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Selling your content outsite SL


Madeliefste Oh
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Due to the new TOS I guess I'm not the only one, who is looking for ways to sell my content in other places then SL. I would like to discuss what options we have. And what experiences people here have already with selling on other platforms.

Possible selling points:
- Second Life based virtual worlds, like: InWorldz, Avination, Kitely
- Other virtual worlds, like: CloudParty, IMVU
- Selling from your own website
- Selling from third party websites. These will depend on what skills you use to make your content. Texture makers you can think of stock photo or texture sites. Mesh makers can offer their models at 3D stock sites. For animations and sounds you can find stock sites as well.

It is ofcourse also possible to start making new work for new venues, but for this thread I would like to concentrate on the work you did already made for SL.

What possbile other selling points do you see for your content?

And what is your experience so far with selling your creations in other platforms? What were the problems you ran into, and where you able to solve them? What is the advantage of the platform(s) you have chosen?

 

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These are some markets I've sold to or worked with in the game sector.  Note that these aren't like SL where you can just build/upload/sell. But if you're looking to expand career wise, they're useful.

Unity3D -- Has a marketplace (not as open as the SL marketplace), although my personal favorite (and sometimes risk venture) is that you can get involved with the community and make your own deals. You can find either paying gigs for modelling, etc, or you can take a chance, join a team and possibly share a piece of the profits on a new game. Check the forums and see what's going on. Either way, you control negotiations over the rights you give.

UDK game engine. Same deal as above.

The Hero Engine -- Another game engine and one I've got sentimental attachments to. The company started out in the AOL days as the creators of Gemstone, the mother of all commercial MUDs, and arguably one of the first commercial worlds with user generated content. They developed a game engine which was eventually acquired by the current company.

One of the strengths to the Hero Engine is that you can develop a game for a monthly fee, supports a team of workers, the hosting for your game and even microtransactions when your game is released. There are usually teams looking for modelling and such if you get more involved. Same as with other game engines, some may be pay, some might be profit sharing ventures.

Not looking to overly hype Hero Engine here, it's not a huge community.

Basically get out there and network in these communities that are looking to put together teams

It's also a good idea to put together a portfolio on your own website of your work, so that you can quickly show your ability to anyone that might be interested.

Slightly off topic but a helpful resource for training/school if you're able to afford the commercial 3D software and a monthly fee is Digital Tutors. It's the biggest bang for the buck education wise for those of us who aren't going to go to school for 3D, but still want some good high end training with the commercial apps.

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I have a bit of experience with selling in InWorldz and Avination. I was in Avination only for a short time, the first 6 or 8 months or so, and mainly because one of my best friends had left SL for Avination. It was not interesting enough for me to set up a shop there, though I was often offered free land to start there.

In InWorldz I come now and then. I don't have a shop there and I don't sell on the marketplace. But for my exisiting SL customers who have moved to IW or operate in both worlds we offer additional licenses for the use of cYo products in IW.

I walked around for a while in IMVU and in CloudParty. In IMVU I got bored very soon, and in CloudParty I experimented a bit with uploading and creating but I didn't start selling there. CP is still too small for a B2B seller.

In all these virtual worlds I use cYo as brandname. But I'm going to offer my meshes on a 3D model site. And since that is not about a virtual economy, but takes places in the real world, I decided to rebrand my creations, and put them under my rl brand.

One of the problems I'm walking into is that it is a lot of work to change logo's on all product parts, make new product presentations after the standards of that site, while I still have no idea if my work is going to sell there. Only time will tell, but it takes a lot of time investment as well.

Another problem I came across a few days ago is possible image damage. In world a had a chat with a guy who asked me if I make all full perms stuff myself. And when I confirmed that he said: 'Then someone is stealing your content'. He gave me a screenshot of the productpage from the site I'm trying to sell my work now. So I explained him that I uploaded the model my self and that I chose to use my rl brand name there.
I was glad that this guy was so kind to point me to possible infringment of my work. But others might not do the same... and the more I upload on that site, the more its possible that people will come across it. And when they don't communicate with me about it, but make their own conclusion, it can be that either my Sl avatar or my seller account on that site might be judged as a IP right infringer. :(

 

 

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Hey there!


I was over at AVINATION last night saving my name just in case. Bizarrely "Aeon" was in the list so I have a ME there with my shape. I was impressed with the default avatar but in exploring found that there seemed to be even less going on there than in Cloud Party which is new and in beta still. The AVINATION forums had posts from long ago and the shops still had hunt signs up from June. I saw NO ONE and I was there a long time. So that isn't a place for me.

