I want to buy land and rent it out to people and make a business out of it.. do people still do this

[GODTRILL]

Hi everyone, i am looking to start a small real estate business on second life. I have all the funds and a team of real life people willing to help but i do not know much about second life and have barely used it. I want to pretty much buy land and rent it out to people. Is this still big on secondlife? are there still alot of people that rent? How would i go about this? I want to hire real estate agents on second life as well and give them comission. Please let me know if this is doable and if it is profitable at all. This will be a large operation and alot of money will be involved...

[Alwin Alcott]

we don't advise business models

 

but not that wise to start this without know how sl works, start with finding that out first.

[ChinRey]

As Alwin said, we can't give business advice here but here are some very basic figures:

One full private sim at list price, not grandfathered:

• Startup fee: 600 USD
• Monthly tier: 295 USD

Monthly income:

• Year 1: 30 USD
• Year 2: 50 USD
• Year 3: 100 USD
• Year 4 : 200 USD
• Year 5: 400 USD

You want to enter a declining market with far more supply than demand and compete against established operators who paid down the initial cost long ago pay much lower monthly tier than you can get from Linden Lab today, and have a well established existing customer base. It's a no-brainer really.

There are two ways that may give you a small profit eventually: you can buy up existing grandfathered sims as and when they become available with lower transaction fees and lower tier than new sims or you can build something so totally different and more amazing than the regular SL estates people are wiling to pay extra to rent from you. But even if you go for one of those options and you're lucky and a good marketer, it'll take two or three years before you break even and even longer before you recover the initial costs. Don't expect to ever make a full time living from it and as for hiring people - don't even think about it.

[Lindal Kidd]

It CAN be profitable, but it's a highly competitive business and takes significant startup capital.

I own about 3/4 of a Mainland sim and manage about 20 rentals on it.  I make a small profit each month, enough to pay my own SL expenses.  It took over a year before I had enough of my units rented to break even.