Peek Into Second Life From The Web!

That’s right - you can now go to a web page and view almost any location in Second Life!

I received a note from Chenin Anabuki, Founder and CEO of Avatrian, LLC, who’s built a new service that let’s you do exactly that. The service is quite simple to use:

• Go to http://www.avatrian.com/Peek360/index.php 
• Enter your region and coordinates, and type in a short description
• Enter your email address
• Hit “Send Request”

That's when the fun starts. The service sends a bot to the specified location, which slowly rotates taking pictures. The images are stored on Peek360's server, and then are melded together into a seamless 360 degree panorama. The panorama is loaded into a unique URL that is then sent to the email address you specified earlier. Then just hit the URL and you'll see your own panorama!

Some ideas for using the service:

• Show your non-SL friends at work what your virtual home or business looks like
• Email the link to relatives so they can see what you're up to in Second Life
• Check on your virtual premises while you're at RL work

I suppose spying is also an option, as you could send the bot to any public location at any time. So if you're up to no good and suddenly see "Pararazzi Artful" appear and slowly rotate, you'd better disappear quickly!

After Much Debate

Yes, I’ve made a decision. And it’s why I haven’t been posting this week. I’ve been shopping – for land.

My main shop is located on mainland in the Caso Milo region, and has been unchanged size-wise since June 2007. However, I’ve been gradually filling it up over the past eighteen months with products, displays and even a rather wacky lounge. I’ve even begun to worry about prim counts, something I’ve never had to do before.

Last week I noticed a few parcels adjacent to me on sale! After much debate (hence the title of this post) I decided to expand onto mainland instead of getting into the island game. The bottom line was that I just could not justify the expense of an island without having a solid approach for a return on that investment. In other words, I could not think up a way to actually use the land on an island effectively. Sure, I could USE the land, but would I get any RETURN from it? A business does not last long if it spends without returns.

Besides, as everyone knows, islands are a risky proposition if you are not willing to fund it from your own pocket. You must have a substantial income from your business, massive donations, subsidies or a complete complement of renters. None of these are guaranteed, and you’ll have to work very hard to make sure they come through. Worse, there are no guarantees that tier rates will remain stable, as we’ve seen recently. So I proceeded to engage something I know I can afford and make good use of. A bigger mainland shop.

After some quick “buys” and “joins”, my parcel is now almost twice its original size, as you can see in the top image. One issue is that I did not quite get all the space nearby. There was a 256 sm parcel subdivided into a 208 sm and several 16's. I'm negotiating for the 16's, but the 208 sm is priced at the ridiculous price of L$25,000+, if you can believe it! It's using some kind of automated script to gradually lower the price. Fine, I will build around it, and I've placed some particle stanchions around it to keep people from falling to their death below.

Meanwhile, I have obtained significant space that can be used for a variety of purposes. The question now is, “what exactly will I do with this extra space?”

My goal is to rectify an ongoing issue in my particle business: sales seem focused on very basic items, such as chimney smoke, white fog, fire and a few other staples. Meanwhile there are many other fascinating particle effects that don’t sell as well. I have pondered this for a while, and now have a theory that I can test with the new land.

The theory is that unusual particle effects are very difficult to understand, and simply cannot be sold from a box picture or even a basic small-scale demonstration. People already understand smoke and fire, so they buy them. They don’t understand the more unusual products, so they don’t buy them. I sell many strange star effects, but I believe the reason they buy is because I usually have a parcel-wide demonstration running that people can’t miss seeing. In other words, if customers see products properly, they are more likely to purchase. My job as the merchant is to truly show them what the other stuff is all about. And I could not do it when limited by the space.

Thus, the new area will be used to provide rich demonstration experiences, far more detailed than ever before. For example, I suspect I’ll end up with a gigantic area for showing fireworks effects. And another for dance floor effects. And so on.

So if you don’t see me in the next while, you can find me hidden in the back, building demonstrations!

Sim Phantomed Sim!

This week I was minding my own business (literally) with Haley Salomon when suddenly we both plummeted downwards and splattered on the ground! My store was built on megaprims that stand about 50m above the raw ground. Picking myself up off the dusty ground, I looked around and saw nothing but bare land!