I have some long ago remembered issues with the folks that run inworldz, so won't be hanging around there but when I did visit it seemed much like an old SL -- and not in a nostalgic way. We can of course make any kind of world that we want if we have the skills, but ......


I have been over at Cloud Part for a bit over a month now. The learning curve is over (or getting there) and I have actually sold quite a bit considering that the population is miniscule compared to SL. I am VERY happy there, but as you say it is not a B2B place at the moment. Just not enough population.  I have imported some SL goods but they don't import directly as the rules are quite different and you need to optimize at about a 180 degree change. From now on I will be mostly making new things. Currently my uploads are around half and half but starting to be new stock.

I am not planning on getting rich there, I have simply picked CP as the winning horse in the race for its superb tech.

I am not sure there is any good "safe haven" spot for the majority of SL content creators. CP is great for artists and those not terribly concerned with making money at the moment (there is no cash out at this time but it is planned - also no cash out at AVINATION). So it is a place to build and enjoy and learn new skills. It works for ME, but it wouldn't work for many folks as they don't want to relearn.

One thing you probably need to know is that the lawyers at the meeting today (well one of three) dropped a pretty big bombshell stating that the TOS not only took away all our control of products in SL but that it also "claimed - was written - whatever" to cross BEYOND SL and into other worlds. That was SO not what I wanted to hear and I do need to go back and read or listen again to that section of the talk (this was 3 hours at the Rose Theater today and will be available for viewing on AVIEWTV.com by tomorrow I think). They are processing and uploading.

So depressing as it may be, we not only hurt (not the actual word I wanted to type :D) ourselves in SL by clicking through that TOS, we also may have hurt ourselves in other worlds. I am having a difficult time understanding how that could be true, and honestly I am choosing to ignore the possibility as while I am willing to give up SL, I am not willing to give up building and virtual life.

That's all I know. Wish I had something more positive to tell you. It is looking pretty dire these days.

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I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. 

 

I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. 

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Chic Aeon wrote:

One thing you probably need to know is that the lawyers at the meeting today (well one of three) dropped a pretty big bombshell stating that the TOS not only took away all our control of products in SL but that it also "claimed - was written - whatever" to cross BEYOND SL and into other worlds. That was SO not what I wanted to hear and I do need to go back and read or listen again to that section of the talk (this was 3 hours at the Rose Theater today and will be available for viewing on AVIEWTV.com by tomorrow I think). They are processing and uploading.

So depressing as it may be, we not only hurt (not the actual word I wanted to type
:D
) ourselves in SL by clicking through that TOS, we also may have hurt ourselves in other worlds. I am having a difficult time understanding how that could be true, and honestly I am choosing to ignore the possibility as while I am willing to give up SL, I am not willing to give up building and virtual life.

That's all I know. Wish I had something more positive to tell you. It is looking pretty dire these days.

I have understand that different, but that can be caused by my lack of English. And it was also a crispy sound on aview. So I might be wrong as well. But how I have understand it, is that under current TOS LL could sell your content on other platforms then SL, and all possible future devices, even without letting you know. 

But you did not grand them the exclusive right, you are still the IP rights owner, you have granted them a non-exclusive right. LL cannot forbit you under current to TOS use your own copyright. You are free to sell your own creations where you want and to who you want.

 

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Chic Aeon wrote:

 

I have some long ago remembered issues with the folks that run inworldz, so won't be hanging around there but when I did visit it seemed much like an old SL -- and not in a nostalgic way.

 


I also had some issues with the owner of IW when I went over in 2010 and created an account.  That was when LL updated the TOS (sounding familiar?) so that only items we created 100% ourselves could be uploaded to save to our HDs whereas previously anything we had full perm permissions for (ie. textures, etc.) could be uploaded.  There was a mass rush by many merchants at that time to upload their stock before the cut-off time in SL.  Some merchants opened a store in IW plus stayed in SL; others moved exclusively to IW.

Prior to my "issue" with IW personnel, I had a small shop there.  None of the animations for my items worked over there.  At the time they were still using pose balls.  I closed my shop in IW and only step foot over there to visit a dear friend of mine who decided to make IW her primary home.  She enjoys the process of creating and loves having more prims for less money and sales, although nice, is not her main focus any more.  From what I can tell during my brief visits is that, partially or perhaps mainly due to the SL merchants influx to IW in 2010, much of the IW population are merchants selling to each other; their user base has not significantly increased over the last three years.  For some extra money IW might be a viable option, but for someone who needs a decent income, I don't think IW has the numbers to support that.

