You and Jobs in SL

I am having to get a job in SL to support my shopping habit.. sheesh just like real life.. /roll eyes

So what jobs are there and what do you think of them? And how much money can one make?

Let's see, these days I escort, I teach, I do marketing, I have several items for sale (a book on SL sex, sculptures), and I decorate and landscape. All of the jobs are fun and I typically bring in 5k - 10k a week. Not a lot, but I haven't had to put any money into SL since the first week I joined.

Honestly, I choose not to work in Second Life, because I work in my first life. My husband and I use SL as a source of entertainment and we feel that spending $30 here and there to buy Linden dollars is worth it, so that we can just have fun.

We're both on "free" accounts, atm, so we look at the occasional expenditure on Lindens is an entertainment expense.

Just my 2 cents. Other people seem to enjoy the challenge of trying make a living in SL and meeting all their financial needs in SL by working a SL job.

Yeah unfortunately, buying lindens is slightly cutting into my money for shopping in rl.. lol

So I have to find a linden job, and well, this place is about social interaction so maybe if i think of it as an adventure it'll be good.. ?

Pretty much the only decent one that pays if you have a "as of yet limited" sl skillset is Escort/Dancer

/me grins evilly at Volatile

/shuffles feet

well I did go and interview one for a dancer
/blush

hehe

I make clothes, I make textures, and I do custom building work, for anything from a cottage to a complete sim with 20+ prefab homes and full landscaping and terraforming.

Income varies a lot. I prefer not to give actual L$ amounts, but I'll give you some relative ideas here. I am a basic member, not premium, so my expenses don't include premium membership fees or tier payments.

Making clothes is fun, but time consuming. Most items seem to have a definite 'shelf life' - people buy them for a while when they are new, and then sales taper off to a trickle. If you like making a wide range of designs mostly for your own pleasure, it's great to also make a little extra from selling them. Custom designed clothes usually don't make enough profit to be worth the expense and time of making them, though there are exceptions. Making and selling clothes was my first SL job, and was eventually enough to cover maybe 1/3 of my expenses for playing in SL.

My textures are a good steady source of income. As with clothes, custom textures that are only of value to a single buyer are usually not cost-effective to work on. I usually only do them as a courtesy. I happen to be good with Photoshop and with 3D rendering apps, which allows me to make themed bundles of textures that people like to use in their building projects. Making textures is what I tend to do when I have no other work pending. Once I create a texture bundle and make it available for sale, it seems to add a slow but steady rate of purchases to my income. Usually these sales are enough to easily cover my monthly expenses in SL, including the cost of renting thousands of M2 of land on private islands. It's been many months since I had to purchase any Linden $.

My building work is both time consuming and rewarding. It is very fun for me to build homes and do landscaping. Being able to design a whole sim is a real blast. And the pay for such work, when I have a contract for a big job, can bring in 10x to 100x as much in the same amount of time and effort on my other business ventures. However, it is not a steady income. I never know, month to month, if a big job will come in or not. My building work produces a large enough income that I can actually take a little real cash out of the game each month. Still, not huge amounts of Enough to treat my family to a nice restaurant dinner a few more times per month.

All that being said... if I spend the same amount of hours working a normal, minumum-wage job in RL, I would earn more real money than all my SL businesses combined. Of course, it wouldn't be as much fun...

Personally, I refuse to work as an escort or as a stripper. I know many who do, and some make good money at it. I hold nothing against them for doing so. But that is not something I wish to do for pay, just because someone waves a fistfull of Lindens at me. I have a family in RL, and I don't want my 'work' in SL to be something I would not want them to be aware of. Besides, I can make far more per hour of time spent by making textures, and that generates an ongoing income.

I have quite a few textures I have brought into the game that I have not seen anywhere else.. And I have been building houses.. But I plan to give those away to first time users.. hmm maybe I should just sell textures..

Gawd I can't make up my mind.. ok someone quick, tell me what to do so I don't have to sit here and anaylize it to death before making a decision.

Volatile:

If you are going to provide a service, as opposed to selling a product, do yourself a favor and consider two things:

1. How much real life money is this service paying me per hour and is that really worth my time. For example, if an event hostess job pays L$300 per hour, you are making less than a dollar per hour in US$. Is that a reasonable way for you to spend an hour of your time? When I see people work for hours and hours, for what amounts to a couple of real dollars, it blows my mind ...

... unless ...

2. Would performing this service provide me with enough enjoyment to make up for the low pay? If greeting people at the door of a club, running contests, etc. is a ton of fun to you, then it may not matter that you are being paid one-fifth of miniumum wage. Above all else you should enjoy yourself. Money is icing

As for the escort service idea, I would talk to a few escorts first. I think you will find that most of them do it primary because they enjoy it. If it's not your cup of tea, there won't be enough money in it to overcome that.

