Picks Camping: SL Scam or Moneymaking Slam-Dunk?

While many Second Life residents are howling over Linden Labs‘ decision to raise fees on open land (something I still don’t quite understand), I’m fuming over the latest incarnation of money-making: getting paid to list a business on your avie’s Picks page (the third tab on your avatar profile, where you can list your favorite people, things, thoughts or places).

It sounds like a good deal: a business owner pays you to list his business on your profile. You get paid regularly — daily, weekly or monthly, $5 to $20 daily up to $100 or more monthly — to give a space on your Picks page. The business owner gets the viral-marketing benefit of having his business not only advertised but subtly promoted, since people who view the pick will assume you endorse the business. Plus, the business owner gets additional traffic to his sim or business place, because you have to go to  the business and click a sign in order to get paid.

My enthusiasm has waned, now that I’ve used picks camping to pick up a few lindens for a few months, because it’s both another way to game the popularity system for ranking higher in the SL search engine and another way avies get ripped off when the business owner fails to pay.

With camping, you risk nonpayment when your time is up, but the business doesn’t pay. It gets the benefit of your presence, boosting its popularity, and you are out the time you spent. Regular camping also gets taken over by bots — avies created only to harvest lindens by using scripts to find and monopolize camping seats.

The same thing happens with picks camping. The two most popular systems of picks camping — Profile Pick Reward System and Josh Van Alten’s Picks Camping scripted message boards — limit the number of daily payments. If the sytem has paid out all of the money the owner put into the board, you get nothing, but the busienss owner continues to get the viral benefit of your profile pick and your visit to the sim.

Ideally, you add the site to your Picks page and then wait a day or two until SL enters your data in the system so that the message board can read it and pay you. However, some sites also make you wait a week or longer to begin paying. So, you’re still not earning anything.

Picks camping does solve the bot problem, or at least I’ve not heard of any scripts that can fling bots from one payout sign to the next and perform all of the authorization requirements. However, the many vagaries and payout failures mean it’s not the perfect answer to moneymaking for SL residents.

An avie at the Fashion District sim's Picks Camping board