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. 

 

I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. 

For me current TOS is making the risk too high to bet on this single horse. It won't hurt to put stuff that I have already made for sale in other places as well. At least then I'm earlier on the market with my creations then LL will be. I might be able to profit a few more years from them, and build name recognisation, before LL or a possible buyer of SL, is going to profit of my years of work here.

Philips new world, uhuh, that might be the reason LL has forced us to grant the rights them for 'any medium now known or hereafter developed'.

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Madeliefste Oh wrote:


Pamela Galli wrote:

I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. 

 

I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. 

For me current TOS is making the risk too high to bet on this single horse. It won't hurt to put stuff that I have already made for sale in other places as well. At least then I'm earlier on the market with my creations then LL will be. I might be able to profit a few more years from them, and build name recognisation, before LL or a possible buyer of SL, is going to profit of my years of work here.

Philips new world, uhuh, that might be the reason LL has forced us to grant the rights them for 'any medium now known or hereafter developed'.

If you didn't know, one of the investors in Philips 'new world' is LL.  :(

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Yes. It could be next year; it could be tomorrow. We are on tenuous ground it seems however we look at it. I mostly build for enjoyment. This last year particularly I have made a good income from it and I may again.  But it will be awhile I'm guessing.  I can't see any great place to go. There may be some in the works though; you would suspect that some techie folks paying attention to all this might be out there now making a new world without many of the SL problems we have come to hate.

And MY issues with the IW folks was from before the started their platform -- well, on their way there - LOL. They already lost my trust before they even opened.

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. 

I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. 

There is that. There are some people making some good incomes on some of these other sites or projects, but the skills needed and competition are steeper than that of SL. Agree that SL is still one of the best places to sell and compete. Probably should have mentioned that these are alternative paths or for people looking not to put all their eggs in one basket.

Being a 3D artist is a career path that has always existed outside of SL and it "can" be lucrative, but SL is the easier and more profitable path depending.

Wouldn't recommend giving up SL income to replace it easily with other income. Just that there are choices.

On the other hand, I'd never recommend a 3D artist start creating for SL, because the TOS puts restrictions on their work that aren't in their best interests as a career path if they're pursuing game development or film careers.

 

 

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Don't know much about InWorldz, but I do have some unease about OpenSim in general. First it's had a lot of time to mature and gain users and it hasn't yet. It duplicated some of SL's major design flaws.

Part of it is that even if you did get an OpenSim world that gained traction it would just act as an upsell for SL.

But the big one for me is that from the developers to owners of many grids, they're just not merchant friendly in concept. The development team is open source minded, which tends to focus on monetizing services, not goods. I've heard people running grids mention repeatedly how goods should be free, or open source, or under a Creative Commons license. Few of them really seem to want to groom merchants.

And then there's an actual distaste for merchants and goods that seem to drip from articles like this: http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/09/content-is-not-king/

Like others, I'd lean toward Cloud Party before Opensim.

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Hello everyone !


I would like to bring some of my experience in Inworldz.

I started to import my full perms stuff to this virtual world since months and my tips are :

  • It is essential to communicate via the forum
  • Groups are a time loss
  • Classifieds bring some traffic
  • I concentrated my positions on a mainshop and only one community place (where people meet)
  • The malls I tried didn't bring any sellings, most of them don't communicate, I left
  • InBiz (the online MarketPlace) is a site to support (growing sellings)
  • Some residents are starting hunts events, I'm testing
  • and, of course, as for any business, anywhere, have an efficient customer service : important to check your feeds.

I never had issues with the team. I think Inworlds is a good second [or third ? :)] place for a BtoB business : my ratio sellings/members is much better than the SL one. All what I write there is based on my own experience.

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There are certainly 3D artists out there making a good living, but probably mostly by contracting for specific jobs.  And those are the ones who are making stuff that when rendered are indistinguishable from a RL photo. (And presumably do not get calls when someone accidentally retextures the floor.

 

As far as putting my eggs in one basket -- I can't keep up with this one basket as it is. It is unfortunately unthinkable to devote any time -- other than the little I did initially -- to Cloud Party or anywhere else where the time spent will not be an investmet.

