Who Are You?

I’ve been wondering about my customers. Who are they? Where do they come from? How did they find the store?

The first step is to get some statistics. To do so, I conjured up a simple monitor script that quietly tracks visitors when they appear. That’s all – it just records very basic information about those nearby periodically. You can even purchase monitoring tools similar to this yourself if you’d like, there’s plenty for sale on XStreetSL. Maybe I’ll package up mine and put in on sale someday if there is interest.

The results? Well, there is plenty to analyze in the two months of data I’ve collected, but the first analysis I considered was language. My theory was that most of my visitors would be English speaking, since that is the language of the majority of my promotional activities. The results show that yes, English is by far the most popular language of my customers.

But it’s interesting to note that significant numbers of visitors are non-English, with large numbers of German, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The third biggest group is in fact “unknown”. That means the avatar has not specified their language or does not permit it to be seen. Many other languages are represented in much smaller percentages.

So what does this mean? Some ideas:

• I market too much in English and not enough in other languages
• My products appeal to English speakers and less so to other groups
• Perhaps English speakers shop more than other groups (do they have more money?)
• My insignificant multi-lingual efforts have produced a less significant visitor draw in those languages

But the number one theory is that those non-English speakers probably speak English as a second language anyway! Stay tuned for more analysis in the future.

Who Knows You?

I’ve been watching two entirely different but strangely parallel ongoing events in recent weeks. What events am I referring to? First, it’s Crap Mariner’s TunesInSL campaign, which is intended to promote many of the wonderful SL-based musicians. The other is Eshi Otawara’s announcement of her new fashion line.

(Photo courtesy Chimera Cosmos)

Now you might wonder what on Earth these two radically different activities might have in common, other than they are being done by two very close friends. The common factor is that they are both promoting something. Fashion products in one case, musicians in the other. Both are following a complex process to meet a difficult goal.

This got me thinking about what it means to promote something in a business sense. At the root of it, there are only three steps involved:

• Make a large group aware of your “thing”.
• Make sure that interested individuals consider your “thing”.
• Ensure the very few individuals who decided to take part actually can (by purchasing, for example)

Ah, but they are not very simple steps. There are specific methods of achieving each of them. In this post, let’s look at the first one, Awareness, which turns out to be the most difficult – but also has the biggest opportunities for creative solutions. How do you make people aware of your “thing”? Here are the main ideas an SL business can consider, although there are likely a few more:

Blog posts. Many SL makers have an accompanying blog in which they can post the details of their new product.

• Example: I do this now and then. 
• Positives: a blog post is hugely rich and can include significant text, images and even videos and can potentially reach a lot of people. 
• Negatives: Few will read a blog solely for product announcements, and you’ll have to commit to a significant amount of high quality writing.

Notecard. Notecards are not nearly as rich as a blog post, but can be useful if carefully worded and sent to a group of friends.

• Positives: Almost assured delivery to each recipient; can be perceived as a personal message. 
• Negatives: Can be perceived as SPAM by some recipients; Typically low numbers of people can be reached compared to other methods.

Group announcement. A well worded announcement can be sent to a group, either a true SL Group or a Subscrib-O-Matic group.

• Positives: Those who subscribe are more likely to partake of your offer than the general public, as they’ve previously expressed interest in your activities; Potentially large numbers of people can be reached. 
• Negatives: The message sent is not nearly as rich as a blog post, and in some cases is severely limited in size.

Advertising.  This involves somehow visibly placing your product name in a place where many people will see it.

• Example: SL classified ads. 
• Positives: Massive numbers of people can potentially be reached 
• Negatives: Expensive if you want it to be effective; Very complex to understand how to do this properly; Creation of effective advertising material is really hard to do. (I think I’d better go deep on this in an upcoming post.)

Promotional idea. This one is a little vague, as I mean any kind of game or contest that can be associated with your product. The possibilities here are as endless as your imagination.

• Example: Grid-wide hunt. 
• Positives: These can be incredibly successful. 
• Negatives: These can go catastrophically wrong. You must have tremendous imagination and effort to attempt to do a successful promotion.

Show Appearance. A podcast interview or an appearance on a popular machinima show can make many aware of your product.

• Example: I appeared on SL Under the Radar a while ago.  
• Positives: This medium is vastly different than all the others and so you can portray your story in a unique way. 
• Negatives: Show audiences vary considerably, but in all cases few people actually know how to view/listen to them, and thus the potential audience size is limited.

Microblog. Twitter and more recently Plurk offer ways to announce your message.

