how to make profit?

Thank you - I pop in only rather occasionally these days, I must say. I am sure that all regular participants will agree that the experience can be quite frustrating at times, and with increasing age I find my patience decreasing.

why thank you Ordinal . i agree that at this moment i would mess it all up and also cause renters a great deal of stress. how ever i think one can grow into it and learn gradually. and i dont mean in a few weeks or even months but it doesnt rule me out of ever being able or capable of doing it. does it?

I'm sure that you are not intrinsically incapable of doing such a thing, but at the moment I think that it would be a very bad idea for you to try.

i appreciate your honesty and i will take it into consideration there for i will not buy and rent out land until i absolutlly understand all the ins and outs off land . thank you for the advice

i agree 100 percent after all i have heard but i still wanna learn it or at least learn something . im getting tired of just hanging out in sl

I can so relate...thus some of my responses. (Plus being on my first Pepsi of the day *grins*)

This isn't a computer issue, this is a business issue. How land works and the fundamental math behind making a successful rental business is not something that one should have a mental block about because "it's on a computer." Either you can model it or you can't. Once given the rules, and having rented with someone else, you should already be able to make your own small scale business model, knowing how much stuff costs.

Reread the context again.
My reference was in regards to some people having a difficulty absorbing some concepts. In my example, it was my boss, who is otherwise a brilliant man and a self made millionaire many times over. A computer threw him for a loop and it took a long time but he has become proficient with it now. Of course in my position it would have been kind of stupid to discourage him from continuing to learn it. Conversely. if he was in SL he would probably be up there in the top percentage of people making a very good living.

Some people answered questions just because they felt like it. Unfortunately I was not among them at first. But go back a couple of pages and see how Desmond Shang graciously handled his responses in posts #71 & #90. My boss learned how to use a computer, can anyone really say for certain that it is completely impossible for Jack to get to the point of having a few pieces of property?

i think i can eventually. i just need to know how to do it all . for a small example. when i rented private land off a landlord.it was a quarter sim, i was terraforming it just parts nothing major, and for the life of me couldnt get the land nice and smooth.. u know how they make it real smooth and drop off gradually in to the sea. then i hear something about raw files... i have no clue what that is.. this is just a small example.do u need to use raw files to make the land smooth or is there a technic? i need to learn all this stuff i know before i make the big jump and renting that piece of land opened my eyes a little wider then they were before . so i just need to keep going further and who knows when im half way there i may find a different avenue and start doing something else i guess that is what is nice about sl .

Jack, I really think you have the mistaken impression that SL is easier than it really is. SL is really, really freakin' hard. Let's take terraforming from your post as an example. Terraforming *looks* like it should be easy. Just hit the tool buttons and start carving, right? Well, not so easy, as you've discovered. Terraforming well takes hours of practice, it is a whole lot like painting with a computer. Some brush strokes you can use a heavy hand on, and some need a lighter hand. Nobody terraforms well right off the bat. In fact, most people make an abysmal mess out of terraforming the first time they try it.

Any skill you are going to attempt is going to take practice. In every skill you must master the basics before you move on to the next level. Mastering the basics means practicing them, practicing them until they become second nature. It takes time. If all you are going to do is skip around and keep dropping things because you aren't immediately good at them from the word "go," you are never going to achieve anything. Find one thing that interests you. Learn it. Learn it backwards, forwards and upside down until you can do it well in your sleep. Then begin expanding your skill set.

Assume it is going to take you a minimum of 6 months to a year to get really good at anything in SL -- which means you really better love what you choose to do, because you are going to spend hours and hours at it for mere pennies. Do it because you love it, otherwise you might as well spend the time flipping burgers part-time because you'll make more money that way.

yes i am starting to see that Isablan . and u are right about the terraforming. i was like wtf.. and then really messed it up and it did take me about a hour just to get it to look decent and hid the messed up parts. i can see where it is gonna take me a while to even find what i really like in sl.. i think i like the idea of owning land but i may discover that my calling may lie somewhere else just have to keep looking and expermenting

Realize that there are things you can learn that won't cost you nearly so much money. Check out the Content Creation section of this forum, the Building, Animations, Texturing, and Scripting forums. They're useful skills, and very very cheap comparatively.

ok i will ty i have been spending time at the ivory towers and partical and i think i need to learn that first . i really like robin woods stuff but that is to far ahead of me right now.

i was looking around the bay city area.. just looking mind u. and there was one plot of land . the size was 384 sq.m maybe 120 prims. for 990,000 L that comes to around 3,480 $ real money.. wtf . how and why is this so expensive? i mean if u opened shop there u couldnt rez much with only 100 prims . what would u do with it? i dont understand what makes it so valuable . and i have seen many others this way also. this was just the highest amount so far for the least space and prims. i guess u could put a mini shop there showing where your main store is??? but the place looks empty . hardly no green dots on the mini map. does this location have alot of traffic for good busness? wow is all i can say.. i am fasinated though . very interesting

People set insane prices on land, sometimes just to say they've got land worth L$INSANE, it's only the prices of parcels that actually SELL that matters.

