I need a job...

Okay, I have gone to the SL Job kiosks, and put in my info. I have waited for a VERY long time, and I have gotten NO responses. I have been VIGOROUSLY searching for a source of income, because I only have 83 $L. I HATE camping chairs, because I want to actually WORK for my money, and not just sit around all day. I will not get a job as a stripper, or any thing like that (no sex) and I dont know how to build/script/texture. Where do you suggest I go for work? I love driviing/racing, I love shooting, love being social, and I love writing. Everyone tells me that there are plenty of jobs, but I just can't find them. I would go to money trees, but I am almost a year old.

Finding a job in SL is not easy. Have you tried looking at the employment forum? Clubs often need hosts or security staff.

There aren't plenty of jobs to be honest. There are opportunities, but not _jobs_ as such. That's not as bad as it would be in RL, though, because imbalances of resources don't exist here such that one is reliant on the rich to survive.

You tell us what you _like_, which is great, but what _can_ you do? What do you have skills in? What is there that someone might say "hey, I would like that done for me but I can't / won't do it myself, I'll pay this person for it"?

If you love being social and have a good sense of humor you might consider being a host at a club. Find a nice club that has desent traffic (not camping traffic) but lacks somone to welcome people as they come in and ask the owner if he/she would like someone to talk to people and help keep them there for a while. The problem with a lot of clubs in SL is that they could be much more fun if there was someone to get the conversations going, joke around, and have fun with verbally. You could work for tips only at first.

Much of the money that might go towards jobs in the economy is used to fund camping chairs.

The most efficient means of getting money in SL still remains flipping RL burgers, then using lindex to convert usd to linden dollars.

Flipping RL burgers is one of the less efficient ways to earn RL income.

Part time brain surgery would be a more effective use of time.

'cept I have a CC that has .12 USD in it, and I get paid tomorrow, but my stupid employer only pays enough for a car payment, rent, and food. >>

best way to make money in SL is thinking on what would you spend the money in SL and making it yourself and then sell it to others that actually got the money to buy stuff.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We got a winner!

My SL business came from similar. I jumped in the game, got beach property, and then started creating content for my beach. This same content is what my small shop sales now. Sure it took a few months, but I think I am finally about to break even. LOL My debit card took a beating first...

Learning to build/script/texture or whatever floats your boat and setting up shop would probably be the most stable source of income, but it sounds like you're looking for money right away, and it takes time and usually a small initial investment (texture uploads, shop space, etc.) to get a product line ready and find a place to sell it.

There are people in the employment ops/help wanted forum looking for slingo hosts, and someone's looking for a writer. You might try contacting these people directly to let them know you're available to start working immediately.

Probably, like in RL, just filling out job applications will get a low response rate. I would think that following up with an IM to the hiring agent to let them know you're still interested is appropriate.

Bear in mind that when you look at the brilliant buildings, scripts, and textures in SL it may seem you can't compete. I know a lot of new people feel this way. And the truth is.. um, in fact, you probably can't. There are people with years of experience in SL, and there are people coming into SL with years of RL professional experience already...

** BUT **

If you are good at coming up with ideas you don't NEED to compete with them!

Several people I know have made a lot of money with good original ideas and relatively basic scripting/building skills. That's the trick - be the first into a market, be an innovator. Bear in mind, the brilliant builders/scripters are brilliant and you probably won't be able to compete with them long-term - you will get better over time, but there are always limits on natural talent, and realistically most people will never be a Starax Statosky or June Dion - but doing truly quality work takes a lot of time too, so many of them will not take risks on entirely new ideas that may not sell. You can be the person who does that instead. They might copy your product but in that time you've had 5 new ideas. It doesn't work in RL commerce, but it SL it does (which gives you a head-start on RL companies, too, because they tend to apply their RL knowledge)

If you do end up going the content creation route, the good news is all the tools you need are freely available - all you need is patience and determination, whether you script, build, texture, create shapes & skins, and even sculpted prims. Content creation really is the traditional route most have taken to steady SL income, enough to cover expenses & fund the odd shopping trip, but it takes a good eye to create stuff people want.

I guess if I were looking for a relatively fast & painless way to cover tier I'd start mining the free script library. There's a lot of underutilized content there and some basic scripting knowledge (easily picked up from the wiki tutorials and in game classes) combined with a good eye for basic prim building & a couple freebie texture packs from slx - add in the freebie scripts and you'll have stuff that does amazing things.

Bad news of course, is it takes a while to get it all down, and there's no guarantee. If you do it for love & not money, its a lot easier on your nerves - if you've got basic talent that can be developed into creating stuff people like, you'll easily cover game expenses.

Want to organise a Clue / Cluedo style murder mystery with locations scattered across 17 sims? (i.e. Hypatia in the Graveyard, with a Derringer...)