I have not one but two households depending on my store not for total but substantial support. A total of six people. I am too busy now trying to compete with people who make nothing but upload tons, to do anything else.


Dartagan Shepherd wrote:


Pamela Galli wrote:

I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. 

I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. 

There is that. There are some people making some good incomes on some of these other sites or projects, but the skills needed and competition are steeper than that of SL. Agree that SL is still one of the best places to sell and compete. Probably should have mentioned that these are alternative paths or for people looking not to put all their eggs in one basket.

Being a 3D artist is a career path that has always existed outside of SL and it "can" be lucrative, but SL is the easier and more profitable path depending.

Wouldn't recommend giving up SL income to replace it easily with other income. Just that there are choices.

On the other hand, I'd never recommend a 3D artist start creating for SL, because the TOS puts restrictions on their work that aren't in their best interests as a career path if they're pursuing game development or film careers.

 

 

 

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Dartagan Shepherd wrote:

 

And then there's an actual distaste for merchants and goods that seem to drip from articles like this:

Like others, I'd lean toward Cloud Party before Opensim.

Maybe I didn't read all the detail but I wasn't impressed at all with what she wrote.  She seemed to be too focussed on the notion of copying a whole sim (there's the amazing content) and waiting for customers to arrive (no show, therefore content is not the important thing to attract customers).

Surely it's the ability to create content, market that content, enjoy that content which is compelling?  Thus how is "content" not king assuming that you actually have customers?

You don't attract people soley because of a great TOS since most people never read it anyway, it's what the platform offers that attracts people.

She wrote a lot of fluffed up bull**bleep** in my opinion :)

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Of course, I have spoken about this topic many times now. The whole reason I promoted mesh so much was to help give creators the freedom to move outside of SL. I hope every1 that argued viciously about it all with me sees now what my point was. Unlike others that continuously refers to SL creators as inferiour to other, I see/saw that SL creators could be just as good, as many in the professional 3D industry.

Most 3d content sites want to charge you 50% commission, which is ridiculous.

My advice about selling 3d content outside of SL, is to get a website and sell the products directly. Through your own website, you can sell for any platform as long as you let the customers know exactly what they are buying. It is my website but I use Shopify to sell my items, which I currently pay $30 a month, and they handle all my credit processing. I can except almost all credit or debit cards. I also pay $10/month to a delivery service to handle all my download pages that get generated by a purchase.  The download page that is delivered to my customers after a purchase, is time sensitive, which allows you to set that time limit. So, a customer could have a month to download the items, or a day. I updated my most popular product on my website a few months ago, and the services made it super easy to send out update notices to every past purchaser, and give them all a new download page, which I gave them a month to download the update for free. The services are so well put together, I really never have to worry about anything. My site has been profitable since I started it, and now makes me a decent profit every month.

So, how do you market your items for your website? There is always a forum for almost every platform created. So, if you are selling to Unity users, you goto their forum and post a link. If you are selling for Daz, they have a section in the forums for you to post your items. Of course, you also want to create the proper google tags for all your products to show up in a google search. As a funny note, if you search for "crotch bulge morph", my website will likely be the top choice.

What drives 90% of people to my website, is YouTube. I make a video for almost every product on my site, and every video I create has a reference and link to my website. Of course, my field is a bit different that most, so I'm sure you will have varying degrees of success there. In my case tho, Youtube is a huge part of my plan for independence from SL. I already get a decent check every month from Google right now, and I've only really been concentrating on it for a year now, but I've been trying many different types of videos and testing the waters. Again tho, I'm getting a check every month despite this. In a year, I've gained 600 subscribers and gained well over 300k views. Shooting for half a million next year, or more.

On a side note, I'm working on a 3D animated video series now and plan on doing many more in the future. If any model creators want to donate models for the little movies that I want to make, you'll get free advertising thru my videos and your name in the credits. The hardest part for me, is getting all the items that I need for a whole scene. I'd much rather work with an SL creator and help promote their items, versus spending money on items that might not fit perfectly with what I'm doing. Animating little movies are a ton of work, so I'll likely be working on this current series, and their episodes for the rest of this year. I'm creating it all in Blender, and this first series is more about learning all the functions I need to in Blender. My next video project will be much more detailed models and environments. My goal is really to put together a team of people to put out 3d animated videos on a regular basis, with each of us making money off all the items in the videos. If I have to, I might even use the SL default for all the characters for a movie, which would make it easier to animate, and the other artists donating character items won't have to create for a different character. Just some ideas I wanted to throw out there.

