Is there anybody in SL now?

a platform !! best answer

dancers must buy their outfits, and some are very expensive.
jewelry cost also many money.

for so, it's difficult to spare money.
except when you are lucky .

(1) Sign up for throwaway account with fake details
(2) Log in, scam people
(3) Cash out
(4) repeat!

It's how all the new kids are doing it!

You can make money in SL the same way you can in RL. Set up a business and work hard to produce something and promote it.

*me smells alt playing games*

Ok, In SL you pretty much have to make your own way. You will find that most people will help you learn, but nobody will run your business for you without a cut for themselves.

Most Important Rule before you spend any money on L$: Anyone who promises to make you rich is either a liar or a fool. There is only one person who can make you rich, and that person is you.

I know that you are relatively new, so Im going to tell you where to go first. You need to learn basic design concepts in SL if you hope to ever make it here.

For Building: Do a search in find for "Ivory Tower Library of Primitives".

For Scripting (programming): go to http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage and follow the turorials in order. Scripting is easy for some people, and very challenging for others.

For Texturing: If you dont already have an image editor, you will need one if you plan on doing custom texturing. I recommend The GIMP, which is free. Do a search in Google for "GIMP for Windows" (if you are running Windows, otherwise get the version for your operating system). There is also a very nice texturing tutorial in SL, but I dont know the name of it, or where it is located... maybe someone else can tell you this one. If you have Photoshop, I recommend www.planetphotoshop.com for tutorials, although there are several other good sites as well.

As far as putting it all together, or trying out what you learned, you need to visit a sandbox area in SL. Sandbox Island is probably the most popular, but is usually a hotbed for griefers (people who cause you grief for fun). Sandbox Cordova is also one of my favorites.

Remember that anything you make you can take a copy of and put in your inventory for later use (all this information is covered at The Ivory Tower).

And one more thing, In SL, you dont have to be good at all of the major areas of creation. In fact, I am a terrible scripter. But I like to build, and Im pretty darn good at textures, so thats where I tend to stay at, and I have friends help me with my scripts when I cant get them right.

I hope some or all of that information will be useful to you. Remember again, in SL you are the only one who can make or break yourself. Your success here is ultimately up to you. I wish you luck in whatever it is you choose to do here, and enjoy your time in Second Life. =)

Son,

I realise that you have some kind of assignment on SL that you really don't want to write but you can't have us write it for you by asking us to write all the chapters in your report one by one.

Log on, try things out for yourself and ask questions in world.

Wendel

There are a lot of cynics in SL it seems.

Yes, you can make RL money in SL. Here is what I would suggest. Play SL for a while, explore, meet people, buy things that look interesting. Try building and scripting, make textures and animations, design clothes and hair. In short try everything and find the thing that is fun for you to make. Keep at it until you make something that you are really proud of, and open a little shop.

Now to be really successful, you would need a little luck, a little talent, a lot of work and some good ideas, but I've witnessed many businesses explode over the last year since I joined. It's certainly possible.

The key is... the most important thing in my book... is find something that is fun. If its not fun, you'll be better off just finding a RL job for extra money.

If your wondering how to farm currency... better off heading back to WoW.

If my conversations with Son Bayliss are accurate, she is under some pressure to make money immediately. Is that correct, Son?

There's always land swooping as well.

While it is very possible to make real money here, making money immediately is nearly impossible. Far too many people come to SL with wild notions of making an instant fortune. I guess we can blame the media, or LL for promoting that aspect of SL so heavily. Anybody coming to SL to make money that would be easier made though a RL job will be sorely disappointed.

I think really what the cynics believe is similar to a lot of what you're saying. Don't target making money as your goal, instead do/make things that you enjoy do/making, and if you happen to make money as a result that's great, otherwise, you were having fun anyway.

I suspect that it is true that most of the "big" slots are already taken, but that doesn't stop anyone else earning money - it just means that if you want to go the whole hog, and make SL your RL job, it's a far better bet to do it by proving your skills and then bringing in outside money, rather than building an SL business so popular that you earn your RL wages in SL money.

