Only months after I first started building in SL, I got my first request for custom work. Someone wanted uniforms for a military in their roleplay group. They would pay me L$3000, and in return I would give them a full-permission copy to distribute while I would never sell the uniform to anyone else. Call me naive, eager to please, or just easily impressed by a number as ‘large’ as 3000. Whatever the case, I took the job.
This was my first experience with working for peanuts.
After about a month’s worth of building with a hawk watching over my shoulder, I finished and vowed never to do that again. But then someone else told me they would pay L$3000 for a custom avatar. They still didn’t want me to resell, but they didn’t want full permissions. For some reason, this seemed like a much better deal, even though the job took me just as long to finish.
A long story short, the last two custom commissions that I took were over two years ago. The client paid $75 US for each. After that I have refused to take on any more commissions in Second Life. Why?
Because $75 US for a full, custom outfit is still peanuts.
Doing the Math
If I’m working at a good pace, it will take me a week to sculpt up the pieces for a full outfit and fit them, and then another week to texture everything. This is if I’m working roughly 12-hour days, 5 to 6 days a week. Different outfits take different time-spans, but for the sake of this post, lets say that on average, I work about 120 hours on a single outfit. (This is probably an underestimate.)
Minimum wage in the United States is currently $7.25.
So if I was to charge minimum wage to create a custom full outfit, I would have to charge over $800 US.
Now the catch is, that’s MINIMUM wage. No one who does commission work charges minimum wage. They charge more. An illustrator might get paid $500 US for a single magazine spot that might have taken him about 10 hours to do. That’s $50 an hour. And what’s more? They keep the copyright for the image. They’re only selling the license to use it, and if someone else comes by and says “Hey, we’ll pay you $600 if we can use that illustration you did,” the artist can sell the license again!
The reason they charge as much as they do? Because they HAVE to in order to survive. They aren’t creating art for pay all the time. They also have to promote their work, talk to clients, do paperwork, PLUS they’re self-employed which means they have to pay a larger percentage of their income on taxes than people who are employed by a company.
Translating to Second Life
I’m not saying that Second Life builders should charge $500 to create something for someone while retaining the right to resell. That’s silly. The reason Illustrators do it is they may only sell the license one or two times per illustration.
But the idea is still this: Whether it’s Second Life or real life, the talent and the time is still the same. I still have to take time to promote my store, to talk to customers, to make updates, to write up these tutorials and so much more. And I’m still self-employed, which means a nice chunk of my income goes to taxes. Then on top of that there’s paying for the sim, a premium SL account, mall spaces, etc.
The only thing that’s different between RL business and SL business is the economy. Second Life is a micro-economy. A thousand Linden dollars is less than $4 US in the Exchange. On the flip-side, $1000 US is about L$259000. To expect someone to pay $1000 US for a custom outfit is unreasonable from a Second Life perspective, but to work for any less than that is unreasonable from a real life perspective.
So my solution is to simply not accept custom commissions.
Statistics Specific to Me
In the first month of sales, my latest avatar sold 86 times at my top two in-world locations, bringing in L$94600 (about $365 US). (Update: March and April sales were both over L$100,000 for this avatar.) While the sales per month will probably decline eventually, she will still sell. Last month, the other four avatars in my ‘top sellers’ brought in about L$15-20,000 ($58-78 US) a piece, and they are fairly consistent from month to month.
I don’t post this information to brag. I’m sure there are plenty of other people on SL who make the same sort of money or more, and while I consider myself skilled, I don’t think I’m that special. I only give you this information to bring home the point that on Second Life it makes more financial sense for a builder to spend their time working on things they can resell than in doing custom commissions.
This is why I do not take them. No matter how sweet a person you are or how awesome your design may be, I CANNOT take on custom commissions and still survive as a business person in Second Life.
No related posts.
L$3,000 ? You’ve been gipped very hard. I don’t recall two years ago for the Linden exchange rate to be that low. That’d mean lindens would be at L$40/USD to get $75 USD.
That is just a big shame. For the quality of sculpties and avatars you dish out, a custom should start around L$10k (given the difficulty, complication of work of course) especially with a request to “Not Resale” and “Full Perms”.
A military uniform with all the bells and whistles should have a starting price of L$28k as a custom avatar with no-resale involved (but with full-perms and to be distributed should be higher). However, if you’re starting out and want to spread your name then I still say that is not a total loss (since it’s cheap advertising when you’re starting out and that’s instant fame–which is how I met and heard of you).