I would also consider that using the Lindex is not a bad thing. It basically means that you feel your time is worth more. You can buy a ton of fun here for what amounts to a couple cups of coffee in real money. Although I have a business and make some money, I will use the Lindex without batting an eyelash when I want more than I have.

People seem to have this philosophical hurdle they need to clear before they would consider using the Lindex ... its like "I am not going to put real life money into a game." Yet they will spend tons of real life time working for a small amount of virtual dollars.

Remember time is money. How much is your time worth? I am really expensive, in real life and second life, and I am proud of it (And no, I am not an escort, at any price).

Best of luck to you Volatile!

Volatile, IM me, ok? I have a notecard I prepared "How to Make Money in Second Life" that is gleaned from stuff here on the boards as well as my own experience. I'd be happy to send it to you.

Persephone is right on target, IMO.

Kk, I will im you this evening.

Please do be aware that it's usually NOT legal to take raw textures off the Internet and resell them in SL. Yes, a lot of people do just that. But if you check the source, most of those textures that you can get on the net are free for personal use only, and explicitly NOT allowed for as-is resale.

The textures that I sell are all original creations - stuff I actually create in Photoshop. While I may photosource bits and pieces to create my textures, such as an image of a piece of bamboo, the resulting image is in each case a unique work of art, quite different from any of the source materials.

Most of my textures are actually pictures of actual items vs a generated one.
So if i change the generated ones, than I can resell them with good conscious?

I may be mistaken but if you chance the source up to 75% your golden legally.

I know there is a percentage cutoff SOMEWHERE.

A couple of you brought up an important point. Pay in SL is crap when compared to RL. One can make L$3,000/hr or more at McDonald's. If you want to make money as an escort, phone sex pays a lot better.

So you need to be getting other value out of it. Enjoyment is one reason to do it. It's just fun to do. Self satisfaction is another reason. Exploration is another. Setting up and running a business in SL is a hell of a lot cheaper than RL, yet you can still learn a lot and feel a level of accomplishment in SL.

When it comes to creating original textures for SL, don't forget the option of taking out the ol' digital camera, snapping some photos of RL "textures" (housing surfaces such as stone or tile, cool sidewalks, rock walls, interesting brick structures, nice wooden or tile floors in public spaces, plants and trees, etc.) and then using Photoshop or another graphic arts program to make them tileable if necessary. It's something I've done to good effect in SL, and it makes for a texture to which you legally own the rights since it came from your original photograph. Plus, it's good incentive to get out in the fresh air of RL once in a while.

I've always made enough money to support my SL habit by selling SL clothing, but my tastes (for both land and bling/accoutrements) aren't that voracious.

I do have to say all of you had valid points here. And all of you are correct. Now I have to decide which is more correct for me.. lol

And honestly I would like to thank all of you for asking my numerous questions.. lol

Hiya,

I made (i.e. built and scripted) a few things while playing about in my first weeks here. They started off as little balls doing the most simple of lsl commands but they grew and grew and grew into the powerful magical artifacts they are today.

A very kind man by the name of Redemption Summers motivated me to set up a shop to sell these little things and let me use his land for it. Other great friends like Boots Mission and Shawn Mission helped me with motivation, positive feedback, some of the basics I never picked up by jumping so quickly into the deep end, my first vendor, a notecard giver and some space in the shop. Shawn's a bit of talker and must have convinced half of Provincetown West visitors to buy 'em. One day I was on their land paying them a visit and their friend Tarsh who's a DJ on Rush Hour Radio had even set-up an advert for my shop and my creations on his show!

While I'm offline, my items are selling. It's great because I don't have to be there to earn the money now. I've been able to go out to expensive restaurants paid for entirely by SL. Unfortunately, now Second Life has gone from fun and feels like a business, and one that's grown so quickly. I come online and I feel I have to answer queries, update code, run around vendors, update notecards, send out group invites, provide feedback and have no time for fun anymore. SL has become a chore and since it's not much fun anymore I'm not on often anymore.

Don't spoil the experience with in game work.

Blair Carson
Carson's Conjurations Enchantrix

Yeah I've decided I am just going to enjoy my experience.

There's one small job that you can combine with your experience, perhaps even broaden it. I am paying L$50 a parcel as part of a region survey initiative for my website. This way you go out exploring, find a cool place, capture a quick snashot and upload that and little bit of copying and pasting from the "About Land..." dialog and you've earned a little extra L$ while exploring!

You can still find the ad in the classified forums, or searching classified in-world, or just check out the home page of the website: http://slhandbook.com

ahh i can do that.. i know this store that has clothes that are like art instead of clothe

When I was a sl escort I earned 6k for 6 hours but it sucked for me.. now I have started in land ownership and rentals.. also have opened a new outdoor ballroom type club.

I feel much better.

Well Im trying to do the handbook thingy in world, but its not working :/