Second Life vs. Real Life - 10 Questions for the weekend

Before leaving for a three days week-end (lucky me !), I wanted to post some questions for you ! They might seem slightly off topic at first sight, but they somehow relate to Second Life economics...

1) Do you behave the same in Second Life and real life, or do you feel different in SL ?

2) What is your avatar ? A copy of you ? Your ideal view of yourself ? A puppy ? A fantasy ?

3) Do you have control over the quantity of time you spend in Second Life ?

4) Do you consider Linden Dollars as real money ?

5) Is there something equivalent to camping in your real life ?

6) Do you consider what you say in Second Life as binding as what you say in real life ?

7) Can Second Life be a viable source of income ?

8) Is Second Life different from any other internet based chat ?

9) What if Linden Lab decided to shut Second Life down tomorrow ?

10) Do you have true friends in Second Life ?

I will give you my own answers in a later post, and I'm really interested in yours. Feel free to answer one, several or all of these questions in your comments...

The t-shirt your Second Life avatar wants !

Look at that ! Stroh Bing made this t-shirt for me today, and I'm sure you are all jealous now... It's so good that I don't know what to say.

The "JohnLight Raymaker" marking in the back makes it unique, as well as the serial number on the front side !

If you want your own, IM Stroh Bing... but he will increase the number each time, so I'm the unique number one camper !

Stroh sell these t-shirts for 150L$ (500 L$ full perms)

Camping Photo Contest - Photos are Here !

The submission phase of the camping photo contest is now over, let's start voting ! Here are the pictures of the contestants. Choose the one you prefer, and vote in the right hand-side column ! The winner will receive 100 L$ !

1) Sylver Vuckovic

2) Sb Babii

3) Hernan Fitzgerald

4) Angle Binder

5) Vicky Lilliehook

6) Quebec Debevec

7) Clive Forcella

8) Clyde Otsuka

9) Bia Mertel

10) Genie Demina

Shields up! There are monsters in Second Life (by Clyde Otsuka)

This is a guest post from Clyde Otsuka, about some attacks he underwent recently while camping. I personally never knew why the clients where sometimes crashing during camping sessions, and this could be part of the answer... Thank you Clyde for sharing the info.

"Recently, I have noticed that I get knocked off some very good camping spots. One time I was floating in gray space, other times, I would just be standing there, next to a cute girl. I asked some friends, and a very nice girl - Angelsky Shepard gave me two shields. She said to wear them when I camp. So, what the heck, I tried them.

Yesterday, while doing work on another computer, I noticed that my avatar had gone berserk! There were boxes flying around in a crazy pattern in a big circle.
The computer is new and high end, I wondered if the object was trying to crash the machine or the graphics card? When I checked it out, there was a huge octopus/squid creature hooked onto my shield. It was black, and pretty evil looking.

Taking a quick look around, I found a cute girl standing there, so I imed her.
She was from Italy, but spoke English. Evidently she had been given this object to knock people off camping spots that she wanted. I im-ed a few folks and they tped in and we had a long talk with her. She promised not to do it any more. I have her name. If anyone else runs into her doing this, we should probably report her?

A little more research, and I now have 4 shields. If anyone needs a set, please let me know, we seem able to give away copies.

Clyde"

SecondLife goes on... without me

Weather in Switzerland was just perfect today. What has the swiss weather to do with getting a millionaire in Second Life ? The link is quite obvious indeed, I'm leaving in vicinity of Geneva, and weather was so appealing today that I spent my day outside. The computers were off the all day, I went online for a very short while.

One of the funny things with SecondLife, which also makes it really addictive, is that it runs even if you don't get connected. The value of my stocks changed, my bank accounts generated interests, some people went to my shop and bought items, some other joined the group, and so on...

Because SecondLife's world is persistent and going on without its users, one is always tempted to go back and see how it changed.... especially people having financial interests in it. And this is not saying anything about emotional involvment...

Nevertheless, a day without any SecondLife activity (ok, only a few...) was perfectly survivable.

A bad day in Second Life

After earning nearly 1'000 L$ over the last seven days, two bad news hit me today. Both the unlimited dancecage in Newt and the 8L$ / 10 minutes benches in Multiply disappeared ! On the plus side, the three lucky chairs in Terra Nexus are giving quite high ammounts, sometimes over 25L$ !

