How to invest US$5000?

How to invest from US$2000 to US$5000 in Second Life? Any ideas?

give it to me?

Buy an Island or Two

Damn- you beat me to it! Wanna split it?

If you aren't a content creator, you could bankroll one and split the profits. Otherwise you have to gamble with the land game. Personally I think it's a huge gamble right now. I'd wait and see what moves the new CEO is going to make in regards to land supply and land and tier prices.

Also since LL has not proven they can give us a reliable platform, I would strongly consider investing in the US stock market. A lot of stocks are undervalued right now and it has historically always gone up.

Or invest in real life real estate:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-04-24_D908A8180&show_article=1&cat=breaking

Sure thing!

Why invest something with RL value in something that has no true value at all?

Prices on things that *might* retain their value in SL aren't based on anything but what LL decides to do.

Now - if you want to buy me an island and set up an interest generating account that will pay tier in perpetuity - Id be ok with that...

Is Ginko Financial still around in some form or other?

Buy shares in a RL mutual fund. Don't "invest" anything in SL. It should be throw-away money.

Well, if you don't mind I wanna join the group to split the amount eheheheh

Put it in a RL bank, that's an investment.

Ira

QFT

If all you have is $5,000 and it's money you need to invest for future return, then don't put it in SL. If it's just mad money and your RL investments are in shape, then maybe sink a little of it into SL. It doesn't take much money to start a successful business in SL. It takes a LOT of work, though.

If I had money and time to play with, I would get a single sim and create a conference center, a really nice one with great media facilities.

I would also set up some ancillary amenities, like a really cool short guided tour of SL for folks who've never been. And default avatars for business people who've never been here as well, including an AO with a handshake.

And then I would market it via RL media as a space for small virtual meetings (probably small technical news outlets) to medium size businesses with dispersed workforces. Novelty collaboration meetings.

It might make money. And it would sure be an interesting experiment.

p.s. customer service would be key here. Each event would have to be continuously hosted by conference center staff, to answer questions and facilitate through SL glitches.
.

Strong recommendation: Don't!

This is coming from someone who has done fairly okay here.

The reason why is: if you have to ask how, you aren't ready.

* * * * *

Consider the grid like an emerging foreign market. Tons of potential, but also tons of issues that you might not expect.

The grid is most useful as a cost center to the overwhelming majority of people - not as a profit center.

For example: it's a great place to hold virtual class sessions. That has value! It may save an educational facility a lot of money trying to accomplish such a thing in other ways. But it's a far cry from making money setting up a school here, for instance.

If you want to make money on the grid, put away your wallet and spend time and effort here... and be prepared to spend a lot of it.

Two ways to succeed in general: content creation and land.

If you think you would survive by becoming a freelance artist in your first life, you have a shot at content creation.

Investing 5000 USD won't help you one bit in that arena - you would be better off walking in with top-notch fingerpainting skillz than cash.

Regarding land - the bleeding upper edge that a fully rented region makes is 200 USD/month. It will be more like 150 if you are very, very lucky.

You'll work very hard for that 150/mo, I promise you - or it won't be income at all, it will be -295 USD/mo - the tier fee for an empty region. At 15 hours a month, congrats - you've just created a 10 USD/hr job. But it won't be just 15 hours a month. It will be more like working for 2 dollars an hour.

True, you can do well in the land biz - 20 full regions is worth maybe 3000 USD/mo, or 36000 USD/year before taxes. Just be prepared to pay 5900 USD/mo every month until you've got some occupancy... not something for the inexperienced to walk into casually.

* * * * *

All that said - there are other ways: scripting, animations, events... but the exceptions prove the rule.

Be cautious, know what you are getting into - and good luck.

By yourself $100 worth of L$. Go on a shopping spree. Use the remaining $1900-4900 to start a RL investment portfolio. (Or put it in a savings account and wait for LL to offer public stock.)

Seriously, as far as I know only a few content creators and land barons are making anything like a serious profit in SL, and both those markets are saturated.

Buy me an island? Pretty please?

But really... depends on what you do. If you'e a content creator, maybe buy get a team together and buy a sim and open shop as another 'big business' building firm.

If you really don't want too much return, rent out land or something...

But I'm going to go with what others have said: Don't. It's possible to make money in SL. Especially investing that much into it it's possible. But if you don't know what you want to do, it's a gamble at best, and even if it made money, your venture would take a while to take off.

