$$$$ - Is anyone making real money in SL???

All? I can tell you first hand, not all.



I don't recall ever having made such a statement, much less officially.



Why? It's not true.

I tried to find your shop by looking at your picks and it doesn't seem to be there. I think a lot of people look at picks to find places to shop. I hardly ever look at the classifieds and I always pass by the expensive ads.

I bet it would really help your biz if you put it in your picks in your profile.

Thanks for checking me out!

The shop is located below the club, just let yourself drop from the landing pad and you are there. But you are right, I should make it easier to find. Good tip!

Thanks! Picks are the best place to advertise I think. And get your friends to put your place in their picks too.

Advertise on SlExchange or other places. Many Second Life-related web sites carry banner ads which can be bought for a pittance compared to high-rated classifieds. Yes, less people visit them, but that doesn't matter, because once some "social hub" people have heard of your goods, word of mouth propagation starts and that is your best friend in the world.

There's resident places doing similar things as well. If your goods are PG you can advertise at NCI which is relatively cheap and has huge traffic.

On the other notes: it's like most things. Myself, I generally make enough to pay for my share of an island's tier, plus a small amount extra. According to the economic statistics chart though, the amount involved puts me in the top 20% of SL business owners (!!) (That will probably sound more reasonable if you consider that if you make more than US$10/month, you are in the top 46%). Although sales have been down recently, possibly because of the L$ buying problems but possibly because of something else. (One problem with being a scripter is having to constantly look over your shoulder.)

Those who make the largest amount of money tracked by the economic stats - more than US$5000/month - are only 0.35% of businesses. If you live in the US, it is actually more common to be an RL millionaire (3.5% of American households) than to make that much in SL.

However, that doesn't allow for the income made by MDC's - that is, companies which sell Second Life development services to the real world. It seems many people believe that this is where the money will be in the future, and some businesspeople I've spoken to still fear an eventual "crash" in the virtual market due to unlimited undercutting.

I read an article which said Munchflower Zaius of Nomine makes something like $175 per day...not sure whether that's profit or revenue.

Based on the Linden Lab provided stats for the number of "unique users with a positive monthly L$ flow", less than 2% of the active participants in SL get any more income out of SL than they pour into it.

The economic stats page indicates that there are roughly 1500 "unique users" who average more than $500 USD per month income from SL. Out of over 7 million registered accounts, or out of the roughly 1.6 million accounts that are active enough to have logged in at least once in the last 60 days. That is a VERY small percentage who are making any noticable amount of money in SL.

As for those who are actually "earning a living wage" in SL? A whopping 139 people earn more than $5000 USD per month in SL. That isn't very many, out of the millions who participate here.

In an average period of time, I manage to make enough here that every few weeks I can take my family out to dinner at a moderate priced restaurant, paid for by my SL profits. It also pays for my land tier and other in-world expenses. When I have a multi-sim building contract going, I manage to earn a bit more, doing what I consider "fun stuff". If I am lucky and save up as much as I can from my profits this year, I just *might* be able to replace my aging computer with something better for SL access. Nothing fantastic, but a step up from what I have now. But if I compare my BEST income flow against the hours I spend on-line earning that income, a part-time, minimum-wage second job flipping hamburgers would earn me more real dollars.

There is NO WAY that SL would provide a high enough income level for me to be able to quit my day job and just work in SL. Even if the environment was perfectly stable, what people are willing to pay for most products in SL doesn't come close to what the same amount of effort and time can earn for me at a real job in the real world.

SL is NOT a great place to make money. Some rare, talented and lucky individuals, who work their tails off and risk large amounts of real money by investing it in SL *MAY* be able to earn some decent profits here. But the average Player can not hope to make a profit at all.

