Seven Ways to Make Money in Second Life
Photo by davidm69
Since my start in 2006, I’ve read quite a few misleading articles about Second Life income. While many have good intentions, some are just flat out wrong. It’s time to set the record straight.
This is not an all inclusive list, but it does cover all the basics. The goal of this article is to create a realistic guide to the many possible ways of generating income from Second Life.
In order of earning potential…
Method #1 – Go Camping
(minus the trees and the fresh air)
Skill Requirements: None
Earning Estimation: Very Low – L$1 (US$0.004) every 10 minutes
How to Start: Use in-game search for the words “Camping” or “Free Linden”.
| You’re basically getting paid to hang out at certain places to make it look more popular than it really is. This use to be a popular way for new comers to earn money in Second Life. Fewer shops these days actually still employ campers due to the reduction in the benefits of traffic. The earning is so low that it’s generally considered a waste of time and electricity. |
Method #2 – Win Contests
(If at first you don’t succeed…give up and go home?)
Skill Requirements: Varies. Typically building or creative skills.
Earning Estimation: Varies. Low for frequently hosted ones. High for one-time company sponsored contests.
How to Start: Check Second Life events under “Games/Contests” category. Check forums or SL blogs for major announcements.
| The payout of a contest is usually directly related to the frequency of the contest. Weekly events such as Primtionary pays about L$25 (US$0.096) per correct guess. Clubs sometimes hold themed costume contests with decent payouts for new comers. “Show and Tell” building contests tend to be my favorites. I would recommend this method as a fun way for newbies to earn some spending money. If you are too shy to participate, it can be fun to just watch. Creativity can be infectious. Even if you don’t win, you are getting familiar with Second Life and learning useful skills. |
Method #3 – Get a Second Job
(yeah, lame joke. blah blah)
Skill Requirements: Time and ability to chat.
Earning Estimation: Low to Mid – L$50 (US$0.19) per hour to L$500 (US$1.92) depending on job. Some are completely commission based.
How to Start: Check the SL Forums or XStreetSL’s employment section.
| Typical jobs in Second Life range from hosting events, models, dancers, teachers, to escorts (yup, the oldest profession is everywhere). They are typically not as demanding as real-world jobs but the pay reflects that as well. Since the pay rate is far below typical real world minimum wages, SL jobs generally only makes sense if you enjoy what you are doing or can multi-task it. |
Method #4 – Preforming Music
(I use the term “music” here loosely…)
Skill Requirements: Ability to stream music. Musical talent.
Earning Estimation: Mid. Tip based L$500 (US$1.92) to L$2000 (US$7.69) per performance.
How to Start: Learn how to stream audio. Search forums. Talk to owners of places with live performances.
| This is one of the more unique ways for musicians to get their feet wet. Second Life audiences are generally fairly polite and forgiving. Besides, you’re anonymous. So if you have any inclination at all, why not? =] Playing DJ also falls in this category. The barrier to entry is lower for DJs so the earnings are typically lower as well. Most residences don’t expect DJs to scratch or create mixes. Playing a good collection of songs and handling requests is usually all that’s expected of a Second Life DJ. |
Method #5 – Sell Your Skills
(share that bag of talent!)
Skill Requirements: Depends. Programming, Photoshop skills, language translation, 3D modeling, etc.
Earning Estimation: Mid to High. L$1000 (US$3.85) and up depending on project.
How to Start: Check SL forum and XStreetSL for Services or Wanted.
| Unfortunately, people generally don’t pay that much for projects in Second Life. Unless you manage to land a job for an actual company, the pay cannot compare to physical world contracts. To make selling services worth your while, try picking jobs that are fun to you. Keep in mind that your time is a limited resource. |
Method #6 – Land Rental or Land Swapping
(the real estate bubble has popped in the virtual world too)
Skill Requirements: Money for buying land and paying tier.
Earning Estimation: Varies… sometimes into the negatives.
How to Start: Second Life Land Store.
| Unfortunately you can never truly “own” any virtual land. There is always a monthly fee after the initial purchase/setup cost. I actually have a strong bias against the land business. It requires a lot of upfront investment. Monthly overheads can be high. It is difficult to keep property fully rented out. Furthermore, the profit margins are low compared to the costs. The days of Anshe Chung type profitable land swaps have already passed. Unlike physical land, Linden Lab can always add more to devalue your existing property and they have a history of doing so. It’s a risky business any way you slice it. |
Method #7 – Run a Business Selling Products
(this is what this site is all about folks)
Skill Requirements: Ability to create. Entrepreneur skills.
Earning Estimation: Low to Very High (US$5000+). People who live off their SL income are usually in this category.
