how to make profit?

thanx for that info Czari . i will check it out

Jack, listen closely: Homestead sims are a bad product to buy, and worse to try and rent out. They have the highest cost per prim of any type of region.

The "big guys" will not try to run you out. There's room enough for everyone. But there are plenty of other pitfalls in the SL land business, and other people here have been trying to warn you about them.

There are changes coming up soon for mainland that will affect prices there drastically. See the blog posts and forum threads about the new Adult Content policy.

I wouldn't get into any land business in SL for at least the next 4 - 6 months...but if you just gotta, then buy a full prim private estate ($1,000, $295/month) and rent that out.

Thanks. I did go to the Ivory Tower at least once, and a couple of other places (I remember the Particle Lab specifically) but most of what I know is a combination of past experience in 3D, and taking apart other people's builds and scripts. Mostly that last part. I've been dabbling in 3D art for over a decade now, and several things I learned from that carried over into SL. Texturing, animation, and polygon modeling in particular, and how to use several different programs. Once I decided I wanted to make animal avatars, I bought several that I liked and took them apart, seeing how cutting and hollowing this or that prim got this effect, and so on. I learn best by doing, and figuring things out on my own. People often ask me for advice on getting into making avatars, and I tell them to see how other avatars are put together. It doesn't work for everyone, everyone learns differently after all, but most people seem to learn a good deal just from experimenting like that.

thanx Lindal that is great advise about homestead sims. i didnt know the prims where higher i think i will wait for 4 to 6 months and see what is gonna happen on mainland.

Hi Maya yes your fox animal av are awsume but how do u take a av apart? do u buy one and edit it like u would anything? and how do u get deep into the polygons.? i suppose any av u experment with u could say one would ruin it

one other thing . are openspace sims just as bad as homestead when it comes to prims?

First of all, the prims aren't higher, they're lower. I think you understand that, but your wording makes me want to clarify.

Anyhow, Openspaces are _not_ approved for being rented out. I don't know what they'd do if you did it, but technically they aren't supposed to be. Overall, they're probably more expensive anyway.

Also keep in mind that you can only buy Homesteads and OpenSpace sims from LL if you already own at least one full sim.

you should really just make your own textures instead of using someone else's and calling them yours..
pulling someones images from the net and bringing them into SL can still get you nipped for copyright infringement..
you could take pictures of fabrics of your own clothes and bring them in as long as you were not copying the outfit just the fabric..
hope this helps

Dance remix version:

Find something people want to pay for.
Make that.
Be a decent enough entrepreneur to keep your head above water.
Fend off up and coming competitors, some of whom will be better than you.
Find your stuff copybotted and selling for half price.
Find that half of your customers will buy a much lower quality product as long as the price is REALLY cheap.
Find that half of people who previously would have been your customers have contented themselves with freebies.

Figure out to to cover tier anyways, because you are an entrepreneur, after all.

Looks like you need to learn a bit more about SL in general. You can't "ruin" something as long as it's copyable. And the few avatars out there with restricted copy permission are usually no mod as well anyway. And you can't do anything at the polygon level in SL, you can only work at the object level (prims).

As for the how, just mod like you would anything else. Rez a head or a foot or whatever, check Edit Linked Objects, and pull individual pieces away.

ok now this may really be a noob question. i have some furniture and stuff in a cabin and im moving out. but i dont wanna just click on all my stuff and select "take" i would rather rez a box and drag everything in there real quick and then take the box and name the box. is this possible? cause i tryed it and it doesnt work. what is the easiest way . step by step to do this?

Anybody else have the feeling that we are being played?

Meh. A lot of the questions are good questions for new people, so even if it's all just some guy getting his rocks off, there's lots of good information here.

if your referring to me. no im not playing u . this is a forum and i have a inventory that is all screwed up cause i have forgotten in the past to ask the question. dont accuse me as playin u. go somewhere else and start shit

thanx alot jesse now maybe no one will answer my questions cause of u

Dude, calm down. It's been 14 minutes since you asked. That's not long.

Anyhow, to put prim objects in boxes, you first need to take them into your inventory. Alternatively, you can take a coalesced object, by selecting the items you want to take and Right Click > Taking them. However, when you rez a coalesced object, the items are put out in their relative positions, so it's not always practical.

Settle down, this forum has had a LOT of trouble makers, trolls, and survey givers recently, people are wary now.

Anyway, the only way you can pick up all your stuff at once is to select it all at once and take it as a coalesced object. You can't "put things in a box" the way you described.

ok thanx guys i was trying to get away from putting items in inventory first but i didnt think u could. lol i rezed a box and tryed to drag the stuff into it and u could tell that obviously wasnt gonna work and i agree takeing it all at once will be kinda kaos when reopening.. ok i will take stuff then open a second inventory window and drag it that way thanx again and beleive me i am grateful for all your information . and i actually go back and read it several times .. great info

I LOL'd totally

No, I think Jesse's comment was in reference to Cali's post, asking for everything to be handed to them on a silver platter...



Wants to "Fill a store" and open a club, but apparently thinks that to "make my own stuff" one simply sticks other people's Leggo blocks together?

Hi Jack,

I'm one of those land barons you seem to want to be... I'd be glad to share a few tips.

First, it's work. A lot of work. If you had any ideas of sitting back and letting the $L flow in, forget 'em.

