Because Free is a Very Good Price.

I have a personal problem. Stuff that's easy for me to create I don't tend to sell, thinking that anybody can do it... I create things as experiments or just for my own personal use all the time and a week later I find it on SLX or in world for sale. So I've started to change my mind. Most of the items I am talking about are relatively easy to create with a bit of research into scripting or some basic build skills, but some people aren't interested in building, they just want to enjoy Second Life and buy the items they like.

Case in point: I made a photo frame that cycles randomly through all the photos loaded into it's contents. This is a classic script almost directly from the example given on the LSL wiki. The only thing I had to figure out was how to make the texture cycle on only one face rather then all of them, but some noodling and it was done. I created these for my house, so I could look at all my snapshots and share them with my friends, I didn't even think about selling it. However I'm now seeing these things around for sale between 150L and 700L depending on degree of customization. So.... not to be a crook, but I'm giving mine away as lucky chair prizes and free gifts to loyal customers. I'm considering selling them for small prices such as 100L. It took me all of 20 minutes to build. Is this unfair of me? Am I undercutting other people out of the market? Or is it unfair for them to take a pretty universal script example and charge a ton for it? I just don't know. It's one of the interesting things about running a business in Second Life, do you undercut and get a bad reputation among your peers, or do you do what you have the skill for and price according to what you will take for it?

Keep in mind we're not talking about freebies here, although in my opinion they aren't worth a whole lot, copying and pasting a script isn't hard to do. I just don't know.... so this is an experiment. My photo frame is a free give away in my Lucky Chair and I'm going to post it on my vendor at 100L. This is all I think I can charge for it, in fact if you want to know how to build one I'll even tell you. If you aren't interested, it's there for you to grab. I'm truly interested in your feedback on this article, drop a comment, first 10 people to drop a comment on this post with their Second Life name get not one, but two free items! (One of em will be the photo frame.)