Hi this is my first post, please be nice :)

Darrin,

Welcome to SL. I'm glad to see you've gotten a number of very good replies.

If I could just go out on a tangent, in the future please try to choose a thread title that really identifies the subject of the thread. As you've seen, it's possible to get good responses even when the title isn't relevant. Nevertheless, it's still a good idea.

One reason is to make it easier for the next person to find the information here. The search mechanism for these forums isn't very powerful. You often get many more search results than are actually useful. By having a meaningful title, it's much easier for the next person to find the thread.

The second reason is that next time, you may be asking a question that far fewer people are capable of answering. By choosing a relevant title, it's far more likely that you'll get the right people reading and replying to your question.

Please don't take this personally. Lots of people post with titles that don't really identify their questions. It's worth having periodic reminders of the value of well-chosen thread titles.

Hi, Darrin & welcome to SL & the Forums!

I'm a HUGE proponent of taking classes in SL. Most are offered for free (tips to instructors optional) and will help you get started in building, scripting, animations, clothes making, etc.

Once you make some items you wish to sell then....



...what Marcel said here is *extremely* important. You may be the best content creator on SL but people have to know how to find your items.

But...there are classes offered that teach that as well, usually under the title of "Starting a SL Business" or something similar.

(You can find classes in the SEARCH button on the bottom of your screen, then look for EVENTS and EDUCATION in the drop -down window.)

Also, Jojogirl Bailey teaches classes fairly regularly on how to market your SL business. I HIGHLY recommend going to her classes as she is one who is able to take RL money out of her SL business.

Good luck to you!

Y'all scared away another one. (And the responses were surprisingly gentle this time!)

Are you saying that Darrin has cancelled!?

Heh, well, there's no such thing as get rich quick. If someone asks an honest question and is frightened by the honest answer, GOOD!

Allow me t get philosophical for a moment. Gandhi said seven things will destroy us:

1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Belief without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle

If you're right that the OP was indeed scared away by our responses, then quite obviously he was "destroyed" by number one. If he expected to find wealth without work, and his awakening to the fact that it doesn't exist was shocking enough to put him off of SL, that's not a bad thing, for him or for us. And if the opposite is true, that he's ready to embrace the amount of work he'll need to do, but for whatever reason has just been a little slow to respond here, then that's a good thing as well, for everybody. Either way, everyone wins when no one is fooling themselves with false expectations.

Easy, buy some openspace sims they are cheap, then re sell them for a ridiculous price (like 65k I saw the other day) and do this before the SL government hikes the prices up by 66%. you will benifit from this, the buyer will not, but thats ok, its not stopping all the greedy barons from doing it, so why not you

I'll tell you one thing not to do, Darrin. There are a number of sellers around the place offering "Making Money in SL for Dummies" type e-book guides. Don't be suckered into them. They're just the SL equivalent of those "Make $$$ in your spare time" scams that have been around in real life for years - you pay out and recieve a piece of paper that says "get a job" on it.

Learn to script, build, texture or all three, or else be prepared to put on a husky voice and talk dirty.

Thanks for all the responses, you guys seem like a nice community. And no I haven't been scared off yet, and to the person who asked what kind of anwers I was expecting, I actually was expecting a lot of the "you can't get rich quick" answers. To give a little background, I used to play in another virtual universe with a real cash economy called Entropia Universe. Some of you might be familiar with it. Well I played for a long time and ultimately came to the conclusion that in order to make serious coin in that game, you had to have the best weapons and most skills, which required either extraordinary luck or depositing a lot of money. Second life seems a lot more based on creativity and does not require nearly the initial investment that an "uber" player in EU would have to make. Well I will keep exploring SL and see if I like it or not, but at least the forums look pretty cool.

Glad to hear you weren't actually scared away, Darrin. It sounds like you've got the right attitude about all this.

welcome to SL

Heres how I earned money creating content in 5 easy steps.

1. Spend a year learning to build to a very high standard.
2. Find an untapped niche then fill it.
3. Invest in advertising, marketting and anything else you can think of to increase your brands visibility.
4. Spend the next 4 years working tirelessly to design and create original content pushing your abilites to stay ahead of the game.
5. Create an efficient process to stop anyone from establishing themselves enough to sell or distribute stolen copies.

On reflection it really has been pretty easy considering I had none of the required skills to start with. I assume it's harder for new people to get a head start nowadays although I have helped a friend from RL start a busines over the last nine months and he's found it pretty easy to break through and earn top dollar.

I think people need to approach SL as a second job if you seriously want to make money over a long period. I think people who just want to log in and create cool content and to sell it because they enjoy doing it will only get so far. The theft of content as described by Darkness will eventually ruin the experience to some extent for the better content creators and the whole process becomes more stressful than fun. At this point you need to make a decision, do I want to spend my spare time enjoying myself or spend my spare time "working" to protect and advance my business and earnings. I went the other way to Darkness and took on the stress and bullshit of trying to compete with the other content creators and the thieves. As a result SL is not fun for me any more. It's a tool to earn money.

It isn't as easy as just redesigning pre-made content like in other games their is whole lot more to know.
There is whole lot more competition with bigger personalities and people who have more popularity and will constantly out do anything you may imagine or attempt to do.
It can be very discouraging and very overwhelming.
I suggest you make things because you enjoy them and if you decide to put
them up for sale unless you're a whiz at marketing, have tons of friends with money
to buy things don't be too disappointed that very few things may sale.
One thing is most Residents won't just buy things for numerous reasons.
Most of people I personally know who often do sell products and have history
here have recently found things just aren't selling like they use to be.
If you do become well known and your product does sale the following may happen
other designers or business may see you as threat, become very cut throat and will try to discredit or sabotage your product.
If idea is original someone will try to discourage, discredit anything you do or intentionally copy or steal it.
Worse yet if it so original and a very small niche market customers
who stumble upon your product might not appreciate or get concept of the product to buy it.
DCMA process can be pain in butt, stressful and ruin fun if you find yourself
having to spend every free moment dealing with it.
If you make lots of L$ in order to cash it out you still have to go through channels
to get it in cash that don't always make sense or intentionally complicated to make
it difficult but for some for some odd reason it is not as difficult.