Getting started making L$ how?

Hi there,

I signed up for SL last night. I dont have a house or shop are they any ways a new player can begin to make L$? I don't want to sell my virtual body for cybersex or anything. Are there ways to sell items without owning land? I am a talented 2D artist with excellent photoshop skills but im still unsure as to where to start. Do people offer jobs for L$ in game (i.e. make a texture for my new sofa and i'll give you blah blah L$). Any help or advice on getting started would be very much appreciated.

Rosalita Valentine.

Hi Rosalita!

You do not have to have land to sell items. You can create clothing and rent a shop to sell your items. If you want to build, you can build in a sandbox, take snapshots of your items, and sell them in your rented shop.

As for getting started in designing, it sounds like you have a good handle on photoshop, you just need to download the templates to get started. I do not have the links on me at the moment , someone will post them I predict shortly for you.

Warmest regards,
Mad

The easiest way is just to buy L$ on Lindex. (There's a link on the "My Account" page)



Sure, there are tons of malls and shopping centers where you can rent a space and sell items without upgrading to Premium membership.



I recommend first getting to know SL before you start thinking about how to sell your skills. Explore, see what kind of stuff people sell and (more importantly) people buy, get a feel for this world - then make a business plan Yes, people offer jobs for L$ but they're typically looking for dancers and event hosts. You could always try advertising in the classifieds forum here and see if someone is looking for a texture artist; it won't hurt to have a portofolio handy. Expect competition, set yourself a realistic goal and don't forget to have fun

Rosalita (love the name, btw -- Springsteen fan?),

Welcome to Second Life!

There are a number of things you can do to earn money besides escorting, dancing, playing games such as SL-ingo or Tringo, or being a camping chair zombie. It's pretty much limited only by your imagination.

Yes, you can sell items without owning land -- you can rent land, or space in a mall, often for very small amounts.

There are a number of businesses that hire talented people to do various types of creative things, which could involve your PS skills. You could also hang out a graphic design shingle, and do freelance work (and be my competition -- LOL!).

Again, welcome to SL. I think you'll find that it's an amazing place.

P2

Gone are the days when anyone can hide in the back alleys waiting for someone to walk pass so you can drop a few bricks on their head and take their money. *sigh*

I can meet with you on SL can help ya (If you want).. you can make money by.. (like you said) making custom textures cheap or not too cheap so you make 'Some' money.. Or become a taxi driver and drive people around... there is money chairs and money tree etc. which making money abit easier.. me I stick with making Avas ,custom Hovertext ,making games and partical effects , there is many ways to make money, you Just need to find out which way(s) is good for you , Just take time to learn..

The stickies in the Design and Textures forum contain information and links which will take you a long ways with your skill set.
/109/1.html

Frequent the Employment Ops & Help Wanted and the Products Wanted sections of the Classified Forum for direction, inspiration and contacts.
/107/1.html

Invest in yourself and buy lindens to get started.
Good luck.

Hello and welcome to SL!

The best ways is to figure out what other people create. Do a find search for textures and visit every shop and see what the current market is. Are there things that you can make that are not currently available?

Another idea is designing clothes and/or skins. You can get the SL templates here. Or another resident made ones that should be easier to use here. With clothing you can, in addition to going around to shops, watch the classified on the forums to see what new items people are making. The are located in New Products -> Clothing. Which once you set out something, you should post there also to get the word out.

Take your time, find a niche, and make them the best that you can.

Renting out shops is easy, the difficult part is knowing where. Aviod places that have camping chairs and casinos. From my experience, a lot of people are there for the free money which lags out the area so people can't shop. There also used to be free places to set up for new designers, I'm pretty sure there are still some around.

Search in find for places that have vendor spots open. They also post in the land sales and rentals/property sales and rentals. Go there and ask yourself would you shop there? Does it take ages to load? Can you move? Once you start selling your items on a regular basis pay attention to see if your spot is costing more then what you sell.

While the mall option is always there, the best is always to have a bit of land to have a main shop. You can either rent them or buy them. My main shop has always done better because its hard to remember what mall you bought something at, but easy to find out who made it and looking at their profile always has link to their main shop in "picks."

Last piece of advice in this rather long post... be patient. It's not going to happen over night. The top designers have been at this for years. Most of your customers are going to be from word of mouth, and this takes a long time to generate.

im the sister of bazaarpleasure tiger and she been trying to meet a good guy she met a guy but he took money from her and her house and land but any ways how do someone meet a good guy on this game is there a dating service on the game. also when are we gong to get better jobs on the game like real life like making 5$ a hour some thing like that. and when can we get places to go on a real dates. well ty for ya time

......

......

http://slc.otago.ac.nz/studyskills/ch4sect9.asp - until I can write a full guide on the use of puncuation.....

What?

I know.

im the sister of bazaarpleasure tiger and she been trying to meet a good guy she met a guy but he took money from her and her house and land but any ways how do someone meet a good guy on this game is there a dating service on the game. also when are we gong to get better jobs on the game like real life like making 5$ a hour some thing like that. and when can we get places to go on a real dates. well ty for ya time

TAKE A BREATH ALREADY!!

Welcome!

