to make money, I can see where you are coming from, but is 60 days a long enough time to expect things to get going? I'm not inS L for business so I don't know.

Even though I have absoulutely no interest in any type of Job in SL, when I first read all the hype about making money and "She who can't be named", I was dubious about it anyway.

I pay my 9.95 a month, I don't even own mainland, but the entertainment I get from SL is worth that and the price of the Lindens I buy each month. LL's mystical business practices get me frustrated at times, but that's the way it goes.

60 days doesn't seem very long to me - I've been over a year building up my SL business to the level where it just about covers costs and I've worked really hard to get there.

Just like real life, then. I don't know of many businesses that start making money within 60 days (at least, not legitimate ones!).

I agree with all the above.

Prior to coming to SL I had been in a rp channel on IRC for about 12 years. A visitor to our channel told us about SL. He was from the same rp genre and said that SL was a 3D environment that provided the opportunity to experience "seeing" what on IRC we could only describe in text.

I joined SL as a basic member to specifically continue rp on SL. I became part of a very large, thriving community who stay in rp unless there is a specified OOC event. Once I began exploring outside of my rp sim and began realizing the immensity of it on so many levels - social, cultural, historical, educational and just plan FUN - I became involved in areas outside the strict rp and after 8 months I still find something new and exciting most every day - and I know I STILL have barely scratched the surface.

I played EQ for about 7 years and at the time I left the monthly fee was about $14.00. On SL I am still a basic member so pay nothing monthly (although I do invest in the economy as a consumer *smiles*), I live on a nice size rented mainland parcel owned by a great landlord, and have even sold a few items in a yardsale.

However, I only heard of SL as a "3D rp venue." I had NO idea people came to SL for business until I was a resident for awhile. So I suppose what one's expectations are for SL largely influence one's experiences.

I don't know much about business on SL, but as has been stated on other threads, just as in RL, building a successful business in SL takes time and hard work.

You will never ever make money in Second Life if your intent is to try to make money. You'll make money by doing something you like, building up an established network of friends and acquaintances and community connections, and then servicing a need because it's a need that you care about and want to fulfill. And then you might just make money or you might just make your costs and add to the community. Depends on what need you're filling.

It is very hard to create a profit at all in SL, never mind in only 60 days. It takes hard work, perseverance and start-up cash.
SL has a lot of problems, but it has a hell of a lot more good points.

Sure there are people who cheat and steal, but there are also good honest people. You only have to look at the forums to see a scratch on the surface of the good in people in SL.
It gets frustrating when SL is buggy or when you lose hard work, but I am afraid that is part of SL. There are ways around this. Type scripts in notepad and save to your harddrive so you don't lose important work. Learn that Sunday is going to be laggy so don't work on important things then without backing up your work.
I have only been here since September(ish) and I still have not bought land or started a business. I am too busy socialising and having fun. Of course, this may not be why you started in SL but it may be worth letting go every now and then, shrug at the bugs until tomorrow and have fun. you will feel better for it.
If SL is taking too much money, reduce this, spend less in world and give yourself chance to make some before building your spend gradually again.

60 days really isn't that long. You need to give it time. Even if you decide that ultimately SL is not for you.
I hope you do stay, I would hate to see you go.

CX, I'm sorry to hear that you are disappointed, because I like you and I want you to stick around

I've been in SL almost exactly the same amount of time as you. And my experience, despite the frustrations of borky software and annoying griefers, is completely the opposite. I love SL and look forward to logging in every day. Your post made me think about why I respond to it differently from you.

One important one, I think, is I didn't set out to make money. I just set out to explore, meet people, and have fun. I built a cafe in a flash of inspiration, because I didn't see another place that was quite like what I had in mind. But I don't expect my cafe to make money, and I am honestly and deeply grateful any time someone makes a donation there, or even just says "Thanks for building this place, I'll come back and bring some friends." That's what I built it for.

I'm not saying that setting out to make money is a bad goal - it's absolutely fine - but in SL, just as in RL, I think you have to be prepared for that to take more than a week or two. You've been in SL 60 days but your mall has hardly been open a week. Can any business make up its starting costs in a week? You also complain of only getting one visitor a day. Well, frankly, malls are less than a Linden a dozen in SL. What have you done to distinguish yours? Why would anyone come to yours over anyone else's? How would they even know it exists?

I have found in promoting my cafe (which, as you know, hasn't been open much longer than your mall), the best resources I have are (1) search, and (2) word of mouth.