I also discovered a new kind of dancepad, combined with a jackpot. For each period of ten minutes:

• the camper get 2, 1, or 0 L$, depending the amount of the jackpot
• the jackpot is increased by 1 L$
• the camper has a chance to get the jackpot

One of the pads had a jackpot 0f 730L$ but a rate of 0L$ per 10 minutes. Camping there gives the camper a chance to get the jackpot each 10 minutes... but could also lead to a very long fruitless camping ! Personally, I don't like it...

A good day in Second Life

I said something wrong in a previous post. The 2L$ / 10 minutes dancecage in the Italian Sexy Club in Newt is not limited to 100L$. As stability is good these days, I left JohnLight here the whole day, and when I came back, he had earned 124 L$ and was still dancing ! I had to stop it because the client was showing unstability signs...

So it is now an open question: what is the limit of this cage, if any ?Any information is welcome... and answering it will help you ? I made 420 L$ in this cage over two and a half day !

On top of that, Genie gave to the group the location of a sim where are 3 benches with 3 camping seats each... paying 8 / 10 ! Ok, they are limited to 24L$, and very busy, but getting one is really rewarding... and good !

Once again, creating the "Free Money from JohnLight Raymaker" group helped me a lot, this was a damn good idea ! You want the address of the 8 / 10 campsite ? Ok, I will publish it in a few days. Join the group for fresh information.

Don't forget that the Camping Snapshot Contest is still open, with an opportunity to earn 100 L$ !

The 200L$ camping day !

As I wanted to know the limit of the dancecage in Newt, I left JohnLight there yesterday evening. This morning, he was off the cage, with 100L$ more ! Given this good result, I decided to make something I had stopped for long, a daylong camping.

When I came back, JohnLight had been disconnected because of a planned maintenance. Apparently there is still a strong causality link between my long un-supervised camping session and SL going down !

Anyway, it's not that bad, as at maintenance time JohnLight already earned 98L$. I just had to camp for 5 minutes to get 2 more L$ and reach 200 ! So in one day I get enough money to pay the camping photo contest prize, plus the equivalent of three days of camping.

The contest is starting well, I've already received some good camping pictures. You can still take part and try to earn the 100L$ !

Earn 100L$ in Camping Photo Contest !

Do you want to earn 100L$ easily ? Take part in my Camping Photo Contest !

The rules are really simple. Make a snapshot on the theme of camping, mail it to me, and readers will vote for the best one. One picture per contestant, one vote per reader. Only camping related pictures will be accepted !

You can make picture of yourself, of other avatars, in SL, RL, a hand drawing, a scrap-book, a patchwork... There is no other topic than camping, so you can do something sexy, funny, artistic, symbolic, poetic, ... anything you like ! Be creative !

You can send your pictures at johnlight.contest@gmail.com until 12:AM SLT next Tuesday, 25th of September ! Don't forget to include your avatar name in your mail !

Lot of camping - Losses on SLCapex

I have had some delays in reporting recently, as I was incorporating the results of the poll and your feed-back in my most recent posts. I also try to maintain the pace of my posts slow enough to let you time to read them !

Most of my camping time over the last week-end has been spent in the "Italian Sexy Club" in "Newt (107, 69, 53)". They have quite various rates, 2 / 10 (no limitation known yet), 5 / 20 limited to 80, and one 2 / 5 but limited to one cycle ! Some of their pads also require to be member of "Italian Sexy Club of Newt" group. I made over 300 L$ there over 4 days.

My investments on the SLCapex are not exactly doing well. The market is oriented downwards, so only long-term investments have luck to produce benefits. Day trading is really hard. For the first time today, the balance is below 4'000L$, representing a 20% loss ! Nevertheless, I still beleive that this will improve.

Security issue - Don't let the SL client remind your password

I know this post is slightly off-topic, but given the induced risks, I want to share this infomration with you. The Second Life Insider reported a security issue with Second Life. If you let the client remind your password, to avoid having to type it each time you go in-world, there is a way for hackers using a malicious web-page and InternetExplorer to gain access to your SL account.

All the details (and the way to do it as well) are explained on http://www.gnucitizen.org/blog/ie-pwns-secondlife. I did not test it myself. Anyway, I never let any software remind passwords for me...