• Positives: Extremely easy to do, and no cost at all; Large, dedicated audiences are potentially available. 
• Negatives: For one, you get only 140 characters, so there’s only so much you can say; You must gain the trust of a large number of people, and that can be very difficult and time consuming, especially if you’re not trustworthy!

Mass Media. You somehow manage to get into one of the major media outlets (press, magazine or TV).

• Example: Crap Mariner’s CNN iReport. 
• Positives: Massive number of eyeballs on this one. 
• Negatives: Extremely hard to do, and usually out of your control entirely (with the exception of the CNN iReport concept.)

Event. This approach is commonly done by many SL business in the form of a product launch, fashion show or opening party.

• Example: Eshi’s fashion show where she unveiled her new line. 
• Positives: Moderately easy to do; Usually effective in bringing good amounts of traffic your way; Fun! 
• Negatives: Can be expensive, depending on what you do.

Forum Post: Discussion boards are a great way to post a message viewed and responded to by many people.

• Example: Crap Mariner's SLBuzz posting. 
• Positives: Very easy to do; potentially large audiences available. 
• Negatives: Unless you have the trust of the audience, you will be ignored.

Press Release. A concise method of documenting your announcment.

• Example: Codebastard Redgrave’s press release on her new filtercam product. 
• Positives: Appears very professional; Relatively easy to produce. 
• Negatives: Awkward to include video; Who do you send it to? PR services that can send it to many for you are expensive, otherwise it’s just a specially formatted blog post.

Each has their advantages and disadvantages, mainly in the effort-to-effectiveness ratio. It’s been my experience that best results occur when you use multiple techniques on the same campaign, and even better results when you link them together into combination approaches, like this:

You issue a press release on a blog regarding an upcoming event to reveal new product lines. The announcement is echoed on all microblogs, and the text is sent by notecard to relevant groups. Appearances on several shows prior to the event raise the event’s profile, as do strategically placed advertising signs. At the event, door prizes keep people talking, guessing and anticipating.

You can see that there is quite a bit to the seemingly simple task of making people aware of your product. Next time, we’ll talk about what you do after that.

By the way, you can find Eshi's amazing collection at her store, Chambre du Chocolat.

Media Week

It really seems to be media week here at Electric Pixels. First, as previously mentioned, I appeared on the popular Tonight Live with Paisley Beebe show. According to their press material, each weekly episode of the videocast has up to 20,000 viewers, making it most likely the most popular show in SL these days.

I was impressed by the truly professional organization involved in running this show; it’s not simply Paisley chatting with the guests, which itself is a very challenging task. There is a director to ensure all activities happen correctly and in the right sequence; a producer sets up the show in advance; camera and audio technicians record the event; assistants provide extra hands at any moment, and there is even security present. It’s little different from a RL TV show.

We three guests were required to be present 90 minutes before the show to ensure we knew where to go, what to do, when to do it, in addition to setting all our video, audio and other preferences correctly. Nothing was left to chance, and that is the hallmark of a well-run operation.

I had a ton of fun doing the show, which you can watch by visiting the SLCN.TV site, and I’ve seen blog reports here and here, and even a short Flickr stream here and another here. Thanks to Czq'bqymc for the great photo of my spontaneous combustion and impromptu studio rainstorm above. If you can manage it, try to attend a taping live on most Sundays at 6PM SLT in their Northpoint studio.

As much of a splash as Tonight Live was, there was a second media event this week! I happened to be listening to the audio podcast Podmafia (episode 57 this week), when suddenly host Yxes Delacroix started describing my shop, Electric Pixels! She and Thraxis Epsilon had visited the other night and we had a long chat about many topics. I had no idea they were going to discuss my operation and say nice things. Thanks muchly, Podmafiaers! Podmafioso?

Podmafia is perhaps the most popular SL-oriented podcast today, and is hosted by the trio of Yxes, Stuart Warf and Gomem Desoto. Even though they are very different personalities, they’ve got an amazing chemistry together that you can hear each week. Occasionally they record live in-world where you can not only observe the show, but also might even participate in yourself!

What’s on for next week? Who knows, life is virtual and anything can happen.

You Can’t Get There From Here

Last week I analyzed the highly successful Rouge opening, and this week we’ll examine another opening. One that you have never heard of. 

While Codie’s Rouge sim opening’s purpose was to draw people in, have fun and make connections, this one has similar yet different objectives. But what is the sim, you ask? It’s the new island by RL insurance giant Aviva!