I'd recomend saving that money in RL truthfully. Shove it into mututal funds, a Rothe IRA (USA anywho), etc, invest it for real.

It all depends on one's passions. As an *investment*, there's just nothing in SL worth throwing RL currency at, unless it's also of intense interest, because whatever one does, at least at the start, one is very poorly compensated for the time that must also be invested. So that time had better be fun, or you lose, even if the ROI looks good with labor discounted to zero.

I rather imagine that we're really supposed to be brainstorming here. Of course, if we had brilliant ideas, we'd be doing them already, so the standard evaluation of Free Advice surely applies. (Of course, Des already devised and executed on a brilliant idea. So... one wouldn't expect lightning to strike twice. )

I'd be sorely tempted to buy an island and four (or more) OpenSpace sims, terraform my little paradise, and hope somebody else out there will catch the vision. And then the part I'd hate: actually promoting it enough and managing it actively to get revenue to more than cover monthly costs. But some folks like that part, too.

Or buy a bunch of Gaeta when it comes up for auction, and do more or less the same thing (unfortunately, without those wonderful OpenSpace sims--at least for now). I suspect that a couple of pleasant Mainland sims will retain value long after Estate land has been devalued by competition. The bad part is that it takes an awful lot of it, to stave off surrounding crap. The good part is that the monthly fees are lower, so rents can be lower, so occupancy can be higher, so... just a safer gamble all 'round, if one is in it for the long term. (Be aware that Mainland rental competition is fierce, though. It is very difficult to do better than the folks who've been doing this for years, and on a vast scale.)

On the other hand, if one has a passion for a particular kind of content--a niche not yet filled, or an idea to fill a widely felt need--it could be a more fun and interesting investment, if perhaps riskier.

What I wouldn't do is get into "land-flipping" which seems to me to be as tedious an expenditure of time as one could imagine. It's incredibly labor intensive (even with all the help one can muster from an army of bots), risky, high (financial) barrier to entry, and for the immediate future anyway, relatively low reward. But then, some folks enjoy it, and for all the dissing they get, they provide a service by improving the liquidity and (technical) efficiency of the land market.

I second (third, whatever) everybody who said "don't."

If you are really having a good time here, maybe break off $500 for a land purchase and tier reserve. If it were me, I would use the rest as an investment in yourself. Take classes that are going to improve your RL work skills and help you climb the income ladder. There is no better investment you can ever make than improving your long-term employability.

The question was about investing in SecondLife so please do not tell me about investing in RL

I do not trust Lindens after their new island fees, so I want to wait until a new CEO reviews SIM tier fees. But even if I buy one SIM and start to rent land it can barely cover the tier fees, so what's the point? In my opinion, land is rather a very risky investment at this point, at least for a next couple of months, but I might be wrong.

Another person said something about conference center? Could you tell me more about this idea?

Additionally, If anybody have a good idea for some SIM, we could discuss that.

I think this is a well thought out idea with a chance of being successful. But it would probably take $5k to hire the developers etc and another $5k to promote it in rl to get paying customers.

I wish I knew the answer to your question, but I don't

I can not say what you should do with your money.

If it were mine, which is totally different, I would buy a sim, then do what I have wanted to do for a long time.


But... since I can not afford to do that, I won't hehe
(Sure do wish I had extra money to invest in SL)

Not gonna tell you to invest in RL stuff, I am sure you know enough about life to know to do that if you want to

Honey..only a fool invests money in somebody they don't trust. ANY investment into SL is investing in LL and their ability to keep the train on the tracks. You either trust them to right this badly listing ship or you don't.

if you have any sense, you will research Desmond iworld, visiting al his creations, and then heed his advice. he's been doing this a long time, is successful in SL, and knows wut he is talking about.

when you say invest, it implies you expect a financial return. that comes with effort, time and patience. no matter what you end up doing, i hope you choose something you enjoy. it's no fun to commit to a project that becomes tedious and hated because it's own goal is to make $$$, which you probably won't.

a conference center would be a nice feature, but i serisouly doubt anyone would rent it out from you since there are so many places to use that are free to the grid members.

fly around, TP around and search around for things of interest. if you want to get an idea for creativity on a new level, explore the asian sims. full of ideas and simply spark new ideas in people, depending on your mindset.

good luck.

I've sent you an IM in-world