Residents Speak: Kim Anubis

It's been a busy fall for books about Second Life.

I was at a book store in San Francisco yesterday--ostensibly to attend a book signing by celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, but while there I just "happened" to go and notice that they had mine on an outward-facing display--and it turned out they had a whole shelf of Second Life books.

One of them was Creating Your World: The Official Guide to Advanced Content Creation for Second Life, by Aimee Weber, Kim Rufer-Bach and Richard Platel.

For those that don't know, Rufer-Bach is known in Second Life as Kim Anubis, the owner of The Magicians, an important designer of in-world building projects for real-world institutions.

Well, Kim is also featured in my book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life, and in it, she shares her thoughts about how someone getting started out in the SL construction business who's not sure of what kind of prefab builds to sell can decide which way to go.

She explained to me that her approach would be to "employ some traditional market research" methods:

- Give a gift to people who fill out a questionnaire about what sort of prefab they would want.
- Start a thread about it on a message board or forum.
- Talk to lots of people about it.
- Put a number of things on sale and see what sells, and what doesn't.

For some people, there may be no question about what to build. They already know exactly what they want. Many others, however, have the building skills and interest to go into the business but may not be familiar enough with what's out there to know what would sell well.

In addition to Kim's suggestions, I would add another piece of advice, and one that applies to any segment of Second Life business: Check out what the competition is selling. That will ensure that you don't try to sell the same thing that a dozen others are already saturating the market with. Or, if you do decide to go that way, that you can identify a way to make your prefabs stand out from the competition.

But Kim is touching on a very sound principle of business, both for SL and the real-world: Building a product line based on what customers want.

It may not be the simplest endeavor. It will take time, and you'll have to be willing to sift through a lot of ideas--many of them less than valuable. But, after all, Second Life residents are going to be the ones buying your prefabs, so shouldn't you give them what they want?

To be sure, your own ideas may be even better than what the residents come up with, but don't discount their collective wisdom. They are the people who are out there, frequenting the existing prefab builders, and they know what's available. If there are people who have something they want and can't find on the market, and they tell you about it, you may strike upon a great business opportunity.

Ultimately, a successful approach will likely be to mix Kim's market-research methods with some creative thinking of your own. Don't discount the value in what the residents say they want.

Residents Speak: Wynx Whiplash

When it comes to cool Second Life business innovators, you'd have to put Wynx Whiplash on any best-of list.

Wynx is the inventor of the "tiny" avatar, which, if you're not familiar with them, is just what it sounds like: avatars that are, well, tiny.

These days, there are tinies all over the place: bunnies, cats, dragons and so forth, and even people, and her store, Wynx's Whimsical Wonders is still tinies ground zero. But when Wynx first created them, it caused quite the stir.

Even today, there are those who hate the tinies, and they would probably be loathe to grant Wynx any respect. But for the rest of us, her ability to break the mold, and to really shift the paradigm is a great example of what can make a difference for a would-be Second Life businessperson.

I talked to her for my book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life, and among other things, asked her for some important suggestions that anyone going into business in SL should be sure to follow.

And from that interview, I've chosen one of her suggestions as something well worth sharing here. Befitting the suggestion itself, the advice might not occur to a lot of people.

"Add surprises" to products," Wynx said. "Something folks wouldn't expect."

It's quite the simple suggestion. But it speaks volumes about what can make the difference between a product that some people buy and one that everyone has to have.

A good example might be the tinies themselves, which are just another take on the custom avatar. But it was a total surprise when Wynx first came out with them because it's not something that had been done before, at least not in any formalized way.

The point is to look for things you can add to an existing product line that will set your products apart from others like it. It can something small and simple, like a script that animates your product, or maybe something hidden inside a product that someone might discover by accident. Whatever it is, if it's not something expected--and it's cool--it will likely delight your customers and get them talking about you and your products. And as I've noted many times before, this kind of word of mouth is invaluable.

Of course, as I've also mentioned, you need to ensure that the surprises you include are good ones, and not things that are going to make your customers unhappy or uncomfortable. Because then, as I've said, the word of mouth you'll get will not help you.

Residents Speak: Hyasynth Tiramisu

In Second Life, there are many well-known fashion designers, and as I've said before and is well-understood by anyone who has spent much time there, some of the real celebrities of the virtual world are those designing fashion.

Among the most respected of that group, it seems to me, is Hyasynth Tiramisu, the doyenne of Silent Sparrow, one of the leading purveyors of hand-drawn clothing.

If you're not familiar with the difference between hand-drawn clothing and fashion that is known as photo-sourced, that's okay. I'll fill you in.

Basically, photo-sourced clothing is made by taking existing textures and incorporating them into fashion designs.

Hand-drawn clothing, on the other hand, is done from scratch, an often painstaking process involving a whole lot of PhotoShop and/or Illustrator work.

Often, hand-drawn fashions have a rich, multi-dimensional feel to them that can be missing from photo-sourced items.

