I have found another place to earn a bit more for those of you who:
1) Have a bit of time on your hands
B) Have graphics editing software (and know how to use it)
III) Have knowledge (or a strong desire to learn) 3D computer modeling
That is a place called "
Second Life". Some of you may have heard of it. Heck some of you are probably already in it. Now, I've never been one for internet chatting. I guess I just don't have all that much to say. And I certainly didn't see the point in using a chat program where everyone is running around as little cartoon characters.
What I didn't realize is (now I don't know about others, all i know about is Second Life) that it is so much more than just chatting. There are actual businesses in there. Barack Obama has a Second Life campaign headquarters. If you have the talent and the time, there are people who have left their 'real life' jobs and are
making their living in the Second Life world.
Just in case you think it is only for the geekish, Rueters (you know the news people) have their own "
Second Life News Center." This is Rueters people! And they have a correspondent that covers Second Life stuff.
It has even come to where the US Congress is talking about how to
tax dollars earned in these virtual worlds.
Ok, buy now you are probably saying "but I don't understand it all." Which is probably correct. And even after fairly exhaustive research on the matter, I'm not certain I understand it either. But here goes my view of what goes on.
Second Life has their own currency. They are called "Linden Dollars" and the currency symbol is displayed as L$1 or sometimes $1L. But I think officially it is supposed to be L$1. Now, people start to accumulate mass quantities of these Lindens (which is the vernacular - or sometimes Lindeys). After accumulating mass quantities of Lindens, people can and do sell them for real money. I have seen the Lindens on the
Ebay, but it is also possible to buy them from people in the game (indirectly). According to the Reuters Second Life site, the current exchange is 267.4L$/USD. I know, it sounds crazy. The have an
exchange? For p
lay money? Whatever.
So where is the money being made? Several places. One is real estate. For a mere $1,700 (real money, not the Linden dollar crap) you can buy your own island. Then you can sell and/or rent part or all of the land to other people. You can build up whatever type of community you want on the island.
So virtual real estate is one way. Another way is to make things in Second Life and sell them. People sell clothes (as referenced above), hair (go figure), cars, planes, space ships, light sabers. Think of something, and they sell it.
And yet another way is *ahem* prostitution. Strange, but true. Now I don't know why someone would pay someone else to have two cartoon characters...uh... "make the beast with two backs" (to paraphrase Billy Shakespeare). But I guess they do. So not only clothes and hair are for sale, but anatomically enhanced...er...body parts also.
Seriously though, I think if you have the vision and the time, you could make some good coin in there. Seriously, the following is from the website
Second Life Insider (they post these stats every day) - emphasis is my own
Yesterday in Second Life we:
- Spent US$1,697,000 at an exchange rate of L$270.7 to US$1
- Exchanged US$192,000 at an average of US$8,000.0 per hour.
- Market buys were US$115,000
- Market sales were US$75,000
- Limit-limit buys were US$1,200
- The busiest time was at 7pm when about US$11,000 was exchanged.
- The quietest time was 10pm when about US$6,000 was exchanged
Do you see that? In one day almost $1.7 million US dollars were spent. In
ONE DAY. Money exchanged from US to Lindens (or the other way around, I don't know for certain) at a rate of $8K
per hour.
Maybe it is just me, but it seems that if one invested a little time effort, and sure a little money, they could do pretty well there.
Of course, the old saying is "it takes money to make money" and mostly that is true. But in Second Life there are ways to make money without spending much. You don't need to own land to sell your goods. There are places that will rent you a billboard (I don't know for how much) from where you can sell your goods.
You can sign up for free, and play forever for free, if you choose. About 45 days after signing up, they give you L$250. That isn't as much as it sounds as many things, like a shirt, can go for L$150 or more. If you pay the $9.95/month (real money) they give you L$1000 after 45 days, and a L$300 per week stipend.
You can use 3D Studio Max, Maya, or just about any 3D modeling software (even the free stuff like
Blender). Many say Blender is better for SL than the big commercial products because those commercial products have so many features, bells and whistles, that are not used in SL. So if you are going to get something specifically for SL, then Blender seems the way to go.
I don't know how difficult it is to create the 3D things. But for things like shirts or pants, it is very, very easy. If you don't want to pay for painting software, get the
GIMP it is very powerful, but if you are used to Photoshop, there is a bit of a learning curve. It is very similar, but there are enough differences (keyboard shortcuts, etc.) that it can be frustrating for a Photoshop person to use.
At the SL website, there are templates to download, just make your clothing on those templates, then upload the image files into SL (it costs L$10 per file to upload). Then you can mark them with properties, such as "no copy", "no transfer"(they can't give it away or sell it)","No modify".
In addition to all of that, there are scripts. Scripts can be attached to an object or article of clothing and are acted upon by a number of different ways. There are animation scripts, which can change the way people walk, or run. They can make the avatar sit or jump or kneel or whatever.
I haven't looked too deeply into the scripting language, but it looks suspiciously similar (syntactically) to JavaScript and Perl. So I am guessing it is derived from one of those.
Well, anyway, I am sure there are more ways to make the bling in SL, but I am running out of time for this post (and by now I am certain you are running out of patience trying to read it), so I'll let it go for now. But I will probably post some more on it as I tryout making some shirts (they have very few western clothes in that place, so I'm going to see if I can sell some cavalry style bib shirts). I'll let you know how it goes.
Oh, I almost forgot, if you want to check out second life, please use
this link as if you decide to stay and sign up for the monthly charge, I get L$2000! Then you can refer your friends and you can get the L$2K for yourself! (which is yet another way to make some moolah from SL)
Thanks for stopping by.
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