I wouldn't agonize too much about making L$ early on. Second Life is a very interesting and complicated market and there's a lot to learn about consumer expectation! Buy some L$ through Lindex and check out the different product offerings in-world. See if anything excites you. You're going to learn a lot through this process -- the products that disappoint you most will be the ones that teach you the most, also.

While you're doing this, experiment with SL's various tools, including the ability to make clothing and textures. You mentioned you're a good hand with 2D art, and that will serve you very well.

I'd recommend you go into business not when you feel like you want to make money, but when you feel like you've got an idea that makes you passionate and excited. Find the path that satisfies you in SL and you'll be on your way to making cash. There are plenty of people who make junk and hope to profit from it. But you'll find yourself much more satisfied if you're working on products that compel you to pour out your heart and soul in their construction. And you'll be amazed how much differentiation you can achieve simply by loving your work.

Best of luck in your endeavors here. Don't ever be swayed by whiny naysayers who insist you can't make it. Learn from those who came before you, see them as friends rather than competition. Stick to it, work hard and you will be rewarded by an incredible, growing and vibrant market.

Invent a cure for lag.

Someone already did that. Buy more RAM, better video card and faster processor.

I'm interested in hiring you. Contact me IW via a Instant Message if interested. And good luck in SL!!

Some offers ought to come with biohazard warning labels and flashing lights.

A wise person would be well served if they studied carefully the history and present 'business' practices of anyone offering to hire them.

Just wow

Hi there.

So...you'd like to meet good guys and make L$5 an hour? Well step into my office. Please have a seat on the casting couch, and I'll be right with you. Sisters you say?

Rosalita, my best advice is my own experience. Play the game for a while before delving into a synthetic business.

I wandered around for a year learning about 3D graphics, online communities and this thing called Second Life. At that point I was comfortable with an idea of what the market needed and would support and that my skills were adept enough to fill the hole.

Having a fully developed reputation helped as well. People had seen my work in contests and freely copyable items so they tended to recognize the name and seek out the merchandise. We don't have very useful advertising formats inworld. The best method seems to be sheer exposure through word-of-mouth and having objects you've created scattered across the grid.

My point is take your time; travel the world; talk to everybody you meet; find a niche that you can fill; then start thinking about planning the eventual opening of a successful business venture. Fate Gardens has not only paid for my account and it's tier since it officially opened, but recovered the cost of maintaining an account and owning land during my year of discovery. We have plenty of time; Philip has plenty of money; the world's not going anywhere.

Hard as it is to believe, I'm thinking she meant US$5.

Most.

Overpriced.

Commodity.

In History.

I totally agree as this is pretty well the path I followed. I spent my first month just wandering around and adjusting my avatar, took me about that long just to get my head around the 'game'. After a while I started to explore more of the creative side of SL, basically in modifying my prefab Skylife modular house which helped me get my head around building. It also helped that I had a good friend who had been ingame for over a year who taught me a lot aobut SL and was a wealth of knowledge. After a while I started playing with clothing since I have a decent knowlege of PS, but after not much sucess there, I tried other stuff, learned a bit of LSL and started making some attachments for myself. That has now turned into a fairly sucesssful business that I started at the beginning of this year, pretty well 8 months after I joined.

Don't rush into it, I can't see anyone being to sucessful without getting a decent unserstanding of the game, the market and the culture. Think of it this way, would you move to a new country, and start a business on your second day without understanding the culture and economy? I think not.

Enjoy yourself for a bit, learn a bit, go play in the sandbox and see what you are good at. Take those skills and see if you can fill a void in a market, or just go in a blow that market away.

Oh ya, there is always just buying your L$

PS: If anyone offers you a job, it would be wise to do a bit of research as to thier history and thier business ethics (or lack thereof...)


Dnel
Xessories

EDIT: LOL just reread Khamon's post and mine and relized how similar they ended up being. Well I guess great minds think alike! (or fools will seldom differ...)

Welcome to Second Life



I would recommend the following:

1) Go visit the Ivory Tower of Primitives (use the Find button to find it).

This will give you insight on how to make prims the size and shape you want. Perhaps all you need is a single flat rectangle for a 'canvas'.

Forty minutes at the Ivory Tower, even if you are just playing around, will give you deep insight into how things work in a fun way.



2) Make a 256x256 pixel .tga file of something in photoshop, and upload the texture to Second Life using a choice on the Second Life 'File' menu. Each upload will cost $L10.

(don't upload files bigger than 512x512 unless you absolutely have to, they cause excessive lag for everyone!)



3) Locate a 'sandbox'. There are many, just ask around. There, you can rez a prim and texture it with your .tga file. Yes, you can 'select texture' and apply different textures to different faces of a prim, such as the cubic prim.



4) Look for people offering free shop space; this is fairly common. Often sim owners or mall owners are willing to take a chance on new folks.

You may find opportunities in the Classifieds section of this forum; also, you can post 'artist for hire' and perhaps post a fraction of an example that typifies your work.



The recipe for success in Second Life is simply not giving up. And not spending a lot of money trying to make money - don't let all your efforts evaporate into rent payments toward ten mall owners

Good luck!