Photo courtesy of Wikipedia and Business Week Magazine.

I am new. I’ve been getting by with freebie stuff that I got from the Helping Haven Gateway — including pretty nice skins, shapes and clothing. But I’d like to really step up my game, and that takes some Linden. How do I make money in Second Life?

~Need Scratch

Dear Scratch~ 

First off, good for you to really explore the world of freebies. Helping Haven, which has been an authorized Linden Lab ‘Info Hub’ for a few years now, has a lot of free stuff and really helpful staff. (Hi, Zussa!)

But answering your question, a common one, is broad reaching and definitely not a “one size fits all” (not even Maitreya!)

Years ago, I wrote a notecard on the subject that I handed out to noobs that were pouring into the Ahern Welcome Area, back when that is where everyone landed after being solo through Welcome training. (Then came other Welcome Areas… Info Hubs… Welcome Island… a bunch of different attempts by Linden Labs to make the process of ‘onboarding’ into this world less overwhelming.)

So here it is. See if any of this works for you, and if you come up with something I’ve missed or something (gasp) NEW… please leave a comment with the info! Also, I’ve only recently returned to SL so some of these may have faded away.

~Heartun

There are several ways to make money in SL. I’ve tried to build a list without regard for ethics, good taste or prerequisite skill.

1. MAKING STUFF
Make stuff people want to buy, then sell it. Household products, sex toys, skins, clothing, weird gestures — the sky is the limit (well, you can’t make a mirror I guess.)

2. LIVING OFF THE DOLE
Tuesday is payday in SL. Live like a monk and you can be happy on $50L a week. (2020 note: this is very old info)

3. LIVING OFF THE DOLE v.2
Get several Alts and take their $50L a week for your primary account.

4. BEGGING
Its annoying, but a lot of people do it for a while. Just don’t ask me, I don’t like beggars.

5. WHORING
This is actually quite popular… and at most dance clubs is apparently an honorable profession. Visit THIS WEBSITE for some great ‘how to’ articles on the profession.

6. LAND SPECULATION
Anshe Chung doesn’t have a lock on buying land in bulk, improving it, then selling it for a bundle. You could also try opening a shopping mall.

7. SKILLED SERVICES
If you’re good at improving land you might rent yourself out. Or find something else people will pay for… like business consultation services, proof-reading bios, photography, professional friend, spy, etc.

8. PAWNSHOP/MIDDLE MAN
Buy up things on the cheap and sell them for more money than you paid. I used to do this with Dark Life weaponry and I made a mint. Now days this is called Gacha — there is even a category for it on the Second Life Marketplace.

9. BUY MONEY
Go to SLExchange and pay your real money for Linden. Nobody has to know, and at least you aren’t a whore. (Unless you’re buying Linden to get a better skin for your whore, in which case never mind!). Note: with the fluctuation of the Linden to USD exchange rate tied to the volume of ‘in world’ users, money speculators buy when the kids are busy in college… and sell when they are home on break… picking up a tidy profit. Of course, with Covid, who knows?

10. OWN POPULAR LAND
If you have a place that people go to you will get paid extra money based on how many game hours are spent in your land (called ‘dwell’ in SL-speak).

11. LUCKY BOARDS and GROUP GIFTS
Many stores, to boost traffic and gain exposure, have giveaways. Some are in-store, and some you need to be in the store group. You wait until the first initial of your name pops up. You click it and you get whatever they are giving away on that board.

12. BLACKMAIL
If you are a burly man IRL but you play a woman so that you can whore for more money you can film the encounter and copy the IM history of your John in the hopes that he is homophobic and will pay for you to not display his silliness.

13. COMMISSION
Get friends of yours to sign up to play SL under a Premium account. If they reference you during the sign-up process you get like $500L or $1000L for each friend. If you make alts and ref yourself you get the commission for that too.