Making a Living in Second Life

While some of you may know about the lay-offs I've experienced in the past year, some may not. Suffice to say I'm looking at creative ways to make money without handing over my soul in return. I've talked for a long time about opening a store, and I'm taking some baby steps towards this real life goal.

But what about my virtual life? I've been playing Second Life for quite some time, and I've made a few Lindens here and there, but that is NOTHING compared to the folks in this article by WIRED Magazine.

I've met a great many cool people in Second Life, but I've never run across "Second Life's most famous landowner, Anshe Chung, who reportedly makes more than $150,000 a year in the virtual world." My God. A tenth of that would set me up for a long time.

Anshe Chung Wikipedia entry
Anshe Chung Ebay listing

WOW. Did you read the Ebay listing? If you buy the land, you even get a Virtual date with her. What kills me is that someone actually bid nearly $1,500. You know what I could DO with $1,500?? In REAL LIFE??

Sigh.

I suspect that my programming and scripting skills are not really fast enough to be able to make a virtual job work well. Some of the builders in Second Life seem to create their goods as if by magic. It all goes way over my head.

I looked into creating a "Virtual SCA Barony Sim" a while back, and even asked an acquaintance of mine (who was president of the SCA at the time) whether she thought it could work or not. The response I got was lukewarm at best, and that the SCA Inc would not be able to back it or condone it.

Maybe I should just start a Renaissance Faire Sim. Then we could have virtual turkey legs, virtual jousting and virtual bad accents! Hell, I'd even set up a "Virtual Vegetable Justice" booth.

As long as I could get Anshe to sit there and let me throw tomoatoes at her.

But I'm not jealous.

Really.