I think those people that are making good money from content today were in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills. I never invested a penny in SL other than my initial $10. Dwell, stipend, rating bonus etc all help support me and my land in the early days and NO ONE made any thing like the builds I made so I didnt really have competition. That allowed me to get a foot hold and establish myself and build a customer base. If I was entering SL as a new player today It would be impossible to duplicate what I did a few years ago. It's a different world with a different society and mentality. Most of the original ideas and concepts are gone. Allot of the older players (Over 1 yr) have now established the skills to compete and own a place in their specific market. To excel in SL today I think you need either an exceptional skillset, a fantastic original idea, or a shed load of money to invest. The averidge new player today who wants to make clothes or tatoos or whatever will be lucky to break even and that is after months of work.

Just my opinion of course.

I know several relatively new residents who are making good amounts of money from SL, although I don't personally know any who have reached the top income band.

The key is that because SL has such a high turnover rate, the market for "general items" - which anyone can use - is continuously being re-evaluated, which makes it easier for new firms to break in. I know people talk a lot about the "big names" here, but in many conversations I've had with residents only a few months old, many had bought quite a few things - and most had never heard of Aimee Weber, and a notable minority had never heard of Anshe Chung. The "essential items" thread showed that more people know Mystical Cookie than Timeless Prototype, and more people know Keiki Lemieux than Francis Chung.

It seems a better way to get a "big name" is to become big in items that relate to a specific themed community, because when people join those communities they meet older residents who pass on the word of mouth. Again, purely empirical evidence on my own experience of newbies suggests that more had heard of Amethyst Rosencrans or Abigail Horton than had heard of Chip Midnight or Aimee Weber.

But of course the tradeoff of being able to get a "big name" is that once there is one, newcomers can't break in. This is especially notable given that many of them have internal circles of creators which - although they are not cartels - have a cartel-like effect on outsiders; and although many of them are actually very friendly and welcoming to newcomers, meeting up with them at all introduces a large level of RPRT (= "Right Place Right Time". I can name people (other than myself) who have pulled out of creating things for certain subgroups because they were already dominated by big names.

A worrying angle is that this in general could lead to a "genericising" of SL - where new creators make more generic items because it's somewhat easier to get noticed that way.

Of course, it's also possible that the previous big names are all working for MDCs now and as a result aren't selling their in-world products so hard..

Well, I guess I'm one of the 139 listed. But more of that income goes to tier, than not.

And if I choose to do what people want (expand the continent - huge waiting list for that) I don't make that much.

I suppose I could charge at breakeven for new sims and perhaps a fraction of the 3 months tier I stockpile (amounts to 885 USD per new sim lately), which would definitely slow demand.

But I prefer slow growth, and I'm really not here for the money. If I was, it would be far too easy to deploy 4 x 4 grids of 16 sunny McIslands per sim, no covenant.

That would cash in at a rate Caledon could never possibly match, what with all its infrastructure and trains and permanent forests and suchlike. But... I don't think I'm capable of both making a place that horrid and subsequently sleeping well at night.

It's probably worth bearing in mind that a lot of the top earners in Sl are getting paid through paypal instead of with the linden dollar. This effectively hides them from the official statistics.

My SL-based income would be in that table, if it didn't mostly go through non-LL channels.

In fact, ANYONE whose primary business is land doesn't show up in the official statistics, even if they do get paid in L$.

Add me to the growing list of those that make enough to cover tier, and not much else. I spend a little bit in classifieds (not much at all compared to others honestly, a couple thousand lindens a month) but the rest basically goes to upload fees (ow when I keep making mistakes) and tier for a sim and a buncha mainland land. I know I need to work harder if I want to be able to pay for the sim when the price increase comes, but for now, looking back...I made a huge $5 last month. Ima go get a gallon and a half of gas!

Well I'm running at a loss and quite happy to do so for the time being. I set aside x amount of money a month that I was prepared to lose on this venture, it's something I'm enjoying and I'm prepared to pay for that enjoyment.