I won't comment on open sim related projects, as I'm sure many can chime in there.

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Reading this thread is in itself a very telling bad sign of the extent that Rodvik and his circle of top LL Managemernt are so so so far out of touch of what is happening as a result of their misguided decisions regarding the TOS as well as Rodvik's subsequent strategy to stay the course and stay utterly silent on the TOS.

I have been active on the SL Merchant forums since 2009 and have had countless interaction with all of you in this forum.  We have all frequently been on different sides of a LL/SL decisions and many of us have also been united on other situations regarding LL.  Almost all of us forum vets have also posted countless times and have seen where the boundaries SORTA were drawn on what LL Moderators might allow and not allow.  For the most part we stayed within these lines after reading / interpreting the SL forum rules.  A couple times we bent the rules to get around them... a couple times we might have take the rare risk to cross the line to make our points....

BUT....

The emboldened position that many of you - my fellow SL Creators - have showed here in this thread should have the Forum Moderators be tapping up their line of command how openly frustrated the merchants of SL have become.  I know that I have often pushed the SL Forum Rules limits in my posts.  But to see so many of you openly engage in an active discussion on where to consider moving / expanding your creation / merchant talents to in light of LL's lowest level of respect toward its creator community via their TOS is a HUGE SYMBOL of that Rodvik should take notice.

Of course Rodvik is utter bliss about his handling of the TOS.  To him, he has made a decision - regardless of how bonehead or damaging to his creator community - and he doesnt have any plans to re-consider if maybe it was a bad idea and back out.

But, to see this thread openly talking about all the competing places to SL for creators to expand to / migrate to and even advice on how best to tackle entry into these new environments is a fundamental attitude shift that I have noticed.  Prior to this thread we would skirt around these competing worlds by not saying the words or pointing links to places where we could say it without raising the subjective hands of the SL Forum moderators.

Not anymore.  It really is a signal to me that the attitude of the creators / merchants have shifted because of Rodvik's TOS.

 

BYW Chic... the 3 hour audio recording of yesterday's Legal Panel meeting on the LL TOS has been available.  A video of the meeting only adds a little more value in that you might be able to see the slides in the early section but the presenters did an excellent job of talking through the slides so you can capture the messages in the audio.

http://www.toysoldierthor.com/2/post/2013/10/recap-audio-inworld-legal-panel-talk-on-ll-tos.html

There will be multi-language translations of the meeting soon from the UCCSL to help all international creators.

 

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Pamela Galli wrote:

There are certainly 3D artists out there making a good living, but probably mostly by contracting for specific jobs.  And those are the ones who are making stuff that when rendered are indistinguishable from a RL photo. (And presumably do not get calls when someone accidentally retextures the floor.

 

As far as putting my eggs in one basket -- I can't keep up with this one basket as it is. It is unfortunately unthinkable to devote any time -- other than the little I did initially -- to Cloud Party or anywhere else where the time spent will not be an investmet.

I have not one but two households depending on my store not for total but substantial support. A total of six people. I am too busy now trying to compete with people who make nothing but upload tons, to do anything else.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote:


Pamela Galli wrote:

I took a look at what people in forums said they earn in 3D sites like Unity 3D, Renderosity, Turbosquid -- and found that, as I suspected, SL, for all its failings, is by comparison simply a gold mine. 

I too would put my money on Cloud Party if I had to bet against SL. Then there is Phillip's new world, forget what it is called. 

There is that. There are some people making some good incomes on some of these other sites or projects, but the skills needed and competition are steeper than that of SL. Agree that SL is still one of the best places to sell and compete. Probably should have mentioned that these are alternative paths or for people looking not to put all their eggs in one basket.

Being a 3D artist is a career path that has always existed outside of SL and it "can" be lucrative, but SL is the easier and more profitable path depending.

Wouldn't recommend giving up SL income to replace it easily with other income. Just that there are choices.

On the other hand, I'd never recommend a 3D artist start creating for SL, because the TOS puts restrictions on their work that aren't in their best interests as a career path if they're pursuing game development or film careers.

 

 

 

I'll just add, that my website and the items there have gotten me jobs from independent producers. This despite the fact that I don't advertise my services for custom work. I generally do accept the jobs tho, as because they are real world projects, they pay what I ask for. I have been contemplating offering my services with a specific rate on my site, but I'd rather just make what I want. lol

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Pamela Galli wrote:

Without content, all you have is a chat room. 