You'll need something like six or more "perpetrator cards" (just a prim with a texture on it with a piccy and name of the suspect), six or more "weapon cards" and six or more "location cards" (and the locations might have various cards set out for people to discover; there would be a small prize for the first person to solve it all).

Maybe one 'master set' texture so people know what all the possibilities are - you might get some number of Caledon citizens playing, say 50 at once wouldn't surprise me!

Best to answer me in this thread if interested, and if so we can follow up later in-world. The real art will be in the organisation of it, and as for people to create the textures and cards, well, I can get others to help you via some mean$ or other if you can't do it yourself.

It's just one of those things I *wish* I'd got done, but can never seem to pull together.

As for $L, well, I get the sense we'd settle on something easily. Find me, answer me here, or send me a notecard inworld if I'm offline - I should be back inworld in a day or two

Wow, $59Linden
Hmm should be able to buy a lot of $1 prim noodles to live on

Well who ever told you there were plenty of jobs obviously hasn't needed to look for one without programing & 3D Modeling skills.
If you been here a year you should have at least had a crack at building, it's easier than it sounds, free training courses are found in s Search > Events > Education
6 months here and I still rely on CreditCard, somebody has to put money into the economy
Nearly got some things ready to sell, but not expecting to make a fortune from them.
Thinking about buying land to rent out but so far the number crunching and vacant blocks about say no.

My point was, you could spend an hour in a RL job, perhaps at 6 usd an hour (i dunno what minimum wage is). That 6 usd translates to over 1500 linden dollars. Unless you have professional quality programming or graphic design skills (which I doubt, or your employer would be paying more than just enough to cover food rent and gas), you aren't going to get that much money from any in-world job in one hour.

RL Overtime. Or a second RL job.

Um, How am I reliant on the rich to survive in RL. From what I've been able to discern SL is no different than RL in that your success is largely dependent upon the effort YOU put into, not the effort someone else puts into it.

I realize this may be flogging a downed horsed (no disrespect to horses everywhere and those that love them), but I've never understood the need to camp or related activities for L$ unless one has no friends or sources to help exchange real money for L$.

If money, in world, is needed, trading in real money for L$ is the sanest method. Obtaining real world money is much easier than L$ (via a SL job), I should think. At worst, half a day pan handling might turn up more than expected. There's also temp labour agencies...

And then there's... gasp... exchanging monthly expenses (i.e. decreasing one entertainment fund to slide those amounts over to the addiction known as SL).

During a conversation with my partner last night, we were stunned for a moment when we realized that I spend less now on SL per month (tier for land) than I did on my weekly comic book allowance when attending University (that was $20 per week in the late 80s).

I digress. Necessity is also the mother of invention -- create and sell or offer social services (greeter, organizer, planner etc.) to those in need.

Good luck to the OP!

For some non-US users, it is difficult to find any way to exchange real money for L$. LL doesn't take any payment methods that they have access to, or the transaction costs are prohibitive. Growth of SL really took off internationally when LL removed the requirement for payment information; it's not simply because some people didn't want to provide information, it's because they CAN'T.

Quite a lot of people feel that trading real money for L$ is dirty, dumb or ridiculous. They'd rather waste 5 hours doing a menial task to get L$200 than spend one $1 US.

I can't count the number of times where replying "I buy them" to "so where do you get your L$?" resulted in disbelief or a rant on how crazy I am.

Take another look at the geographical spread of residents and then tick off countries that don't have banks that offer a credit card, or where PayPal isn't available. There are virtually no people who can not buy L$ if they truly wanted to.

If you need $L and you have no skills, buy it. The small skills that you have wouldn't make you enough to pay for the electricity it takes to run your computer for the time.

I had thought that most residents lived in countries where PayPal and other friendly means of money transfers were possible. I guess I'm living in the dark ages. For years I've purchased items from people all over the world (Germany, UK, Japan, Australia etc.) using PayPal, so I just assumed and you know what happens when one assumes.

Thanks for the clarification.

Why work when you can play?

Some of the best advice I ever got in SL was a brief conversation:
Me: Is bingo stupid?
Them: No. You can win money.

When I was "young" and my pixels all non-wrinkly I played bingo to win Linden dollars. I went to every bingo game I could find. Bingo is pretty easy. Mark your card as the numbers are called and if they match yours yell Bingo. There's a 1 in X (number of cards in play) chance of winning. Someone has to win the round.

There's a variety of games (Search > Events) in SL in which a player can walk away with small and sometimes large amounts of cash. Accumulate enough L$ and you can do things like upgrade your account, get a small parcel, cash it out and have a cheeseburger, etc.

Presently, a fun game with nice pots per round (L$400-ish to L$500-ish) is Captions, run by Trimming Hedges on Thursdays at 6pm in Stillman. He shows us pictures and we make up funny captions and the winner of each round gets a cash prize (and a shirt). Anyone can play. It's my favorite event in SL.

i don't understand why people camp....i bet it uses up more money in electricity keeping your computer on all night then it would be to just buy some lindens.