Immediately, I thought that somehow my land, store and all my objects had been taken away by an evil land-baron-trickster-bot, or perhaps in an insufficient-sleep induced stupor I had marked the parcel for sale at a fractional price. But no, the truth was even stranger.

I looked up to where my store had been - and it was still there! Somehow both of us had simultaneously fallen through the floor, all the way to the ground. Bizarrely, we apparently were standing on the ground in the middle of a solid megaprim cube.

Having no other obvious course of action, we flew back up through the "solid" cube to arrive at the store's normal floor. Upon casually striking the "Stop Flying" button, I gently set down on my store's floor once again.

And then plummeted 50m to splatter yet again.

Somehow the megaprim floor had become Phantom - and I could freely pass through it. A furious investigation ensued, where I checked the phantomness (is that a word?) of the remaining floor cubes (phantomed). Store walls (phantomed). Any objects nearby (phantomed). Everything was made phantom!

Perhaps, I thought, it's only my objects. I rocketed over to my neighbor, Aspasia Arliss's park and approached her house/temple/not-quite-sure-what-it-is, and being the clumsy oaf I am in a laggy sim, proceeded to fly right through it! All of her objects were similarly phantomed.

Returning to my store, and gaining a slight bit of psychological stability by positioning myself mostly on the floor (see picture above), we set about figuring out how to report this unbelievable turn of events to the Linden Mandarins.

Suddenly, I squirted upwards out of the floor to resume standing normally on the now solid floor. Other objects were also suddenly non-phantomed.

So what happened? A SL Client problem? No, it happened to two of us at exactly the same Second Life second. Did I dream the entire scenario? No, check the picture again. Clearly it was a sim problem of some sort - and fortunately a temporary one at that. It does a business no small goodness to have arriving customers plummet to their death mere seconds after they arrive.

Moral of the story: When you hear a big "Splat", it isn't always due to avatar operator competency challenges.

Tips for a Successful Second Life Club

I came across some very interesting Second Life business ideas the other day quite by accident. Readers may recall my rantings on how best to organize your store for traffic management earlier, but these ideas take them a lot farther.

ATown Fall is the owner of multiple successful sims, most of which involve 24x7 DJ clubs - a rarity itself in Second Life. He sets up sims one after the other, hiring staff and gathering residents and merchants to populate them. While he certainly does the basic things, ATown has several very unique Second Life business approaches that I hadn't considered:

• ATown's admission policy echoes real life - you often must pay a cover charge to get in. This makes the events more important, if only because those who are inside really want to be inside because they paid to get in! This raises the profile of the events.
• Because you must pay a cover to enter events, the concept of VIPs becomes real. All too often clubs hand out "VIP" tags to basically anyone, but that makes the concept of VIP meaningless. However, ATown's cover charge is waived for his VIPs, and the tag is no longer meaningless. You really are "important".
• Many businesses try to increase their traffic by planting as many poorly-paid campers as possible on their parcels. But these zombie-like operations appear quite artificial and often scare away real visitors, who immediately recognize it for what it is - a scam to game the traffic counter. Meanwhile, ATown has a very unique approach to camping. Instead of paying people to camp, he simply has people wait for a specified duration before they are given a pass to enter the club. Of course, you could pay the cover charge and get in immediately, but instead many people simply wait out the time for their pass. And in the process, cause the traffic count to rise - because their wait time in the line is equivalent to a row of camping zombies. But it's much more realistic.
• I've written before about the importance of traffic flow in a shopping mall. Essentially, the problem is that TP allows people to skip by the shops and go directly to and from the entertainment. Many, many clubs have this issue. They hope to make money by renting space to shopkeepers, but fail to encourage traffic to the shops. The shopkeepers fail, and ultimately the clubs are unsuccessful. I've previously recommended using careful placement of the landing point such that arriving TP'ers must walk past or near shops on their way to the entertainment. This has proven successful in a few malls I've seen. However, ATown takes this concept a bit further. He sets his land to no-fly. This, combined with the landing point trick, means that visitors must walk past the shops - and walkers are more likely to see items they'd like to purchase than someone flying by at warp speed.

Why do these techniques work? Simple - they are already well proven in real life! ATown has recognized that the same things can also be done in Second Life. And evidently very successfully.

Insane Way to Increase Traffic to Your Second Life Parcel!

