Long winded Noob? Newb?

Hello Everyone:

I have been monitoring the forums since I signed up with second life. There is allot of people saying bad things about camping chairs and also allot saying good things. Since I am still a noob? newb? anyway when I started I was fortunate enough to find a person the gave me some great (FREE) advise. First I was told that for the first 30 days I could pick money from the money trees and that I could save it and sell the linds to pay for my premium membership. Fantastic I'm a premium I can own land yadda yadda yadda 30 days are over and now I have to fall back on camping I don't want to but seeing the employment possibilities are next to none and even those wouldn't come close to paying the 3100 or so I need to maintain my membership as premium. From all I have read the problem as I can see it is not dwell, stripends or even camping chairs.

I am not in real life able to afford SL as a hobby so I must earn in world to support my habit (yes habit love this sim, game or what ever you want to call this SL addiction). As I can see it the problem is auto-venders! if they where abolished It would force those who are creative in making clothes or whatever to sell to be there to sell them themselves or EMPLOY a person (that isn't able to make clothes or script) to be there to sell for them using a system similar to a shopping basket that so many web sites use. This would also offer greater customer satisfaction as there would actually be someone there to answer my questions about the product or service. Even the huge land barons would have to have sales staff to handle all their transactions (and maybe allow some haggling lol).

It's not the few that camp at night or while they are at work to save to buy land or clothes that are SLs' greatest threat it's the ones that have a huge captive market that they can afford to squeeze out the completion and dump the linds out to real life. 50 Linds a week in stripend what a joke wait 2 months to buy a outfit, (not likely) so I can see people like myself camp out and get enough in a week to buy from the ones that dumping Linds out to RL. I applaud the successful but if more people have money the more they will/can sell. Dwell is great allows people to run their clubs, casinos, stores or whatever and SL kicks back some for making the whole SL experience more enjoyable and attractive to new clients. Now there are those that can afford to continue buy Linds as they need for their purchases and that's wonderful and just what LL needs because these are also not the ones selling them off. For these lucky ones in world employment is not necessary unlike me.

I am not saying that all people that join SL will need a hand but there should be other ways we can support ourselves other than money trees and camping until we can establish a viable source of income. These two resources have given me the ability to 1 go premium and 2 allow me to save so that I can take courses and learn to be self sufficient but until I get my skills up to those of the currant retailers I must rely on what's available. I do not wish to transfer back to a basic account nor do I wish to camp every night but for the time being that is what I must do. Believe me when I say that if I was paid like 30 Linds an hour to be a sales person I would jump at it. I don't think this is the best way to earn money as I am doing now nor do I encourage it and I also have heard of people with many accounts trying to make RL bucks camping I feel this is a lose/lose situation and most likely dieing now due to the camping cut backs.

The other issues I feel should be addressed are:

1. Why do we have to pay our membership fee in USD.
2. The whole land tier thing why can't it be paid in Linds and not force people to sell off quickly to make their payment(s).
3. Why are land auctions for large parcels always in USD not Linds.
4. Islands to get one yep you guessed it USD only and the maintainace of $195 USD a month as well.

The only reason I can see the Lindens are doing this is to collect the transaction fee they charge but seems to be hurting more that it is helping. Keep the Linds circulating inside SL and allot of the value of Linds against the USD will improve

So in conclusion wipe out auto-venders, hire a noob? newb? let them earn and then the camp chairs will be converted to sales chairs and the whole traffic monitoring thing would be more accurate. You have a mall now with 20 stores and 10 camp chairs lol you gonna have to get 10 more chairs. Now not only will the creators/innovators have to make the product and just sell no effort copies anymore but also EMPLOY someone to do that and monitor their performance, possibly a customer satisfaction box will stop people going on auto when they are supposed to be working. A bad vote on your shift bye - bye just like in real life you're out of a job.

Now I know this isn't a perfect solution but then again nothing is perfect but goes along way to addressing the problem. Now the currant pay chair does pay like 3 Linds per 10 minutes and for sitting to inflate traffic numbers it is fare but to actually have a live person answer my questions about a 350 outfit well that will have to be paid much more. A good sales person should actually increase sales therefore making up the cost of the labor. This will also require sellers to train and monitor their staff providing interaction and I feel a more rewarding experience for all.

Oh ya when I camp I do read the forums allot so it's not that my avie is a zombie it's just I'm doing something else.

I guess I rambled on long enough but it would be great to have a Linden give this a read.