These days, SL is for anyone. There are no restrictions any more. Little kids can sign up for the mature grid. Your 6-year old daughter can be a pole dancer, too. Or your 10-year old can use his cleverness to sell boxes of free skins for thousands of Lindens to newbies (usually causing those newbies to lose heart and quit SL) in someone else's store while wearing fake ID over their heads. They'll be banned of course, but not to worry -- a new account is only two minutes away with no limits on how often you recreate yourself. Meanwhile the store owners fill their ban lists with names that are only in-world for 5 days and wait for LL to actually DO something about the problem. <cobwebs>

Just be sure you've offloaded your ill-gotten $L to another character before they catch up to you.

Tune in again tomorrow: how to steal textures from real professional Photoshop artists who invested months in perfecting their product. In just a few minutes you, too, can be a wealthy low-life stealing scumbag with NO training, NO practice, and NO legal worries.

Welcome to Second Life. It used to be your world.

I tend to look at the numbers.. I have read about perhaps 5 people that are really making what I would call a living .. there are probably a few more.. maybe even 20.. but there are a quarter million residents. so 20/250k mmm.. the odds dont stack up for many people to get rich. I think perhaps if you can not have a real life for maybe a year... get really good at your product and advertise like a mad person... then perhaps there will be a chance. Even then, you will have spent a year and need the second to make up for 2 years. Land sales seem to be ok.. though I have very little experience with them. In my mind.. new land is popping up regularly and the mainland has so many lots for sale already. Theres no driving market because land can be created by LL on a regular basis, so the demand would seem to low to me. Not to mention the amount of money needed to be spent in teirs and land. Perhaps you will catch up.. I dont know since my knowledge is limited. To me, you might as well buy a scratch off ticket at the gas station lol.

... and then LL nerf the very feature or function that makes your product viable and you're back to the drawing board.

If, however, you are running from money tree to money tree, dancing at clubs, and then converting Linden Dollars to American Dollars to Chinese currency, and are part of a stable of individuals employed to do this, you can probably wind up making a decent amount of money for your employer.

Son seems pretty sure to be a "Money Farmer" of the sort Hamlet Au blogged about a year or so ago.

Honestly, a mimimum-wage job in the real world pays more per hour of time invested than any legitimate business venture in SL, with the possible exception of sinking a huge amount of cash into 'land speculation'. Like in the real world, it takes money to make money. Or it takes a lot of hard work and no small measure of luck and talent.

I have several SL businesses that I have worked hard to develop over the past 9 months. I enjoy the building and texture making work that I do in SL. It's not all about the money for me. It's a real kick to design whole sims, or to make someone's SL home more beautiful, and to see people enjoy my creations.

I consider my SL Businesses to be 'successful', in that they cover all my expenses for enjoying Second Life, and I can, on occasion, take out enough real money from the system to perhaps take my family out to a nice dinner in a restaurant, or to buy a few small nice things in real life. What I earn for building sims and doing other large building tasks definitely exceeds what any 'escort' can earn, and leaves me my dignity intact. But it also takes talent and effort to do what I do. It took perhaps 6 minths of hard effort to get to where I am now. And there are quite a few more successful businesspeople in SL who have worked longer and harder to get where they are.

If you're just trying to find a place to make money, go somewhere else. Your time will be more profitably spent.

I agree. If you look at all the posts from the original poster it starts to get creepy. I wouldn't respond without asking how much he/she is getting for this assignment and will she/he be sharing it with any responders.

Perverts of all ages... over 18... are welcome!!!

All the male avs in SL are 9-14 year old boys. All the females are 40-year old men. It's true, I checked everyone in person. So they might as well target these audiences.

MM

I have always said... beyond a shadow of doubt, the best way to make money in SL is to... um... create a new and improved... boy thingy... to keep it PG... and sell it.

That is NOT true!!!!

I'm not 40...

Ok, this just has to be said in reply...

"If you build it, they will cum!"

*Runs away*