who's really in it just for the money?

I am curious... who really comes here for the money? If you came here strictly to start a business, do you feel that you are "successful"? Unless you are a really talented content creator or an established land baron, are you making the kind of cash to make the return worthwhile? As in, it won't take you years to earn your money back?

not me ..... I worked it out the other day , but i am in it to play and create.. I like getting sales though as it makes me feelas though my stuff is good so its a little bit of an ego boost but doesnt even break even.

Making money is important to me, and I do reasonably well at it in SL. My inventment has returned it self many times over. But these are not the only reasons I come to SL, the joy of designing and creating things is just as important to me and I would continue to come here to do that even if I made no money. But I would do it on a much smaller piece of land.

It'd be nice to make back tier. More would be nice but I don't expect it any time soon and don't expect it to ever replace the RL day job.

Before I bought an island, it was alllll about fun.

Now it's first about paying my tier and then having fun, but tier has never yet been a problem for me to pay, my sales have exceeded that for a while now or I would have never bought the island in the first place.
I think these days getting into SL just for the money is a bit foolish (no disrespect meant to anyone) just because it's so damned hard to get started in SL these days.
I've been exploring lately. I haven't really left my island much since I got it about a year ago. I'll say for sure, things have changed, and it just doesn't appear to be the place to come in expecting to make something out of nothing anymore...at least not very easily.

I've bought a programming book with SL income.

though to be in it just for the money is an insult to yourself. pretty much end up spending more hours on a project worth doing then it's worth for RL cash. it pretty much comes down to keeping a fat wallet in SL since it's all hobbying time for me.

I've gotten one commercial product on the line and that's enough to get Roleplay weapon developers kits, what sparse shopping I do, and uploads lots and lots of uploads.

When I started in SL, over two years ago, it was to roleplay with my best on-line friend, who had left another venue where we had been playing, and had come to SL. I promised myself that if I started playing in SL, I would find a way to earn enough in-world to cover my expenses and my start-up costs. About 5 months and a lot of effort later, I had earned enough making T-shirts, dresses and textures, and starting to build sims, to say I had met that goal. Since then, I have always covered all my in-world expenses from in-world profits, and I usually manage to get a little cash out every week or two, to spend in RL. What I earn in SL will never be a full-time level income for me, but I would say it is a successful effort. I have a very nice home and SL income for myself, my Partner, several friends, and many of our alts. And all paid for by my in-world profits.

If I couldn't at least cover my land costs and in-world expenses with my efforts, I probably would not stay in SL. There is no way I could afford to pay out of pocket each month what I pay right now for my land tier in two private sims, let alone for the L$ that I spend each month for all my accounts. My RL mate would have a fit with those kind of charges showing up on our monthly credit card bills, just to allow me my 'playtime'. And if I didn't have my land, where I can enjoy time with my SL household, there wouldn't be much reason to remain here. I can't imagine going back to using someone else's skybox or home as my home point, and having no place of my own. No more than I could imagine giving up my RL home and posessions, and living on the streets or crashing in friend's living rooms in RL.

And yet, the money doesn't matter to me as much as my friends here do. If my SL Partner left SL, I'd sell everything and leave as well. I'd stay and play with them if there was no profit, so long as it also didn't cost me a lot to remain here. But I'd not bother to stay if my Partner left, no matter how much real money I was making here.

When you factor in the hours involved, if you are here for the money and are actually making more here per hour than in RL, sincere kudos.

I'm here for the hugs.

Absolutely! I only know a handful of people in SL who actually earn enough in SL to call it a living wage. For most, if they make a profit at all, the money per hour of effort spent is far less than a minimum wage job would pay.

I am here strictly to live the life of unfettered leisure that is not possible in RL right now. Working at any type of SL job goes totally against that. The money I spend is money that would be spent on some other form of entertainment, I'm happy to give to those talented people out there who make stuff.

I am friends with a lot of very successful SL creators and designers- some of whom make their RL incomes from SL. Not one of them came here with a goal of making money. They came here to roleplay or to experiment with the building tools, and then discovered that people liked what they did.

That tells me something.

/me hugs Raymond

Oh me too. I'm not foolish enough to believe I have the time or talent to propel myself into the position of making more in SL per hour than I do in RL.

It amazes me the number of people I meet who still believe that they can come into SL and make a fortune. Often, they throw big numbers around, and some throw big names in terms of connections.

Most of them either just start having fun and give up on making money or are never seen again....

Not in it for the money per se, but definitely for the opportunity it presents for our band. Playing original music in RL, the formula for success is simple, but takes a lot of effort. Record and distribute the songs (either via hard copy like CDs or now electronic distribution), play live to promote and sell the music, talk to the patrons after the show to add them to the mailing list. Once you've got a record in hand, it's all about booking and playing shows and growing the fan list. In RL this means chasing down club owners and booking agents with lots of phone calls, driving all over the place, and after the show trying to cajole lit up bar patrons into scrawling down an e-mail address you hope will be legible the next day.