Somebody MUST have already thought of this, but I certainly didn't.

I was having a conversation with my parcel neighbor (and all around great person) Aspasia Arliss (pictured at my Particle Shop) and she commented that she often receives many uninvited guests. She had a theory that because her parcel is located directly in the sim's center visitors accidentally drop in.

It turns out that this is actually true! If you are in SL using the MAP function, the default coordinates upon searching for a sim name are 128,128,x. This means that anyone searching for Caso Milo in MAP and hitting the teleport button will drop right onto her property. That's why she receives many uninvited guests.

This got me thinking.

Each sim has the same special effect, unless the parcel owner of 128,128,x has set a specific landing spot. This means that the parcel located at 128,128,x in most sims will automatically get some amount of random visitors over and above other parcels within the sim. Therefore, these 128,128,x parcels should be more valuable than others - if your goal is to attract traffic.

However, I don't see these parcels priced any differently - but perhaps they should be. Darn, I wish I would have thought of this earlier! SL Business tip # 64: if buying land to set up a store, make sure it contains coordinates 128,128,x.

Charity

My good friend VaaaVa Voom called me the other day (not to be confused with VaVaa Voom or VaaVa Voom). She's been hired as a manager for the Furumachi sim. It's a large Japanese build that has all kinds of things going on it.

Anyway, VaaaVa wanted me to set up a satellite shop in their new mall. Oh boy – readers will know my opinion of malls by now! But, as she is a good friend and offered such a good deal, I could not turn it down.

So, now I have yet another satellite shop location – and even though Furumachi is not really open yet, this shop actually gets somewhat more traffic per day than my other location in Amat!

But that's not the topic of this post. Here's what happened: I met and spoke with another of the mall unit users, Mustang2 Bing. He's a very cool guy who is connected to the RL music industry and is tearing up SL with his enthusiasm and talent. Turns out he was recruited by the Furumachi administration to set up a benefit concert on August 18th in Furumachi to collect L$ for earthquake victims in Japan.

I asked Mustang what I could do to help, and he wasn't sure any particles were required, but then said “maybe some fireworks to use between shows”. So, I promptly built some very cool (and large) custom fireworks, which are now ready to be used during the show. As a donator of items, Mustang said I am now an official sponsor and thus have a advertising box on display at the show location.

The punch line to all this is that a year ago, I would never have expected to own a thriving virtual business that sells imaginary products to virtual people, and helps sponsor worldwide benefit concerts for the unfortunate in Japan. How can I explain this to my Mom?

It Was Mall Maddness!

It's now several weeks after setting up a second satellite mall location in Amat next to a popular Rave club, and it's time to examine the results.

Well, that didn't take long – THERE ARE NO RESULTS! That's not quite right, there are ALMOST no sales whatsoever.

How can this be? The shop is located right next to what I thought would be a prime location.

What do I mean by “a prime location”? Here was my thinking beforehand:

• Heavy Traffic, generated by the club owners, who in this case seem to do an amazing job at organizing DJs, events, etc. There are always lots of people in the club
• Location immediately beside the club. If you step out the door of the club, you cannot possibly avoid seeing the store
• Right kind of Traffic. The club-goers are not only Ravers, a genre for whom I have specifically built many products, but quite a few of these specific people are already my customers and “rave” about my products

This should be a no brainer, right?

Wrong. My traffic counter indicates I am getting about 0.5 visits per day, which is many, many times less than my main shop's traffic. As a result, there are few sales.

So what went wrong? All the facts seemed to indicate that this shop should have been successful, but it wasn't. Here's my analysis. By going into the club and observing the comings-and-goings, I knew what was wrong right away:

• While the right kind and quantity of people were in fact nearby, they did not enter the shop
• People would arrive frequently to participate in the well-promoted club activities (usually DJ's, etc.)
• People would participate (dance their brains out) in the club and then simply TP away
• The avatars would almost never take the time to step out of the club and stumble into the mall and my shop

So, I now conclude there is a third factor required for mall success: Traffic Flow! Yes, you need not only lots of traffic and the right kind of traffic, but also the traffic must somehow flow past your store. In the Amat case, the people flow occurred entirely within the club walls and never left. The mall shops were left to the ghosts.

