Before you take a read on this opinion take a read of my post above in the labels called "A Dancer's Life".
*****
Let's just say that I sure was fooled when I first came to
Second Life. Making money, real money in Second Life is just as hard as making
money in the "real" world. In fact, I tend to think it's much more
difficult. While I'm sure that many people have made money in Second Life, I
tend to think most of them make enough just to pay the tier enacted by Linden
Labs, or the rent they pay to greedy landlords, or not so greedy landlords.
I have many new women coming to me asking me how to make
money in a virtual world. The biggest problem I see is that many do not have or
wish to learn the skills or make the investment that it takes to earn a virtual
living. Other than camping or becoming a skilled and lucky Zyngo player, every
money making venture requires an investment in time and capital.. which is
money for most of us.
Let take an example of a dancer, or even a club host. Many
say that either job doesn't make a lot of money. Well that's not entirely true.
I danced and brought in over one-thousand lindens a week, sometimes in a night.
Now before I get a plethora of comments about that being nothing, to a new
member of the Lindonean race, one-thousand Lindens is quite a bit of cash. So
yeah, you can make money in this virtual world. And at four-thousand Lindens a
month you have enough to invest in a small plot of Linden Land and have some
cash left over.
But before you can make that kind of cash you need to
invest. You need a decent shape. You need at least one and preferably a few top
notch skins to cover that shape. You need clothes. While freebie clothes may do
for a start. Don't expect customers to throw Lindens your way until you really
invest in good sexy lingerie and exotic wear. Hair, oh yes. Not that spiky worm
like hair.. oh no.. you need the good stuff. How about shoes, belts, jewelry
and dances!! Before you know it, you have invested at least a few thousand
lindens into your avatar to make it look good.
Now jumping on a dance pole and wiggling your ass isn't
going to get you rolling in the dough. Most people, that's men AND women, are
you ready for that too; need a little verbal stimulus. You have to be good at
getting them turned on. And not virtually turned on! You have to invoke a REAL
feeling in this person you’re wishing to extract money from. Because like you,
they know that Lindens are worth real value to. You have to give them the
feelings they came seeking you out for. And what is that feeling? You have to
find out! Does this sound easy? Let me tell you it's not. So, after dropping a
couple thousand now you have to LEARN how to turn on the person on the other
side of that avatar with your words. Are you ready to spend another valuable
resource, your time, to learn that skill?
No, even a simple job like dancing in the virtual world can
have a steep learning curve. But let's say you are open-minded. You have no
issue turning on men and women (remember, were talking about really turning
them on now, not virtually; and know that the woman you’re turning on could be
a man in real life, or vice versa). You have no moral issues about going nakie
when the coins drop into the till. Let's say you learn to emote. You know how
to start a conversation and how to keep it entertaining. You're doing
everything right and yes, you're making three-hundred to one-thousand a night.
Now what are you going to do with all of that cash?
Here is where it gets interesting. You dance to earn cash.
Why? To spend the cash of course. So you do. You spend your hard earned Lindens
on.. CLOTHES! That's right, because while you are dancing in yet that same ol'
bra n' panty set. The girl next to you is in that super-hot latex second skin
with just enough exposed to make YOU a little warm. And you want one too
because all of a sudden, she is making more tips then you. And her boots!!
Wow.. if you only had boots like that. And her hair and her skin and prim
nails.. Raggedy Ann looks better then you next to her. So you take your hard
earned money and you buy clothes. And not clothes that you can wear anywhere,
nope. You buy "stripper clothes".
Now the vicious circle is complete. You are dancing to earn
money so that you can purchase items that allow you to be a better dancer and
earn money. So, what is a dancer to do? Well there is always modeling or
escorting. Good luck with that too!
*****
Boy it sure sounds like the Sedona of yesteryear was a
fairly cynical woman! Well not
really. When I wrote that many
realizations were coming to me. An
epiphany of sorts occurred to me around the fact that no matter how hard you
work in Second Life, doing the typical jobs one does here is not going to make
you financially independent. I became a
student in the Second Life economy and I found that in reality there are two
economies in play here.
- The Linden Economy: Wealth in SL is based on the accumulation of lindens, our in-world currency. Everything can be purchased with lindens and in truth many created in-world items are very cheap or even free. But what makes this economy thrive is not the massive consumer market or the desire people have to accumulate “things”. What make this economy work is that a single Linden is incredibly cheap when compared to any real world value. Okay I hear you saying; “dammit Sed not another analogy to that other place where bad things happen! I love my fantasy!” So do I, but in comparison to real wealth, a Linden or even many of them are pretty cheap. I feel discussing the other economy will bring some light to my reasoning around this.
- The Land Economy: While everything in the linden economy is considered virtual everything dealing with the land economy is not. The big irony about our little fantasy world is that in truth, the basic existence of it still aligns to the fact that it is directly tied to real life value and wealth. In simplistic terms, the wealth you pay for your virtual land is really nothing more than you paying for computer resources. That’s right; in truth Linden Labs is nothing more than a giant, extremely advanced web hosting service and Second Life is in a sense, a social network for the anonymous.
So, the genie is out of the bottle here. You may be thinking I’m full of crap because
you can “play” in Second Life for free.
You can accumulate crap for free.
You can do everything for free in Second Life and still participate just
about fully in the environment that Linden Labs provides. And you’re correct if you look at the
investment you made AFTER you log in.
But what about before you log in?
Ask yourself this, when you purchased your computer did you think about
its capabilities? If you were logging
into our lovely virtual universe when deciding to purchase your computer I bet
you made damn sure well that it could run the SL client you use in probably the
high or the “OMG it looks so real” mode.
Because shadows are important too.
