How do you earn L$ in SL?

This is probably the biggest newbie question I ever get asked, and although I know the basic ones, I have no idea as to how many people participate in them, nor if they are successful in the long run.

So if you vote in the poll, please let us know some things about it, how hard was it to get started, how much time it takes a week, and whether you are successful, either personally or financially. (Please no L$ numbers. We have enough of those posts as is.)

When I first started, I saw so many things I wanted *now* that I spent a little money buying $L. At that point I found myself wanting to buy more $L and had to snap out of it before I drove myself to bankruptcy It's way too easy to buy 20k or 50k $L and go nuts.

I haven't bought any $L since then. I make do with stipends and whatever contest prizes and odd jobs I can find. One nice guy paid me $L to write trivia questions for him and sending them to him on notecards in a specific format, so he could use them in his game scripts. It's all about asking the right people.

Uusually the only L$ I make in-world is from my DJ'ing tips.

I feel lucky because doing all the things I love to do in SL HAPPENED to be profitable. So I never wrestled with the question of how to make money. But I would give this advice to new users...

Play SL and keep your ears and eyes open. I regularly catch people saying things like "You know what I would like?" "You know what SL needs?" "I wish I could buy..." Eventually you will get a feel for the unmet demands in Second Life. Now YOU be the one to fill the needs. This may require learning a new skill (nobody said this was easy).

I would also urge people to think LONG term. If you squabble with a customer over a $L50 return you may win the 50 now, but the long term losses will be larger than you think. Build a good relationship with your customers and express your sincere appreciation for their patronage.

EDIT: Oops. I posted before the poll arrived and I think I may have missed the point of the thread . But I this this is good advice nonetheless so I'm going to leave it.

I've done a variety of things to make money since I came to SL.

When I started the most obvious was being a dancer at a club. Unfortunately that was for tips only and well, lets just say I didn't make much. LOL

I moved to doing events at different places, meeting new people and broadening my social network. It helped that I was able to DJ at some of these events as well.

Right now, I have opened my furniture store with other stores in different areas. I do property management for some rental properties and I do custom landscaping for people as well.

Aimee, you are so right about the squabbling over 50L. I am one that if someone buys something while I am at the store, I will find one of my low end items to give them for free. I would rather make someone happy and build my customer base than worry about the little bit of money I might be losing out on.

I earn money by showing people my moobs.

Well as TOTAL money earned I guess GOM is the largest since I did buy money to get started up and then a little later to purchase something Id wanted for a while.

For regular money earned I supposed it would be a combination of Stipend and Tips from Club goers. Tiger Lily's isnt about money.

Have no rent , no bills and dont need food - so I dont need much ^^.

Vehicles, of course

It was a lot of work to get started, and probably the biggest external factors in my experience was meeting the right group of people to advise and help, and snagging a spot at Busy Ben's. I sell more vehicles there than all my other vendors combined.

I probably spend between 15 and 25 hours a week in-world, although some weeks (when I've been off sick from work) I spent probably 60-80 hours there. That extra time helped a lot getting started.

I've been selling vehicles for a little over a month and a half now, and I can comfortably pay my premium account and tier costs with my profits, and still have a bit left over for fun.

The part I've had the most trouble with is marketing, and the fact that I can't do marketing graphics to save my life. My vendor pictures, while very informative, pretty much suck from a style standpoint.

It has been a lot of fun, and I hope to continue to make my place in the metaverse as the months and years go by...

- Jon

Honestly (and very selfishly), the purpose of the poll was to see what ideas I hadn't thought up to make money people had been using. Like I said, people ask me a lot how to make money, and besides the big 3 (clothing/building/scripting), I haven't known what else to tell them. I've lso seen a lot of people coming into SL that have no previous experience in any of these fields so I have no idea what the learning curve is for them.

Mostly, I wanted a nice place where people could get an idea what works and what doesn't.

I would love to answer this.

coco

I chose other because I charge people to rub my head for luck.

I sell fake IDs and Passports. I also fence stolen goods.

I was lucky too, as what I enjoy doing was lucrative. That is, texture work, whether for skin purposes or clothing purposes.

Clothing (and skinning especially) was an intimidating business to get into, as there were already incredibly successful, high profile designers out there. So at first, you automatically get that "why bother, there's already this awesome stuff out there!" feeling. Well, I bothered because I can't leave well enough alone.

As long as new people can get over that feeling of "jumping in", things pick up, and they realize they can have a lot to offer, afterall. SL, in general, will benefit from even more creativity.

My buddy Darrly Chang and I started making scripted pet dogs way back in beta. They became popular and we still make new breeds and tricks every so often. As a matter of fact, we now offer a free demo dog for people to play with for an hour.

We like being creative, and we wanted to have a pet in SL. So this business came out of a need that wasn't being met. The combination of his building skills and my scripting made a nice partnership as well.

i buy all mine, i dont want to come inworld and worry about how im going to make money, i do that in real life, jeeze.

And we content creators who do make money in-world love you (and people like you) for it

- Jon

I do the clothing thang.

Sezmra is right about it being an intimidating area to get into. SL has some extremely talented designers and graphics people, and my skills with graphics programs were limited to photo-manipulation. I had never worked with templates or layers, or 2/3rds of the tools, so I was basically starting from scratch.

The main reason I kept at it was because I wanted to make stuff that I liked and wanted to wear, and because I really enjoying using GIMP. I got lucky that the stuff I liked wasn't really being done a lot yet. Casual clothes, seperates, photorealistic.. I just wanted some normal, fashionable clothes that didn't make me feel like I was trying to play a role. (Stripper, Goth, Bondage, etc...) I wanted clothing, not costumes. By sticking to modest pricing, I seem to have found my niche in the industry and it does remarkably well.

As cliche as it sounds, people looking for ways to make money should really experiment with everything and discover what they enjoy doing the most. Enjoying it is key, to me. It doesn't feel like work, and it isn't frustrating, so you'll spend more time on it and get better and better.

I agree completely. I could have looked at the vehicle market, and said "yeah, Cubey's got it sewn up", but the simple fact of the matter is the market in SL is so big, and growing at such a fast rate, that there is room for everyone right now. As long as you produce high quality items, and provide good service, people will buy them.

- Jon

The advice I give most people is:

Build something YOU like, and find interesting. If you put your passion into building a well-executed item, SOMEONE out there will think it's cool and want to buy it.

Couldn't say it better myself, thats a awesome peice of advice,


as for me building and textureing is a big passion of mine hoping to get a buisness started sooner or later, that and I make a lucritive buisness/hobby of dressing my male friend in frilly dresses I hand made saying their leather jackets/pants/spandex, it makes a pretty picture though,

I sell cigarettes through the chain link fence to the teens in the teen grid.

I just hang out in the clubs and casinos that have moneyballs and raffles... I've won hundreds of L$ that way. I enjoy getting money for nothing

Ummmmmmm I'mmmmm tellllinnnnnnnn


wakka wakka

Stipend

Building - selling , e.g StarGate v4.2 Pics in this thread

thats problt just bout it very very limited in scripting, like basic cloak/texture change script or popgun lol