About NightClub

Hi all, I don't know if here is the right place for this question, but I really don't understand If some create a nightclub, how the owner earn lindens? , because all the people dance and have a nice party, but how the club earn lindens?

Thanks!

To be honest, most clubs don't earn lindens and that is why so many appear and disappear just as quickly.
many of the successful clubs have malls attached to them which generate an income, then sponsored events in the club help to pay for entertainment. hosts, dancers and djs have tip jars which many clubs take a percentage of.
But unless you have a good business model and something new to get people to your club in the first place the chances of making any money are pretty remote IMO

Excellent points here, Rhiannon.

Randall, basically, clubs today are just a draw to something else. Any business model that includes a club needs to have a separate form of income of some sort that will use the traffic coming to the club.

Hi Rhiannon, you are right, thats why a lot of clubs have malls attached to them. But which is the normal percentage for the club from the tip jars of one dancer for example?

Thx Cheree Bury, but how to get money without a mall? mall is boring, and someone know which is the normal percentage for the club from the tip jars of one dancer?

10%-20% from my experience. You are not going to make money with a club. Your goals should be minimizing your loss. If you only lose 25% of what you put in then you are doing very well.

You say malls are boring but most of the money being made in SL is from people buying products and land sales. You need something to sell that people want. To be honest clubs are far more boring these days than malls. People dancing around to the same predefined animation while the hosts and staff spam messages every few minutes to tip the staff. That is hardly entertainment. It used to be more interesting when SL was still young but SL is evolving and maturing.

You need to find a niche that is still not tapped to hard and make it apart of the club. That is why many clubs these days are just a part of the overall business model people have and many places are moving away from the club part all together. Just isn't worth the expense.

It is also not the best of time to start any business in SL. Many places are seeing 20%+ decline in sales right now over a large range of products. It isn't just happening in SL either. A few other large virtual worlds are having the same slow downs. RL is tough right now with the economies in various countries collapsing. People just don't have the money to throw away. Even a few dollars is to much for many right now.

Jodina answered this much more eloquently than I could have.

Hey Jodina, thanks for take your time and answer this thread, now its clear for me.

actually there are very few club in SL that dont do it for the money. i just opened a club and although there is a small vender in there because my bussiness partner wants it, i opened it just for the fun of it. there is no income because all my dancers and hosts make 100% of their tips and i dont have a mall, i want a place for people to go and have fun without having to feel obligated to buy something from a mall shop

I agree with Charisma. I opened a club knowing full well it would not make money. It is just a fun place for my friends to hang out and to meet new people that come in. I do not know any club owner that actually makes money, there may well be some out there, but if you are after money then a club may not the right choice.

My partner and i come out even on our club (and maybe make a little some weeks). However mostof what we make goes back into the club.

We have something that most other clubs dont however, both of us DJ, my partner is a fantstic DJ who can pull a crowd pretty easily and both of us have extensive skills hostessing. o at any point we can take on a shift if staff cant turn up. This is also how we make money. My partner DJs several shifts a week and i hostess. The tips from working those shifts combined with the income from our small mall and donations esily covers our teir, money on the contest boards and tips for our staff (they arent paid but we take none of their tips).

The reason most clubs fail is because they take on more than they can handle. When we took on our club we were asked to by my partners DJ group, but for a month prior we had been debating going up a tier level anyway to expand my store. So i gave up prims from the store to create our club. The tier level is something we could maintain from RL money if need be and there is essentially no other essential costs to running our club.

Our staff work thee becuase they enjoy it and it brings in a few linden to play with. They spend their non working time at fab anyway so the work isnt lot to tke on. We have only had one person who joined staff leave staff over the amount of lindens they made (and to be honest if that is the only reason someone wants to work in my club i dont want them).

This goes for the small club that my partner and I built. DJing is a significant part of my SL Experience, so our club started when I found myself Unemployed, though looking for more clubs to take me on, the stretch of not DJing was making me moody, and so my partner had the idea of building a small club, and we did. It has no mall, we rarely run contests and honestly our traffic is no higher when we do, though I must admit our biggest gimic is "Fido" the linden eating dragon. Our clubs donation jar is its food dish. Other than that all our hopes is that people come to enjoy the music and have fun. We really don't have much of an eye on making any sort of profit, would be nice but is not the clubs purpose.

The comments I read here are consistant with my own experiences.

Basicly I see 2 kind of clubs, those with true interaction and fun an those that are ment purely for traffic boost.

For me it started to draw traffic as well, but through the proces I found that having a good time is worth a lot more.
Basicly people want a place to have fun, to interact and have maybe a little contest just for the heck of it.

For a while I saw clubs competing with 1000, 2000, up to 5000 of pricemoney in contests. Sure they loose heavely and every day another club falls.

If it would still be all about the traffic, I also would have to compete in that game. But I don't. Also put 250 in a contest or 1000, makes no difference. The regulars that like to be there still come.

Give it time, the current setup of mall/club venue will go to the background since more and more people just want a great place to hang out.

Easy profit in malls using clubs as traffic booster has had it best days.

IMO any club that makes you "feel" you SHOULD tip, isn't a club that wants to offer a good time.

Ben

Yup, I agree with everything said here. IMO - if you're wanting to profit off something, a club isn't something that will do it for you. My partner and I started a very small club where we just wanted a cool place to hang out, host & DJ events twice a week and maybe an open mic night for musicians once a month. We know that we're not going to make money, but might possibly break even to pay the rent with the donations or tips we receive.

Good luck with any SL endeavor you take!

I'll bump this and agree with Sassy. Among my other businesses, I've owned several clubs with only one making any profit for me. And that one did because I was fortunate enough to have an incredible manager/host to run it.

Even clubs with malls don't do that well. You can snag 20% from the tip jars and whatever rent you get from stores are and still be lucky to break even after shelling out for events a stream and land tier.

I won't name the club but one club owner had the right approach; if you look at it strictly as a moneymaking operation. She charged new strippers and escorts for training with the enticement that she would only take 10% from their tip jars. But, the girls that couldn't pay upfront -- which was most of them -- worked off their training by having their jars set to like 50 or 60% for management untl they paid off training. Sure some girls would get the training and flake but it didn't matter.

Anyone who has owned a club knows how high the turnover rate is on strippers and escorts. So, this woman had a high traffic club to entice the girls with (thank you campers making L$1 every ten minutes), kept the mall full (again, thank you campers) and had a steady stream of women willing to PAY HER to be a part of that club. No one was pissed at her. She did provide training and those who did stay did OK. But, she banked on the fact that turnover is high enough that she would have a steady flow of dancers.

All in all, it is a non-profit deal though.