I won't turn this blog in a hacker / safety oriented way, nor as a hoax spreading tool, but this vulnerability seems serious enough to deserve being comunicated widely.

How to Find Good Camping in Second Life Part II

In a previous post, I explained my startegy to manage a good campsites lists, so as not to loose time with no campsite available, and how to check if a campsite is good or not. So now, it's time to answer the key question: how to find campsites ?

The first method is quite obvious: use the "Search" feature of the Second Life client. Just click on "Search", then select the "Places" tab, and use a good keyword. You can get good results with keywords like:

• camping
• dancepad
• dancing
• camp
• free money
• free linden
• camp master

Before going to one of the places you found, just have a short look to its description and traffic.

Another source of good campsites is the tons of landmak that other people are distributing on campsites. In popular campsites like Apfelland or Newt, you frequently receive landmarks while camping. I systematically accept all of them, and take some time to check them while searching for new campsites.

Finally, I get many good campsites via the "Free Money from JohnLight Raymaker" group, which I founded for this very purpose. Many active members do share their best camping adresses. It's very good because it's not just adverts from campsite operators, but from fellow campers proud to share their adress book !

To summarize, I get campsite adresses using searches, landmarks distributed while I do camp, and from the group. As in real life, it's all about of getting the good connections !

Help me - help you - open a JTFinancials account

Starting on the 17th of September, JTFinancials is making a contest amongst its affiliates. The winner will be the affiliate with the larger number of new accounts opened within a given period of time !

So if you want to help me, you can go to the shop, in Club Josephina (SLURL in the links section), and open an account by paying the ATM on first floor ! So you will also receive 0.12% daily on your deposit, and may be I will be the winner of their contest !

I'm expecting you ! Contact me if you need more information or instruction how to open your account !

How to Find Good Camping in Second Life Part I

As the proverb say "Give a fish to a man, he will eat one day, teach him fishing, he will eat for the rest of his days". Many readers and group members asked me how I proceed to find good campsites. I have no special procedure, and I think it's all about common sense, but here is how I do.

Let's start by defining what a good campsite is. First, the payrate must be acceptable. To make comparison easier, I check it on an hourly basis. I don't camp for less that 12 L$ per hour. This is equivalent to the frequent 2 / 10 or 3 / 15. This is what I consider standard. Anything above is good, but 12 per hour is ok.

As the campsites change very quickly, I do share my time between camping and searching for new spots. The objective is to always have at least a couple of 12 / hour sites available so I never wast potential camping time because of no campsite available.

When I teleport to a new campsite (I'll say how I find them in part II), I expect the camping device to be easy to spot. Given the number of campsites out there, I don't spend time flying or walking through all of an island to find them. Using the mini-map is helpful here as it makes easy to find where crowded areas are, and crowds most of time are due to campers.

Once the device have been easily located, I have a look for other camper earnings. If campers have earnings in the 20, 50 or even 100 range, it's a good sign of unlimited camping. If decide to give the new site a go, I camp for about half an hour, keeping an eye on the process.

This test run allows to check for any blue box popping-up asking if I want to continue. This is quite common now, and makes any unsupervised camping impossible. The test run is also good to make sure that the device is actually paying, before starting spending too much time. To be fair, most of the camping devices are paying, but it's worth checking.

To sumarize this first part, here are my rules:
1) No camping below 12L$ per hour
2) Camping device must be easy to find once teleported
3) Use the mini-map to locate camping crowds
4) Check how others are doing
5) Have a test run before camping too long

In part II, I will explain how I find new campsites to be checked... stay tuned !

Reverse use of the group

Until now, I always used the "Free Money from JohnLight" group to post good camping adresses to the fellow members. Sharing such adresses has always been encouraged in the group, and frequently members do send some.

Today however I used it a different way... As I did not made a lot of campsites search recently (I'll explain a bit later how I do this...) it happend today that all my usual spots were busy or switched off. Instead of starting a search, I just asked on the group if someone had some free pad in sight, and ... Bang... Angle Binder gave me the best tip, and I could start camping immediately. Thanks you Angle... you're really sweet !

