You might remember how Candy failed to be your guide on how to play Second Life on a budget.

And without getting into sex work.

Fail: She became a whore and subsequently became the manager of a sex hotel (a pimp basically).

I promised in one of my recent posts, that I will make up for that and give it another go. So I did and released poor little Yaya on the grid.

Yaya will not have restrictions as Candy did, but a similar mission: Starting with nothing and getting somewhere without ever buying Linden Dollars.

She is allowed to do whatever it takes to survive, if that includes sex work, so be it. Let’s be honest, I can not resist the temptation to be paid for sex. You have seen that on numerous occasions.

Once a whore always a whore.

But:

Part of the mission is to show you alternatives to sex work and how to make some money in Second Life. She will not become a full-time sex worker by any means. I am just not ruling out the possibility of occasionally accepting cash for sex. Maybe.

You will learn:

• How to get a decent-looking avatar by spending very little money. Yaya will start at 100 L$. She will get no further support from Takeda Media and will never buy any L$.
  
• What jobs are available, how to get hired, and how much you can make.
  
• Where to find quality free cloth and other items you might want to have.

(100 L$ is an amount one could easily acquire with some of the inworld games available. If you start in Second Life with Zero Linden-Dollar, you might want to play some of those games first).

Second Life Free Mesh Avatar

Let’s see how to get a decent-looking avatar by spending very little money or even free.

You have to be flexible. If you already have a specific look in mind, you will find it very difficult to get that for free. Instead, you need to look at what is available and then choose.

Here is your shopping list:

• Free mesh body
• Free mesh bento head
• Free hair
• Skin matching the head’s skins
• Some decent clothing

How to Get a Free Mesh Body

There are a few low-cost mesh bodies available for both, women and men. Try searching on the Second Life marketplace website. 

Yaya got this one to start with Ruth Mesh Body

The reason I had chosen the Sweets Ruth Bento Mesh Body is, that unlike most free mesh bodies it comes with an alpha hud.

That’s basically a hud that allows you to make part of the body invisible for cloth to fit. Without that feature, it can be not very pleasant to make cloth fit. This is actually the reason people, later on, upgrade to a paid version of their respective mesh bodies.

(So did Yaya, but that’s part of another story)

A good example is the free Altamura Mesh Body called “Jennifer”. I used this one for Jessica It does look really good but hasn’t got an alpha hud. 

You can find the Jennifer body and a free male mesh body in a freebie shop in London City.

How to Find a Free Mesh Head

This proved to be more difficult. 

Sometimes mesh head designers do promotional offers for free mesh heads. Typically those offers are limited in time. You need to check out blogs, groups, and the Second Life forums for announcements.

For Yaya, I got a free bento mesh head from the Genius Project. It’s called “Strong Face”. I didn’t find it that strong really. 

There are a few different shapes and skins for this head available. Limited of course, it’s a freebie after all.

How to Find Nice Hair and Decent Cloth for Free

This one is really easy. 

But let me tell you first how NOT to do it. Avoid the so-called freebie warehouses. 

The stuff you get there is mostly outdated old stuff that often causes lag because of tons of useless scripts, or /and increases the complexity of your avatar ridiculously.

Stay away from those.

Trust me, you will eventually delete the stuff you got there.

This is what you do instead:

Search for shops of hair designers and fashion designers in the Inworld search and on the marketplace. 

Almost all known designers do offer free stuff against you joining their promotional groups. This is part of their marketing strategy.

Yes, you will need to invest some time, to find something you really like. You will also be a member of a lot of groups. After a while you will have to clean your group list out, otherwise, you will just get too many promotional messages.

I got Yaya’s hair at a store called Diva. The initial cloth I got from various different designers, including some well-known brands such as Blueberry and Scandalize.

One excellent source of information bout free stuff is this blog: Fabfree.

It’s probably the most authoritative source about free stuff in Second Life. They also have a Second Life group, which I did join. I strongly recommend you do too.

Last but not least: You do want what we call an animation overrider (AO). In the beginning, the free one from market leader Vista is sufficient, ist the best one of the ones available for free.

AO for males

AO for females

Later on, when you made some money you get a better one.

Second Life Free Mesh Avatar: Yaya

She does look different now.

Yaya went job hunting and started to make money, very good money. She is now really hot, lives together with somebody, and even started a new small business with that somebody.

Hence no need for a free mesh avatar any longer

This will be the next storyline, to be written under the “author name” Yaya. She gets her own category on the blog.

Yes, it developed that interesting. Stay tuned and feel free to speculate a little in the comments.