And Hyasynth has built a pretty significant and lucrative business--Silent Sparrow--by refusing to do it any way other than entirely by herself.

This entry really isn't about hand-drawn clothing, however. It's about one of the suggestions Hyasynth made to me when I interviewed her for my book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life, and asked for some advice that someone wanting to start an in-world fashion business should be sure to follow.

She told me, "Make friends with other designers. It's really important to have a support network. Other designers will teach you more than any book or Website."

This is great advice, and I think it may come as a surprise to people with business experience only in the real-world, where competitors are often loathe to help each other. That's not always the case, of course, but there's certainly a higher degree of secrecy among competitors in the real-world than what I've seen in Second Life.

In SL, it's all about respect and mutual assistance, or at least being willing to pass on favors that you received from veterans when you were getting started to others later on.

Ultimately, the point here is that you really need to have a network of peers you can trust to be honest with you about your products--are they good? Bad? Need work? Need better placement in your store? Are you charging too much or too little?--or who can help you test out your vendors or who can just be available to talk when you need encouragement.

These are people you would turn to for help if you're in a creative rut, who will give you pointers when you can't figure out how to do something and who, if you're lucky, will refer customers to you.

Of course, you must give back as well as take. That matters hugely. No one is going to give freely of their friendship or advice forever if they feel you're not reciprocating. But assuming you are--and why wouldn't you?--other designers can be a terrific resource and a terrific source of support and understanding when you need it.

And that's really important because this stuff is hard. And having an ear to bend or a shoulder to lean on or someone who can just hang out while you work in your store or whatever, well, it will make you a better businessperson and will make your business more successful.

It's not going to happen overnight, of course. It's going to take a lot of proactive effort on your part to meet people in Second Life, talk to them and make friends with them. But you need to do that anyway when you're getting a new in-world business going, as I've written before. Building a business in SL is extremely time-consuming and requires that you do tons of leg work. And making the fashion designer friends who will make up part of your support network is another piece of that.

Residents Speak: Sol Columbia

While much of my new book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life, focuses on tips, tricks and tactics for building businesses in specific segments of the SL economy--fashion, real estate, building, etc.--I also included a chapter on business basics.

It's chapter 2, "Laying the foundation for your business," and while doing the research for it, I talked with Sol Columbia, one of the proprietors of the stylish fashion boutique, Luminosity.

I asked Sol for some suggestions of things newcomers to SL entrepreneurship should be sure to think about, and as with so many other experts I talked to for the book, she came up with some real gems.

One of the suggestions really stood out to me today when I was looking at them.

As Sol put it, "To do well in business in Second Life, pick a product that people will buy over and over, not just once, such as clothing, hair, skins and fashion in general. People don't buy a new couch very often, but they buy lots of clothes.

This is really good advice on lots of levels. To me, the one that matters the most is that this touches on one of the things about business in Second Life that is most important to remember, and which, even though I've mentioned it before, is well worth repeating: That SL is a micro-economy.

In other words, with a very small number of exceptions, the products you'll be selling, be they clothes or cars or toys or even couches, are going to cost a very small amount of money. Sure, it often feels expensive to shell out L$500 for something, but if you think about it, that's less than US$2 at the general exchange rate of L$270 or so to one US dollar.

Which means, as Sol suggests, you're going to need to sell a lot of product in SL if you want to make any real money.

And think about it. There are fashion designers, and others, who are making full-time incomes with their Second Life businesses. At US$2 or less per product, that's a whole lot of sales.

Which brings me back to Sol's suggestion: In order to make those large number of sales, you're going to need to be selling products that a lot of people are going to want to buy. Further, the best way to create repeat business is to regularly update your product line with new items that your customers won't be able to resist.

Fashion is a great example because, as Sol says, people buy a lot of clothes in SL. But there are plenty of things you could sell that would qualify.

And Sol's comment about couches notwithstanding, it's not to say that you can't make money selling furniture. Because you can. But probably not if you just offer one or two variations. Rather, you'd need to have a wide variety of pieces for sale, and you'd need to be constantly updating them, making sure that people looking to furnish their spaces have lots of choice.

Ultimately, this is common sense, but I think a lot of people wanting to be in business in SL overlook some of the more subtle elements of doing business here. And the fact that it's a micro-economy is perhaps number one on the list of things that you simply cannot afford to forget.

And, again, being a micro-economy, you have to service it if you have any hope of making money. And that means that you can never stop thinking about what new products you can create, and whether or not those products are the kinds of things that a lot of people will buy.

Because you can sell the most wonderful thing in the (virtual) world, and people can talk about it like it's the best thing they ever bought. But unless it's a whole lot of people talking about it like that, you're only going to be able to take a few dollars' worth of that good will with you to the bank.

Residents Speak: Prokofy Neva

If you haven't noticed, the real estate business in Second Life is pretty big.