Camping and investing

While I continue camping actively (as far as camping can be qualified of active...), my investment knowledge is slowly growing. Aldon Hynes, who was kind enough to give some advise via comments, also sent me a very interesting post of his own, about Second Life Day Trading Strategies. It is really good reading for newbies...


My big problem with day trading is that I don't have to possiblity to monitor the market closely and permanently enough, nor to spend time reading SLCapex business news. Long term investments are probably better for me.

I'm also still waiting for your feed-back and improvement proposals (click the link on top of this page...) about the blog, so as to incorporate them in the next change.

Finally, on the social topic, I restarted dual camping, so it is possible again to meet JaneLight and JohnLight camping together... how sweet are they ? This raise a funny question to me. In your view, Jane and John are...

... brother and sister ? twins ? friends ? lovers ? couple ? freudian sides of myself ?

Here we camp again

Since I got my computer back from the maintenance workshop, I restarted camping as much as I can, and I'm reaching daily amounts of about 5o L$ on week days and 100 L$ on week-ends. At this rythm, I will need 35 years to reach the million.

Hopefully, interests and other activities will help to make it shorter ! I can't imagine me still camping in 35 years. I can't even imagine what computers will look like by this time, and the current SL version would probably seem as old as pacman games do today.

There have been some changes in camping since I started this quest. The unlimited campsite are not so frequent, and many include human vs. robots checks. This can be in the form of a question when starting camping, or a warning while camping to which you have to respond, otherwise you get ejected.

Another new thing I found out recently are campchairs that can be used by members of a certain group members only. And obviously one has to pay to join the group ! As you can imagine, I don't exactly like that, especially as the chairs are not paying super rates.

There have been discussions today in the "Free Money from JohnLight" group about a camp master that is not always paying. Some members were there for as long as 23 hours, and got nothing in the end. It is not confirmed yet, and apparently the owner is temporarily short of cash...

Please continue to give me feed-back via the polling in the right hand column, or by clicking on the "help improving this blog" link on top of the page. I plan some changes soon, so it's right time to tell me what you would like !

Attack on Josephina's 9 / 11 tribute - Shame on you morons !

As announced in my last post, Josephina Bonetto was holding a tribute to 9 / 11 victims yesterday evening (european time). This has been broken up by some "flying dollars" which made the sim quite hard to use, as you can see on this picture. The notes were flying around in large number and were completely out of control.

If this has been caused by some idiot neighboor, it's really stupid and demonstrates bad handling of SecondLife capabilities... But if this has been done intentionally, which is quite likely, it is then the mark of infamy. This kind of action, managed remotely, without any reason, just to harm someone's projects is really mean, especially when it ruins an event dedicated to heroes like those of 9 / 11. I can't find any strong enough words to say how disgusted I am...

Jo filed an abuse report to LindenLab, and I sincerely hope that they will react strongly, and make sure that the abuser will never ever do that again !

9/11 Tribute @ Club Josephina

Tonight (european time), Josephina is holding a tribute to 9 / 11 victims and survivors in her club. The event will take place in the "Club Josephina", all details below. I personally support this cause, and will join it. See you there !

Host: Bio
Music: Modern Club/Pop
Location: Club Josephina
Time: 11 Sep 07 @ 1:30pm SLT

No contest - Just an evening (or day depending on your time zone) in tribute of not just the lives lost but the survivors too.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gula/72/239/113
http://secondlife-clubjosephina.moonfruit.com/
http://secondlifeclubjosephina.blogspot.com/

IM Josephina Bonetto for LM/TP/Further Info and/or join Group "Club Josephina"

Self-traped in SLCapex

My investments on SLCapex are temporarily frozen, as I made a bad choice. To increase my potential benefits, I wanted to do a quick buy, and sell at a slightly higher price, but a large quantity of shares. The idea was to benefit from market fluctuation, but with a sufficient number of shares to make such a fluctuation interesting.

That's the theory. In practice, the price of the share in question is just falling down since I bought, so I can't sell now, and have to wait for the price to come up again ! Bloody beginner !

Improving this blog ?- Express yourself !

To get a better idea of what you like, I opened a poll in the right hand column of this page. Please take 30 seconds to vote, so that I can improve the content of this blog.

If you have other wishes / tips / remarks, they're all welcome via comments on this post, or per e-mail if you want more privacy.

Now, the floor is yours !