So now I am thinking, how does one design a mall/club to produce effective traffic flow? If I was building a mall, I would consider the following aspects:

• You (the mall owner) cannot control the point from which people leave. They can just TP out anytime from anywhere in your sim
• You (the mall owner) CAN control their entry point
• Visitors are coming for their own benefit, not the shopowners. They were attracted to the sim for a particular reason. In the Amat case, they come in their dozens to participate in the club activities
• So (and this is the key point) visitors will traverse the shortest path between the entry point and the area they were attracted to in the first place
• Therefore, if you want visitors to see the mall... The Mall Must Be Placed In Between The Entry Point and The Sim's Attraction!

I am now imagining various designs for malls that could do this. All would be relatively simple to do, it's just positioning of the build objects. Does any mall actually do this? One limitation to this approach would be that visitors would tolerate only a certain number of stores on their way to the attraction. You can't expect them to walk through an entire Mall of America just to get to the pole dancers!

I spoke to the Amat club owner about this, but he seemed to think that a change in building style of the mall units would be the solution. I am not sure about this, because that would do nothing to affect the traffic flow at all.

So, my secondary shop remains in Amat, not selling anything. Come by and visit sometime!

Transfer Complete!

The new store has been operating for a week now and it appears to be a success. Sales are up substantially; traffic is up and I am happy. Finally I can get back to building particle effects. My list of ideas and requests has grown far too long. For those of you who are expecting something from me, I am hoping to work through my list as best I can.

Building a New Store, or SL Ergonomics 101

Man, I am tired! I just spend two whole days building my new store. While I took the logos and color scheme from the old store, I wanted to try to use my experience from the old store to create an improved store concept.

Here were my goals:

• Make things as easy as possible for customers, meaning easy to see/find products, move around, operate demonstrators, etc.
• Create an expandable design suitable for adding many more products in the future (I am staying here a long time, remember?)
• Keep the prim count low (thus extending my stay at this location for the longest possible time)

I thought about other store designs that I have encountered, and realized some problems that are all too often present:

• Products placed one by one on a wall cause avatars to move from one product to the next in a very tedious manner. Step, turn, look; Step, turn, look; repeat twelve times
• Doors are a pain. In RL, doors keep thieves from walking off with your inventory. That kind of theft simply doesn't happen in SL (at least most of the time, LOL!) You don't need really need doors at all, unless doors are critical to the store's atmosphere. Worse, poorly designed doors are sometimes hard to get through
• Have I seen all of this store? Is there another room I haven't found because it is hidden around the corner? Should I open that door to the back room? Is it a back room? Sadly, this type of confusion is often the case
• What the heck am I buying? I want to be able to see it, which is doubly important with particle effects that involve motion that can't be properly captured in a still image

Sometimes these “problems” aren't really issues because the store is trying to achieve a look-and-feel by approximating a specific real life situation. That I understand. But far too many shops simply build square walls, doors, etc. without really thinking of the effect on the ease of use by avatars in SL. SL ergonomics are DIFFERENT than RL ergonomics!

So, I built a store with some unique, SL-ergonomic features. Time will tell if they prove valuable:

• Products are hung on semi-circular walls. The customers need only rotate (one key press) to see many different full-on views of products. Step, turn, look at 12 products all at once
• Modular design that can be added to vertically. When do we run out of vertical? Not anytime soon for me!
• Demonstrators beside all products. Customers do not have to move at all to see an instant demonstration of the product
• Open design without walls or ceilings. Customers can quickly hop up or down to get to any portion of the store. In fact, when they arrive via TP, they can actually see the entire store all at once without any hidden rooms for them to find, and fly-bys can also see the entire operation
• Visible work area. I have placed a Laboratory Sandbox behind some glass. This not only provides me with an area to work, but also something for visitors to observe (think “zoo animal”.) Watching someone build particles is usually interesting, especially when things go horribly wrong...
• Open stage with bleacher seats for presentations or special events

That's enough for now. I have to open the store now (which means shutting down the old store and replacing it with redirection signs and re-issuing the advertising with new landmarks.)

New Land Big Land!

I've done it – I've bought an 8192sm parcel located in Caso Milo. This is monstrously gigantic compared to my tiny 512sm in Lanestris. It's one-eighth of an entire sim! Maybe someday I will be able to say “I own my own virtual island”, but not quite yet.

