Help me Get Started

Hola peoples. Ok, here's the thing. I consider myself to be pretty good at the scripting. (Well, a little more than "pretty good." And ideally what I would like to do is get into the business of making custom scripts for people. The only problem is, I only have a vague idea of where to begin. So it would be great if yous guys could give me some tips to point me in the right direction. Thanks

I do have some specific questions, too.

I already have sort of an in-world "office" set up. Is that a good idea? Is that something that's usually done?

How can I determine at least a ballpark figure of how much I should charge? I mean, how do I know if a particular job is worth 5000 Lindens or 5?

I've been looking into the idea of making my custom scripts full-permission. Is that a good idea? Does the idea of getting something full perm tend to "sweeten the deal?"

Those are all the questions I can think of right now, but don't worry, I'm sure I'll think of more.

Help you get started? Ok...

Ready..... steady.......... GO!!!!!!!



I can only give my personal answer to the last question...

If I paid for a script to be written, it belongs to me and not to the writer, and I wouldn't settle for anything less than full perms.

Thanks. (Although I always heard it as ready, get set, go. Oh well, the effect is the same.)

Actually, I think I'll give the same advice I gave to the resident wanting to do a photo studio. Look around at what other scripters do, particularly the stuff you are best at. This will give you an idea of your "competition" and also a general idea about what to charge. Second, if you have your office set up, enhance it by examples of your work, the more complicated stuff, the better. Your customers need something to judge your qualities by. Third, base the rates mainly on how much time it costs you.

That said, good luck.

Oh yeah, and advertising in the right places couldn't hurt.

- An Inworld office is neat because then you can leave out information and samples of your work.

- You should work by an hourly rate adjusting for reality of what the market can bear.

- I would never take a custom script that was not full perm. I did it once, will not again. If a person is paying you money for a custom script idea, then you should deliver the script with full permissions. No Modify scripts that you supposedly own the full rights to are not cool as a person cannot take the scripting work they paid for and change it around to match future changes to their business model.

Thing is, I want to allow people to use the scripts I made as part of something they made, but not just take my script and resell it. (Hope that makes sense.) I don't know how enforceable that would be, but oh well, I guess I'll just have to trust people.

If somebody pays for a script to be written for them, no trust is involved. They can do whatever they want with it.

Ok, I can get on board with that. So if making the scripts full-perm is not a selling point, but rather the standard that people expect, what else can I do that is a selling point? Advertise speed? Convenience? ...Half price Tuesdays?

You don't need to sell scripts full perms, if you're doing custom scripts you can negotiate the perms as part of the deal.

Copy/Transfer will suffice in a lot of cases.

Well, if there are some people who need full-perms and some who don't, I'll just offer full-perms as the standard deal.

A lot of scripters with either charge far more for full perms and try to negotiate lesser perms for less if possible, or refuse to do full perm scripts at all. Almost no one will agree to exclusivity as part of the deal either unless they are getting paid even more money.

If a person is only willing to pay for full perms then generally they will find they are paying way more than is necessary to get the functionality they want and they will find it difficult to get a good scripter to carry out the work.

If a scripter does work for a client then it is not correct to say the client owns the work. The client in most cases has a license to use and possibly distribute copies of the work just like with other software. The scripter still retains the intellectual property associated with the work.

It is possible to get inexperienced scripters to agree to anything if you show them some money but if you want quality and support then you will find what I say to be true in all but a few cases.

Hmm, well maybe this is the inexperienced scripter in me talking, but at this point I'm really more interested in being shown money than I am in my intellectual property rights. (At least for now.)

Most people new to a creative field do feel like this. Take book authors for instance, most sign away their rights at first but as they progress they begin to regret it and start to change in their outlook.
Nothing wrong with it if you decide not to retain rights though, I am just saying what you are likely to encounter out there and informing people who might be reading who may want scripting work done.

I have done this for a while now. Here are my tips:

- Be professional. There are lots of hackers who will script for next to nothing. To add value to yourself, service is all.

- Do proper software engineering. For any non trivial script, sort out a requirements specification and a design document with the customer. Every one I have done this with has valued and appreciated it and it makes sure they get the script they want.

- You can charge for perms. You can also charge for exclusivity.

- Bugfixes should be free, but agree in advance how much feature enhancements will be.

- If you give the customer mod perms they will break your script sooner or later. Be ready to deal with that.

- Try to get into partnerships, they are much more lucrative (and fun) than one-shot customs.

- Be prepared to fight for the value of your work, many builders dramatically undervalue scripting, and they are your most likely customers.

Ok, thank you all for the great tips

80,000+ concurrent users(including bots) may seem like a lot but your reputation is everything and word spreads fast, negative words much faster then good words. If you are not up to the job (for example; lsl to php/mysql etc) yet then do not take it. For 99.99999% residents, SL is not thier major source of income. Remember that most of the time you can make much more taking a part time job at minimum wage so enjoy SL as you learn and splurge every now and then and buy $20 worth of $L.

Ok, time for more questions. (Yay!)