SLCapex end of week 1 - Can you beat the market ? I can't

The adverts for JT Financial SL Capital Exchange asks "Can you beat the market ?". About myself, the answer is clear: no. One week after receiving 5'000L$ from Arbitrage Wise, my portfolio has a market value around 4'300 L$. Even if the loss is virtual only as I did not sell yet, I can't say it's a great victory.

Neverthelss, I will contine to work on my investment strategy, and I'll report here when I will find a startegy... that works. But for the time being, here again no wonder: no money without effort !

Week-end post - Family camping - New type of pad

It's saturday, let's have some fun and personal information. I found today a new very quiet campsite, offering many 3L$ / 15 minutes, the limit is not known yet, but they allow at least 18 L$.

This picture has been taken there, after fellow campers and readers Genie Denima and Stroh Bing joined me.

Stroh is the insect. We had some good contact with the campsite owners, who were still putting things in place.

There is also a new kind of camping device there. They look like standard camping mats, but while camping, the avatar is kneeling, like praying. Will religion get into camping ?

JohnLight's landmarks book XIV - 2 / 10, 3 / 10, and 5 / 15 camping

This spot which I already mentionned in other posts is located in Brasil Paquera (196, 174, 22). The camping there is time limited, to relatively short times. The 5 / 15 is limited to 15L$. It is an orange towel, on your left when you teleport there.

I received this spot via the "Free Money from JohnLight" group last week-end, and group members could profit from it quite a long while before I published it here. To get such information more quickly, join the group now !

Shop is re-open !

Just as Club Josephina re-opened (great party, thanks Jo...), my mini-shop is opened again as well ! It also had its first customer, in the (very good looking) person of Genie Demina ! To visit it, use the "SLURL to the shop" in the right column, go in, first floor, to the left.

The vending pyramid is full of t-shirts, jeans, watches, and other items, for 2L$ each ! There is also the JT Financials ATM where you can open an account and become my affilate, helping me to reach the 1'000'000 L$ quickly !

Resuming normal operations

After eleven days runing the SL client on my old computer only, the main one is at least back from maintenance. I can at last resume my normal operations, meaning runing the client on a more powerful then stable computer, using the older one for JaneLight only.

By luck, I could go directly to a campsite reported few days ago by a member of "Free Money from JohnLight", and get the only 5 L$ / 15 minutes spot available there. It's limited to 45 minutes, but it's still a very good rate. I will publish its location here soon, but I will let the members of the group profit from it. Remember you can join the group at anytime for 15L$...

This week, all the camping money will go to APEZ, to build up the strategic reserve. My new idea about it is to have the reserve being 10% of my total wealth at anytime, so if I experience massive losses again, I will not restart from zero. I will make the corresponding transfer on next Saturday.

The mini-shop is also ready, and I changed the watches seller in a more general 2L$ vending machine. It contains may items (t-shirts, jeans, a couple of tuxedos, a skin, ...) , which you can buy for 2L$ each.

On the SLCapex front, nothing new to report today. As it was a day off in my location, I did not had many time to invest...

Help me... for free !

If you want to support my quest, but don't want to give me money, you now have the opportunity to open an account by JTFinancials. It will allow you to invest on SL Capital Exchange, and you will also get 0.12% interest daily on the cash you will deposit there. Sounds good ?

Once you're decided, just go to the mini-shop, which is on top of Club Josephina (see like beside...). Go on first floor, on the left hand side, you will find the mini-shop, and a JTFinancials ATM. Just pay it to open your account. You can then use any other JTFinancials ATM for your operations. This will help me reaching 1'000'000 L$ via the JTFinancials affiliate system, and it won't cost anything to you ! How sweet is that ?

SLCapex Day 4 - First dividends

This is the only thing I've got to report from my investments on the SL Capital Exchange for today: I reveived about 7L$ in dividends from one of the companies I invested in. It was not a surprise, it was announced by the company, and discussed in the forums.

Apart from that, I placed sell orders for all my shares, so if the price raise enough, they will be automatically sold. No need to monitor them constantly then... which helps focusing on other activities while my money works for me.

SLCapex Day 3 - Still learning

By the end of my third day on the Second Life Capital Exchange, I still did not loose all my money. Not so bad for a beginner ;-).