 

What I have heard repeatedly is what Dart says -- the operative word in Open Sim is Open, as in opensource is king. Meaning free. 

The writer acts as if "content" means objects. I don't think many of us just make objects. We make interactive content, which means people use it and play with it. Without that content, yes, SL is just a 3D chatroom with ugly avatars. The only people that would ever come to a place with no content, is content creators. Without the ability to make or buy content, SL is a worthless project.

 

Content is KING!!!!

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I thought I should just drop my two cents in here as an avid opensim user. Despite what many seem to be saying here Opensim is not all about free stuff. The thing I find great about opensim is it allows the end user to choose if they want to be involved in the commercial aspect or not. Here in SL, very few people can afford a whole sim just to build in, but in opensim you can do that, but there is also the possibility for commerce, and on the many closed grids like Kitely and Inworldz, its just as secure as SL.

With regard to the article by mariah at HG business, many opensim users laughed at that article too. As we all know, a flat green sim with nothing in it is no fun for long periods of time.

For my part, I have been experimenting with the Kitely marketplace and have only good things to say about it. The actual MP is amazing, so much is there that the SLMP lacks, and you can be paid direct in USD. Considering I have just over a dozen items currently in my Kitely store, I have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of business I have received so far.

A decent animator with good AOs or a talented clothing designer could make good money there I am sure. Plus lack of competition at the moment means you can charge a premium for your services if you are offering good quality. In SL I cant charge more than 10US for my cave kits, but in Kitely people will pay upwards of 20USD. If your a merchant that can turn their nose up at that, well, my hat is off to you.

Taking a longer view, CP looks interesting but there are a number of things which dont sit well with people currently, like the floating island setup, no terraforming etc. Though what they have achieved so far is impressive.

HiFi from Mr. Rosedale? Well, I am watching, but not holding my breath :)

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Parrish Ashbourne wrote:

For mesh theres all so 3D printing as an option.  Some of the sites allow you to upload your models and they handle the transaction, printing, and ship the object to customer, and give you a % of the sale.


:) Now you are talking Parrish.  :) 

Especially if one is making 3D mesh models that are "ART SCULPTURES" in nature - which is exactly what I have moved to over the past 2 years since getting into MESH and away from Sculpties.

Tell you a little story related to this suggestion from Parrish  (because it leads me into a few ideas of where some creators could make revenue outside of what was initially intend just as SL creations....

 

Back between 2009-2010 I hit it big (relatively speaking) within SL with regards to finding a niche in the commercialized content creation space of SL.  In that 1.5 year span I created and put to market 6 master-builder sculpty landscape theme packs.  They were (and still continue to be) a big success when released to the SL marketplace.  Even until last year they were still generating $400/month US in sales.  Over the past 16 months my complete neglect / abandonment from my landscape sculpty cash cow has started to take its toll as I now only generate about $150/month US from these old but still popular packs. 

Over 2 years ago, because of a lot of pressure from my customer base, I established a landscape store in IW and although the monthly sales in IW are about 1/5th of SL sales, the cost to maintain a storefront there is so low that it was a no brainer decision to set it up and it more than pays for itself.

So then...why did I abandon my sculpty landscape packs product line that was so successful?  Wel, in April 2010 I got totally distracted and changed my interests 180 degrees from creating Sculpty landscapes into a new passion of creating SL Photo Art.  It started out so innocent and simple, I won a photo contest at the 2010 Fantasy Faire - the same faire that my landscape packs were featured components of one of the 9 major builds.  LOL I entered the photo content to help promote my lansscape sculpties at the faire.  I ended up falling deeply in love with using photoshop for artistic means instead of utilitarian means.  At that time I pretty much abandon any further development of sculpties for SL.

In the 2 years that followed, I ended up creating over 200 2D artworks (all digital images of course).  I also quenched my natural curiosity by expanding my art past just SL Photo art into RL photography, photo manipulation, SL/RL blended art, etc.  Also during this time, the enterprising side of me started getting involved and said, why do you try to commercialize the art - AN EXTREMELY STEEP CHALLENGE IN SL.  But I took it on.  I created and still maintain a huge 5 floor art gallery in SL that shows off my art - for sale.  I started getting invited to more SL art gallery exhibits than I could count.  And inside SL, my art sales now make up about 40% of my overall sales in SL.