We’ve seen this before, where RL companies pop up an expensive "billboard", usually having little idea of the culture, needs and attitude of residents. They last for a short while and then declare their experiment concluded (this is code for: FAIL). Many companies have come and gone, wondering how anyone can make any money in a virtual world. Usually the only party making any money is the virtual construction consultants who assisted the RL company.

The Aviva experiment appears to be more of the same, but it is interesting to contrast their approach with Codie’s. You can read all about the Aviva opening right here. To spare you from the reading the article, I’ve extracted the most interesting aspects. 

Aviva’s objective is actually not to “make money” in the virtual world. Instead, their purpose is recruiting to replace aging sales reps on the verge of retirement. They are:

Looking for a unique and effective way to connect with members of the younger generations who have the potential to be effective insurance agents

Now, why would Aviva think this? Because they believe that:

If you look at [Second Life user] demographics not only by age, but by education, affluence, brand sensitivity and even the male/female splits, this certainly looked to us like it had the right demographics. There are, potentially, in the population of Second Life users, [many] that would be good life and annuity agents

Right. I am certain there must be some. But they are not on my friends list, perhaps they are on yours? Also, isn’t the average SL resident an aged 35+ married female? There’s more:

Our thought was that initially, since insurance is not something that is big in the Second Life world right now, ... the first and best use of this for us is as a means of attracting new, younger agents to sell our products

Sure. And what exactly would I expect to see on a visit to the Aviva sim?

the Aviva USA island's function is primarily one of information and education. The island has a welcome area and tutorial trail with five stations of information that introduce visitors to the island and its features. It also includes a commons building -- designed in a similar style to that of Aviva USA's new real-life headquarters in West Des Moines -- that features an area devoted to its Bright Futures national ad campaign, a wellness area with interactive surveys and a timeline history of the company

and

a replica of Aviva USA's wellness bus, which tours the country as part of the carrier's relationship with the Mayo Clinic, is stationed on the island. Visitors also can walk away from the island with Second Life in-world accessories for their online characters, or avatars, such as Aviva-branded hang gliders and messenger bags

That’s pretty nice. I’ll be looking to see the “messenger bags” on avatars during my travels, or perhaps even highlighted in the SL fashion blogs.

Suppose there actually are avatars who wish to become a “Life and Annuity Agent”. Should they drop by the island and get some information from the inevitable kiosks and notecard givers?

Second Life members can visit Aviva USA's island by invitation only... the company is looking to make sure that visitors to the island are legitimate and interested candidates to become Aviva USA-licensed agents

So the sim is actually closed to visitors! But wait, I *really* want to be a “Life and Annuity Agent”. What do I do?

Potential agents can request an invitation by calling a toll-free Aviva phone number

Really? We wouldn’t want to make this any harder, would we? I’m wondering how a potential “Life and Annuity Agent” would discover an interest in that career If They Can’t Even Get To The Island First!

Somehow I have a suspicion that this venture may not succeed:

If the company recruits around 500 per year through the initiative ... [they will] consider it very successful

That’s three recruits every two days for the entire year. Sigh. Only a small percentage of visitors would likely become recruits. The invitation procedure and significant absence of in-world marketing suggests few visitors are likely and that this expedition may not work out exactly as envisioned.

Bonne Chance, Aviva!

Pictures and videos of the Aviva site are also available for your viewing pleasure.

A Rouge Analysis

Last week I had the opportunity to take part in the opening of Codebastard Redgrave’s new sim, Rouge. It was an enormous success with over 750 guests, and you can see my gossip-laden pictures here. But before, during and after the event I wondered how Codie actually succeeded so well. An examination of what took place could be instructive for any business wishing to stage a successful event.

In any complex undertaking, success comes when many dimensions are covered. You can’t expect everything to go right if you correctly execute only a single aspect. Codie, always an energetic personality, saw no boundaries and used a business-flavored version of the Powell Doctrine:

when a nation is engaging in war, every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisive force against the enemy

That’s right – many techniques were employed to achieve her objective: a successful launch. What were the specific techniques? I can’t say I know all of it, but here’s a list of things I observed:

