The clue is this: walking up to avatars and asking, "Hey! Hi. How can I get a job?" marks you as a real newbie - a clueless newbie to boot, actually. Which is okay, we were all newbies once, and no one is going to hate you for asking.

Of course, no one is going to give a clueless newbie a job, either. If you ask the "How do I get a job" question, most folks will point you to the jobs board on the Secondlife.com site or just say "I don't know" or "nothing here" and hope you wonder off soon.

So, it's time to strategize. You *can* get fun work in SL, just not in two or three hours of inworld time, and not just for earning Linden dollars (more on that in a bit). The direction and strategy for getting work - and deciding what kind of work to look for - can be determined by two questions:

---- 1) Why do you want to get a job in SL?

---- 2) What kinds of things did you get into SL to do?

Let's take the first one: WHY do you want a job?

I JUST WANT MONEY
If you are working just to get Lindens to buy stuff in world, you might want to reconsider things. This is because even the best unskilled jobs in SL pay - at most - about 10 cents an hour (US dollars). Wow. You could literally clean out the change in your car ashtry and save yourself about 30 hours of work in SL. If you have any kind of credit card, spending just $10 will get you about $2,500L, or the equivalent of about 100 hours of work in-world (assuming you can earn 100L in 4 hours, which is pretty exceptional for most average jobs). That's a lot of hours. Most people I know can earn $10US in less than 2 hours real time, and that's if they have to mow lawns or walk dogs to get it. So, if you can earn $10 US in less than 100 hours of real-life time, you'll be able to earn Lindens much faster by earning money in the real world and just buying Lindens.

GET SOME SKILLS
Here's the bottom line: if you are going to 'get hired' in SL, you have to be able to do something that someone else can't do. It might be as simple as manning the bar area while the club owner is offline or welcoming guests. It might be working as virtual real estate agent, greeting folks that are looking to buy or rent property and showing them around.

Or, it might be building things, scripting things, or doing other valuable work. Lots of people can't build or script, yet they want things built and scripted.

You'll have to learn how to do these things - build and script - in order to be hired by others for your services. It takes dozens of hours to become a competent builder, and many more hours to become a competent scripter. Not that you can't be building and scripting in just a few hours - you can - but the things you can build with just a few hours of skill are not worth much to folks. There are a ton of free items in SL that are of low-skill level builds. People don't need things that require that level of skill, they need things that they can't do themselves. Which leads us into Big Question #2.

#2: What kinds of things did you get into SL to do?

Basically, what is it that you would like to do in SL that would make you happy? Why did you want to get into SL?

If it's for making friends, then look for jobs like bar tending, coffee hour barista, meeter-and-greeter for events or clubs. Help people open new sims - be it in the role of gopher, greeter, or junior builder. Participate in events and talk with people about what they are doing, what projects they love.

If you joined SL for creating and building, then see if you can be of some (free) help to someone building a project (preferrably big ones). You can learn some tricks and building techniques while making friends and demonstrating you can work on a team or with a group. Once you complete a project or two, you'll have folks that can recommend you to other projects or server as references. Also, attend all the build classes you can (they are free) to learn the tricks, get material packs, and practice building.

If you joined SL to explore and tour, then learn your way around, master the search tools, and keep a list (or a blog) of cool spots you've found in SL. Then, offer your touring services to folks. If you are a touring fan, I don't even need to tell you to place food & fun stops along the way and to keep your tour talk interesting and informal. But I might be able to recommend chunking your tours into 20-minute segments so people can log off when they need to or join up with the tours 3 times per hour. People's attention span tends to wane after about 20 minutes. Keep the group moving and encourage LM's so folks come back again.

If you joined SL for gaming and role play, you'll have a great time but probably won't find many opportunities to get paid to play. If you are serious about that angle, you're best bet is probably to buy a sim, outfit it with *great* builds for the gaming you love, and then run great games there. You can get donations, sell gaming supplies and outfits, rent out apartments and store space, and rent it out to groups for games. This is not a new-player kind of endeaver: sims start at US$1650 and cost US$295 per month in server fees. You'll need a good wad of startup capital and a *great* team of builders and scripters to make a sim that people want to play.

If you joined SL to do teaching and hold classes, then just start doing it! You can ask for donations at each class or charge for tuition. Advertising the class in the events calendar does cost extra, but usually isn't much (L$30 a week, or about 12 cents US). There are so many places and building in SL that just are empty and not being used, you can pick a spot and have a class of an hour or two just about anywhere!

YOU CAN SELL THINGS YOU'VE BUILT
Once you have created something useful or beautiful, you can set up a little store (or even just a vendor in someone else's store), rent a mall booth, etc. Store setup and management also requires some hours of learning curve, and that's *after* you have built your product(s), but it isn't bad. Once you have the automatic vendor selling your goods, you will need to get traffic to the vendor somehow. Marketing. Events. If you can get all that working for you, you can make money selling things in SL - which is a great way to go. This can be a lot of fun for folks that like to do this kind of thing.

LANDLORD
If you have startup captial, you can buy land and rent it out for just a little bit more than it costs you. Not much more, though, or no one will rent from you. There is a *lot* of rental land available in SL. The rates will keep you competitive. But, even if you are only making US$100/mo positive cash flow on a sim (which is reasonable), you multiply that by ten or twenty sims, and you get some real income. Of course, it is *real* work: renting, showing, building, cleaning up (prim garbage), resolving problems and complaints, collecting, managing, advertising, and more. If you call that "playing" then, great, have a ball! You can make real money at it, but it takes time, commitment, determination and some startup captial (probably about US$2,000-US$3,500). Your return: maybe around 6%-10% of your investment *per month*, which is 72%-120% return in a year. It's a no brainer for folks that have the cash, the time, the aptitude and the desire.

YOU CAN OFFER SERVICES AND REAL-LIFE SKILLS
I do know people that do real-life income tax preparation in Second Life, as well as investment management. Caldwell Banker is in SL, and they sell land and houses, just like in real life. I know people that specialize in organizing and promoting Second Life parties or fundraisers. I know people that run role-playing sessions and get donations to cover their time. People give crafting lessons, language lessons, film-making lessons, building lessons, and many other things in Second Life. You could offer your skills to folks as well. Be creative and think about how to adapt what you are good it in real life to needs and people's wants in Second Life. You must figure out why people in SL would want your services, though. Figure out how to offer something that people want.

IN SL, DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND THE MONEY WON'T MATTER.
Bottom line here: look for work that pays you in more than just Linden dollars: do jobs that pay you in the kind of experiences you want from SL. If you follow this rule, you'll find the kind of people that hire you will be the kind of people you like to know, the places and gigs you work will be the kinds of places and things you enjoy, and the level of jobs you get will continously improve over time. This is the real work ethic in SL. It's about fun, experience, creativity, and people. Enjoy it!