Is it really a business?

I know this person, who I did some work for, that has 4 businesses in SL. When they were on my friends list, they would be in-world about 12-16 hours a day, every day. I have no idea what type of money she was making. I know that some of the businesses are a clothing line, wedding planner and model agency. This person truly believes she is a business person but it got me thinking.

If you feel its a business your running and you feel your successful at it, why are you still running it in SL? Why not take that knowledge into the real world and make serious money doing it if you have that time and energy? I know that some can not physically do this but this person is healthy.

Is it that the startup costs are low that you could only do it in SL? Anyone out there feel they are successful in SL but can't transfer your ideas to RL, I'd like to know why?

Regards, JulieAnne

ps: What got me thinking about this is that the person took me off there friends list because I am no longer part of there business (so they said and I believe them). I started to wonder how serious this person is about business then and what are they doing making pennies if they are??

I'm in the land business in SL, which is really different from the 'real' land business. Though if there were anything quite like it, yeah, I'd try it!

Maybe the real land business is pretty close but I can't think of any small country that I could afford.

Well... maybe Iceland. I gotta admit my SL country is prolly worth more on paper than Iceland is right now.

It is exactly the startup costs and low overhead and logistics. You only need a couple of hundred bucks for example to buy a few mainland plots and start renting them out. A few hundred buys you photoshop to make clothes. You can learn the skills to take into RL, but for a lot of people the cost is still prohibitve to satrt a RL version of your SL business.

It's quite possible that this person is making more than pennies.

I can only speak for myself...I 'play' with Paintshop. I love it, and I was doing it long before I hit SL. While I might call myself a 'designer', really I am someone who likes to draw virtual clothing and arrange it in such a way that it pleases me and hopefully other people.

I am self taught, and by no means an expert. That isn't really great shakes on a resume IRL. And I sincerely doubt that anyone would want me to draw clothing onto them, well they might like it but I doubt they would want wear it out anywhere.

Someone who is really good at business itself, which it sounds like this person is, quite honestly might have the ability to earn as much as they could in "RL". If they are earning enough to live on, and living on it, then it is a RL job.

That's a good question. Why aren't I making teleporters and jetpacks and sky homes and total-conversion ramjets in real life instead of wasting my skills and knowledge of SL physics in a virtual world? You've opened my eyes, I'll get on it immediately!

I would like to order a RL teleporter, please.

It's principally because those with money to lend usually don't place much credence in business plans where the putative CEO's claimed business experience is playing computer games 90 hours a week.

Pep (Understandably so, even for banking cowboys)

Hmmmm...


The truth is, there's plenty of people making 'real' money via their SL businesses. Why in the world would anyone give up something that WORKS in a virtual world (I'm speaking in terms of those who make a living with their SL business).....and spend the time and money transforming it into a RL pursuit?

Example.....lets say I'm a very successful clothing designer in SL. Let's say....I'm a mom, who prefers to stay at home with her kids and I'm able to make enough money every month in SL, to allow me to fullfill that ideal. WHY would I give that up? (I'm not any of these things....I have no kids and I don't make clothes in SL, but it's a scenerio)

On the other hand.....I agree with you that there are probably a good deal of people out there who have managed to develope a certain skill, via SL, that they could translate into a real world business, or skill. Just the other day.....while my sister was at my house, she watched me working on an Ad for an SL client and she was floored......she immediately said to me "why don't you go into graphic design?"

That was a very good question. It was something I never pursued in life, because I never realized I'd have the interest or the skill, until the digital age was upon us. Now I love it....I love the work I do....however menial the income (and it's not even enough to pay for my island, but that wasn't why I got into it to begin with) It's something I've wondered about......I never got the formal education for it......and the idea of pursuing a career using my skills now....is rather overwhelming. But, it doesn't mean it's not possible.

The flip side for me, however, is my personal situation at home, makes my having control over my time a 'must'. My sweety works out of state, and often out of the country. I have traveled many times in the past to spend time with him in more hospitable places.....and I'm sure I will again. IF I had a conventional job, at this point, the limitations would likely kill our relationship. IF, I can do work that allows me flexibility in time management, whether it be via SL or some other pursuit, than that's what I aim for.

Everyone's situation is different. There are advantages to SL business pursuits for a miriad of reasons.......creative reasons......disability/physical limitations......quick world market access..... This is a new venue, but it's no less valid for those who are making the best of it and drawing an income. Who cares where your money comes from.....if it's paying the bills and you're enjoying what you do.....well then you're way ahead of the average stuck on the treadmill citizen out there who has a good job he hates and little time for family and pursuits of passion.