The lesson for today relates to the quite low liquidity of this market... be cool. The value of my portfolio changed, from 3'700 to 5'200 without any transaction. High volatility results from a combination of very low stock prices, and proportionally large bid - ask gaps.

Typically, when a stock price changes from 0.40L$ to 0.41L$, this single cent represent 2.5% ! Some stock prices are evolving quite slowly, there are sometimes hours between transactions. For the time being, my strategy is to place sell orders immediately after I bought, so I won't miss any sell opportunity. This obviously applies only to the short term part of my portfolio only. I try not looking at the long term part, to avoid any quick move temptation.

We will see in the next days if this strategies will lead me to my million or not...

JohnLight's landmarks book XIII - Lucky chairs paradise

This landmark is dedicated to all readers who like lucky chairs. You know, the chairs that give you a prize when you seat on it if your name starts with the indicated letter.

In Hairy Canary, you will find some of them.... not 10... not 20... not even 50... but not less than 84 lucky chairs ! There is also a Dance Dance with quite good rates, and limited to 400 (very good), but it's always full.

Oh, I was about to forget it... this place has been indicated this week-end by one of the members of "Free Money from JohnLight" group. Join it if you want such tips quicker.

SLCapex Day 2 - Short and long term... 24 / 7

On SLCapex as on any market, there are two ways of investing, short or long term. For my first moves on this market, I decided to be very conservative, so as not to lose everything the first week.

I invested about 95% with a long-term view, and I kept the remaining 5% for daily investments, and very quick moves. Typically when there is an interesting bid - ask gap, and some persons placing market orders, it gets possible to gain money very quickly. The only risks are to be locked with unsalable stocks, or not to gain enough to compensate for the 2.5% fee on the sales.

However for very small amounts, the fact that the fee is only proportional makes it quite good. Many real life markets have minimal fees, so if you make very small transactions, all your potential benefits are canceled by the fees.

Another major difference between SL Capital Exchange and other markets is that... it never closes ! One can argue that any major investor in real-life will use many markets worldwide, so time differences will make it like a global 24 / 7 market... but such guys also have traders working for them on all these markets !

Managing a short term portfolio on a 24 / 7 market can quickly become an addictive and exhausting activity !

Campsite directory - Prototype 1

If you're a good observer, you probably noticed a new element on this blog, as the very bottom of the page. Scroll down, you will find three lines stating that someone earned a certain amount at a certain place.

This is the visible part of an inventory system I developed today. Yes, I went to SL scripting again. The idea is quite simple: when you want to report a good camping session, you just say the amount you earned to a "JLR camping reporter". This (ugly looking) bracelet then gets your name and location, and your report becomes visible on the blog ! It's so easy, and then all campers can get fresh updates about good campsites.

During the prototype development I already identified a few issues, but before fixing everything I will distribute 10 of them for testing. So if you're interested in one, IM me. First come - first serve !

A special thank you to Angle Binder, who kindly accepted to be the very first tester, you're soooo sweeet.

Stategy update

Investment activities
As I started to invest on SLCapex, a strategy update is needed. For the time being, and as long as I will consider myself in the learning phase, I won't put any of the camping money at risk. I will only invest the 5000 L$ I got from Arbitrage Wise. To keep them separate, I'll use JaneLight's account for this.

Interests
Given the information published here about JTFinancials, I trust them a bit more than Midas, from which I had no info until them. As a consequence, I moved the 10'000 L$ from Midas to JohnLight0s account by JTFinancials.

I also topped this account with my camping income from last week. The previously defined strategy consisting of taking interests away and put them in APEZ is still valid, and I will use APEZ as kind of a strategic reserve, in case of major and undetected trouble by JTFinancials.

The mini shop
For the time being, Josephina is unfortunately experiencing troubles with the club building which is also hosting the mini shop. I must mention however that she does a great job as holding her famous parties in the garden. For more info on that, check her blog (http://secondlifeclubjosephina.blogspot.com/).

When the building will be fixed, probably today or tomorrow, I will restart vending watches there. I will also place an ATM, and a donation box.

Camping
Last but not least, I will for sure continue to camp and explore SL to find the best camping sites, being supported in this task by the members of "Free Money from JohnLight" group. And remember, I by the end, on of the group members will get the 1'000'000 L$ as a prize !