Sure, it's dominated by a fairly small group of people--Anshe Chung, Adam Zaius and Nexus Nash, Dana Bergson and others.

But as with any segment of the SL economy, there's still room for newcomers who have the right approach.

When it comes to SL real estate, there's one key ingredient to success that seems to be overlooked by many of the outfits trying to make a buck. And that is the concept of community building, of giving people a place to live their second lives that is what they want, and helping them get to that point if things aren't quite right.

To Prokofy Neva--a vocal critic of my book and this blog, who is also the successful manager of Ravenglass, a pretty sizable SL land management business--providing value add to your customers is just about the most crucial thing you can do, both for your bottom line and for the wellbeing of your customers, and SL in general.

As Prok--who has studied what has worked for Anshe Chung--puts it, "Most people in the land business want to scorch and burn, make a killing and never look back at the people who bought from them....Anshe figured out that it is not a land business. It's a customer service business and a development business."

I am loathe to try to put words in Prok's mouth, but my take on this point is that Second Life residents want and need a lot of hand-holding and a lot done for them. They need to have the option of renting or buying land that is already developed, and which was developed with a sense of community and neighborhood. They want someone who can be a firm and strong manager who will set down rules (the covenant) about behavior and who will enforce those rules.

All together, the idea is to let those who are not yet ready to do it themselves come in, and buy or rent a piece of property on an established estate that meets their needs and that nourishes their sense of place and home.

Whether or not the place you provide meets someone's specific need is not the issue. Because no one can provide for everyone's needs and desires. Well, maybe Anshe can. But when you establish a relationship with a customer, you want to be able to offer that person the best experience you can--within reasonable boundaries of course.

And, to be sure, that customer needs to be willing to play within the boundaries as well, and as manager of an estate, you must try to assure, to the best of your ability, all your other customers that when someone new arrives, they are going to be a good neighbor.

But the reason there is so much potential pay-off in being a proactive provider of a value-added customer experience is that most land owners and estate managers aren't doing that. Most don't have the first clue what it means, or how to do it.

For those that do, word of mouth will reward your efforts. For those that don't, word of mouth may well be your undoing.

And while Prokofy will surely quibble with my interpretation of his words, and my explanation of his ideas, I hope that what you take away from this is a better understanding that if you want to be a player in the SL land business, you will have much better success if you make community building a very high priority. Because the truth is, there is no end to poorly managed land in SL, and customers have a lot of choice. Which do you think they will choose?

Residents Speak: DJ Nexeus Fatale

If one thing has been made clear over the four years since Second Life launched, it's that residents like music. And they like music at events.

That means, of course, that while it's possible to pipe in Internet radio or some other canned type of music, there's something a lot more compelling and personal about having a DJ to spin tunes at clubs, parties or other events.

And if you're the DJ, and you have a regular series of gigs and people you spin for, you can make a decent amount of money, all without needing some of the technical skills--PhotoShop, 3D modeling, etc.--that are required in many of the other Second Life businesses.

Of course, however, DJing has its own set of required skills and techniques, and so for the corresponding section in my book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life--which arrives in the warehouse on Oct. 22, just 13 days from now--I turned to one of the most prolific DJs there are, Nexeus Fatale, for expert advice.

Nexeus, as you might imagine, was full of great suggestions and ideas. And here, I thought I'd cover one of them, and discuss it a little bit:

"Interact with the crowd at your events. Every DJ should make their listeners feel as if they are paying attention and interacting with them. This means talking inbetween every song or every two songs (not talking OVER songs)."

If you think about it, this is great advice. It kind of goes to the core of what makes Second Life such an interesting and interactive environment: The idea that the content that is entertaining you doesn't have to be static; It can be a person spinning tunes interacting with and responding to cues from the audience.

Think about it for a second. Imagine you go out to a club in the real world and dance the evening away. Think about how much fun it is to lock eyes with the DJ, letting him or her know how much you enjoy the song they're playing. Or maybe that you don't. There's a feedback loop going on there, made up of watching the DJ bobbing his or her head while playing the tunes, responding to requests and basically being an active participant in the audience's experience.

The same holds in Second Life. If you're at an event and the DJ is just silently spinning tracks and not talking, not answering questions, he or she might as well be an Internet radio station. But on the other hand, if the DJ is talking, commenting on how some avatar is dancing or what someone is wearing, it makes it feel so much more dynamic and exciting. It makes it feel two-way, and makes it more likely that you're going to stay and continue dancing.

And the more the DJ can keep up that kind of interaction, the better. As long as it doesn't interfere with the music. That's why Nexeus added the caveat, "...this means talking in between every song or every two songs (not talking OVER songs)."

If this is something you can master as a DJ, if you have a good and wide taste in music, if you can commit to regular gigs and if you are responsible, you can make good money as a DJ. But success starts with mastering the little things, like how to get your audience on your side and feeling like you're as much a part of their experience as they are.