I posted my thought not really in response to this post, Jesse, but his own admission somewhere in the last two or three "help me make my business plan" threads that seemed to echo this, that it was because of the computer.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that he's not ready yet. I understand his excitement, but he's just not ready yet and he's positioning himself to lose a lot of money that he really cannot afford to lose.

It is not impossible to start small, but even then, you still need to have a basic sense of what you're doing and have a grip on the math. I started on a 1280 plot that I rented on an island, with 3 houses that I built myself. It doesn't get much smaller than that! And this was done by about a month after starting SL.

But the difference here is that I already knew what I was doing - I had read the knowledge base voraciously to learn about land, and I had already rented with a landlord on a private island with some friends so I pretty much knew how it worked. I didn't know the forums existed at the time, and even then, I probably wouldn't have used it to ask the fundamental questions being asked here because I was inworld looking at prices, looking at competition and figuring it out.

Jack can do this, I'm sure, and to some degree he's right about learning by just doing it, but I don't feel terribly comfortable for him doing it at this point based on what we've seen so far.

i agree with u Cristalle . and im not gonna do it yet. i think i will get a small plot for myself . The 512 free tier on mainland i have coming and build a house on it or something. of course not in the bay city area though

The best bet (odds-wise) would be to cash out, throw away your password and turn off your computer.

This way you will almost certainly break-even.


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Barring that - Start small so your losses won't be too big if your business doesn't take off.

sounds like good advice. im gonna start small i like this as a hobby to much to worry about making a profit. just thought it would add a little icing on the cake

well i have been looking around the mainland for my 512 plot. is there any advice on where to buy . such as the old land verses new land. old land meaning the region bay city is on but not particularly bay city area . i have also have to take in consideration if i buy more land later on i can add the prims from one parcel to the other so i may wanna buy where i may buy more later. anyone have good ideas of where they would buy and why? i dont wanna make a hasty decision and then regret it later. is there a thing u look at for traffic in the area for an example? and should i look for the amount of traffic? if so how do u look that up? there is also a map i found in a place and it is a world map of sl . it shows #1 as the old land bay city ext... #2 and so on up to # 8 i believe.. is there away to tell witch u are on ?and is this important when buying land. i have read that #1 was first and the others were created in order as they are numbered. hope this makes sence

ill just take my time on buying land unless someone gives great ideas. i will venture around till i find a great deal

They dont sell it back to LL, the abandon itl thus loosing their initial start up for delivery of said homestead (that many purchased at a lower rate and had no idea LL would be raising that rate)

I'm not sure which map you are looking at, but if you only want oldish land look to the continent Sansara. Mainland is now several continents though. You can limit your land search to mainland in search, and you can set the area and price limits you are interested in. I have mainland both in PG and Mature areas, and a Homestead Sim. Sigh. None make me money -- they are just for fun for me. I've probably lost hundreds of dollars moving around in SL trying to find the perfect plot. So my advice is to try to find some protected mainland and sit tight on it, building and having fun.

What do I look for? Linden-protected areas (road, water -- and careful here, as not all water is protected! I've even recently seen fake Linden roads!), terrain that interests me (rocky, snow. green, flat, steep -- these will be among your choices), and a sense that I'm not surrounded by a firmly-entrenched mall or something. But remember, your neighbors can constantly change. Good luck.

I own mainland and love it. I saw the area when it was all small plots and bought one. eventually folks bought up the smaller lots and the entire landscape changed dramatically. just find someplace you like and buy it. i was in sl for about 3 months before i felt like i knew enough about land and about the various areas in sl to make an informed decision and make a purchase. now i own quite a bit of land there so i have more control over how the area develops.

as for making money...you have to acquire knowledge and skill just as in RL in order to find your niche and then begin to build a biz and make a profit. just take it slow and enjoy the journey!

ok thank you all for the mainland advice . i have been learning about building and have just rezzed and finished my first chair at ivory it wasnt that bad ,but i would have been lost if i didnt go through all the previous steps there. the hardest part is remembering where your controls are and not hitting the correct one. that is frustrating. then i wasnt fast enough so it sent my object to my lost and found.. so i kept linking it so when it did it would be all in one piece. i even scripted my chair of course they show u . just copy it from them but i can see now that even a small chair can be a challenge . and now i see that i am no where near close to what i want to do in here.Also i know now why some posted in here saying dont do it u will fail.. i agree with them now. they just didnt have to be so negative about it ,and burst my bubble i will just take my time and enjoy the ride and learn as i go. this building stuff is fasinating and very time consuming. i really admire and respect those that make such great detailed prims. but i think the trick is learning the controls on the keyboard to do things quickly with out mistakes , i think i will get my land and learn to build there, now just finding the spot ..