Second Life First for Business

Want the ultimate virtual business experience? Want to make Real Money for your online virtual venture? Then second life is the ticket you've been waiting for! I found out about Second Life from a friend I met a few years back playing Star Wars: Galaxies. I have to say I was a bit apprehensive about it at first, but once I got in to the virtual world, it lived up to the hype.

Let me start by saying that Second Life is not a game per say, it's a virtual world. You won't find any end game inside. With that being said, it's not for everyone. What you will find is very robust item creation tools that let you make just about anything, and I mean that in the literal sense. It also has its very own scripting language so you can actually program inside of the world.

The community is also fantastic! People will stop and actually help others out. When's the last time you had a bunch of people offer to give you a vast amount of help and advice in any game, without having to beg for it? The latest estimate gathered from Second Life's home page is that there are over 7.4 million "residents" with over 1.6 million logging in the past 60 days and about 30,000 logged in at any given time, that's pretty impressive!

Let's look at business opportunity in Second Life.

Real Monetary Value

When you make cash in Second Life, it has real world value. I'm not talking about back ally deals with credit farming companies or EBay. Linden Labs, the producers of Second Life, deliberately built the virtual world with a real world economy in mind. Lindens, the Second Life equivalent of the Dollar, can be sold back to Linden Labs and other residents for real U.S. Cash. The way this is handled is through a virtual bank system called the Lindex. You can also buy Lindens through the Lindex. So what is Linden money worth? The exchange rate varies based on supply and demand, the more money in demand the more its worth and vice versa. At the time of this writing L$10,000 is worth approximately $35 U.S. Dollars.

So what ways can you cash in on the virtual gold mine?

How about a virtual casino? Yes, you can create and run a virtual casino. Clothing Store? Yes, you can open a Clothing Store. Night Club? Yes! Strip Club? Yes, you can even open a virtual Strip Club in Second Life. When I say you can do anything, I mean anything!

The Creation Business

One of the best ways to cash in is to create products that other residents would like to purchase. Not every resident is a creator, some purchase virtual cash and enjoy the game without ever creating, or earning, anything.

Creating items that people want to purchase isn't as easy as it sounds. Item creation takes time, talent and a lot of practice. Photoshop knowledge is very useful in Second Life for any type of texture work. Any programming language experience is also good. Java script, C++ and C# are all structured very similar to Second Life's scripting language LSL, languages like VB.NET will be OK, but LSL is a strongly typed language like the C derivatives making the transition from a VB style language to LSL more difficult.

Unlike other MMO's, Second Life as a game does not compete against players in the creation market, meaning that Linden Labs does not create content for sale as a rule. Everything you see in game is created by a resident, from Buildings to Bicycles - Zoot Suits to Zebra's, it's all created by other people just like you and I.

Not only can you do anything and create anything, but you get to keep the intellectual property rights to your creations! Yes, you heard right, you keep IP rights to your creations! How sweet is that?

So, what are the more popular items that one can create for sale in Second Life?

Clothing is always popular, but there's a lot of competition, be prepared to aggressively market your clothing business and to have to put a good effort into learning Photoshop for creating the textures.

Scripting can make you a lot of cash if you happen to like programming and can get used to the LSL language and its occasional quirks. You can easily make more money in scripting than clothing with much less competition.

Gadgets are very popular, find a niche you like and create items for it. Programming of gadgets can get extremely complex. But the reward is usually higher for more complex gadgets.

The Land Business

I read somewhere, sometime earlier this year, that one person was making a 6 figure salary from selling Second Life Real Estate. I'll give a second for that to sink in /Que_Elevator_Music /Pause 10. Ok, now that you're drooling. The land business is a cut throat, down and dirty business in Second Life. Your competitors will do anything to beat you out of it. It is the one proven business type in Second Life that you can make a real life living from. But be prepared to invest real life capital in a Second Life real estate business.

Unlike Creating, Linden Labs is in the real estate business, which means they have the power to create new land and undercut any competitor in the land game at any time. Land pricing is determined on supply and demand and there is monthly tier payments as a sort of rental based on the total square kilometers you hold on average each month. Holding land that doesn't sell can and will get very expensive.

The Club Business

Clubs are mostly money losers in Second Life. While fun, clubs are pretty expensive to run due to land requirements, staff costs, advertising and contest prizes. If you always dreamed of owning your own night club, but never had quite enough cash to open a real one, this is your chance. As the former owner of a Second Life night club, I can tell you it takes a lot of work to keep a good club going. Regulars won't just pop out of the woodwork to be there, you need to advertise and keep a good atmosphere to make it work. Even then plan on spending real money to not only get going, but keep going.

A few simple rules to having a popular club are.

Have an original idea for the design [the look] and theme of the club, if you can't seem to design a club that you can be proud of, hire a professional Second Life club designer.

Hire only the best staff you can afford or find, make sure that they are outgoing and good looking. Don't hire anyone to work a club that has been a resident less than 2 months.

If you can afford it, hire a professional DJ to spin live at least once a week in your club on the weekend. You can DJ yourself by downloading broadcasting software used to run an internet radio station.

There's no assured way to make sure you do anything but lose money on a club. But I can tell you, it's a hell of a lot of fun. The only exception to not losing cash on a club is sex clubs; we'll get to the sex trade next.

The Second Life Sex Trade

The sex trade is one of the most lucrative business' in Second life. Hands down, sex sells. Depending on what part of the trade you're in be it the Club Owner, Dancer, Call Girl or perhaps a Club Manager or maybe you create sex gadgets. There's a ton of money to be made in the sex trade, but it doesn't just fall in your lap. If you own a sex club, you better have some sort of experience to make it work. If you're the Dancer/Call Girl, you better have a very good looking avatar. A few steadfast rules apply to the sex trade, be sexy, look sexy and have a great and outgoing personality. You don't have all three of those; you just aren't going to earn much.

The most important thing in Second Life is to have fun with whatever you do. There's no point in doing something you don't like in a virtual world, that would be like going to the job you already don't like. Be safe and whether you make big bucks or not, have fun.