Then in January 2012 as MESH was becoming critical mass adopted, I decided to brush off my rusty skills as a Sculpty model creator and re-learn / advance my skills adapted to MESH.  But, since LL's SL Prim count penalties for large sized mesh was sooooo high, it was not feasible for me to create MESH LANDSCAPES - even though technically a mesh with physics would have been superior to sculpties in a bounding box, the LI costs would have been stupid. 

Plus, I had a new passion - ART - and so I decided to use my new MESH skills to create Mesh Art Sculptures for SL.  But since the 3D art sculptures looked a 1000% more amazing within the modeling tool at extremely high polycounts and with complete access to a full advanced material system that couldnt be transfered to SL at this level of detail, I decided to release each 3D art sculpture with a corresponding 2D wallart of the model that was captured and then manipulated in Photoshop.

These 3D sculptures as well as their 2D counterparts have been very popular in my gallery in SL.

 

OK FOLKS... here comes the  HOW TO MAKE BUSINESS OUTSIDE SL....

In 2012, I had so many ppl in SL saying how they liked my art and buying it, that I decided to take on the CRAZY challenge of bringing my 2D art out into the Real World.  I created a brand and an online art gallery website and migrated all my art initially intended only as a hobby and only for SL into this new art website of mine. 

There were countless Art Websites where they did all the work but you only got a few dollars from every sale.  I wanted to provide a reasonable price and a much larger part of the profit.  So I found a great canvas printing company in Canada to be my manufacturer of my art prints behind the scene.  Although sales are still slow and growing as I work to market myself and my art as desired investment for art lovers to buy, the profits from each print sale is big compared to the micro profits in SL (about $40/sale in RL vs. $2/sale in SL).

And related to this challenge - this is a HUGEEEE WEEK for my journey to make my SL-turn-RL artworks a success.  Because next week 40 of my RL art prints on canvas go on exhibit for 6 weeks where they will be seen by 1000's of people.  And just in time for Christmas :)

Taking on this RL art venture from my SL art beginnings has also been a big financial investment ($2000 just to print the 40 artworks to canvas), BUT, thanks to my years of profit taking from my SL Landscape Packs business - it has bankrolled this entire Art business venture so far.

Now... as for what Parrish mentioned about printing models from SL into REAL models via 3D printing....

This is actually something I have been actively investigating for the past year.  I am actively a part of a local Entrepreneurial Startups / Makerspace community and our makerspace actually has 5 different types and sizes of 3D Printers including the top-end ZPrinter.  I want to print some of my 3D art sculptures and transform them into Bronze Casts via this method.  I think this will be another unique source of profits for me BUT the printing costs are relatively high and I need to get the value of my 3D art popular enough that people would want to buy them as table statues.

Finally, I will say this...

I believe in making profits from anything via a business model of BUILD ONCE - SELL COUNTLESS TIMES.  As such I have never been a fan of commissioned projects.  One, because I can't create what I want to create, Two, because this model involves a lot of continued personal effort (like a 9-5 job) in order for the revenue to keep flowing.  I would rather my creations make on-going money for me so i can move on to the next creation.

Sorry about the long winded posting.. :)  (I had to beat Darrius in lengthiest posting)

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A lot of great ideas pop up here. I created an account at Unity now, and I'm learning about the upload proces there. Thanks, Dart.

I also like Medhue's concept. It's fresh way of looking at marketing your products.

I'm also interested in 3D printing. But the work I made for SL is way too low poly for that purpose. My first goal now is to find new homes for my SL darlings, and in the meantime I keeping an eye on the developments in 3D printing. I'm not sure get how to go that route, maybe in cooperation with an rl compagny... it can still go many ways...

 

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This is how I sell my content outside of SL. My content is me. I get up, go to this place called 'my job', and spend 8 hours there looking busy, and for this I get $58 an hour ($116/hr on Sundays if I choose). 

Oh... you mean SL content, I wouldn't bother - chances of making decent money is very unlikely.

And at this rl thing called 'my job' we have this great set up called 'the union' (I've become a delegate). Amazingly, we actually have a voice, where the people in charge have to listen and respond - a much better deal.

but really, I agree with Pamela again here. SL probably is the best place to sell content if you aren't a professional. It already takes way too much time to run a business in SL - especially for those like me who have rl jobs too.

But good luck to all of those looking for new horizons :smileyhappy:

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