SLCapex Day 1 - Learn the market

This post is the first in an hopefully long series about my investments in the Second Life Capital Exchange market (SLCapex - www.slcapex.com). As you know if you're a fellow reader, I started investing on this virtual stock exchange after Arbitrage Wise, the boss of JTFinancials, offered me 5'000 L$ as an initial fund. The deal is that I can invest it, and count it towards the 1'000'000 goal, but not withdraw before the goal is reached.

So I'm now starting to learn about this market, its tools and possibilities. I will probably give investment tips, but for the time being, I'm just a very newbie... so let's go for a very simply description of what SLCapex is offering.

There are for the time 16 companies offering stock on the market, and two Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) going on. As on any stock exchange, you can place market or limit order. To make it clear for non-market oriented people, here is a brief summary:

Market buy: you buy at the price of the lower sell offer on the market
Market sell: you sell at the higher buy offer on the market
Limit buy: you buy at the price you define, as soon as someone agrees to sell at this price
Limit sell: you sell at the price you define, as soon as someone agrees to buy at this price

These are quite usual tools. On top of that, the SLCapex website offers announcements from the companies being trade, and users forums. There are not costs for buying stocks, and a 2.5% commission when selling, so any sale at a price more than 2.5% higher than buying price is a benefit.

As the market is no as liquid ("active) as RL markets now, there are sometimes quite large gaps between "Bid" (highest limit buy offer) and "Ask" (lowest sell offer), so limit orders can take time before being settled, and portfolio "market" value can fluctuate strongly.

So you must keep in mind one of the very basic market principles: "No sell - no loss". Even if a share you bought has now a lower market price, you do not loose money as long as you don't sell it. The loss occurs only if you sell at a price below buying price.

GUEST POST from Reverend Chapman - Chino Yray's prize

Three weeks ago someone of the group (can't remember who exactly) told me about this competition on Chino Yray's blog (link: http://www.chinoyray.com/) to win L$5000. To participate you had to post a link to his blog on your own blog. It was a small effort so I posted something about Chino Yray and the competition on my MySpace-page and gave him the link in a blog-comment. I already forgot all about it untill today, when Chino mailed me to tell me that I won and sent me the money. I'm glad that I finally have some L$ again after the Ginko debacle most of us experienced. I just want to say thanks to Chino and the group, and keep in mind that these small efforts sometimes do pay up. ;-)

JohnLight's landmarks book XII - The submarine camping

One more thime, I got this camping spot via a member of "Free Money from JohnLight" group, so thank you for that ! Many group members already profited from this place, so after a few days it's time to publish it here for the non members... but remind you can still join for 15 L$, and have all the best camping tips as soon as they are known to one of us.

This one is located in Adobe (146, 155, 11). There is a green-ish object there you have to touch to start camping. Touch it again to get your money. It is paying 1 L$ / 5 minutes, and when reaching 24 L$, you'll have to restart. Don't sit on it, it's not needed, and while camping you can still more around.

From Camper to Investor - Much to do

As you can imagine, my encounter with Arbitrage Wise and his 5'000 L$ gift did slightly change my view of the quest. Until now I used to be a camper, and occasionally a gamer, but now a new way of earning money appeared, and will require a strategy adjustment.

The possibility to use an SL stock exchange to invest my money and possibly gain some more is not new to me. However until now I did not had enough money nor time to start such an activity. Now, this is no longer an option, as the deal with Arbitrage is that he gave me 5'000 to invest on SL Capital exchange. I promised not to withdraw any money from there until I reach my goal of 1'000'000 L$.

So I'm now investor on the SL Capital Exchange (www.slcapex.com), with an initial balance of 5'000 L$. I will have to update my strategy, and define and investment plan. I'll also have to update the "My Balance" widget, as I moved my money from Midas to JT Financials as well.

On top of that, Josephina had troubles with the club building, and the mini-shop is out of order for the time being. Moreover, my normal (read powerful enough for SL client) computer is still not fixed. I also have to publish the underwater campsite address, and I've got a report from a member of "Free Money from JohnLight" about a prize he won on the net.

As you see, I've got tons of things to do, so I'll have to work hard to stay up to date. I will do my best, also considering RL and other projects. Stay tuned...