How to Start: How to Start a Business in Second Life
| Obviously, I am biased towards this method because 1) it’s what I do 2) I write a blog about this. Since you are dealing with real people, this can be just as challenging as any other business. I’ve already discussed the benefits of a virtual world business so I won’t keep beating the dead horse. In all sincerity, I do believe this is the best way to make money in Second Life because it can be an excellent source of passive income. |
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This list is open to correction or addendum. If your experience in Second Life differs feel free to share it in the comments. Keeping any addition to the same format for readability would be greatly appreciated. =]
-Todd
A very good list – on the top of my head I can’t think of anything you have missed. I disagree however with the “most people in this category (7) live off their SL earnings”. I am fairly familiar with the SL fashion industry, and only a fraction of the people actually live off their revenues. My guess is that in fashion not more than 1000 designrs actually derive their full RL income from that. There is a fair level of designers who receive a (significant) chunk towards their RL income from their SL business, but the vast majority only receives money in the magintude of an allowance from SL.
Please note I’m saying “Most people who are living off their SL income are in this category.” not “Most people are living off their SL income in this category.”
Hmm, I should reword this for clarity. Thanks Peter.
I’m aware that most folks here are not making viable income off Second Life. This is one of the reason I’ve started this blog.
Oops… you are right – that comes from too quick reading :-)
Fantastic article, Todd! #5 has been a shocking revelation for myself as I’ve aged in SL and outsourced certain tasks I don’t have the inclination to pursue myself. When I hire someone and offer them real-world wages, they are usually stunned. So as a buyer, #5 can be a real plus. As a provider, not so much!
It’s for this reason, I’ve also really become a believer in specializing; the market favors buyers, so if you can find a competent, responsible provider to fill in the gaps for skill sets you might not possess yourself, by all means hire it out! Why spend weeks learning how to create sculpties, for example, when you can buy custom-made sculpties for ~L$5-10,000 and often far less than that? It’s a no-brainer.
This is a nice article to give to someone that just gets into sl and wants to know how to make money.
I’m not sure about the 5000 us$ + from #7. I sell products of my own and I’m way below that :D. I think most of the designers are around
300 – 1000 us$. But hard to know
Kahiro, you seem to be misreading Todd’s post.
“People who live off their SL income are usually in this category.”
Yes, very High –> 5000 us$ + is right, and a lot more :D
As someone who is still in the development, pre-launch stage of her SL business (but with over a decade of RL business experience) it always piques my curiosity as to just WHAT people do earn in SL.
I mean…I hear from some people who claim they are making a living off of SL…but that means different things to different people. Some people consider $1000/month to be “a living” which it is if you are in a dual-income family (or living in your parent’s basement!).
I often wonder if the $5000+ crowd is in fact a rare anomaly amongst SL content creators.
Yes Nadine, people making US$5000+ a month is definitely in the minority. There’s usually only about 200 people. You can find the hard numbers from the SL economic data page under the in_world_business_profits.xml link.
i have still one method….
method #8: get a real job
skill requirements: high
earning estimation: high (from L$ 20.000 per hour)
you should view SL as a place for fun or that’s fine by me profitable hobby. don’t thing you are going to make millions here.
Hi Yvette. I think you missed the title of this article >=]
Besides, why tread on other people’s dreams? While no one claim it’s easy, it’s certainly possible to make a good living from a Second Life business? I did and there are others who did as well.
Good article. I rarely comment on blogs. When I say rarely, I mean this may well be the 3rd time ever – quite a feat considering I’ve worked online for over a decade. Anyway, on with my point…
What prompted me to post is the comment by Yvette. This kind of thinking is typical of most unimaginative surfer-types who cannot comprehend the vast fortunes available to be made in internet marketing. And Todd is correct, such a comment may well step on people’s dreams.
Let me give you something to chew on.
I remember 5 years ago making $4,000 a week from AVS systems as an adult webmaster (look it up). The work required was appx 2 hours a day and I outsourced that to my wife! The reason for such high earnings was the “traffic quality”. Everyone inside an avs site were confirmed adults who had payment info on file. Do you see the parallel?
In my day-to-day work I run sites, among other things, that get several million unique visitors a day. In sl the traffic is meager in comparison BUT the quality is astounding. The vast majority of users are verified adults with payment info on file who are not afraid to spend. If you can’t think out of the box and make at least 100K+ per year then you should be shot.
I’m sure the dullards like Yvette will think such pronouncements are improbably but that’s ok. The more Yvettes in the world, the less competition for the rest of us smart cookies, eh?
Hi Kristian, I’m glad that this post has compelled you to participate in the comments. Thanks for sharing your experience. The points you’ve made about internet income are certainly valid.
