[Apollia]

Sorry to hear this but trust me, you have to be an extremely gifted programmer to make much money, unless you get a lucky gig with Microsoft, Google, etc... I've been a programmer for a while now and the effort and time isn't worth the pay.

Interesting to know, thanks. I think I'm going to have to do something pretty unconventional in any case, just because I'm so extremely in favor of open source software that I probably wouldn't even want to work for Google or Microsoft, let alone the average job listing on a freelance site where the employer wants full rights to whatever software you write for them.

Oh, yeah, that reminds me. You probably have already thought of this, but maybe search freelance job sites? I haven't done any jobs with such sites myself yet, and am not very informed on this topic, but, I most often hear about Elance.com , which features non-technical as well as technical jobs. There are doubtless many similar sites out there too. I've sometimes been told to try Craigslist.org too.

I probably would be doing this right now if it wasn't for all of the scamming. It's so easy to get ripped off on sites like that.

Things might have changed since 2002 (which is when I was selling stuff), but, I think I only got ripped off on eBay once, maybe twice. (I can't remember whether or not with the second problem I had, the person's check finally arrived).

The time I (almost) definitely got scammed is when someone said they had sent their PayPal payment to a typo version of my email address, an address I found out for a fact didn't even exist, but supposedly the payment had been accepted. I decided for a $7 item it was more trouble than it was worth to dispute this and risk getting a negative feedback on my profile, and there also was a small chance that maybe the person wasn't lying, so I sent the item for free.

Fortunately, there are people out there who are definitely honest. I had mailed an item to someone, and then a few weeks later, the person emailed me saying they hadn't received it. Having no idea whether or not this was true or a scam, I issued them a refund - then, to my surprise, the person sent back the refund (about $15), apologized, and told me they had found the item.


I was more naive and trusting back then, but these days, I can think of a lot more reasons to be nervous about selling on sites like that. I would be wary of credit card chargebacks, having my PayPal account frozen for a dispute, and, something I forgot to mention before (since I haven't sold on there for years, and forgot this news I heard about several months ago) - if I'm not mistaken, sellers are no longer allowed to leave negative feedback for customers. I never gave anyone any negative feedback, but I can see how this could be bad.

So, actually, an alternative to eBay might likely be better, along with using payment methods (maybe even Second Life) that have no chance of being snatched back at an unscrupulous scammer's whim.

No idea what would be a good alternative. I tried selling on AuctionAddict.com (which has no listing or commission fees), but my items sat there for months with no bids, until one of them was bid on by someone who turned out to be someone who wanted me to send a large amount of money to someone in Nigeria. :/ At that point, I gave up on AuctionAddict.

Yeah, this is floating around in my mind. I don't have much experience with 3D modeling, but I'm getting more and more interested in it.

Me too.

There is also a game like second life called Entropia Universe.

I've looked into that but it doesn't seem to be as easy as Second Life to get into that as a developer of content.

I also have no patience for trying to figure out how to play the game itself (or any other similar game) for profit, even though that's supposedly possible. That would truly be a no-passion job for me - defeating virtual monsters, etc. would feel so empty and useless to me.

The only problem is that people say it's a very risky business, both financially

Might be true of Entropia Universe. But, I pay only $72 a year for a Second Life subscription (a lot of which comes back to me in the form of the weekly Premium user stipend), and if I decided not to own land, I wouldn't even have to pay that much, since free accounts are an option, and renting a small amount of land is pretty cheap.

I own so little land it costs nothing extra for me to hold onto it. I only have it so I have a private place to script and build, a place to sell and give away items, and so I don't have to rent space to hold the scripted boxes containing items I have listed for sale on the websites SLExchange (which takes a small commission out of every sale) and OnRez (which seemingly doesn't take commissions, I'm not sure what they do to make money).

and personal health.

Yes, it's probably particularly bad for anyone who is prone to getting addicted to computer games. Fortunately, after all the video games I played when I was younger, I think I've developed some immunity to that.

Other than that, I guess the risks are about the same as any computer-related job - lack of exercise, etc.

I agree, but I am having trouble finding a topic that is unique, valuable, and something that I care enough about to update it at least once in a while.

I partly get around this problem by featuring multiple topics on my website. There are those who discourage the idea of having a single website on a variety of themes, but, I think there's no problem with it as long as the site is well-organized enough that people can easily find the content that interests them and ignore the rest.

Exactly. I have had smalltownbigshot.com for over a year (it just expired today) and I hadn't updated it in a few months, yet I was still getting some clicks on Google ads.

Oh, yes, I remember that site. I liked that too. You are really an excellent, clear writer.

If I didn't run out of things to talk about, I could probably be doing very well by now.

Me too, possibly. I'm just not capable of churning out a ton of new, valuable content quickly or regularly, though, so I'm hoping just piling up a lot of interesting stuff gradually is a good approach. It might be working, my traffic tends to increase or stay at a stable level.

Thanks for the input!

You're welcome, thank you too.