The Business of Second Life

With my first book Second Life - A Guide To Your Virtual World set to hit the streets by end of August, I am starting to think about the next project. At this point, I believe there is a need for guidance and help with the business of Second Life.

I'm not talking about a real-life start up, doing the venture capital circuit, and come up with the BIG idea kind of Second Life business, there will be plenty of that. I'm more interested in the build and sell something for fun business of SL. The pay my tier business of SL or the buy my morning Starbucks latte kind of SL business.

The platform offers such a great arena to learn business basics and have fun doing it. My plan as of now is to chronicle several business experiments in this blog and then to fold the info back into another book.

For starters, I'm wondering what types of "fun" businesses / experiments people have done in SL. Here are I believe the three main ones:

1) Product - Build something and sell it (the stock SL business)
2) Rentals - Become a landlord or mall owner and make money on rentals
3) Service - Become a service provider / club owner / marriage arranger, etc. Make money selling in-world services

Two other ones which are too close to RL business are land sales/speculation and providing build services for companies wanting to get their brand in-world. I'm leaving these on the cutting room floor.