• One of the best, if not the best sim builder: Eshi Otawara. By engaging Eshi, Codie not only landed a top-notch builder, but also the reputation of the builder. Eshi’s work always attracts attention, regardless of what she’s building. For the weeks surrounding the opening, attention to Eshi also meant attention to Rouge.
• A truly unique design for the sim. For those of you who somehow haven’t yet seen or heard of it, the sim is designed as a gigantic version of Codie herself! You can stroll up her legs, and, um, where ever...
• Party time and date sufficient to cover all planetary time zones. Most avatars now seem to originate from time zones other than North America, a fact often forgotten by many who host events. Codie carefully selected a broad weekend time slot that enabled everyone to have a fair chance of attending. Of course, it required her to be around for a massive number of hours, but that’s the price of success.
• Announcements. One of the most basic promotion techniques, announcements flew in every direction before the opening. Codie used her own blog, of course, but also through here extensive network of friends announcements or mentions appeared on many blogs.
• Generous invitations to her SL group. Invitations to the CodeRed group were offered, especially before the event and anyone who wished an invitation probably received one. Announcements went out to the group members on an increasing frequency as the date and time of the event came closer. If you were a member, there was no way you could have missed the information.
• Press Conference. The evening before the event, Codie held a press conference where invited media and bloggers had an exclusive preview of the sim and were able to ask questions of not only Codie but also the builder, Eshi.
• Incomparable DJs. The long duration required multiple DJ shifts. Codie arranged for many preeminent DJs to appear during the event.
• Quality Free Gifts. Gadgets detected guests and provided items randomly. If you weren’t lucky with the random gifts, there were several name-brand gifts for the taking directly.
• Leveraging social networks. Like many of us, Codie belongs to the vast social cloud of blogging, tweeting, flickring and most recently plurking. Codie has a habit of telling everyone what she’s up to, and the Rouge meme spread thickly through the SL social sphere. By the way, Codie happens to be one of the most active SL Plurkers (#2 as of this writing, with Gabby Panacek #1 and yours truly at #5).
• Blog Post-Event-Buzz. After the spectacular event, many blogs (including this one) posted reports, pictures and commentary. Codie rounded them up and posted an extensive list of pointers to all of them.
• Anticipation. The most important and final item was how the entire operation unfolded. It began weeks away when Codie announced on Plurk that she was obtaining a sim. We then saw every stage of development mentioned: The sim was transferred. The sim was named. A designer was hired. DJs. Ideas for the build. More ideas. Contributions. Building. Questions. More building. Scheduling. Invitations. Frantic activity. As a mere observer, I read the bulletins and gradually began to feel like I was somehow part of the action. I wanted to know what happens next, since the bulletins became a kind of story with an unknown ending. Finally, when the sim actually opened it was totally obvious that I should go. That’s how everyone felt, because we were with Codie every step of the way.

Is there a better way to open a sim? Perhaps, but I couldn’t tell you. Maybe Codie can. Well done, my friend!

Unstaffed!

Readers of Second Effects may recall a few weeks ago I began yet another business experiment: onsite staff at my store, Electric Pixels. The idea was to have a friendly face meet and greet visitors to the store, and to help them find items they could not locate (which is actually becoming an issue, since I now have over 150 items on the store shelves!)

My observation was that shoppers generally seem appreciative when greeted by a live person, and often I was able to help people find and buy items they probably would not otherwise have found. Also, you'd be surprised at the number of people who come randomly to a store like mine.

One recent visitor, Quanishia Tuqiri, has the bizarre habit of picking a random keyword, punching it into SL Search and then TPing to one of the search results. It turned out to be mine the night she came by, and after a lively discussion of many things, Quanishia is now a good friend. Visitors with no intention of shopping can often be transformed into customers with an explanation of your store's products.

Another important aspect of live interaction is to identify the need for products that don't exist. Shoppers frequently TP through dozens of stores looking for a specific item. If you are there on duty, you can find out precisely what they seek, and sometimes even build products for them right in front of their eyes! This can't happen unless you or your staff are present.

So I hired a very nice friendly face to work at the store. I set up a time clock and began paying hourly wages. Results were very unclear at first, because of the irregularity of SL shoppers - some days are good, while others are catastrophically bad. I decided to run the staffing experiment for a few weeks to see what happened over the longer term.