Business might be a loose term in SL......but, one cannot help but LEARN while in the process of building a virtual business. The same as pilots are trained on simulators....SL can be a great training course for real world business. But, people need to do what makes them happy. And sometimes it's a comfort zone issue. My first passion in life is writing.....why I haven't been able to pursue it thus far has more to do with my own fears and angst, then with my skill. But, there again, SL provides me with a testing ground to publish short works and get some exposure.....thus helping me with my confidence issues and hopefully, ultimately, inspiring me to finish my real world writing projects and do what so many have told me I was meant to do.

(but dam if I COULD make a living thru SL alone, you better believe I would!)

For me, yes, it is really a business. I use SL as a source of income because a) I like working for myself and not having a boss, and b) it is a job I can do from home, which for a number of reasons is the best situation for me right now.

I agree that low startup costs and easy entry into the market are advantages of SL business. Not that *succeeding* is easy, but getting a few sales is very possible if you bother to optimize for search and choose a good location.

The biggest disadvantage of SL business is tier fees. They are far too high compared to what one can charge for a product, whether that be land rental, clothing, houses etc. They are real world pricing in a microcurrency economy. They make profit margins on everything far less than what they should be.

For those that need more information ... ahem... I mean, taking your business skills into RL. Surely the knowledge you have about marketing of your SL goods (regardless of what they are), can be translated into RL? Can't it?

But then again, perhaps some people are so stuck in Second Life, they can't make that transition. Perhaps you have opened up my eyes Argent

It's not about the skills, you need MONEY to start a business in RL. A lot of Money. Some people just don't have the start up capital.

perhaps you should have quoted my first post when I asked if its the startup cost? You could have just said *yes* but that answers the question for some of why they don't open there own company. Is there other reasons is my question?

rl government regulations and hoops to jump through is a big reason.

Hold onto your horses, I'm still trying to get the edit window to come up.

HEY while your at it... I want a flying car!!!!!!!
The whole jetpack... with a furry tail SCARES ME

JulieAnne....I could give you a demonstration that would make it very clear as to "Why"...but sense from the above paragraphs....just a tad.... that there might be a little jab there, toward people who are working in SL....particularly the part about why wouldn't they take their skills back to RL? Like perhaps they weren't competent enough to do so and make it in RL?

Did I read too much between the lines?

Oops...just caught that....answered my question

For me, it's the whole prim hair liberation. My hair is a wild mass of unmanageable big red curliness that likes to embarrass me in public. I've tried bribes, threats and punishment, but it always retaliates and gets even. Not so with prim hair. My hair is actually afraid of prim hair and and will behave while I play SL and go through my sleek, elegant hair inventory. Yes, prim hair is a force to be reckoned with.

There's another thing, too:

Many of the skills involved in an SL business, at least when it comes to content creation, are really computer skills of one form or another. Programming, graphic design, 3D animation, etc. So it's not so much that Argent would actually start manufacturing jetpacks in RL, or that I would start building assault rifles (leaving aside the very obvious legal repercussions), it's that the skills that would translate to RL would clearly be in the IT field.

Sure, it'd be cool to be able to set up a private software company, but the problem with that isn't just the startup cost, as was already mentioned, but the opportunity cost. In SL, I have servers readily available to rent, plenty of storage, a Virtual Machine, programming language, and compiler already established, a working physics engine, really a whole working game engine already available, along with an existing customer base and a means of production and delivery of products.

To do this in RL would require not only a large expenditure, but it would require an even greater opportunity cost. Such a venture would not even be able to earn revenue, much less turn a profit, until the first product was released, which might take several years in terms of R&D, design, production, distribution, etc. Sure, if the right situation popped up with some sort of capital to back up the project and get it off the ground, I might be willing to take that chance. At the moment, however, SL is the cheapest available alternative for someone who wants to be able to do programming without requiring a large software firm.

I would like to place an order for a teleporter as well please.


As for the Original Post.

I draw clothing, and use plywood boxes to make skirts, hair, shoes and such...

you tell me how I can draw clothing and use plywood as skirts, hair, shoes etc in the real world and make pennies doing it.

oh, bri and may have met that person last year

The same Reason Linden Lab's main office is still in San Francisco. It's nice here. (^_^)y

And risk. I just went through a startup failure, and I'm not really interested in going through that again any time soon. Moonlighting in SL for supplemental income is a lot less risky.