For (1), I am never going to have enough traffic to hit the top of common search queries, so I stick to a niche - I have certain words in my description (coffee house, Bollywood, India, &c.) that don't turn up hundreds of results, and these are enough to attract 3-4 new visitors a day, or more. If even one new visitor every other day or even every third day likes the cafe enough to join the group or come back with a friend, I am delighted.

For (2), the best word of mouth has been my own friends, like you and other the kind folks of the forum who come by the cafe from time to time. Most of my repeat visitors to the cafe are people I met elsewhere. But I need to make more friends in order to expand this network, and this is where there's a hard balance to strike. On the one hand, I want to keep building and improving the cafe, and I also want to be there to greet new visitors; on the competing hand, I need to get out to other SL locations to meet more people to expand my network. For a few weeks there I hardly left the cafe, and SL started to feel small. Yesterday I got out and explored for a few hours for the first time in weeks, and not only did I find some cool sims and meet some nice people but - I got two new customers and gave out LMs to a couple of others.

All of this is a lot of work, and I am not even *trying* to make money.

In sum, CX, I'd like to urge you to have a little patience, to do a little more legwork, and to think about ways to make your mall special and different so people want to go there. Perhaps you can try to attract vendors having a certain theme and then use that theme to boost your niche search results. Maybe there are other ways to distinguish your fun new business from the endless supply of SL malls. If you see me in world tonight, TP me over and I'll be happy to brainstorm with you about it. I have an ulterior motive - I want you to stay in SL.

Nobody else seems to have hit this point of CX's complaint...

The Premium bonus only applies if you INITIALLY registered as a Premium member. If you started with a Basic account, and then upgraded, you don't qualify.

Commercial:
What do you sell? We've got some nice little market stalls in our sim. You could rent one as a second store and put up a vendor board.

I visited your place after seeing mention of it in the Forum Group IM box. Going that route, I have never actually seen what your place looks like in search, so you might already have this particular keyword. I found the Forum Hangout when I did my search for "conversation" in the search box. Seems to be a keyword to add to your place, if you do not already have it in there.

welcome to the forums Fayruz

Also, unless they changed it and didn't bother to update the membership plan page, it's 1000L, not 1500.

Does anyone know when they changed this? I did it that way a year ago and did get the bonus. That is another thing the Providers need to spell out. I'm sure a lot of people are upgrading, not knowing. Unless , that is their insidious plan, to get people to sign up in the mistaken belief they will get the bonus.

Thanks! I think it is ... but later when I log in I will check. It's very much the spirit of my place, good conversation, so you are correct that I should have it in there.

Thank-you for the welcome.




I will note, though, that the first 10 places in the "conversation" search had huge traffic numbers (I sorted the results by traffic). At least three of the results were "coffee" cafes, one was the Forum Hangout, and a good number of the rest were some form of "Gentleman's club." And one mall. Oh, and the first two are for the same place, Mill Pond. Strange that they would do that. Have two place searches in the search box for the same place. The teleport point for the second Mill Pond is ten meters away from the entrance to the cafe, while the other was right at the entrance.

I guess I haven't found what I like yet. I didn't really come here with the intention to make money but it seems I am driven that way. I was hoping for something special to happen but I guess I don't know what it is yet.

In RL I collect vintage VWs. I don't make money by selling cars and parts on the side but it is a benefit to the hobby. I guess I am just missing something.

I am paid up for a year so I guess I should stick it out.

My biggest disappointment is with the Lindens and the inconsitancy of the system. Even the forums haven't been working right. VBulletin software is very well developed.

"CX"

Hi ConductorX,
If you started as basic and upgraded to premium soon after, you can try a support ticket. In my case within a week I upgraded, initial answer was: you do not qualify. Protesting led to receiving the 1000 linden bonus

Stability is another thing, apparantly your system and SL aren't the best friends. Tune your system as much as possible to be able to play, defrag often, and I hope you get a better result. I used to have several blue screens a night, at the moment I am stable, and that with a low end graphic adapter. Don't forget SL is a very sophisticated platform, offering something no other platform can. So its not that strange, not every computer can run it.

Then the money: Never expect to make money Create, have fun, and be glad if anyone buys your stuff, but never expect it. Especially not after 60 days. The way I handle it:
As you may or may not know, I build furniture and prefabs. Because I like doing that. Rent myself a parcel of 7500 m2, just because I love having prims Put down my main store, and a few small shops around it that I rent out for free to people creating asian products. Because I simply dont want the hassle of renting out shops, I decided not to ask rent As you can imagine, with a monthly rent of 15k, I loose money each month. Money I spend on the best hobby ever. And the sales I made, all made me very happy, the freebies people for from SLX as well as the things they payed for. But never I expect to make my 15k rent a month, and if I do, i will probably just rent more land.

