Linden Lab has made a lot of changes this past year, I felt the need to redefine how to earn lindens in Second Life. Let's talk about some other ways we used to make money
Camping:
Before the new terms and services, landowners would pay you to just stand or sit at their location. This was called camping and is now illegal!
Gambling:
Another change Second Life made was the outlawing of casinos! You could own one and make a lot of money. But not anymore!
Escort:
This Isn't Illegal, but with all the new rules on the classified system and the changes to your land rating, this is extremely hard to be viable as a Linden earning alternative.
Sploder balls:
Was an event system where you would put money into an object and over time all residents that participated in placing money in would receive some money back. But one person would win a large part of the jackpot.
Oh the list could go on and on, but that won't help you! I'm not here to tell you how not to make money, I'm here to show you how to earn more lindens today.
So let's begin!
Due to the fluctuation of the Linden economy, developing new methods to earning lindens becomes important. As most of you know, those of you that have been here a few years, it is getting harder day by day to earn lindens. Why? With all the publicity that Second Life has attained over the past few years, it is brought more and more people into the virtual world, to earn lindens just like you.
So what are currently the three biggest ways to earn money in Second Life?
#3 Club:
After years of research, and after watching many businesses fail, the ones that are still here after a few years are clubs. My reasoning is simple, there are numerous ways for your club to become an asset.
One way that your club is an asset, is if you rent out shops. It's important to have a high traffic rating for your club. This means you will have to have events on a regular basis. I can't stress enough how important it is to have really good music, as well as a good performing DJ at your club. Once you get people to visit your club, and stay long periods of time, your traffic rating will be high. A tip for you, keep your shops close to your dance floor. This gives the residents that visit your club and easy way to purchase products. One fundamental mistake that I see club owners make, is not having the dance floor close enough to their shops. Most people are at your club to be social, so if they don't see your stores, then they won't purchase any products from your location.
Be sure that if your rental shops are close to the dance floor, to raise the price of the fee. The price should be higher here, because it is prime real estate. A large portion of your sales will be made here. You can also price your rental fees higher for stores close to your landing point. When a resident teleports to your location, the place where they arrive is considered the landing point.
I'll say again, this is a prime location!
The successful clubs use a mix of store rentals and affiliate marketing, capitalizing off of their high traffic to see a revenue explosion in their business.
#2 Affiliate Marketing:
The number two way that I feel you should be earning money in Second Life is affiliate marketing. In my heart I feel that affiliate marketing should be number one, but I know better than to put it there. Most people won't do this effectively, or just won't put in the effort. But if you gonna be making money in the future in Second Life this is really the best way to do it. Good common sense on how you choose locations and how you market them, will make you successful in affiliate marketing.
Here are two ways to earn lindens in affiliate marketing:
One way is as product creator, in which you create a product package it up into vendors, and give a percentage of your sales to other Second Life residents who sell your product.
The other way is to sell other people's products to earn your commission by finding good locations that sell well.
Again I honestly believe that they should be the number one way of earning revenue in Second Life. The problem is not everyone knows how to market, so this will have to reside at number two.
#1 Product Creator / Store Owner
The number one way of earning lindens in Second Life is product creation.
Let's say you have a hot pair of new sneakers, you've just made, and want to sell. As the creator of the product, as long as you market it well, that product becomes an instant asset for you. So if the shoes cost you 500 Linden's to upload the all the textures and all the box art, if you price those shoes at 250 lindens and sell 2 shoes, you've already recouped your investment.
Now that's what I call ROI!
I know I'm gonna get a lot of boos from the cheap seats, because real estate did make the chart. Fact is this year a lot of people that I know in real estate close their businesses. More of my friends who make products, are still in business. This makes product creation the best way of making lindens in Second Life.
As I said before I'm shaky on my number one and number two picks. The reason for this is there is a learning curve in creating products for Second Life. Not to mention, there's a lot of competition in the product creation field. So you have to make great products that can sell. This is a huge hurdle that some people can't get past. This was my main reason as to why I was leaning more towards affiliate marketing being my number one pick. This is because by selling other people's products, you don't have the same learning curve as you would by creating the product itself. You just buy the affiliate package, place it up at all locations you want and start earning money.
You will find numerous ways to earn revenue in Second Life, I'm just not gonna go into every single one of them. These here, are the best ones, that I have found to work.
I'll say again, real estate is not in my top three, since it's just not consistent.
In sales, the more products you add, the more chances to earn more revenue. Of course utilizing some good marketing strategies, this can be a slow building asset which can earn you lindens every month.
DON'T MOVE YOUR SHOP OR CLUB AROUND!!!
Once you complete your research and find a good location for your shop or club, stay at that location and don't move around. As people landmark your location you don't want to move and lose all the work that you've done so far. I'll say this again for those of you that cannot hear what I'm telling you! If you find a good location once you've completed your research, stay there! If they can't find you! Too late you've already lost the sale!
In Second Life some of the most frequented places are clubs. Clubs are very sociable places where people usually come to hang out, chat and listen to music. They can be a great place to network and build your contact list, which is important if you are e.g. running an events business, or marketing a product. Clubs are a good source of income for a lot of Second Life residents, there are various roles within a club from owner to host, DJ to dancer.