I've run several real-world small business efforts. I was an entrepreneur decades before I ever heard of SL. I have started companies, had downtown office space, had clients that renewed their contracts for services year after year... While *some* of the skills for running a successful business in SL can translate to running a successful business in RL, I can assure you that most do not.

Clothing Designer? In SL, that is a graphic artist, not a seamstress. And while everyone needs clothes in both environments, few people in RL actually *need* detailed graphic artwork. Nothing about running a successful clothing business in SL translates to being able to sew a straight seam, or get good prices on fabric, or get RL stores to put your hand-made stuff on their shelves. A wildly successful clothing designer in SL might have no luck at all trying to translate their skills to the real world.

Builder? Again, in SL it's skill as a graphic artist, and to a lesser extent as a script coder, and not skill with real bricks, boards and paint. While I might parlay my skill in designing SL college campuses into a job with a Real Life architectural firm, designing 3D walkthrough models of their homes and other real building projects, I don't have the degrees or certifications to work as a real architect, so would not progress very far. And opportunities for such employment are very limited.

Scripter? Coding in LSL is a very specific discipline, worthless anywhere else. While it teaches you a little about object oriented programming, it won't get you a real job as a coder in a house that writes all its code in C++. I can program in many programming languages, but nothing I have done while scripting in SL would make it onto my resume.

SL Wedding/event Planner? Maybe... But scheduling real halls and photographers and caterers and transporting real materials and rented equipment to and from a rented chapel or hall is very different from whipping up a 3D fantasy environment in SL.

Avatar designer? Jet pack maker? Teleporters? Wings? None of these products are even possible in the real world. Yet in SL we can create such things successfully.

Escort? Stripper? BDSM Gear maker? It's harmless to do these jobs anonymously in SL, but would you do it in real life?

Most SL businesses have almost no start-up costs, or negligible costs compared to opening a single real-world store front in a strip mall. Most can be run successfully by a single person, or a small team of people, most of whom are NOT expecting to pay the rent with what they earn from working in SL. And most businesses in SL have zero costs for raw materials, inventory control, transportation...

What is "Success" in an SL business, anyway?

For the majority of SL merchants, apparently it is merely having fun doing something they enjoy, and being able to defray part of their expenses for being in SL with the work that they do in SL. There are millions of businesses in SL, but only a few thousand cash out real money every month. Yet millions of SL merchants remain in business. Money must not be the sole motivator for them.

For some, it is covering 100% of their SL expenses, and being able to cash out a little pocket change each month, so you can take the family to dinner in a restaurant a time or two more that month. I was quite happy when I hit that point after a year or so as a merchant in SL.

For others, it's making enough to cash out and buy a few luxuries each year that you might not otherwise afford, like a new set of speakers and a new amplifier for your home theatre system, or a new computer with a huge flat-panel display. Years of working in SL, and I am getting to this point now. And I wouldn't dream of trying to quit my day job to make money only in SL, or quitting Sl to try to start up a new company in a lousy RL economic crisis.

And for a very few people, it is earning enough to not need a RL day job, and being able to cover your real-world rent and living expenses with what you earn in SL. I only actually "know" one person that fits tin that category, and her physical health is too frail for her to earn as much in a RL job as she can earn in SL.

But again, none of the skills that earn me money in SL are all that applicable to running a real-world business. And the real-world economy is severely depressed. It would take a LOT more money than I have to invest, and a lot higher risk of losing all that money, for me to try to start a real-world business today. Virtually ALL the businesses I used to run I have shut down over the years, because while they did earn SOME money, they didn't offer the stability or income that I can get by working for someone else.

For me, running several businesses in SL is a way to supplement my income while being able to stay at home with my family in the evenings, instead of working all day on one job and then hot-footing it to a second 20-hour-a-week part-time job somewhere else. I'd never see my family, doing that. With my SL work, they are there with me, chatting, watching movies, and I can take a break when I choose, to do things with them.

Most people run businesses in SL for the fun of it, or when its for serious profit there usually isn't much of a need to take it beyond SL. Somethings cant really be taken from SL to RL.

I know there are lots of people who design clothes in SL then went on to design clothes for their own startup clothing sites in RL.

I even know one person who started in SL by renting/buying/selling real estate and they took that into RL a year ago with residential rentals mainly buying then renting condos/town homes all starting from the revenue they made in SL.