It was mentioned that I should charge an hourly rate. About how much would you suggest that would be? Are we talking tens of dollars? Hundreds? ...Millions?

And suppose I don't want to do it by the hour, but rather say "Ok, that'll cost you X Lindens, I'll call you when I'm done." I'm sure it'll vary widely, but what would you recommend the value of X be? I'd hate to be like "Ok, that'll be L$1000" when they were expecting it to be 50ish.

It was also mentioned that I should display things I've scripted in my in-world office. That's a great suggestion, but I need some ideas. So far I have a clock and...yeah, so far I have a clock.

Hiya Ovaltine,
Those are answers no one can provide you. What matters is what YOU want from it. If I order a script with you that takes you 10 hours to write, what would you want to have in return for it?

Let's assume you ask 10.000 linden for it. Which equals not even US$ 40.-. So you made not even US$ 4.- per hour. For a custom job. Tossing newspapers into front-yards probably earns you the same

This is why I hardly do custom work, if I am not able to sell it in my shop as well. Stuff I make for there, eventually always makes up for the time spent. And even while I do create for the fun of it, I know it can generate lindens so I aim for results.

Reminds me of the time I was the official starter for races at the Teddy Bears Picnic.

Pep (Ready . . . Teddy . . . Go!)

Advice from an idiot consumer on how to get your business going:

1. Research an idea for a small but useful script, either from blue sky inspiration, from requests in the forums or from people you know who would like something. You seem to be at a loss in this area at the moment so you are going to have to do some work!

2. Write it so it not just works but is massively impressive.

3. Make it available for free, promote it in the relevant forums, put it as a freebie in as many places as you can and give it away to everyone who might be interested.

4. Let people know where to find you.

5. Wait for the world to beat a path to your door because they not only know about you but have been impressed by your expertise.

6. Profit!

This does depend upon your ability to accomplish point 2.

There is an optional point 3a - make a big fuss in the threads about people ripping off your charitable contribution to the community so that everyone knows you are ethical which will garner you credibility and compassion as well as getting lots of free publicity.

Pep (Marketing is more important than scripting expertise - maybe you should get a partner to help you with that, and not a sleeping partner either)

You know, there are other options than custom scripts. You could go into the business of selling more generic scripts, or scripted objects, or script sets to be used in builders projects.

I've bought many MANY scripts and script sets that have only copy/mod perms, but come with a notecard for configuration. Believe it or not, people WILL pay for a better door, or vehicle script, security system, animation system, flight script. . .

There have been times when I paid good money for something that I KNEW was largely in the public domain, but had some sort of enhancement that I couldn't duplicate.

If you want RL restrictions on a script, under work-for-hire rules, expect to pay RL prices... US$60/hour and up.

I agree. But full perms are important on those simple scripts too. Even if a door just opens a little bit differently this would be a boon to someone building houses, setting them apart from the masses.

Advice from someone who has given up being a potential customer to scipters- for God's sake RESPOND to people making custom script inquiries. Is this so hard for scripters?

Geez, I wish I would have gotten to you before folks here allowed you to realize how much you're worth! lol.... GOOD scripters are VERY difficult to come by in SL. Let me rephrase that--there are dozens of them, but they are all booked solid. If you are indeed 'good' you won't have any trouble having more work than you can handle. A word of warning, however...if you bite off more than you can chew and deliver a substandard script, word will spread faster than you would ever imagine. I have some scripting work we need done but haven't yet been able to find a scripter with the time. I will contact you inworld.


BTW, it drives me NUTS when someone says "pay me what you think it's worth", or "what kind of price were you thinking?". To me, if it's YOUR speciality, I want YOU to tell me how much you want!!

Please do not take this the wrong way. You asked for advice and unfortunately some of it may not be pleasant, just realistic.

I just scanned your Xstreet offerings and nothing there is on par with this statement:

"I consider myself to be pretty good at the scripting. (Well, a little more than "pretty good.""

This one; "Avatars? Yes. Objects? No." Is a really contentious offering. Using a scanner to check for vehicles and then turning a 100% alpha wall solid is not exactly a very friendly thing to do for anyone that happens to be on a vehicle when they hit it.

Another offering: "Tardis Teleporter Box Set". Notes:

"Note 1 - The boxes must be rezzed in that order. First the red, then the blue."

"Note 4 - The boxes work as long as their difference in height is less than 300 meters."

It would have been what I call just basic scripting to have been able to overcome either of these limitations. Either posJump or warpPos would have made this work sim wide instead of just using the barebones sit-offset hack. And simple communications would have made it so that either the red or blue boxes could have been rezzed first, or even better have just blue boxes.

If you want your name to be recognized as a respectable scripter then offer substandard or basic creations under an alts name. And the same applies for something like that wall for which there could be negative comments if anyone would have been interested in it. And believe me there would have been if someone would have hit that wall while just meandering through a sim exploring.

Again, I am not trying to be hurtful and I do wish you the best of luck. If you look down in the Scripting Forum you will see that I am all for people learning and improving themselves.