Camping

"Camping" in Second Life does not mean hiking into the woods.  It means going to a location and sticking around.  While there, the avatar is paid for his or her time.  Camping rates vary...1L every 10 minutes is considered typical, now. A few years ago, 4/10 would have been a good rate. 

There's an economic lesson in the history of this seemingly innocent way to earn a few Linden Dollars.  According to Hamlet Au, some "Linden Farmers" (like the "gold farmers" of World of Warcraft) report earning $400-$1200 US Dollars per month, by running "bots" (avatars on autopilot) on camping spots.

 

Linden Lab banned camping devices in the summer of 2009, if land owners use them specifically to boost their "traffic" rating.  Enforcement of this will prove difficult and largely relies upon complaints.  The thinking was that business owners used camping to drive up apparent popularity at their shops unfairly, by packing the places with campers, not shoppers.  This pushed their rating up near the top of SL's search engine, which under the "Places" tab ranks locations by traffic. It also meant that some regions where others owned land got so full that the land-owners could not enter or the region "lagged" so badly as to make it useless.

 

You may still find camping devices. It's not illegal to use them; it is to set them out to drive up traffic. Hunting for "Lucky Chairs" and doing trivia contests (tasks difficult for bots) have replaced camping devices and still help shop-owners with traffic.

 

Of course, it is possible to equip the avatar for free with the help of stores such as Milky 9 and Sarah Nerd's Freebie Paradise.  Many retailers also have cheap (1L) or free items as a courtesy to new users.