I'm learning graphics skills, a new scripting language and experimenting on business ideas so to me personally it's about personal development at the moment but I'd like to get to a stage where most of my tier fees are paid ...obviously then I'll think about tiering up!

As a person who has benefitted from your gorgeous homes and great personal customer service, I think you are an outstanding person to model if I was getting into an SL business.

Tier and time are the two highest costs to do business in SL.

For me, I was making some money in land, but when I broke it down to an hourly average, I immediately quit the business. I think i was making about 35 cents an hour.

Well, almost anyone, perhaps.

I deal exclusively in $L, using parcel meters. Most land deals are made even before the sims arrive new, so they are paid in $L and gifted to my avatar directly. I haven't even played with the land sale search feature in several months.

I'm very careful to report my USD income too; and anyone who takes paypal micropayments has to record each one properly as income.

With the content creation (prim-avatars mostly) I have enought to cover my tier, pay my uploads and some salary to ocasional employees and still have a little profit. But it was a long way to this point. I only invested the first $10. Non-expensive but well written classifieds, social events, SLX and SLB are the tools I use. However, Im sure that I will never be able to live only with SL incomes.
I tried to enter in the buy-sell land game but I had a very small profit with it in comparission with the content creation.

I make a decent amount of pocket money, more than enough to fund my trip to SLCC this year.

Ah hell I was going to sit this thread out, but since the larger guys are being honest. might as well be there too

If I was to look at the total L$ transactions on my account page for any given 30 day period, it comes to approxiamtely 2 milllion L$. (7500 USD?) thats in transactions, not in total profits, that also doesnt account for the monies I recieve from paypal for land tier. I pay a bit over 2000 USD per month for tier fees, Im sure Desmond and a few others can relate to those types of figures. I also earn about 50 USD a month from SLX sales. Now with those figures you would think that I ok, well part of the 2 million in transactions is pingponging L$ on lindex earning myself a little bit every month. All in all Im no where near the 5000 USD a month catagory, but Im in the 2000 -5000 catagory if they consider pure profits over tier fees, but I have invested nearly 20k USD worth of Lindens and USD cash to purchase my sims.

I wrote a little help thread about how to succeed in SL, but it it was late at night and fell off the first page before many read it, someone looking to earn some extra might find some useful information in the thread


/327/62/188943/2.html

According to the economic statistics I'm among the top 700 earners in Second Life. I'm only breaking even though, after costs, which had always been my goal. It took me 2 1/2 months to get to this point once I finally decided I should try to cover my land fees.

I have several personal acquaintances and friends who make their primary or sole incomes in Second Life. Most of them are content creators, and have a lot more in-world time and talent than I do. I've never personally met someone whose Second Life profits match what I make in RL, though, which helps me keep things in perspective whenever I feel like spending a lot of time building or scripting something in-world.

Dearly Darlings,

I make enough money to pay my 40 USD Tier and pay for Maneo's and my yearly membership and buy a few things now and again. I wish I had more computer skills to make a tad more but most things to learn here are not little old lady friendly. I only work on projects I want to; for example: the water fountain in the atrium of MM2. At my age I really don't want to waste my time on things I have no interest in. I love to go around to new places and see what other builders and content artist are up to.

What I did for the people who work for me who want to play SL when there's nothing else to do, I got a bank debt card so that they could all be verified but nothing would be on my corporate card. That way I also don't have to worry about someone stealing my CC number again. That did happen last year. Some idiot bought 3,000 USD of Porn with the AE card. Seems to work well for the ladies in my business.

I have to admit Maneo is happy not to see Linden Labs on my American Express bill any more...he'd love for me to find a sponsor for our new puppy RL! I think that will happen about the time I figure sculpties out!

You all have a lovely afternoon!

Ever Yours,

Mrs. showdog Tiger

Very good points everyone. I have been working my tail off the last few months really giving it a go to see if there in fact is full time money here. What i have realized is that there is money to be made in content creation, but it's more like starving artists kind of money. I have made my tier and subscription for half a year so far with more to come. Some money is tied up in unsellable land at todays prices but which i still consider principle if/when I decide to cash out.