My previously mentioned objectives for land strategy turned out to be slightly incorrect. I did not need to buy flat land. My buddy Poopmaster Oh showed me that I can use mega-prims to quickly cover the area, creating a perfectly flat space. In fact, she actually built them for me. Thanks, Poop!

The mega-prims used here are 20m cubes. I need only eight to cover the entire area, producing a perfectly flat surface for building. You can't create such cubes, but some still float around SL, having apparently been created before the 10m limit was imposed.

Now I'm left with the hard part – construction of a new store. More on this in a future post.

But what about my old parcel in Lanestris? Should I sell it? Obviously not until I open the new store, but what about after that? I am still concerned about customers having landmarks pointing to the old location. You know the old saying: “your best customers are your existing customers”. I believe this to be true in SL also, since I often have former customers returning to buy new or more products.

I've decided not to sell the Lanestris parcel quite yet. Instead, I am going to erect signs and landmark givers that send anyone who shows up to the new location. Also I will rez a body counter to see how many people area actually showing up there. When the visitation rate gets low, it will be time to sell.

More Mall Madness!

This time, my mall experience will be better. I've been contacted by the owner of a very popular Rave club in Amat who is starting to set up a mall and seeks vendors who are appropriate for those who frequent his club. Now this sounds a lot more interesting than the last mall!

I've made arrangements to fill a prime spot in his new mall, just opposite the club itself. This should be infinitely better than the last attempt at a mall location, which failed miserably. With a large number of people who are more likely to be interested in my products, I should be able to make some sales. The sales will hopefully offset the ongoing rent.

As I did with my previous catastrophic mall expedition, I've set up a small shop with my most popular products (or at least the ones related to Rave culture) and included live demonstrators to show people how the particle effects work. Wish me luck!

Mall Time Not!

I wrote previously about setting up a second location in a busy mall, and speculated on how well it may do. I am afraid it's bombed catastrophically. After several weeks of operation, I have sold exactly ZERO items, while my main shop sells dozens of items daily. How could this be? The mall shop is located in a high-traffic area, right next to a club. Other apparently successful shops are nearby as well.

Puzzled, I spent some time hanging out at this location to see what was going on. Soon, I learned the truth: there was indeed high traffic, but the people were wrong! Don't misunderstand me – I am sure they are nice people, but they just were not the type that would find my products of interest.

What kind of people were they? I watched the traffic TP inbound and followed their path.... they typically walked by all the stores and entered the club. From there they presumably TP'd out somewhere – never entering my shop.

My very good friend WarmSpirit Williams and I went into the club to see what happens, and we immediately realized what was going down - literally! The club was not a dance club, but instead was a sex club for newbs and strippers! As we all know, newbs typically have no money and are not able to buy many products. Also, those in SL for sex are unlikely to buy my products. Obviously, I was never going to make any substantial sales at this location.

Stepping out of the club, I also saw a Money Tree outside – which I then recalled from my newbish days, shaking single L$ from as many trees as I could find. And who do Money Trees attract, exactly? They attract more people with no Lindens! Clearly, this is not the right place for me. I am moving out right away. (Note to self: don't bother putting up that Money Tree in my shop.)

My next mall experience must have quality traffic – that is to say, people who might have an interest in my products and have the money to buy them.

Land Shopping Strategy

Hmm, having decided I need an 8192 parcel, what should I pay for it? Market price, it turns out. I don't have any brainiac real estate strategy, but I do have some considerations:

• I want to be on a new sim. My particle effects will be demonstrated at the new shop, so I want as much horsepower available as possible
• I want to be on mainland. I do not want to be at the mercy of a potentially maniacal island owner. I have had too many friends get suddenly ejected - what happens to a business in that situation? (Recall my thoughts on moving and landmarks in the last post)
  
• I want to have neighbors that are compatible. “Compatible?” Well, I am not precisely sure what that means – I think I don't want neighbors who have operations or perform role-playing that do not work beside me
• I would like to have neighbors who might happen to be drawing people that could also be my customers. A busy club would be of interest, for example
• I want the land to be flat, so that I can easily build a shop. Many parcels I've seen recently are hugely mountainous and could be difficult to use

Of course, parcels and their operations come and go, so no matter what area I select it really won't make much difference over the long term. Hopefully, I will score some land soon.

