Skills rate your sim's aptitude at several classes of tasks on a ten point scale.  The skill areas are the same as those in The Sims, and include mechanical, logic, and creativity scores.  You build your skills by spending time interacting with special objects - play chess and you increase your logic skill or practice a speech in a mirror to improve creativity.  If there are several skill-building objects placed near to each other, then the speed at which your sim accumulates skill points increases.  Each successive point in a skill area takes progressively longer to earn and skill ratings will decline over time, so you'll be forced to spend a significant amount of your time online interacting with skill objects.  From your point of view this is a very passive activity as your only interaction with the game while working on skill points is to stare at the screen.  You're free to type in chat messages while working, but people in the skill-building focused properties tend to concentrate on building their skills instead of chatting. 

By making skill points so hard to earn and by having the skill levels erode, the game forces players to concentrate on no more than two or three primary skills.  However, this removes a lot of the "game" out of The Sims Online.  The best way to build your skills is to visit a property with plenty of skill-building objects and lots of other sims using them.  Most of these properties provide beds, buffets, and bathrooms for your use, so you can just plop your sim down at a skill-building object and sit back, only needing to interact with your computer when it is time to tell your sim to use the toilet or to eat.  Some players will find the reward of high skill ratings enough motivation to go through this passive process, but others will quickly get bored out of their minds by it.

Hanging out at a coffee shop.

Skills are important to gameplay because they are necessary to earn higher returns from the game's skill and job objects.  Your sim can interact with a skill object in order to earn more of the game's currency, simoleans.  Your skill rating will determine the speed at which you create something of value, and how much you will earn from it.  For example, a sim with a high logic skill can earn money by working at a blackboard and selling formulas.  As with the skill-building objects, adjacent skill objects will generate higher income when used by more than one sim.

Job objects are special money-generating objects that require several sims to operate.  These objects have multiple stations that are tied to a particular skill.  The higher the corresponding skill of the sim operating the station, the higher the total payout to all of the sims using the job object.  Job objects are more interactive than the skill objects and actually play as little mini games.  For example, in one game three sims work together to break a three letter code.  The games are all pretty basic, but at least they allow you to interact with the object along with your sim.

The only real way to earn money in the game is to own your own property and open it up to other players.  You'll generate some money when you have visitors on your property, and will take a small cut of all money they earn using your skill and job objects.  The Sims Online also allows you to charge for anything - pay toilets, food, even a cover charge just to enter the property are all possible money makers.  You're free to create a restaurant and charge for meals, a dance club with a cover charge, game shows with cash prizes - there's a lot of room for creativity.  The downside to this is that your property is only open to other sims when you (or one of your roommates) is online and at the property, so it won't earn money for you while you are gone.

If you are planning on building the next sim hot spot, prepare to be patient.  The game starts your sim off with 10,000 simoleans, and an empty property will cost you at least a third of that.  Everything that you add to your property costs money; objects, walls, floor tiles, wallpaper, you name it.  Creating your dream property takes a lot of money and it will take you some time to earn it.  The game allows you to pool your resources with other sims by allowing several sims to run a property as roommates.  Since roommates are other players in the game, you'll need to choose them as carefully as you would in real-life to ensure that they share your vision of the perfect property and that they will pull their weight.

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