I am just starting to get interested in selling my wares but this seems more difficult as there is so much competition for traffic and shopping malls are everywhere as I am sure you all know. I don;t intend to spend much on advertising. For me it is an experiment in fields that are totally out of my comfort zone, ie marketing, sales, trend spotting etc. What I come away with along with a few linden hopefully is a better understanding of what drives business and how to approach people, which will help me in my RL freelance writing career.

I think the impulse towards content creation in SL is towards making things that copy RL items, the thinking being that you see a friend is selling s-loads of shirts for example so one thinks I am going to make shirts because that is a high demand item. I can make shirts, I am going to sweat blood and stare at my monitor untill I see double into the wee hours of the morning to make my shirts. OK now my shirts are made and they truly are great shirts, now what? Now I have to develop a marketing plan, find stores, vendors, place ads, try to hawk my shirts to everyone who passes. Has the fun of SL dissappeared at this point?

What I am coming to understand (i hope) is that for me success in SL is about innovation, and my guess is we'll see less and less real life copying happening( again I can only hope). This comes full circle to my comment about SL being a starving artists money. If you truly love what you are making, and put your enjoyment and enthusiasm into it creatively I beleive you will be more successful. As is the case with many creative careers, (this is advice I get from many succesful author friends), is that you can't create with others in mind.

THis is opposite to what works in traditional buisiness where you either copy someone elses success or look to the masses for a need and try to fill it which is a very difficult model to use in SL. I think some people do well with this kind of model in SL but not many.

It may not sound like much of a distinction but I feel a you should produce stuff that is for you, what you want. You can't find a giant purple gingerbread house to live in well build it, this is the beauty of SL. You want to sail the seas in a yacht made of chewing gum but the only one you can find for sale is a lolipop one for 10000 linden? then make it yourself. Sooner or later you will hit on a niche where others will want it too and you may make some money off of it for a while untill somebody else starts making chewing gum yachts. By then you will on to the next innovation.

-why

Off-topic, but, when do you report? Only when your income "exits" the world, and enters PayPal / bank account? I figure, converting from L$ to US$, but keeping it IN-world to pay tier is probably not a reportable transaction?

I know you aren't a tax accountant (or maybe you are), but I'm just curious when people think it becomes a reportable transaction.

Oh, I definitely think that's true. Time was when it was enough just to make great content and have it available in one or two places, but with the explosive growth of SL that's not enough anymore. To be a top earner you need to be connected to various social circles and scenes where you get lots of word of mouth, and your primary sales locations need to also be destinations for things other than just shopping. Since I'm a complete hermit and only keep a couple of locations that aren't in themselves social destinations I no longer compete with a lot of other people selling similar products of similar quality. I'm okay with that. I definitely reached the point where Second Life had become Second Job, which made me start wanting Third Life.

People who come to SL with their sole aim being to become a top earner in a particular market are likely to become frustrated pretty quickly, but if profit is secondary to enjoying yourself then SL can make a nice second income and source of fun money, and can help pay a few bills.

A good number of people in SL DO either make enough to make a living off or do in fact make a living off SL.

Many of them are clothes designers, then there are the leading sex industry content creators for example.

Take a Clothes designer, let's say they sell on average for 500L, Let's say 1.5USD/Item.

They sell 2 items an hour, that's 3USD an hour, 72USD/Day, 504USD/Week or 26208USD per year.

That is clearly, 1) a very viable example (leading clothes designers have stores selling well over that). 2) a very minimalistic example for a successfull business.

Now obviously they have outgoings in the form of Land tier, but even a new sim only takes 3540USD/Yr out of that amount.

So yes, if you see a busy shop, clearly making 2 sales an hour ( based on a 1.5USD item) then they are earning enough to live off.