You may not realize it but what real value you invested in before
you even log into Second Life is part of the land economy too. Hopefully by now you are beginning to see my
point. The land economy is directly tied
to the real world economy! Land in
Second Life has nothing to do with the social experiment I’ve talked about in
earlier columns. Land in Second Life has
nothing to do with the virtual goodies that end up in your inventory. Land in Second Life exists so that Second
Life can exist. And EVERY single person
pays for that economy, regardless of whether you actually own, lease, rent or
use free land. Everybody pays some real
value to be a part of the Linden’s virtual 3D anonymous “Facebook”.
So do the two economies I’ve laid out have zero relationship
to each other? We all know that you can
convert Lindens to real currency and that real currency can purchase
Lindens. But is a Linden actually
considered “currency”. Linden Labs says
it’s not. They consider Lindens “tokens”
used for the transfer of virtual items in their virtual universe. Personally I disagree with that premise. I spend Lindens each month to lease land that
I can use to make a virtual home. Those
lindens are used by my land owner, converted to real capital, to lease the
server that allows my land to exist; with a tidy profit she keeps for herself
I’m sure.
So why would anyone want to become a SL gazillionaire? Most likely for the same reason I discussed
in my blog article. Because those
“tokens” are really just like the tokens I use in my real life. But we call them coins, or dollar bills. And if I made a gazillion of them in Second
Life I could probably pay for at least my bi-weekly trip to the nail
salon. Yeah, I want nails like Sedona
has now! Well, not as long. So the question came back to me. If I could get pretty nails via Second Life
how would I do it? What economy should I
invest in? Do I invest in the linden
economy or the land economy? My answer
really came down to this; how much real world financial risk am I willing to
take?
Either way I knew that any investment I made into becoming
rich in Second Life would incur a cost.
Again my blog article clearly spells this out. It could be a financial cost, or a personal
cost in time and energy spent learning skills to accomplish the task at hand to
acquire the virtual wealth I desired. If
I take the financial risk then to me, the land economy seemed the prudent
choice. I’m already in for a dime, why
not for a dollar so to speak. I’ve spent
the money to have the computer necessary to invest my time in SL, so why not
invest more in hopes of getting a return?
I did this for a while. Basically
land flipping with some financial partners and I did find it very rewarding
financially. But the costs and risk
compared to the linden economy was huge and I found I didn’t have the stomach
for it. Second Life wasn’t as much fun
for me as I always worried if my tier costs would kill any profit from my flip
if I held onto the land to long. So I
gracefully exited that scene.
I then turned to the linden side of the economy. I first looked at building content. I tried clothing, homes, anything. I even pursued scripting as I have a real
talent for computer programming. While I
feel with time and energy I could become a great creator of content, the time
involved to learn the skills and to come up with the imaginative designs
required more than my real life allowed.
And I just don’t have the patience to keep a long term vision relevant
in my priorities. I’m sure if you ask
Sky she will agree with me on that.
My last attempt was to try the typical route of starting a
club. Since SL is a big ass social
washing machine I felt a well-designed club, managed properly with just the
right theme surely would be profitable.
The club I came up with which was actually a resort was successful. We had a good sized following and anybody
that came always said they loved it there and had a great time. But two problems cropped up. The first was that running a club full time
was like having a second job. I would at
time regret logging onto SL because I knew I had to deal with personnel issues
or plan events or god forbid, do accounting.
Managing a club is work! And I
work hard enough in my real life. My
other problem was that while we got paid in linden economy currency I had to
pay out costs in land economy currency.
Since a dollar is about two-hundred and sixty times more in value then a
linden. Whatever lindens we took in made
barely made a dent in our tier costs. So
I paid a lot of my real world cash (my business partner paid a lot more) to
keep the club open and expanding. In the
end I just didn’t see the reason to pay to do something that seemed like a job
to me. So I closed the club down.
Do all of my failures, or learning experiences as I like to
call them, mean you cannot become a gazillionaire in Second Life? Absolutely you can! If you look at the first two attempts you
will see had I had the entrepreneurial spirit or patience to keep to a long
range goal I’m sure I would be hip deep in lindens by now. But since I don’t does this mean I’ll never
have any wealth in Second Life? No, I
have tremendous wealth in Second Life. My wealth
does not come in the form of financial treasure. It comes in the form of personal gain to me
as a person.
The personal gain I speak of is not Sedona’s, but of her
puppeteer, me. A couple of months back
Harry Bailey wrote an article about “What would Friday do?” Reading this article made me think about how
Sedona’s virtual life affected my own.
When I came to Second Life I strived to make Sedona’s personality my
own, but with a twist. She would be less
critical of people, more patient of them, and more understanding and caring of
others not like me. I know those traits
were inside of me I just needed to be in a place where exercising them would
produce less real emotional risk to myself.
Could I open myself up to others, be more empathetic and be that “sweet
little girl” my mother always reminded me I was?
It’s been over five years now. Sed has always been here. She has always been
active. And after reading Harry’s article
I reflected back and thought how often in my real life did I ask myself “what
would Sedona do in this situation”. My
answer was not always “the answer”. But
it always gave me pause to look at the real life situation in another
perspective. I get asked a lot how do I
keep my interest in Second Life for so long with the same avatar. I do because today I still meet great people
every day, have wonderful virtual experiences (no, not sex) with my friends,
and find amazing creations that come from peoples imagination from all over the
world. So did I ever meet my goal of
becoming a gazillionaire in Second Life?
If you say yes you’re damn right I did!
I’ve gained more personal wealth then I could ever imagine in Second Life. And I do so for less than a night out every
month. My return on my investment has
been remarkable.
I am a gazillionaire in Second Life. But in ways I didn’t even think existed.
