Go.com?

Greetings all! Hope I'm in the right forum for this...

I just rejoined after a year gone. The reason I left was pretty bad, I ended up losing my entire home build, AND the land it was on, with no recompense. I quit.

It took me a year to get over it, but now I'm back. Unfortunately, as a returning player, I get no newbie deals, no starting money (that I know of), and my inventory has been wiped, so what little I had left when I lost my land, is now also gone.

No big, I really enjoy doing builds, and scripting, and look forward to learning the new animation stuff (I installed Poser last night). I accepted gift boxes from others, made a couple of simple pieces of clothing, and since I was AMAZED at how far prim based costumes had advanced, started working on one of my own, with the hope that if I could do a nice job, I could also sell it and collect some money.

What to do? Well, I'm a Futurama fan, and I made a T-Shirt with Bender on it, so it seemed natural for me to make a Bender AV right?

After a couple of days of asking questions, and re-teaching myself the build system, I had a partially completed head in the Sandbox last night, JUST enough to be recognizable... I heard keyboard clicks, and someone said "Why not just go buy a Bender AV from Soandso's shop?".

Crud. I don't know if that guy had any idea how cruel he was right then, but all thoughts of making money flew out of my head, and what I thought was original work became a hack copy job.

So, I'm not going to be making money soon, in fact given the number of excellent av's I've seen, I may NEVER make any money. While I love using free stuff as much as anyone else, the sheer amount of decent or even good quality freebies means that I have to hit a pretty high bar before anything will be profitable for me.

If I want to keep playing though, I need to pay for my uploads, and that's saying nothing about ever having a small home plot of land, maybe one I can recreate my long lost build on...

I had muttered something to the guy about not being able to afford buying an avatar, and he said something about Go.com.

Is there a place to buy $L for US $? If I'm going to be fighting this uphill battle toward making any profit, I may as well price out what it would take to keep me in upload money... At $10/upload, and $50/week stipend, that's 5 uploads a week. If I get going on a heavy project, I'll burn through my money in NO time... Hell, figuring out how to do a simple T-Shirt took me three uploads just to figure out how to do the Alpha Channels...

Ingot

I think he meant GOM, most likely.

GamingOpenMarket.com

there are others.

as for clothing uploads, there is now a preview window before you upload - you can opt to try the item on an avatar model in the preview window before you accept and pay for the upload. should give you a better idea if it's gonna work and save you a little cash

The preview is a wonderful feature, one of those things we asked for and got /clap for LL.

If you buy land, you'll have to upgrade your account to premium status and will be receiving 500L in weekly stipend. You'll be functionally purchasing ~2000L and 512sm of land allocation for $6-$9.95 a month. An option to land ownership is renting. People wanting to rent you their land are not hard to find. Just read any forum thread or attend any event.

For av design, don't despair, do a little research. It's a big old crowded world now and there are several versions of almost every product on the grid. Your Bender will surely look a bit different and have a couple of varying features from the currently popular designers. See what's out there and do something a little different. That's not hack copying, it's creative competition.

Good Luck and Welcome Back

This is all very encouraging, thank you!

One question... I have looked into land ownership, and seen that it would cost $U.S., but I can't see if it would cost any L$.

So, if I upgrade to premium, pay $9.95/month, use what L$ I have to purchase a piece of land, will owning that land then drain my L$ account, or just cost me the $U.S.?

Ingot

EDIT:

My Apologies. It seems this must have changed. According to the land FAQ you must now have a premium account. Excuse my ignorance, this was not the case last time I checked, which was in March of 2004.

You can find the land FAQ here





You don't have to have a premium account to buy land. You can pay the land tier fees without upgrading to premium.

In order to buy land there are 2 money steps..

1. You must go to the SL website and agree to pay for a premuim account.
2. You must buy a piece of property.

If you buy land at auction, you can select an auction that has a US dollar price on it. Then you won't have to spend any Linden$ for the land.

You can also upgrade to a premium account, which gives you the benefits Khamon Fate outlined.

Land Tier fees and monthly premium accounts are paid to LL with US dollars.

Ok, synopsis to make sure I got it right...

Buying land is a matter of spending either L$, or US$, depending on the seller's preferences.

Ongoing premium membership and land owner's fees are in US$. There are no L$ fees for land ownership.

Thanks for the help!

Ingot

Hi Ingot! *waves*

You're pretty much on the money (pardon the pun). At the Land Auction page (where you're buying land directly from LL) you can bid with either US$ or L$, depending on what LL initially set it as - you'll see it pretty easily.
land auction link

Inworld, you can only purchase with $L - unless you manage to work out something with the seller one-on-one. Not sure how popular that is.

You are correctomundo on the fee situation.

(Don't get discouraged - for as many people are in SL selling stuff, there are MORE people looking to buy stuff - there's room for everyone)

This is my second account less just say same thing happend to me. But i am back in a group holden over 8000 land . ne ways, your bender idea ide stick to it, i know a lot of people will say no no dont someone else alrdy did it........ WELL WHATE THE HELL HASENT BEEN DONE IN SL???!!! lol the truth of the matter is there is hardly anything in sl that has not been done, basically in sl its alll about being the better builder.While sometimes you might 1-100 find a good idea get it out there and ur the only one and role in some dough, well all i wanted to say was keep up with the bender, u didnt start it knowing there was another 1 so u made just the head, well i bet there 432656436 things you have made that other people have also.




just wanted to say ide like to c another bender av ^_^ (maybe even some sounds and animations with it )