Land Strategy

Well, my 512sm parcel in Lanestris, while successful, must be replaced. I can wait no longer. The question is, what should I do next? Here's some options:

• Buy the neighbor's 512 parcel and expand!
• Sell my 512, and buy a 1024 somewhere else
• Sell my 512 and buy a larger parcel, 2048/4096 or even 8192sm
• Buy an entire mainland sim
• Go crazy and buy my own Island!

Lots of options here, but which is the right one? My first consideration was cost: what could I afford? Upon looking at my revenue, it turns out that I probably could afford my own island! Would this be a good investment? Eventually, I conclude that it would not be a good investment, since most of my profit would be eaten up by tier payments and also I simply cannot use 15,000 prims. I don't need or have the time to carefully create 15,000 prims worth of stuff. Most of the island would be empty! Spending money on prim capacity – and not using it – would be silly.

What about a slightly larger parcel? The speed at which I outran my first 117 prims (2 months) suggests that I would also rapidly outrun 1024 or even 2048 prim quotas. Well, theoretically I could certainly use a 1024 or 2048 parcel, but I would simply be forced to move again in a few months. And I think moving is bad...

Why is moving bad? Because Linden Lab's landmarking system is static. Once a landmark is created, it doesn't react to changing conditions of the land. All the landmarks I have carefully included with my product packaging are suddenly obsolete. In other words, if I move, my customers will have a landmark to an old location and they might not find me. Sure, they can re-search for me, but why should I take that risk? If they do a search, they may find another supplier before me! My philosophy is to make buying from me as easy as possible, and thus having customers losing my location is just a bad thing. Therefore, I believe that while I have to relocate, I should move as infrequently as possible.

This means only one thing: buy as big a parcel as is reasonable and financially sound so that future moves are postponed as long as possible. I'm going to buy an 8192sm parcel.

Mall Time!

A customer came by my store the other day and convinced me to set up a secondary shop location in his mall. He says he gets lots of traffic (verified by Linden Lab stats) so it should be a good deal for me. Even better, he's giving me a few weeks at no charge so that I can see how it goes. How can I say no to a fellow Canadian?

So I've set up this new shop in Monowai, and it's basically a miniature replica of my main shop. I've put in a small selection of the most popular products, and built a single custom demonstrator unit to show them off. Also, the demonstrator automatically triggers a brief random demonstration every five minutes to attract passers-by.

But now a question comes to mind: should I purchase special advertising for the secondary shop? In the end, I decided that is NOT a good idea. Here's my reasoning:

• Advertising is used by consumers in a very simple way: search -> results -> select one of them -> TP to shop location. There is no need to have more than one shop location if you can instantly TP to any location from a search hit. Why spread your advertising L$ budget over several ads when you can concentrate that money on one ad that would get higher search ranking?
• On the other hand, the mall may have existing traffic, and if someone is already at the mall they may notice your shop and drop in for purchases. But again, this doesn't require me to advertise

My bottom line on mall advertising: if you already have an advertised main location outside of the mall don't bother advertising the mall location. Spend it on your main advertisement instead.

So, I now have a second shop in a second location and I am depending on existing mall traffic to drive results. Apparently there is a busy club nearby so I am hoping to grab some customers from that traffic. We'll see what happens.

One Hundred and Seventeen

One Hundred and Seventeen is no longer my favorite number. My measly 512sm parcel is now full – all 117 prims have been used by my products and very rudimentary shop structure.

I tried really hard to make this work by using these low-prim strategies:

• No personal items (e.g. Mansion, Bowling alley, Battlestar Galactica replica, Rideable pet elephant, etc.) using up scarce prims are allowed on the property. If it doesn't contribute to the sales process, it isn't on the site!
• Ultra-simplified building technique. Yes, this means no roof, using ramps instead of prim stairs, plain walls w/o prim-riddled adornments, etc.
• Embedded gadgetry. Need a notecard giver? Or a visitor counter? Put the script in the floor or walls, not a separate object – and for god's sake don't ever use more than one prim for something like that!
• Building work takes place in public sandboxes, not on the property

In spite of the “advanced” or “efficient” (or just plain cheap) techniques above, I am STILL running out of prims. Maybe I have too many products? Hah! I must figure out another way to expand my business.