Ah, and it's drama too. People don't read covenants. Return a gigantic 'for sale' sign (these aren't allowed by my covenant) and somehow the person violating the covenant will feel singled out and get angry. Then argue with you or try to negotiate the covenant.

Even worse, is when someone will fall out of the good graces of a couple people in the community. Then try to 'strike back' by attempting to trap the land baron into a TOS violation. Yep, not kidding... there are people who will willfully attempt to wipe out the residences of several hundred people in order to 'teach a lesson' to... well, whomever they were trying to get vengeance upon. You won't know the exact details any more than I generally do.

So that's land barony. I'm not sure I'd call what I do a "living wage" here in California but some people probably would. SL makes me more than anything shown on the first graph here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

It took me three years to get here, at levels of work that vary between part time and at times, 70 or 80 hours a week during what would otherwise be a holiday *cough* openspacedebacle *cough*

Regarding other stuff...

...I think your chances of succeeding are pretty slim unless you really, really, really, really, *really* wanted it. Which means: not impossible.

...you sure can start from nearly nothing. I started from a premium account and maybe a coupla months tier at 25 USD/mo, that was it. Maybe not even that, I can't remember, other than the premium account. Been cash positive ever since. At minimum... you need $L 10. Yep, just $L 10. Upload a map texture of your region idea, put it on a prim, and put some markers on that. As people prebook parcels, assign their names on the map with some hypertext. Collect $L when it's all booked and... there ya go. From $L 10 to land baron. Don't even think you need land or a premium account to do it; just $L 10, a sandbox and an idea. Won't be easy though, but, that's land barony for you.

...'big estates trying to put you outta business'... usually it goes quite the other way. There are constantly a string of wannabee land barons offering 'FREE RENT FOR ONE MONTH' and stuff like that, collecting names in successful regions and raiding them shamelessly. Usually these fail; a few succeed and a few actually wipe out the estates they have been raiding (imagine being raided by 10 upstarts, say 2 or 3 of which survive). So generally the big estates don't do anything, but if ticked off enough, some could. I don't get raided much, because I could turn around and do this: "Free rent for 6 mo for anyone of region X leaving there *completely* tonight!" ~ but not everyone has reserves like I do, so generally the raiders target weaker estates who have maybe a handful of regions in a similar theme, and no defence reserves to remedy the situation with. So long as you don't pester other estates, nobody's going to bother you.

I remember how a few people laughed at me, when I started in 2005. "What, a region not using sex or gambling, and what's with all this infrastructure stuff, why not just 16 sandy islands in a 4x4 grid???" Yep, I heard it all.

So if you want to go for it and it's your dream... give it a try. Doesn't matter where you start, you will have setbacks but you will *always* pass up all the folks who never aspired to chase their dreams. I can't even begin to tell you how great it was to leave the cubicle.

Good luck man,

Des

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlgsfLkAUVg

thanx Dez great info .. i have a question . in something u said i dont understand and maybe i need to learn it before i jump into land owner. what is...>At minimum... you need $L 10. Yep, just $L 10. Upload a map texture of your region idea, put it on a prim, and put some markers on that. As people prebook parcels, assign their names on the map with some hypertext. Collect $L when it's all booked and... there ya go. From $L 10 to land baron. Don't even think you need land or a premium account to do it; just $L 10, a sandbox and an idea. Won't be easy though, but, that's land barony for you.


i dont understand what uploading a map texture of your region idea is. and how to put it on a prim? and put some markers on it??? u lost me is there somewhere to learn this. cause it sounds nessesary to know and are u realy making that much a yr in sl?? real money? how much land do u own?

That's probably because that's all you can do in MMOs (and I believe also places like Habbo), where they do "crafting" - sticking together pre-made components manually one at a time so you can sell them.

Jack,

Desmond is not the largest land baron in SL, but he definitely is one of the most successful and well known. His mini-nation of Caledon is comprised of around 40 regions.

What he's described to you is this:

1. Make a pretty picture of what your region will look like from the air. Be sure to show how it's divided up into parcels.

2. Upload this image as a texture file in Second Life. It will cost you L$10.

3. Plaster the picture onto a big flat prim.

4. Go set it up somewhere, such as a public sandbox (or better, rent a small parcel so you can keep it rezzed there permanently).

5. Use this item ("Coming Soon! Jack42Land! Reserve Your Bit of Paradise Today!" to take reservations and deposits.

6. When you have enough, buy the region, set it up, call the people who reserved spaces, and tell them it's time to move in.

Then the fun of being a land baron (which Des also described) really begins.

Or get rich even quicker:

1. Make a pretty picture of what your region will look like from the air. Be sure to show how it's divided up into parcels.

2. Upload this image as a texture file in Second Life. It will cost you L$10.

3. Plaster the picture onto a big flat prim.

4. Go set it up somewhere, such as a public sandbox (or better, rent a small parcel so you can keep it rezzed there permanently).

5. Use this item ("Coming Soon! Jack42Land! Reserve Your Bit of Paradise Today!" to take reservations and deposits.

6. When you have enough, transfer the money to an alt, abandon the Jack42 persona and start again.

Pep (Then the fun of being complained about in the forums begins; and you can watch it and laugh!)

I thought I'd go the easy route and just change my name to Desmond Shang.