Is it free to create items in Second Life?

[Sassy Romano]

My suggestion was useful, you chose to not act upon it, that choice is yours but here's what i'm going to do, I'll send you the same amount of money that I started my business with.

Good luck.

[Rolig Loon]

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BlackCrow23 wrote:

[ .... ] Even if I put $5 in to it, how easy (if I'm decent at 3D designing) would you say it would be to get my real money back, and then to continue forward after that? [ .... ]

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Easy?  How long is a piece of string?  Nobody can answer a question like that.  It all depends on how good your work is and whether anyone is interested enough to pay you for it.  There are thousands of creative people in SL, many of them very talented indeed, so there's competition to deal with.  Competition also tends to keep prices low, and so does residents' natural desire to keep their own recreational expenses down.  You'll find excellent houses for sale in world for under L$1000 ($4 USD), for example.  Under those circumstances, it's far from "easy" to earn a lot from your creative work. 

Now, there are ways to keep some development costs low.  You can use Blender (which is free) for your 3D modeling instead of paying a lot of money to buy Maya, for example.  You can upload Local Textures free while you are trying them out, or you can upload everything free on the beta (Aditi) grid before you are ready to to pay for a final upload on the main (Agni) grid.  In the end, though, there will always be expenses.

As I said in my last post, however, that's really not the question you should be asking.  If you are asking about how easy it is to earn money, you shouldn't be trying.  Look at your pocketbook and ask how much you are willing to spend for your own recreation.  If you're not willing to spend the price of a small lunch a couple of times a month to have some fun creating things in SL, regardless of whether you ever earn anything back, find something else to do -- like eating lunch. 

[Nalates Urriah]

Yes, you can take money out of SL. Money can move both directions.

There are people that make their RL livng working in SL. Others pay for their regions from in-world sales.

[ChinRey]

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BlackCrow23 wrote:

Even if I put $5 in to it, how easy (if I'm decent at 3D designing) would you say it would be to get my real money back, and then to continue forward after that?

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As Rolig said, it's hard to say but to here are some stats that may give you an indication.

If I remember correctly, LL paid out 3 million U.S. dollars to users last year. I don't know how much of this went to builders but probably less than half of it.

There are about 170 000 registered sellers on the Marketplace and more than 3 1/2 million products listed there.

As a newcomer you have a huge disadvantage. Sales in SL is very much based on your reputation - if nobody knows you or about you, nobody is going to even notice your works on the Marketplace, let alone buy them. And of course, you won't have access to the big inworld sales events - possibly the most lucrative sales channel today.

Pamela mentioned there are many ways to make a few Lindens inworld - at least enough to cover the upload costs. What I would recommend to you as a content creator, is to attend the various builder "Show and Tell" events and competitions. There's a good chance you'll win some Lindens there and they're fun, you get to meet other builders and get lots of valuable feedback.

Oh, building for free in SL - yes of course you can. Prims don't cost anything and if you're a decent 3D modeller you can do wonders with them. And textures, this virtual world is full of public domain textures already uploaded by others (and unfortunately also lots of pirate copies of commercial ones, so you better be a bit careful there).