Unfortunately, after three weeks it was clear that there was no appreciable affect on sales. But there was an appreciable affect on my costs! Overall, I lost a considerable sum of Lindens, but I learned a few things about staffing in this type of sales situation:

• Hourly (or by minute) payments are questionable. It's not clear whether your staff is actually working consistently even though they might be physically present, since its so easy to be busy IM'ing others. Meanwhile, someone may show up at the store and even slight delays in greeting them don't look good.
• Difficult customers are hard to deal with. Somehow I am usually able to successfully interact with even the most dreadful personalities by being very careful what I say and how I say it. However, not every one is able to do so, and in one case I received a complaint during the staffing experiment. Inspection of chat logs revealed a catastrophic miscommunication. Understandable, but still not good.
• Some customers just don't want to talk. Half of our visitors simply didn't respond when addressed. Perhaps they spoke other languages, or maybe they were in a hurry. Some were simple rude. Regardless of the reason, it meant that staff were not required to handle half of the visitors.
• Some customers talk too much! It's fine to be engaged in a discussion, but when things get busy it's often tricky to disengage from one customer and start with another. This always happens in real-life stores, and Second Life is no exception. But staff have to be able to do this seamlessly. Hah - in one case, a randy customer became overly interested in my staff and asked her "when they got off work".

Will I hire staff again? Perhaps, but things will be slightly different. I want to organize a different payment scheme in which salary will be more directly tied to sales results. Not commission payments, exactly, but something close to that. That way the staff will have appropriate motivation to do the work. However, I haven't figured out the right formula yet. The hourly payment scheme attempted this month was just a bit too close to Camping for it to work effectively.

Another change would be to train the staff in sales techniques. While many people may think it's easy to simply jump into a store and start selling, there is actually a science to selling. I have a real-life friend who teaches such skills, and I am thinking of engaging her to train any new staff with proven techniques.

Finally, if I were to hire again, I would have an open job posting and either interview or somehow evaluate applicants until the right one came along. Hmm, that might be a good blog post in the future....

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.

SLB or SLX? or SOR?

First of all, it's not SLB (SLBoutique) anymore. Their site was taken down a few weeks ago and was re-born as “Shop OnRez”. I am not sure I like the new name, but the new version seems to have a few interesting added features, such as bulk editing of entries.

But first, a bit of background. I had started selling particles on SLX (SL Exchange) long before I had any land or shops of my own. In fact, SLX sales funded the purchase of my first land in Lanestris. I've been quite happy with SLX, although the sales are significantly lower than from my in-world store.

Meanwhile, I also tried SLB. The management interface at first appears to be a lot slicker than SLX, but having used it to manage a large number of products, I'd have to say that the less-polished SLX was actually easier to use if you are a seller. Nevertheless, I set up a quantity of products on SLB and waited for sales. During the first month I made some sales, perhaps 25% of what I was receiving from SLX. However, after that sales dropped off to almost nothing – perhaps one sale every two months. Terrible!

I had almost given up hope on SLB, but with the introduction of Shop.OnRez.com, I thought I should give it another try. After spending several hours setting up all my products on SLB (Whoops! I mean Shop.OnRez, of course! Or should I call it “SOR”?) I was satisfied that I did all I could to properly use SOR.

Today, more than a month later, I signed into SOR and found to my surprise that I'd made 32 sales since I set up on the new SOR! I am liking this service more than the old one, at least for now. These sales are in fact somewhat larger than SLX during the same period. Good work, Sheep!

Optimizing Classifieds

I wrote earlier about my philosophy on classifieds: keep the number of them low to focus your advertising dollars so that you will show up higher on the search results list. I'd like to amend that idea here, by introducing a new twist.

While the original concept is still valid, it assumed there were only a fixed set of keywords that people would use to search for your products. As my inventory of for-sale products increases, I now find I have some items that don't really fit with my main classified ad. In other words, people would likely use different keywords to find those products.

So, I realized that you could feasibly have more than one classified ad – as long as they each focus on a different set of keywords. Also, they each probably have different payments to get onto that all-important first or second search results page for the keywords they are designed around. In this way I believe I have optimized my classifieds by spending the least amount to get the maximum results.

And it seems to work! I am getting somewhat more traffic lately.

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?

Groups!

My friend Kim Junot, a creator of fine dance floors, made a great suggestion this week: “why not start a group?” I agreed that this was a good idea, since there is some evidence that I have “fans” in SL after having visited some clubs and finding many people using my effects.

Creating a group is technically simple; The creative aspect is more difficult. What is the name of the group? What are the titles of the officers and members?

In the end I decided the best thing to do would be to reinforce my brand, “Electric Pixels”. I believe that in order to make things easier for customers, the name should be easy to remember. By making my group name equal to my brand name, I have taken another small step to building up the brand.

What do I do with this group? Basically, I considered the group from the viewpoint of my customers: what would I want to know? There are only a few things I would want to know myself:

• Announcements of new products. Remember, your best customers are your previous customers. Make sure they know you have new things to sell
• Announcements of major events, such as moving locations, temporary closings, etc.
• Announcements of special sales events – and not just spammy advertising, this has to be real sales only

I don't think the customers want to know anything else, but I encourage anyone to correct me.

