what real life items would you buy with $L?

I was just thinking to myself imagine if i could buy real life items such as dvds, cds etc with my $l. I was thinking this because i earn a few $l but not enough to make it worthwhile to cash out especially as i am overseas so for me it would be great if i could just swap my extra $l for dvd delivered to my door.
So what do other people think of this idea?

and what real life items would you buy with your spare $L?

Feel free to repeat what others have said as i would like to see what the most popular items would be.

Pie, lots of pies......

I would swap them right away for a new CP fan.

I actually rather swap them with real money, even if I loose 15$USD for the transaction and then get about 350€ for like 500$USD. whatever. lol.

Dare I say - a California home?

Yup, earmarked some $L to pay the mortgage; it's enough even after taxes paid on the income.

See the lengths I'll go to, to justify my SL time?

grins

And this Samsung u620 Vcast... my old phone gave up the ghostie on me last week... sigh. Thank the gods I can't log into SL with it...

Prepaid credit cards that I could use anywhere for groceries,etc. Though I have had one friend get me a Amazon gift card. Personally if I was going to be paid I would rather it go to gift card then in Lindens.

I would buy a new skin

I want to keep my L$ in-world but I think my RL agent might want to cash them in someday if I get too many!

Looking at the original question slightly differently, what RL items would I buy through SL - like would I buy a RL Toyota after visiting Scion City? Er....no! I don't think I'd ever use SL as a mail order catalogue for RL

It used to be that slboutique sold RL items for L$. Not sure if they still do. I suspect that as Second Life stabilizes and confidence grows in the Linden Dollar as a currency, we will see more real world retailers setting up shop in-world. Right Click > Buy > Get package at home next day. I look forward to it.

Nothing...there are no RL items I would buy with lindens. Not Dell computers, no Nike shoes, not Toyota cars..nothing. If I want something, I'll use my cash..thank you very much.

Right now, it would be relatively low-valued stuff with SL tie-in. Maybe a t-shirt with the spooky green eye-in-hand logo. OK, well, maybe not *that*, but something *like* that.

Pizza! Oh, yes, I'd love to order pizza's in SL!

Zilch. If I want be tracked on my shopping habits, I'll use a credit card thanks.

That's a very cool idea, and is basically another way to get cash out of the system. The use anywhere type would be best.

I'm so with this one, that would be an incredibly cool thing. :>

Nothing..my lindens don't hang around long enough for that to be a option. And I too am not interested in RL shopping in SL.

When I imagine I'd have to walk into an Amazon shop in SL, with my female Alt that I usually use... endure the IMs of horny newbies, stand around in a laggy and overcrowded shop waiting fro the vendor textures to rez... no, thanks. There's a 2D web where I buy my books, CDs and DVDs, and it works perfectly fine. 3 mouseclicks is all I need to select an item and check out, totally stress- and lag-free.

Besides, who knows how long SL will be around? And how long I will be around? For all I know the servers could shut down next weekend. Or shut me out, for whatever arbitrary reason they come up with next. Or my account gets hacked. Or I lose all my inventory due to a bug, which would be the point where I finally gave up on this. I never have too many L$ tied into SL, just enough to pay for my classifieds and a new outfit now and then.

Thanks for the uplifting and inspiring post

LOL what was the inspiring part?

It is probably years too soon for SL or anything like it to be a conduit for actual RL sales, for all the reasons given above, plus the actual audience is still too small and spread out worldwide. Someday....

In the meantime, one thing it can serve as is a conduit for url links. For example, thre is a news site in-world (Elmaer 245, 24, 94) that provides clickable links to dozens of news-oriented websites from The New York Times to The Drudge Report. Invaluable to a news junkie like me. Or Circuit City, whose in-world "store" takes you to their web page for each product on their virtual shelves. I'll bet there are hundreds if not thousands of variations on that theme waiting to be done.

Also, viral advertising in general. My avatar never goes anywhere anymore without chugging on his can of Coke from a Coke machine it stumbled on in its wanderings. Also, I don't remember where I saw it, but one clubowner reported he gets paid for his traffic count by prominent beer brands as long as their giant beer cans are prominently displayed in front of his patrons. With all the sex in SL it is beyond me why I haven't seen any Trojans "dispensers" on club walls. Just a matter of time, I think.

Buying RL items in SL would mean giving away too much private information connecting my SL self to my RL self. On the other hand, when I see a representation of Amazon (for example) in SL and some books which gather my interest, I try to search for them in my web browser _independently_ in order to have nothing connecting my SL actions to a RL purchase.

But that scenario didn't happen to me up to now and probably wouldn't anytime soon.

Probably won't happen for me either as I try to avoid areas connected to RL companies. I like keeping SL as my little escape from The World, so I want as little RL encroaching on it as possible. Plus , having various things to do such as online shopping, in addition to other RL issues are built in SL timeouts, for when I find my self escaping a little too much. A lot of people probably will find the convenience useful, that's fine.

News flash: Schiphol Airport was closed today when an precedented number of cargo transports carrying pizzas blocked the taxi ways.


phone at Pizza Plus: "No, noooo! ... my *avatar* is in Amsterdam!!"

oh, sure.

i'd buy photoshop 9.0 csv (whatever it is) for 495 ells instead of 495 us dollars. ;)


oh, i know! i'd buy wow accounts with ells. and guild wars gold. does that count as real world stuff??

okay, sorry, in a silly mood today.



since to buy a real life product, it would have to cost a real-world equivalent of lindens-to-dollars.... um, i'd have to convert my dollars into lindens, pay out the lindens, and then they'd have to cash out the lindens to get the dollars.... with all the overhead of transaction fees -- it'd be easier and cheaper all around for me to just pay direct with dollars.

i can't think of anything where this is not the case. except maybe really cheap items like.... ringtones? that cost like 2 dollars? a stick of gum? (oops, no, postage on that.)


on the other hand, if you have a buncha used cds/dvds/old videos you want to sell, but nobody on ebay is interested.... and you dont care how much you make, but you DO want some lindens to use in-world.... sure, i could see auctioning/selling them for ells instead of dollars/euros/whathaveyou.

Mostly, I could see it making sense for low-value items; things that cost less than US$1, so that the transaction costs of buying them with US$ (or other RL currency) are prohibitive. Some SL musicians sell their songs in SL (you buy the object, and it gives you a special one-time download link so you can get the MP3 from a web site); that's one good example. You could sell stories the same way; rather like Fictionwise does, but using L$ instead of an account with them. Or perhaps higher-resolution versions of artwork that you sell or display in SL; buy the SL object, and then download the 6 megapixel version of the art.

Staying with low-value goods means that we're also talking mostly about things that can be delivered online. Something that could be stuck in an envelope with a single stamp would be possible; that's about the limit of physical delivery in that price range.

Another reason to stick to low-value goods, at least for now, is the lack of RL accountability; if you buy something in-world and don't receive it, you don't have much recourse. If I buy something for L$200 and I don't get it, I'll be annoyed but not heartbroken. If I had spend L$2000 or L$20000, it's another story.

Eventually some SL businesses will build enough reputation that they can sell higher-value goods as well, if it turns out that there is any market for them. However, the costs of using L$ (round-trip, if you have to buy the L$ to make the purchase, and then the merchant has to sell the L$ to get the goods for you) are higher than using PayPal or credit cards, so it's not likely unless a substantial number of people want to use their in-world earnings to buy RL goods.

Well since LL has access to my credit card anyway, why not a direct L$ payment TO my credit card? Pay off some of those RL shopping bills...