New to SL? Here are some ways to make money

A new resident of Second Life stopped by my TD Scripts store to ask me how he could make money without spending more money. There are a number of ways, I told him and then realized I should just write a blog post so I can point to other new residents that ask me. I’ve been an SL resident since December 31, 2005 and have not spent any more money since paying for two SL avatar accounts. I’ve owned a $25/month tier of land for over six months and have paid that off with money earned inside SL.

Here are some ways to make money:

- Create items and sell them. These can be everything from clothes that avatars wear to sounds, videos, buildings, vehicles, games and more. With Halloween just around the corner, you could make a bunch of scary sound clips — in 10 second max clips — and then sell them as a package. I’ve been thinking about this myself. If you have a Soundblaster sound card, you likely have the “evil” voice modulator which could be used for all sorts of 10 second clips. Scripters who make games especially need sounds they can use so there could be business to business sales too.

- Get a job. Just like in RL, there are numerous job opportunities in SL. Many higher paying jobs are adult-oriented like being an escort or casino host, but there are jobs doing non-adult activities like minding a store or hosting non-gambling games. It’s better to have a human being providing customer service at a store and talking about products and services than a bot. To find job listings, search the classifieds section for “hiring” and if you are interested in adult-oriented work make sure to check the “mature content” checkbox.

- money trees. There are trees with free L$ on them and many are focused toward new residents. Do a search for “money trees” in the places category.

- Camping. This is controversial with some residents but other land and business owners will literally pay you in Lindens to put your avatar in a chair or other object on their land. There used to be a financial incentive called dwell that was earned for the land owner, but now they want dwell to drive up their listing position in the search engine or have the hope that you’ll gamble or spend money in other places.

Some camping chairs have idle timers where your avatar will be ejected and you’ll need to resit. A few, although they are rare, don’t have any idle timers. A common rate is L$2-3 per 10 minutes of idling, so you could make L$12 per hour or L$288 per 24 hour period.

- weekly stipend for pay members. Become full time member and earn L$500 per week. While this stipend is being reduced to L$300 soon, there is still a little time to get in on this. I realize this one does technically cost you money but if you pay annually then you can get a break on the price and it’s possible at L$500 per week x 52 weeks to actually make money if you saved and used it to pay future renewals. Here’s the math:

L$26,000 which converts at L$275 per $1USD = $94.94 USD
An annual membership when paid in full is $72 … which means you would actually make $22 USD profit (or L$6,050 which could be used to buy other objects). If you pay monthly, it doesn’t work out, but if you can afford the extra $72 up front, this deal works in member’s favor.

Also a benefit of being a full member is the ability to own your own 512m space of land for no additional tier fee. This means you could then have a business location to build and sell objects. You can build without being a pay member in a sandbox area, but owning land is similar to having your own web domain name.

Do you have other good ideas for how to earn Lindens in Second Life? Feel free to leave your comments/tips/tricks below.