Making Money (Legally)

Thank you for all the people that have stood up for me in my decision to still play while in debt. Also, thanks for the advice for the texture program. Hopefull you will be able to see my name some day on the high interest items. Talk to you all later,

Joshua

Good luck Josh- sorry you had to experience drama.



Btw- if youre good with photoshop try taking up the art of tattooing in second life, or making some nice clothes.

I'm used to drama from wow lol, but thanks. And ill just have to learn to use all those types of programs

You could always build in world. Ya know- furniture, fountains, etc. All you need within SL- Prims and textures. You might be good at it.

Joshua,

An earlier poster, Michael Norse, had a very good suggestion for you... get a copy of Photoshop. I was able to find an older version (7.0) on Ebay for only $20, myself (no good for Alpha Texture's... 7.0 needs a patch). Go into making textures. not the big laggy 1024x1024 that take forever to rez, but smaller 512x512 or even 256x256. You said you are Navy. Have you considered military textures? The camo pattern of a uniform, Different types of ship hatches, things like that (might need a digital camera... and again, there's ebay, or maybe you can borrow one from a friend). There are also military fonts, as are used in the ship names & ID numbers (none of which is classified, since we could see the same things in a public source such as Jane's Ships of the World). When you do sea duty, you go to exotic ports of call... more sources of new textures. Builders are always looking for new and exotic textures. They collect them from various sources. Working with the textures can be done while not connected to SL, and uploaded (10L per upload, so use the preview before paying to be certain you are satisfied). Become good at textures and you will have a wide open market as new builders join the game.

Joshua,

Given that you are in the navy it sounds like underway alot, I assume you have a fair amount of private time when off-duty underway. There are a few things that you can do to make money in SL. Things that you can work on while underway as long as you have access to a decent computer and the software.

Does the Navy provide you with internet access while underway, I would be surprised if it does not these days. As long as you can access the internet you can do the following things.

Software: Photoshop is the premium software but very expensive. Paintshop Pro is very good and reasonably priced. Gimp is free and will do almost anything you will need.

Textures: someone already mentioned that... you will need graphics software that can do layers and alpha textures. Photoshop is the premium software but very expensive. I get by with Photoshop Elements V2.0, an old version I got cheap. Paintshop Pro is very good and reasonably priced. Gimp is free and will do almost anything you will need.

Clothing: is really a subset of textures, but there is a shortage of good men's clothing in SL, at least realative to women's clothing. To to the Design and Textures Forum and read the Sticky tutorials on how to make clothing.

Scripting: This is hard to learn and you will need to access SL often to test scripts out expecially while learning, but once you begin to understand it, you may be able to do alot of work while offline. I recently read in the Scripting Tips Forum that there is an offline compiler you can get or access via the web to test that your scripts will compile when you cannot log into SL.

Building: You can't aquire many building skills without spending time in SL learning and doing. But you can use programs like Maya to develope 3d building skills and learn to make and apply textures to buildings that can be baked and dowloaded then uploaded into SL to apply extremely realistic lighting effects to SL builds. Someone is even working on software that will allow a person to build objects off line then import them into SL. I think it is a only a matter of time before this is a real possibility.

Sales: You don't even need to set up a shop in SL to sell this stuff ( which involves renting or buying land), you can sell it on SLExchange.com or SLBoutique.com and possibly a few other sites.

Quality and customer appeal: Just because you make something does not mean it will sell. There are a lot of horribly made, tawdry products for sale in SL, and many disappointed product creators who thought "If you make it they will come". It is not true. your product has to have appeal and be of decent quality or you are wasting your time.

So.... there are things you can do to acquire skills, and create things that can be sold in SL to make money using your spare time. There is nothing you can do to make money in SL that does not require a considerable investment of time and effort: 1. to acquire the skills; and 2. to create things to sell.

Someone once said most people can make more money selling MacDonalds hamburgers then they wil ever make in SL. That is true at least initially regarding the payback you can get for an hour of time invested. However, once you have created a body of selllable items, they do not deteriorate, and you can keep selling them over and over again indefinitly.

IT MAY TAKE TIME: I have been in SL for 18 or so months, I have created lots of things and have been selling them for most of that time. My business has grown slowly but for the last 4 months I have cleared significant amounts above and beyond my land tier costs. It is finally enough to justify my continuing to do this.

To expand on this, I'd also say, if you plan on selling anything you create, whether it be houses, clothes, etc. to shop around and see what competitors are offering and at what price.

My clothes are by no means in the genius arena, but my price reflects that. As I've slowly gotten a bit better, better quality clothing comes at a few L more. So if you sell, make sure you are price appropriate for not only the work, but the competition pricing.

Yes, I will definately be taking the photoshop and maya elements into consideration. This looks like something that I will enjoy doing and have fun with. Thank you all for your inputs.

I do pay some people a bit of money for odd jobs here and there. Mostly just odds and end things that I don't have time to do myself, like finding a particular texture or some other thing like that. Hell, I've paid people to be testee's for a new gun or something (nothing like a moving taget that can tell you what happened to em when the get back). Now I won't say I pay a lot, or that you can make a full time employment out of it, but it helps. I also pay a lot for skilled work. So contact me in world and see if there is anything I need done. I know what it's like to be new and not haveing anyway to buy something.