Do you REALLY make money here?

Hee hee Morwen .. so you don't so much have a walk-in wardrobe, more a drive-in huh? .. or should that be ride-in?

At the beginning of the year when Bilbo went to clubs and my alt was a dancer I was giving much, much more in tips than I was earning at dancing!!
Now, with so many clubs gone (and her job! LOL) I'm actually a lot better off .. go figure!
So, on thread, I don't make money but I'm spending less

This is a funny and true thing. An ex of mine is a dancer, and makes quite a bit of cash (in SL terms of course, not RL terms) from it on tips .. but spends a good amount tipping other dancers. It's kind of an odd thing, really.

Not probable. But that is not to say it is not possible.
I know of a large skin creator that sells on average 60 skins/day and they are selling them for about USD$10 each.
That is good money in anyones book.
It is not probable, but if you have the talent, are willing to put in the time, AND GET LUCKY, it could be you. (Which is pretty much the same as in RL I think).
Keep the dream alive, and show us what you got.

*laughs*
Yes... but I also spend a lot of money on my house and surrounding. A new chair... a new closet... Recently I bought some very nice animals from Animania for in my garden. I have replaced all door by ones that open automatic when you get close. I am considering to buy a pool for in my garden. And then I of course the rent of the gallery at SLACC (it is not much, but still it has to paid).

*Sings*
Money makes the world round... the world go round...

Morwen.

You want her to show you her skin?

Yes I do. I know others who make more.

It takes hard work and persistance, coupled with a worthwhile product (or products), to make it anything log-lasting. Just like first life, you have to work to make money. It's not a "get rich quick."

Mari

What to spend on SL depends on how much the 'make believe' means to you and how emotionally immersed you are prepared to become.

Unless you are extremely lucky, I'd guess you'd need to invest a lot of time and RL money in order to make a meaningful RL sum out of SL.

Yes! one of the jobs was precisely that, the lindens just going back and forth .. crazy. The other job was at a nice but sadly quiet club where the staff always outnumbered the customers. There was good banter there and a nice atmosphere but the owners can't justify that sometimes .. not when they're in it for the money


Ah well, these large estate owners with businesses.

/me sits back on his porch puffing at his pipe, slowly throwing Egons itinerant laundry into his pool.

i spend money here, which supports all the people above me making money.

i have a store, but it's not really more than just a place to list all the things i'm not ashamed to say i made. LOL

lol. If she wants to. She might even make a few $L. I'm a good tipper.

What she said

I had an SL job hostessing when I first started playing = nice easy time dancing right? WRONG ... meet and greet and make happy ain't easy but it is a lot easier if you have good social skills in the first place

There was a job I was offered recently before I became a (YAY) single woman again but I thought ... I simply don't want to stand around here for all this time doing nothing when I could be doing something constructive.

Now, I definitely don't expect to make money in the short term. Long term, if I can pay for my own island tier - that would be good enough for me.

Mm… I can say, since I’ve started building, I have made enough to pay for my tier and buy some extras. But a significant amount that it contributes to rl? No.. Not Yet! . It takes time and dedication to ones craft in business to make money, be it sl or rl. And it does not happen over night.

However, the one commonality I see amongst builders, designers, scripter (s), etc, here in SL, is most do it because they generally like creating. To take cube, cylinder, torus, texture, etc… and turn it into something spectacular for all to see and eventually sell it; AND know that you created it is great feeling for any Artist – at least for me anyway…

Yes. I have a positive USD cash flow. My design firm, Glowbox Designs, makes enough money with it's products and small side jobs to pay for studio space rent, as well as multiple classified listings, groups, content uploads, and shopping. There isn't much positive USD output after all is said and done.

However, from time to time, I will land sub contracting work building movie premiere sims for real world Hollywood companies. Builders on these kinds of projects bring home hundreds of USDs a week, depending on the hours. The going rate for the average (quality, non-diva) builder is 6-8K an hour (lindens). This translates nicely to USD when the week is through.

Am I getting rich? Heck no...but it sure makes what I love to do anyway THAT much more appealing.

The long tale of the Fae Folk (my family group in SL).

It alls tarted with 3 of us and a small plot of land where we opened a texture shop in June of 2004. Business grew, we started doing prefabs, more family joined SL. We moved to a larger plot.

Business grew, more family joined, we diversified more, bought yet more land.

Eventually moved to half a sim in Jouppi. Business continued to grow family in game went over 50 people. We made enough money to buy Dragon Isle.

Our content continues to amass. We were still in business. But the move to an island made continuing to stay in business quite a struggle for us. Nonetheless we held onto it for nearly 2 years. Barely, and it quite frankly took all the fun out of being here out of it for nearly all of us. We loved building Venice. Took pride in the beauty of it. But as a business move it was a disaster.

The final blow to the island was LL double billing island tier 6 months running. Did they remove the second charges yes but that did not clear the 80$+ overage fees/month from the CC company.

About 1 week ago we tore down the island. Sold it off. Bought half a sim in Brimsen and are rebuilding our businesses. You know what? We are having fun again. The stress is gone. We are creating because we want to not because we have to. We are falling in love with SL again.

we did it all on 2 annual premium fees + a one time 40$ US purchase of L$.

Did we make money some would say yes. We didn't cash it out. We paid tier, bought alot of land and the island. Had a great deal of fun as a family together. And the texture shop is still here that we started all those years ago.

I make money.

I am in the 100-200 per month bracket.

Hopefully by early next year, I will be in the 200-500 per month bracket.

The vast majority of folks who make money in SL could make more money per hour in RL. Therefore, the main reason for making money in SL would be because it's more fun than what you might do in RL to make money.

