Camping Guide to Second Life(R)

First, what is camping? In Second Life this refers to a Second Life user earning lindens by sitting in a place for a specific amount of time. In return, the user generates traffic for the land owner. Traffic is important for the land owner because this can improve the exposure of his or her land, as well as making it more desirable for advertisers to advertise on his land, or for potential shop owners to consider his land for rent.

Of course, those who immediately think they can "do nothing and earn money" are somewhat mistaken. The earning rates for camping are little more than pocket change. You can read about how much the linden dollar is really worth here. As each linden is currently worth about 1/3 of a cent, it takes thousands of lindens to make money in real life from Second Life. Thus it would take many, many hours before you earn enough lindens to be able to cash out a respectable amount.

Furthermore, don't forget about your utility bill. Electricity costs money, and in some areas, the cost of electricity may be greater than the net gain from camping.

Other than those real world issues, the linden earnings are enough to give you enough lindens to spend in world on clothes, skins, and can even allow you to rent land for a week or two. Or you can simply have fun with the lindens.

Of course, camping in Second Life is controversial. Venture into the Second Life forums and you will see camping is hotly debated.

On one side, camping is seen as a waste of bandwidth and that users who are "professional campers" do nothing to contribute to the community. This group feels that camping simply drains the resources of Linden Labs that could be better allocated in improving other problems and issues in Second Life.

Not to mention, some users have been abusing the camping system by using "camping bots". These are bots that allow a user to camp at multiple players at once, without their primary avatar physically being there. This is highly controversial and frowned down upon by many landowners, who will kick and ban you if they catch you using a camping bot on their land.

On the other side, without camping, the allure or temptation to draw new users to Second Life is difficult as new users, who probably have basic accounts, have no money to spend in Second Life. Furthermore, as I mentioned before, camping brings about traffic to land owners, and losing traffic could hurt their source of income.

There are several types of camping in Second Life. First and most common are the dance pads and camping benches. The former results in animating your avatar for a certain length of time and the latter...your avatar simply sits there.

In terms of earnings, all camping types are similar. Above the dance pad or the camping bench you will see a small blurb outlining the linden earning rate. All you have to do is click on the pad or bench to start camping and earning linden.

Note due to abuse of the dance pads and camping benches by camping bots, many have limits to how long you can camp or kicks you off the dance pad or bench after you earned a certain amount of linden. Some even have anti-idle questions, meaning you have to answer a simple question correctly (like what is 2+2) every so often or you will be kicked off the camping device. Usually the dance pad or camping bench will tell you this upfront, however sometimes you just have to find out for yourself.

Laboring for linden is "working" for linden. However, in Second Life this kind of camping is similar to that of camping with dance pads or benches. Your avatar merely works by mopping, scrubing, or performing other menial tasks for linden. You yourself do nothing.

The difference is that you must remember to equip the mop, brush, or other accessory that goes with the labor activity. While equipping the item will not affect your linden earnings, the owner (if he or she's around) may kick or ban you if you do not equip the aforementioned item.

One more note, labor camping sites have a specific amount of linden they can give out. This means that once a user has earned all the linden allocated to a labor based camping site, that site becomes inactive and nobody else can use it until the owner "refills" the site with linden. Keep this in mind as you explore the Second Life world.

Another common method of camping is via the Campmaster system. This involves logging into the Campmaster system where once again your avatar is paid based on the rate specified in the Campmaster module.

Unlik dance pads and benches though, Campmasters can have a few additional anti-bot and anti-idle defenses. While on dance pads and benches you can idle and leave your computer, campmasters often have an anti-idle feature that will automatically log you off from camping if your avatar goes into the "idle" state. Campmasters also have the same anti-bot simple Q&A defense as some dance pads.

But the benefit to land owners is that Campmasters allow large groups of users to camp at once, wherease it takes multple dance pads or camping benches to do the same thing. You can see the number of users alloted to the system at the top of the Campmaster box.

Like dance pads and benches though, some Campmasters require you to join their respective group before you are allowed to camp.

Picks Camping is another means of camping, although unlike other methods you do not sit in a location to earn lindens. Instead, Picks Camping allows you to earn a fixed amount of linden every month by keeping a particular site in your profile picks. Every month you simply return to the same place and click on the same sign to earn lindens!

Due to the abuse of the system, many Picks Camping locations now have a minimum avatar age before you can use the Picks Camping system. Usually the minimum age ranges between 7 days to 6 months. And due to abuse, more and more Picks Campers also require you to have payment info on file with Linden Labs(R). In addition, a majority of Picks Camping sites require a minimum amount of time in your profile before they will pay out the first time. Usually this is around a week or so.

Furthermore, Picks Camping sites have a maximum payout per day. So sometimes you will see a message that the Picks Camper has paid out the maximum for the day. Don't dispair, just come back tomorrow or the next day. Eventually you will collect your lindens!

You've read that right. Unfortunately, as of the latest revision of this lens, the locations I am aware of that have text/chat camping have shut down and I am unable to locate any other areas that have text/chat camping. In theory, this form of camping encourages traffic by having users simply chat with one another and earn lindens through being active on their land. The rates were not that high, one area had a rate o L$1/5min and even this was randomly given to a nearby user. The best areas usually had a joint camping/chat camping combo, allowing users to slightly increase their overall camping rate. I am unable to explore the entire Second Life grid, so it is remotely possible that this form of camping still exists.

With all the camping types above, it is no wonder that Second Life is populated with hundreds of possible camping locations. Of course at any given time many of these places are full, however many others are not. Campers tend to sit on one spot for hours which may seem bad, but remember for every spot they are on this means another camping spot is open somewhere else in Second Life.

Don't forget to keep an eye on your map for possible camping locations. Any area that has a line of green dots or other organized formation is likely a camping site. Just remember this only leads you to the more popular sites. To find the more exclusive ones you must spend time to explore the Second Life world.

Finding camping sites is not difficult. For starters, simply type "camping" of "free money" into the in-game search feature. I guarantee you will find thousands of listings for camping locations.

Of course, how do you know the good from the bad sites? Unfortunately this takes trial and error. With hundreds of locations, it takes time and one must explore constantly to find the best sites. Once you do, I recommend making landmarks and when you want to camp, simply skip around your landmarks until you find a location that is open and with a linden earning rate to your liking.

Furthermore, make a spreadsheet on Excel or other office application to make your life easier. Again, with hundreds of sites out there, making a list to keep yourself organized only benefits your camping efforts.

There are a few sources you can use to find some immediate camping locations. First, try joining one of the many (and I mean many) Second Life camping groups. Simply search for camping under the groups tab of the Second Life in-game search feature.

Again, this will bring up many, many groups, some of which charge exorbant prices for camping locations. Here's my recommendation. Stick with the free groups, they usually have decent locations that you don't have to pay for.

Furthermore, maintaining a camping list takes a lot of time and those group who want your lindens are not likely to keep their efforts up for more than a few months. The downside, those free groups are often littered with spam and again it takes some time and experience to sort out the good locations from the bad.

On the internet, there used to be a good camping list, but it has been discontinued. So I've created a small list for starters which can be found here. Unfortunately, the list is not very big and comes nowhere near covering the number of in-game camping sites. However it should provide a start and a reference for those who want to start camping in Second Life.

I hope you have found this lens useful and informative. While camping in Second Life is not recommended for those wishing to generate large amounts of real life income, it is very useful to earn in-game lindens to improve upon your experience in the virtual world of Second Life.

Legal Disclaimer

Second Life, Linden(s), and Linden Labs are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc. This website (Camping Guide to Second Life) is not affiliated with or sponsored by Linden Research.