To make it easy for customers to join my group, I built a Group Inviter device and planted it in the middle of my shop. It appears as if you simply Touch the device to be joined to the group. The script for this is a little goofy, however. It turns out that Linden Lab's LSL does not include any APIs for interfacing with Groups! So how can you possibly script a Group Inviter? Easy – I fake it by simply having it send me an IM with the name of the requestor. Then I just add them manually. If too many people ask for invites and I cannot keep up, well, I would LIKE to have that problem!

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.

Second Contracts

This always happens to me: I am visiting SL friends, and suddenly connections are made and I am off building something for someone. I don't mind doing this (especially if I get paid!) because it means more exposure for me – both others seeing what I do, and me seeing what others are doing. The more you understand your SL market, the better. I take every chance I get to learn what's going on.

Here's how it went down the first time: I am at a SL house party, and a very nice lady asks what I do in SL. I explain that I build particle effects. “Oh, can I see some????? Pull-eezzzz!!!!”

“OK.” I don't mind showing off – my effects are usually quite a lot of fun anyway. I showed off some of my fogs and poofers, but she got very excited when I demonstrated my hearts poofers.

“Wow!” she said, and “Hold on a minute,” just before disappearing.

Moments later I am summoned via TP to a dance club, where I am introduced to the owner, another very nice lady. She likes the effects and buys several on the spot, but goes on to explain that they need something to spice up the club's lounge area. We visit the lounge and I recommended a few changes and suggested that I could build a custom particle effect that might work.

A few days later I had created a unique effect for that club's lounge – and the owner bought it on the spot. Suddenly, I was a virtual contract worker!

And that's how it usually happens. Some builders may turn down such requests (or not even identify them as opportunities), but I believe I gain much by doing these custom builds:

• Exposure to more potential customers. Who knows how many people will hear the story of how the lounge effect was built? Any additional sales that develop, even one, is more than you would have had otherwise
• Experience. Contracts typically cause me to push my knowledge of LSL and building a bit further than I have previously gone. This makes you a better builder and enhances your future products automatically. Of course, you have to have a nose for this kind of thing: don't take on contract work that you just cannot achieve. A little bit difficult is A Good Thing
• Customer service reputation. By helping my friend and being patient and listening carefully to the contract customer, they are likely to buy more items from me in the future (hopefully!) If not that, then they may again tell others of their customer experience. Besides, I like to be nice in general, and I can't do it any other way
• Items that are custom built for one are often resellable to others. In other words, you just received a great idea for a new product! Use it!
• Connections. Meeting people is always important, because not only do you gain social value, you also gain a potentially useful connection for future activities. Who knows when you might need to have a buddy who builds japanese furniture?

So, when ever I have the time and the ability, I do take on special contracts. It's just good business.

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.

Classifieds!

Nobody is coming to my store.

Well, that's not exactly true ... there are a few passersby who seem to drop in. One of my pals, Emerist Begonia, runs a successful store selling articles for your SL home, so I asked her what to do. She suggested I post a classified ad - and she paid "more" to make it appear higher on the list. More means paying more than the default L$50.

Here's what I learned of how classifieds really work:

• You create a classified advert and submit it
• You are asked to specify how much to pay - the default being L$50
• You are cheap and take the L$50 default
• A user seeking your products types in some keywords in an attempt to find them
• ALL classifieds containing those keywords (actually, ANY of them) are found in Linden Lab's classified database
• The found ads are sorted - guess how? By the amount paid by the advertiser (that's you, remember?)
• The highest paying ads are shown first
• The user, impatient and desperate to find what ever they are looking for, selects a few ads FROM THE FIRST PAGE SHOWN
• The user inevitably fulfills their needs from the first page of search hits
• Meanwhile, your measly L$50 advert is positioned on page 26... AND IS NEVER SEEN

What's the lesson here?

• Pay an amount sufficient to get your ad onto the first page of listings, or for more popular keywords, at least the second page
• Pick good keywords! (More on this in a future post)

Wait a minute! How does one know the correct amount to pay? This is pretty easy... just do this:

• Search for the keywords you are focusing on
• Examine the results page and see where the price is at the page end
• Add a little bit to the page end price to "insert" your classified just before the end of the page
• If the prices are close, add a bit more to ensure you stay on the first page

Once I did this, visitors started arriving. Not lots, but some - and they were buying items. It's a start.