Quite franky, for the most people, a newspaper round will bring much more money then a SL business. If you start a SL business for the fun of it though, you can have a great time!

Greetings, Marcel

As a fellow resident trying to make a bit of money in SL these days, I share your frustrations.

One thing for sure: My goal as far as money making is only to cover tier. Only the rarest of the rare like Desmond and the best content creators make real money here. And the performance issues hamper them as well.

i never got mine, and i'll be one year very soon now.

It is spelled out, but it's buried in the fine print. I was duped, and I'm sure a lot of others were (I would have gone Premium anyway, but the bonus I *thought* I would receive was a nice extra incentive.)

Me too - twice in fact. I started as basic and upgraded to premium after a day, and I got the bonus (It was L$1250 at the time) then my alt also started as basic and she upgraded to premium after about a month or so, and she also got the L$1250 bonus.

I was aware that they had changed things from immediate payout to a 45 or 60 day delay, but I didn't know that they had changed it so you weren't eligible unless you went premium immediately.

For the OP, I would echo the sentiments of the other posts here -- The two most important things people have mentioned in this thread are about Patience and Expectations... unless you are doing something that is quite remarkable and unique and never-before seen in SL, it is going to take more than two months to build up recognition and awareness of your products and location. And if you are only here to make money... you will have better faster success getting a part time job in RL and using that money to fund your SL.

Do the stuff you do in SL because you love to do it. Otherwise, SL is just a (very) low-paying job.

-Atashi

60 days? Bless. In a few weeks it's my second rezday and I still consider myself a relative noob compared to some around me.

RP = well, this is hit and miss anywhere. Takes time and dedication to get a good place going, plus people being willing to hang around when it is quiet and put effort in. Chances are that people won't which is why the good old places in the good old days (bleurgh) often withered away.

I find the RP places usually full of people with OOC anyway.

Still SL is about many things to many people, and defintely 60 days is bearly off the starting blocks. Hell, 2 years is bearly off the starting blocks (tho this is 2 years on top of a lot of IRC).

I'm glad you've decided to stay, CX! But your first 60 days does sound like it could stand some improvement. If I were you, I would be tempted to forget about the mall and go with your RL enthusiasm. Is anyone throwing auto shows in SL? I know there's the occasional boat show, but I don't know about other vehicles. I personally would love to go to an airship show, because I want to buy the most bizarre airship I can find. Drop me an IM if you want to brainstorm about this sometime.
There's often a thread running from someone looking for a specific type of RP. In fact, there's an inworld group for RPers in general to find the right RP. Search the forums or start another thread ...
Not true, many content creators make good money, and many landlords make about $200 U.S./month per island on rentals. Both types of business take a lot of work to build.
Hmmm weekends are peak times, but I was on last night when there was over 61,000 inworld and made a new AO, tweaked the script, TP'd around and bought some stuff, etc. no problem. Two things to suspect here: your networking possibly not high enough performance, or you're building on a bad or crowded sim. I only build at home nowadays, a generally empty class 5 residential island sim. There's a plot open next to me if you want to move *grins*
.

I find sometimes it's best to let SL's mood dictate what I do. If I'm trying to build and it's being bitchy, I save everything and go exploring If I run into a griefer, I'll just go back to my sim and build. And so on.

Mostly though, it's fun to just keep my eyes open and see what comes up. As said above, SL is an adventure I look forward to. A year later and I feel as though I've just arrived.

And in the end, like anything, SL is what you make it. It may be buggy and inconsistent, but I don't know any software that's perfect.

I hope in the next 10 months the OP finds reasons to carry on. SL is quite a world. Just visiting places like Apollo Gardens etc. is enough to remind me why I'm here.

The car show is a good idea.. but the only vehicles in SL that seem useful are boats and flying machines simply because there are no roads or need for roads in SL. When first signing up I was all excited about building vehicles but that idea died quickly.

My equipment at home has all been upgraded to fit SL requirements to no avail.

I do have free mall space available contact me inworld or pm here for info. I would be happy to see someone else besides myself on the sim.

Thanks again for the advice. I guess I'll write the "bonus" off to experience.

"CX"