When commenting, I found it more beneficial to focus on the issue rather than the authors. We all have different opinions. It’s also more convincing to simply respectfully disagree. =]
Todd, learn to embrace debate and out-and-out fighting. It makes your blog sticky! The purpose of my post, however, was not to shoot down Yvette, but to fan the fire of passion felt by many of your ambitious readers. I’m still a young guy and I’ve been doing well online almost since the word go. I know how it feels to want a healthy income from IM. Many of your readers will be sat at home, making peanuts, dreaming of leaving their day jobs in favor of all the benefits of being a self-employed internet marketer: keeping your own hours, doing what you love, working in your underwear (lol). People like Yvette need to be put in their place in a blog like this. If you don’t think so, maybe I should start up a blog and fill the void. Better for you that I don’t though. ;)
Success and arrogance need not go hand-in-hand.
I don’t want to step into a flame-war, Kristian, but Todd actually has exhibited a good deal of practical insight as it pertains to SL-based business workings.
I would, however, agree with you that a little back-and-forth commentary is good to have, provided it doesn’t devolve into personal attacks. :)
Hey … you forgot begging for Lindens.
Go away beggar. Shoo~ Now, where’s my digital broom?
Just to say that I teach inside Second Life, and my pay rate is the same as in the real world – that it 20 euros / hour. 1 hour weekly only, unfortunately ;-)
So your mileage may vary, according on what kinf of teaching you do and who pays you.
Another good article, and a great one to point newbies to when they ask the perennial question of how to make Ls.
I do want to comment on your segment on musical performance. Very few musicians (my band included) do free or just-for-tips gigs (with the exception of fundraisers or a favor for a friend). New ones who sell themselves short will, perhaps, but by and large musicians will charge around $2000L-$6000L for an hour-long performance (we’ve been told that our rate of $3500L is too low). My band started out doing free gigs for charity, so that people would get a chance to hear us and know what they’re getting, and then we set a rate for other venues to hire us. So far, knock on wood, we’re doing all right for ourselves.
Another word to the wise for aspiring virtual musicians: get paid in advance. Too many instances of being stiffed in RL have taught us that.
Thanks for sharing the tip Mistletoe. Does your performances consist of more than one person? I wonder if having more than one person puts you guys in a different price range.
Glad I came upon your blog. I look forward to reading more of your articles shortly. I think your Linden ranges are very accurate, until #7 :) I’m not saying it is impossible, but $5,000USD is statistically very uncommon. It is only about 0.3% of the current 700,000+ monthly unique residents visiting SL for 2009. I know you revealed the numbers link in one of your replies, I just wanted to put those numbers into perspective.
I admire anyone who can sell enough widgets in SL to make $5,000 USD a month. That’s 1.3Million Lindens a month. If your average widget costs L$350, you are selling 3,700 widgets a month, or about 125 items a day. That’s a fantastic business.
I’ve started a blog myself called “Metaverse For Business” where I’m comparing/contrasting RL business concepts to the metaverse. I’m interested in seeing how relative or applicable they are. I have added your blog to my blog roll. Good stuff!
I think it’s also worth pointing out that a LOT of business transactions take place outside of SL, but involving virtual world services. I’ve had a few clients pay me in USD by credit card or check, for services rendered in-world.
Likewise, I prefer to pay my contractors with USD, to save both of us the LindeX fees.
All of these transactions, of course, are not recorded by Linden Lab as SL economic activity. So the estimated number of earners involved with SL, could–and likely is–much higher than can be easily measured.
@Nadine, certainly a valuable point that some transactions occur outside of SL, but considering that the majority of in-world txns are only just a few lindens (pennies to you and I), I doubt that the number of earners is “much higher than can be easily measured”. I would venture to guess that the people making $200USD or more a month are also the same earners with txns outside of SL for convenience, not increasing this number at all basically. Thoughts?
Hmmm. Well. The only reason I got into SL in the first place was as an means to explore these reports that I’d heard in the media for a few years now.
That being the RL companies conducting job fairs in SL. I’ve seen fosil remains of this very thing happening in SL… but I haven’t actually seen it happen.
THAT has been disappointing. VERY MUCH SO!
What gets me is the potential in this medium to do so much more, at a very economical cost.
Otherwise… if not for the hype in the media, I’d have ignored SL. Big hairy deal, I don’t play games. I find them boring, generally.
Now give me something to make, learn or explore and that’s a different matter! But… well…
If I hadn’t met some really cool people, who have been very helpful in getting my feet under me, I’d have not wasted the space on my computer and walked away chalking SL up as yet another wild goose chase on the quest to find that fabled job to retire from.
You guessed it, I’m one of the many techs hit by the current economic problems. Specifically a nearly 2 decade veteran of CAD drafting, a switch hitter between AutoCAD and MicroStation, with loads of experience in Civil, Electircal and Utility Mapping.
They’re hiring fully papered engineers for my jobs now (which makes me cringe at the inevitable mess that will result… that’s like asking an engineer to do their own secretarial work. NOT PRETTY! Ah, but history repetes itself. Raganomics did the same thing…). And I’m out in the cold, eyeing college again, and cringing about whether or not I can afford such things without having to pay for said education with what retirement monies I might have in 13 to 18 years…