Part Three: Choose Your Services (Making Money in Second Life)

This continues my weeklong exploration of making money renting apartments in Second Life. You can find me inworld as Uriel Wheeler and feel free to stop by my rental office in Avalon Estates).

Step Three: Choose your amenities and setup FIRST. Why should people spend their real money on your (imaginary) stuff? In my case - as I mentioned back here - I built the skyboxes I wished I had been able to find. They are relatively spacious without being TOO big. A hundred prims isn't a LOT, but it's pretty reasonable for most things. I make sure I have working security systems - something that often does NOT work in apartments and skyboxes, with locking doors. Apartments far enough apart that even with using the cam, you're outside of voice/chat eavesdropping distance - so it doesn't matter if your neighbor has chickens or barking dogs, and as much privacy as you can get in Second Life.

A patio. I don't know why I like patios; I just do. I don't like just TP'ing into a room.

I help my tenants whenever I can.

My motto is: Simple, basic, and working.

And that brings us to what I do NOT provide. There is no "private sandbox". No tenants-only club. No beachside resort area (yes, I've seen this as a "perk"). There are no winding forest trails (yes, I've seen this as a perk as well). There is no official support for TVs or radios.

The last is probably the most controversial. I *do* hand out, on request, a copy of the FreeView TV. If someone wants to deed their @Home TV to the group, they're more than welcome to... but I'm not responsible for the outcome. I have no desire to split up the parcel in the ways needed for that to work properly, so I won't claim to support it and then not do so (I've seen that trick before as well).

Sometimes things don't work, or I find a better replacement. JennyX Turbo (aka Designed by Jenny) offered me a new skybox that let me give more prims to the tenant. Excellent value, and so I ran a rolling upgrade. Tenants could schedule an upgrade time, or as they left I would replace the skybox before a new tenant moved in. I discovered the security system had a bug, so did an upgrade of all the security systems over the course of two days. And then I apologize and thank my residents for their patience.