Because Linden Lab can't pay their bills (employee, servers, offices rental, ...) in L$, that's why they need US$

Hi kerunix

That's just silliness, I just looked and as of 9:55 game time 7.1 million Linds had been sold today so if we where able to pay most of the teir or our account payments in linds LL would just sell them and of course they would charge themselves a transaction fee (lol), so they would still get USD to pay their bills.

Imagine for a moment the outcry of protest at the idea of the Lindens selling L$.

They have an infinite suply. It's just an integer to them.

That would as much as eliminate the market for anyone else.

And that market is by and large how folks pay thier tier... and how we keep encouraging the creative types to keep making cool things.

Hi Jillian:

All I ment was that the L$ have a value and LL should just except payment in them how they convert them into hard currency is up to them. As a example if you owed $40 USD in teir then instead of dumping it onto the market LL could except payment in L$ at the currant selling price to settle the debt.

The main reason I wrote this was not to discuss the other points I listed but mainly to express my concern at the lack of income making oppertunities for the new people here and offer a solution or at least a partial one.

As one could easily sell the L$ themselves and have LL take the money from their account to pay for tier, I really don't see what your method would accomplish.

Well, two things there.

One, that's how a free market is. You can still go head to head with the well established folks and win. Just takes time and patience and a lot of work.

Two, you can buy L$. It's cheap (and getting cheaper). In fact, at current prices for the 10 USD per month you're spending on your premium account, you could buy 2929L$. That's almost one and half again your stipend. If you don't need your land, it's the better way to go.

Now... even more to the point (I hope, I'm tired and I don't think I'm communicating well.) I hire folks. The job pays commission, so they can make as much or as little as they like, I don't force hours on them, and they can go out and play as part of looking for cutomers. (I've dead-fast rules about spamming and being annoying, so I'm not worried about folks being pestered.)

I've hired about 23 folks. One still works for me. Only one have I had to fire, the rest don't like to work.

And who the heck can blame 'em? For nutters like myself, coming home from a day of work to get into SL and work some more is fun. But for the vast majority they want to play - and for the sake of pete, lets let 'em!

Simplest way ever to have L$ in SL is to pay a little bit of your entertainment budget on some SL entertainment.

Employment isn't going to be the answer. If you want to earn L$ in world, you'll have to carve your own niche - and that can mean finding employment, mind. One of the best RL jobs I ever had was one I invented and proposed to the business owner. Hand-outs of any flavor serve only to soften markets, and engender unrealistic expectations.

Well would save the 3.5% transaction fee

Save that it's covring the fee the credit card companies charge.

Tory, the usual path to income in SL is not one of instantaneous wealth. Ask any person who is coving tier with sales from an in-world business and you will find that first they had to learn to make stuff (or learn to "work" the economy) and it took usually months for them to build up the business. The quick and easy way is obviously to buy Lindens and not bother trying to be self-sustaining. The second quick path is to just pay the year of premium membership at $72 and collect your $500L a week. The longer path is to create a business and build it up.
It took me approx 7 months once I got decent enough at building to be able to cover tier with sales - and I'm a typical user with no background in Photoshop, 3D model making, animation or any of the big creative arts. It just takes time.

The funny thing is that many many people seem to think that Second Life is supposed to be autosupportive.

The fact that for some it can be autosupportive is a good thing. But, hey... this is a product/service and you've got to pay for it. LL doesn't and shouldn't get into the buisness of assuring you have enough money to actually pay for it.

Many land barons do have sales staff. The problem is more with permissions - it's easy for a person to, by accident, give out a copy of an item that the reciever can copy and transfer. If someone gave an item like that to a customer by mistake, then effectively the product line is destroyed.



The free basic account is effectively a "demo mode". It can be very frustrating at the start, I know, I've been there, but there are ways in.



You shouldn't need to pay for courses - there are plenty of great free ones. LL do pay instructors directly. Also, you don't need to "get your skills up to those of current retailers" - just make something different.



The problem is that the money you pay to LL is spent outside SL - it's spent on their hosting and bandwidth fees and keeping their hardware running. Unfortunately, their ISP and technical companies aren't interested in L$.



It wouldn't work that way. There's no way in SL to ensure that a stranger working sales would be trustworthy. About the only way to do this would be to use bulk vending, as with Timeless Prototype's Multi Gadgets - but if you want to make money selling that you, you'd need a starting stake. Voting has been notoriously unreliable in SL - people will form groups of friends who all vote for each other, or cast negative votes on people just because they feel like it.

You can't afford less than $10 a month for a premium membership, that appears to be so vital to you...?

How long is it until you turn 18?

P2