New ways to have newbies work for you

I was just thinking that new people really don't have enough ways to make money. Camp pads aren't very pleasant. Money trees are pretty random. Filling out web forms doesn't cut it either. Are there menial or time consuming things that you find yourself doing that could be handed off to a newbie?

People complain that they can't find events anymore. How about hiring someone to search the events, teleport around and report back to you which places are actually events and which are just fake camping grounds? How much would you pay a newbie to do that for you?

I also kind of hate the huge amount of notices from the fashcon group. I wish I had someone who could sort it all out for me and just give me a list of stores selling a certain type of fashion. Maybe even have them visit the store. Would you pay a newbie to do that for you?

In SL we are all sort fo a 'do it yourself' crowd when it comes to working and playing. I think we need to cultivate a new attitude of 'let someone else work for me'.

So what do you think? Not possible? Already doing something like it?

Let me see if I got this straight. You have a newbie who does not know how to find money trees, camping havens, etc. but that same newbie can tp around the grid and take notes for you. That newbie can join all the groups you want to join and filter the notices that are of interest to you.

Pretty tall order.

The thing is that new residents, with a few exceptions, no matter how much they may complain about not being able to find a "job" in SL, just don't do anything you might want to pay them for, even the simplest, easiest tasks which they are quite capable of. In my experience and the experience of everyone I have ever talked to. It is not mining for fish.

I've hired people, saying, "I'll give you X up front, then every time you do Y I will give you the sum of Z, up to N times a week." They mean to, but they wander off and don't produce results.

Kind of like RL, huh? Good help is hard to find.

yes but how many Y skirts or W tops can i get with X or Z?

I don't trust people enough to know what I want done.. I went thru 6 secretaries in 2 years RL.. I am a terrible boss.. when they don't get a task done properly or in a timely manner, I take it back and do it myself.. I am of the feeling that it takes more effort to teach someone what I want rather than do it myself. lol

N, obviously. ;-D

I guess newbies are too unreliable to do anything worth paying them for? Isn't there anything simple they could do? I wonder if someone could make a dungeon and a scripted monster inside. Then if someone asked for a job we could just send them on the dungeon quest...

You would have to teach them, and then trust them to do what you want them to. There is no quality control unless you check up and do it yourself, and at that point, what is the point? You are giving them a task that you don't want to do, albeit for money. What makes you think that they want to do this task? They also want to enjoy their second lives, which is what makes them unreliable.

There are plenty of things they _could_ do, but they won't,

Target practice does work fairly well I suppose.

Making them wear a sandwich board? Too demeaning?

I'm sure there are roles that newbs can fulfil, maybe talk to NCI and see if they have suggestions.

Aside from the obvious alt abuse (which is preventable to a point), I do think LL should reinstitute the L$250 starting amount and L$50/week for payment verified basics.

New residents do have an instant way to get as many L$ as they need/want though: buy them. If they don't want to, then that's a choice they make and that shouldn't be cuddled and "here's some L$ anyway". If noone bought L$ then there wouldn't be an SL since a big portion of all tier is paid by proceeds from selling L$.

Somebody not me once suggested that prims should not just rez by magic for free. instead, there should be prim mines (or maybe prim farms, prim ranches, prim fishing, etc.) where people have to go find the prims, gather them up, and transport them back to a store where they can sell them.

Then there was the great California Prim Rush of 1848.

Of course, someone would probably wreak this by creating a primbot. And the prim barons would corner the market.

never mind.

study the prim tax, its already been in SL. There were riots to have it removed hehe

Hey Lee, if you really want to buy prims, just contact me in world and we can set a rate up, I'll be willing to sell any I can make

Well, actually, that is more or less the case. The prims are being delved from the bottom of the ocean and then shipped all over the Grid.

Cool idea. Maybe there is finally a useful purpose to slavery in SL.
Just collar someone, ask them to cover themselves up a bit and send them on various missions for you. No wages required!

I *might* pay a newbie to collect freebie textures and sort/catalog them. Come up with some sort of system other than my usual collect and forget. That would seriously save me a ton of time.

I haven't really collected many textures, but wouldn't most of them be no-transfer? The newbie would end up with a huge inventory of textures that he or she couldn't give you.

There are legitimate jobs to be found here and some pay really well. When Language Lab came to me to help find helpers to hire it was hard to get enough people and the pay was $L1000 an hour. Some of their best workers were the Pioneer students…newbies. But still its unlikely anyone will hire the putty faced girl or boy next doors noob. They should at least buy a few thousand $Ls and get some nice clothes, skin or hair, to show they are committed to spending some time in world. And even if you cant create or design you still need to be able to communicate well. Some of the best DJs, Dancers, Hosts or Managers I know are successful because they can flirt, type, talk or communicate in an articulate and witty way to the point that I want to give them a tip.
Still the best way to get $Ls is to buy them. For many of us this is our entertainment. For me its pretty much replaced the traditional entertainment of going to or renting movies, or golf or tennis. And I would much rather spend my day looking for that perfect palm tree in SL then driving around the north side of Indianapolis looking for a cheese grader.

Start some sort of man hunt sim and Pay newbies to run around and hide . Then you charge admission to the sim to hunters so they can sport hunt them .. Maybe Dress them up as deer and antalope .. Script the avies with Target tags so when they get hit it throws their avie on the ground kicking and screaming.. Good stuff there..

Ah, yes...hunting the most dangerous animal of them all...newbies!

noobs are great, everyone should have one!

LOL...that's the 1st thing I thought when I saw the title of this thread "Great, another 'virtual slave trade'". Newbies are just folks who made an SL account recently, not "willing slaves", so I would say give 'em a fair shake anyway. I notice, the less griefers we have, the more folks talk about newbies like "trash", instead of just new SL account holders. They ain't illegal immigrants, lol. Romper Stomper Cartel in the house? What I mean is for example:

I remember this guy w/ the last name Naranyan or some crap, who would go to Freebie Warehouse...stand, and round up groups of newbies to join his group and vote for him at contests whenever he was online.

He would then go to random contests, whichever ones paid the most, and win w/ newbie votes...then the bonehead gave "prizes" (freebies) to the "top 3 voters"...and only a few of us newbies figured out that he couldn't tell who the top 3 were anyway. I actually helped the bonehead name his group...it ends in "...For Prez"

While that might be an easy way ta exploit new members, it's still runnin along a "President Bush" line of thought. Pretty Darwinistic ta me...not that I'm all that smart.

One funny fact is outta the "newborn" folks I have helped...about 1/2 of em went on to be Gorean slaves in the next 2 weeks, lol. Damn I love ramblin.