SL makes every part of this process easier by a lot. Booking shows, adding to our group, communicating with fans. Even the performances themselves are WAY easier, I don't have to slug our gear up onstage in between bands, I just turn on the mixing board and plug in guitars and mics. Sure, there's something lost compared to jumping around on a RL stage, but what we gain is a lot more efficiency and the ability to play to people all over the world.

We're making more than I expected to after only a couple months of playing. Most of that we are just putting back into the SL economy, tipping other performers and otherwise buying stage clothes, gear, etc. I see the potential to make pretty good money in SL, and I see a very big opportunity in the coming years for live online performance in virtual worlds, whether it's SL or whatever comes next.

That's pretty much how I view it.

It depends on how much land you own, though. If you get into the island sim thing, it is serious money and payments, and the platform basically forces it to be about money for you unless you have the inclination to spend extravagant amounts per month on a hobby. If you stick with a small amount of land, or rental, then it is more manageable to pay for it out of a normal entertainment budget, but I don't think too many people have the inclination to spend USD 295 per month on their online entertainment hobby ... so if you go that route, it pretty much has to be about making enough money with your land to offset tier/island payments.

Make a fortune?? It's not even that - many expect it to drop in their laps..

That's very true.

I know several people who didn't come here to make money, but wound up having to focus on doing so, because they felt that what they wanted to do required more land than they could justify spending their monthly fee on.

Unfortunately, as SL has evolved, it has become harder and harder follow the classic model of "find something that you enjoy; make things that are to do with it; sell them; use the money to fund doing it" - because you are likely to wind up having to compete with someone who is already established and/or sees the creating as their #1 activity (rather than just doing it as a sideline to actually doing the thing they're creating tools for).

I don't know why, but desire to create seems to have dropped dramatically too. New folks on HI used to be inspired to learn that they could build; now they're more likely to be "yea, but it's too hard for me".

Probably as SL goes more mainstream, more peopel who don't have any background or experience in any of the creative aspects, like me, are going to show up. Some will be curious enough to try the ingame tools, some won't.

I'm just here for the giggles, and expect to pay out something for my fun. I try to keep the costs down to what it would be if I played WoW or EQ2.

When I arrived there was still First Land. I made about £15 profit on my first parcel, and £100 on my second. Now I rent a lovely beach-front parcel, shared with my RL partner, which comes to approximately £10 a month each. I'm happy enough if my sales cover the rent on my shops, I'm not here to work myself to a frazzle. If I cared about profit, I wouldn't shove so much money into tip jars every evening.

Maybe in time I will make a small trickle of cash out of SL, but not if it means draining all the fun out of being there!

I'm with Brenda on this too. I have no talent for anything here (well, actually I probably do but don't have the inclination or time). I'm thrilled to throw my hard earned RL money into the economy of SL, and now that I actually made one good friend here, it's becoming even more enjoyable to spend time in it. Now I understand what the kick of it really is, and I'm sure the longer I spend here, the more money I'll donate and the more entertainment value I'll receive. Good enough for me.

I am a bit amazed at the people coming specifically to make money. First thing is, they don't know anything about the economy or the culture, including valuation. Second thing is, they expect it to happen quickly. Just because SL has a low barrier to entry doesn't mean that the barrier isn't significant in its own way.

People hear about the land trade but they don't realize that the profit margins are so thin that it's all made up on volume. They expect to make crazy amounts of returns on their investment. Truth is, if you want to break even and excel financially in SL, you need to be prepared to be in it for the long haul... like a real business, and not just a game.

If I was in SL for the money I would have thrown my hands in the air long ago. It's WAY too random to depend on SL for a RL income. Some weekends I'll pull in L$10k/day, other weekends, I'll barely clear L$1k/day. I've learned to live and let live, and do whatever I feel like doing. It's more FUN that way! And "fun" is why I came here in the first place.

I think it's that because the best builders are all now very, very, very good and experienced at it, that I think newcomers are more intimidated to start -- it can appear to be a very tall mountain to climb, for many, and many can't be bothered with that. I think that Brenda is right as well that as SL becomes more mainstream, it attracts people who want to interact with it as entertainment, rather than getting involved in things that can (to someone who is not "into" them already) seem more like work than fun.

I have seen enough designers and builders to know that trying to build anything myself and selling it is a waste of time. I just couldn't put the time in (or have the ability) to compete.

But now we have got to the point where there are other ways in SL to earn money, by supporting the creators. If you're a creator and are spending a lot of time dealing with the nitty-gritty of running a business then you're not spending time doing the thing you love to do - create. So, for someone with no building skills, there are opportunities to make money. OK, not the big cash payout things, but at least enough to cover SL costs.