Of course, you can play SL for free. No real money required. I do -- I haven't sunk one dime into SL. I make content for my $L (mostly scripting, but also a few built items). I *like* making stuff in SL, and the income is really secondary.

The low-hassle way to sell stuff is to list it on . Owning and operating a shop is a good bit of work, but it can lead to quite a bit more sales. Business related things tend to sell great on SLX; things people like to window-shop for seem to sell better inworld.

You can also find retailers willing to sell items you produce and share the revenues or other arrangements. For example, if you make jewelry or apparel, search for HWMO. They have a notecard about reselling your items there, and I vouch for the integrity of the owner. (You have to provide a copy/xfer version of your product to the owner, so trust is required.)

Good for you, Uvas! Any estimate of how much time you spend per month on your business?

BTW, one of the advantages to SL over what most of us can manage in RL, is it's easier to make content that continues to generate revenue with relatively little work after the shake-out period. However, if you're not continually making new products or improvements to old ones, sales will tend to tail off.

Yeah, that.

It didn't work when I tried to rely on sales to pay taxes. That was stressful for some reason. It's hard to keep people happy when you demand money from them.

I found other ways to make money and pay the taxes. That changed the whole environment back into happiness again.

My investments are worth more than my sales. Sales are a 24/7 eye on the job. Investments allow you to step away from SL as long as you need.

Just make sure to diversify sources of income.

It's fair to say, there are markets in SL where you CAN make profits greater than others, same as RL. You could hardly expect to become a millionaire in RL with a single Hot Dog Stand, nor in SL. Land seems to be one of the areas where some real profits can be made, but the market has virtually been played out by Anche Chung in the growth years. It maybe there will come another time for that market.

If you manage to create a business plan that works, and you can keep to it, it should contain a statement 'Only accept Gross liabilities that do not reduce your potential for a profit margin. This does not include Liabilities that are required to operate your business'.

This refers to land, rent, premises, employees, stock etc. I suspect those that cannot make a profit, when it is their intension to do so, would need to look more closer at those levels of liabilities. For instance I see huge 'shops' in SL with all their 'stock' hung around on walls, like the size of the store is some sort of status symbol, whereas in reality, they would be probably better served if they halved the single shop liability (halve the size of the land required) and openned a second shop in another location to maximize 'capture zones'. Or they could make better use of the space, add floors and use a smaller foot print of land.

I have witnessed many very good designers/creators in SL, working from several well thoughtout stores throughout SL, to sell everything off and 'buy a sim'. Open their new shop(s), only to fail financially. It wasn't that their products were no good anymore, but fundementally, they lost traffic from all those people that had saved LM's (no longer any use) and given the massive (in comparrision between RL $'s and L$'s) liability span, have lost huge sums of potential profit and even investment.

Our Groups do make profit in SL, not just soley from the SL economy, but through exposure to RL companies that engage our services. Given the relatively small liabilities in SL compared to the earnings from those RL contracts, we could perhaps 'buy' a sim or two of our own, but the question remains 'Why'? We only take on liabilities within SL, that match its income, it is the same for our RL operations.

Yes, Im making some money here. Enought to pay my premium account and my land fee and still some money to transfer to my RL. In my case, to reach my current "success", I needed to use building and scripting skills alone and combined, creativity and a lot of talking with people to know about their needs.

I just checked SL Economic Statistics:
http://secondlife.com/whatis/economy_stats.php

All numbers for August "Unique Users with Positive Monthly Linden Dollar Flow" are down.

The Volume of transactions for August shows that more than a half of transactions are in the range L1-L19 what is my personal experience too (Katier Reitveld, you must be kidding - "It's not a huge amount you have to make either, for example if you sell one, 600L ( say 2USD) item of clothing per hour( on average) then you are making, 17472 USD/Yr.", LOL).
.....................................................................

Resident Transactions by Amount (2007 August)
Transaction Size Volume
1L$ 2,089,436
2 - 19 L$ 2,513,130
20 - 49 L$ 876,058
50 - 199 L$ 1,356,562
200 - 499 L$ 597,695
500 - 999 L$ 221,514
1,000 - 4,999 L$ 215,757
5,000 - 19,999 L$ 48,394
20,000 - 99,999 L$ 12,352
100,000 - 499,999 L$ 1,440
>= 500,000 L$ 401
Total Transaction Count 7,932,739

....................................................................

Most SIMs look like ghost towns so you can not count on walk-ins, you need to actually PAY to bring in LOOKERS and hope that eventually a small percentage of them will turn into customers. And you PAY for the land purchase, Premium account, monthly tire fees, etc, eventually you end up spending more money than you cash in, it's frustrating and it's not my idea of having fun, really.

It's good if you at least break-even but then again you need to evaluate the time and effort you put into it and decide for yourself if it's worth it, that's what I call time/cost effective and Ged Larsen, it has NOTHING to do with the minimum wage. BTW not everybody works for someone else .

I think if you are having fun - go for it! But if it feels like a job at list you have to have a positive cash flow.

******************************************
"Keep the dream alive, and show us what you got"
"You want her to show you her skin?"
"lol. If she wants to. She might even make a few $L. I'm a good tipper. "

LOL, I know I can make much more than a few $L showing what I got but it's just not me (BTW I'm still a SL virgin *blushes* and I'll keep it this way ).

Most estate rental landlords and large-0scale sim building groups will appear as deeply in the negative on the LL stats page, because they tend to accept payments in real money and not linden dollars. I fall into that category.

AWM Mars, great post you said it all!

Thanks everybody for your thoughtful and honest replies, I really needed your feedback, it helped me get out of the frustration and gave me some good ideas.