If you do in the future consider custom work, you should at least start negotiations using USD instead of Lindens. It’s psychological really, the sheer number of zeroes makes people think they’re giving more than enough when they’re actually just paying for a Happy Meal. It also culls all non-serious buyers and opens your doors to people who are willing to pay that much money (and more) for your work.
Heheh. Well I don’t really blame anyone for thinking that $L3000 is a large number. After all… I used to think so myself.
Like you said. Most people just look at the zeros at the end of the number and think that it’s enough, without considering the real-life time and talent and comparing that to real-life wages.
I meant this article as less of a bash against people who don’t pay enough and more like… solid information for people who haven’t really thought through the numbers before. Both customers and other builders.
True enough.
If anything the experience you went through was a learning experience (^.~)
I love your blog, I am in no way a tech genius nor a blender sculptor but I find that this place is useful for something in intermediate levels (I visit Machinamatrix for my noob needs). I hope you’ll do more. Honestly, your stuff are fantastic! And I’m not just being flattering here.
Please post more tutorials!
xD Yeah, I actually learned some of what I know from Machinamatrix. They’re alright … <_< The fake voices on the videos drive me crazy, though.
As far as making more tutorials, I could use some extra incentive, maybe. *points at the Donate button* cough cough.
Hehehe. Seriously, though, I’ll keep writing. I have a plan to write up SOMETHING new every week. We’ll see how it goes.
Once I start earning again (barely earning in SL to pay for tier *cries*) I would definitely be donating (here and Machinimatrix). \(^o^)/
Although I’m surprised you haven’t entered into fashion. Your items can give most of the designers a run for their money in quality alone. :O
Thanks for being frank about numbers – people like to doge that a lot –
This is mostly the reason I am getting tired of custom, it seems hard to persuade people in secondlife that you need to eat
I “solved” this problem by charging clearly posted hourly rates, and their amount in USD.
I understand if you don’t think it’s fair to the end user to charge that amount for a one-time outfit.
However, if they’re not willing to pay my going rates, they can find someone else less skilled (or less marketed, etc) who’ll do it.
Anyhow, thanks for the tutorial postings.
Aye. The trouble with only posting hourly rates is that often people don’t understand how long it takes to create something. They see “$10 per hour” and think to themselves “Oh cool! This custom design gun shouldn’t take more than… two or three hours, right?”
So they end up expecting a gun for twenty or thirty bucks, when in reality it might be more like one or two hundred.
Yeah. Of course, I’m quick to set them right about that. I’m not going to let anyone walk in to ordering a commission they can’t pay for.
I take, on average, about 3 hours per unique sculpt. My estimates reflect this. Lately, however, I’ve been working on the same very long scripting commish for the past three months at about L$3.6k/hr.
It is really nice to see numbers put into an easy to understand perspective. Also like others have said before me, I feel you were definitely jipped with that price for the quality of work that you produce, now I didn’t know your work two years ago but looking at it now.. I still say that was a lower amount than it should have been
It also explains why Tokushi is able to let their custom avatar auctions go so high in price. The last time they held an auction for a custom avatar slot, it sold for like 700$USD.
It’s great to see this put into prespective.
Only just crept on this article recently. But did your artistic flair in Second Life, if anything not provide you with a great “portfolio” of your achievements in Second Life?
Surely that would count for something more-so than any qualification to say an employer?
Unfortunately, my Second Life work has only provided me with a great portfolio for Second Life. The limitations of sculpties aren’t easy to explain to potential employers, and the mesh work of sculpted prims looks messy. Maybe once I get heavily into doing regular meshes for Second life I’ll be able to do something remotely impressive, but even then, I’d probably be looking at entry-level jobs that pay less than what I’m currently making on SL.
What would your opinion be on commissions where you’re allowed to resell it too? “I really want to see this, so I’ll pay extra to prioritize it, but you can still sell it to others” type things?
(I couldn’t afford even that, I have to play on the cheap. But I’m interested in your thoughts anyway.)
For that, that really depends on two things:
First, whether or not you really want to put in the effort to make it and Second, whether or not you think the item will actually sell. If someone pays you 5,000L to make a something odd, tells you, you can resell it, but it only ever sells once or twice at 500L, that’s not going to be quite as worthwhile.
If someone wants you to make something, you think it’s awesome, and you think it will sell? Sure. Take the upfront commission. I don’t see anything wrong with that.