Prize Money?

Where does the prize money for events come from, now that linden support is gone?

Out of pocket?
Entry fees?

If it comes out of pocket, how do those people get their money back?


sory, I'm an event n00b

In general the Club owner and partners I believe pay these out of pocket.

There was a long thread with he closing of the Island version of Club Elite about this. and the simple answer to how they get their money back is - they dont.

The general comments by the club owners is the Clubs as operations in and of themselves dont make enough to cover the Tier fees.

Though the Club I co own is extremely tiny in a business sense compared to the big clubs, we have to pay out any promotions out of pocket, and we write off any teir fees as part of having a club. We needless to say make only a small amount of tips and dwell. We could make more attending other people's events lol.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

There is an enourmouse untapped market of content-creator sponsorship just waiting to be had.

If you want prize money, talk to people who sell things. If you want to make money, become a liason between people who make/sell things and people who run clubs/contests/events.

- Jon

As a content creator I've tried the club sponsorship thing before.... problem is its really tough to see an impact on the bottom line.

From my experience, a lot of people hanging out at clubs around the ole' money ball don't really have much money (hence the reason they are hanging by the 'ball) and consequently cannot really afford my products.

Has anyone had a positive impact on sales from club/event sponsorship?

Our game show - "Payment Podium" depends on sponsorship for our prizes.

Currently, I have two primary sponsors - and both have told me they've gotten results from their messages placed on the gameshow set.

Part of the reason this works, I think - is the format for this event. We have a stage set (like a real gameshow) - and an audience seating area.

For the entire 1-hour event, the messages from the sponsors are clearly displayed in the field of view of the audience - the only way to not look at the sponsor messages is to not watch the gameshow. The messages are also clickable - and give out notecards and/or landmarks.

In addition - I also take free advertising for Payment Podium in the form of donated 'concellation prizes' - which can contain landmarks or other branding information for a store/product/etc. All contestants either win Cash or a Concellation Prize, no matter what.

Hope this helps - and - if anyone is interested in being a sponsor for Payment Podium, just contact me in-game

Or - feel free to stop by & check out the show. Its every Sunday -- Tuesday -- Thursday @ 6PM @ The Shelter!

The Shelter has been roughly 90% advertiser funded, and 10% benefactor funded (donations) since Linden support was removed in February. Tier has always been, and still is - subsidized by developer incentive. We originally opened our doors on August 20, 2004.

This was insufficient in the beginning, and I had to subsidize the shortfall with my own cash for a period of time. However, that time has passed - and I haven't had to subsidize anything out of my own pocket for at least the past month or two.

Interestingly, the day-to-day operation of the Shelter actually cost me *more* before the Linden support was removed than after. Between Dec 1 '04 and Feb 1 '05 I managed to burn through over L$60K of my own capital. Granted, I did make significant changes to how we operate in response to the support changes in February.

At least from my experience - the Advertising-Support model works infinitely better than the Linden-Support model ever did. But I also understand my own experiences here may be unique. (The Shelter isn't your regular club)

Yes, I've had positive results from event sponsorship. For example, I've been providing prizes for Knot Mae's Best Quiz for most of the last year. Mae always mentions sponsors prominently in the event listing and at the event, and I have had many sales directly because of it. I'd chip in prizes for the Knot Quiz regardless of whether I get any sales, because I'm a huge fan of the event and I love Maesy, but if any event hosts want to see the right way to do this, check out Mae. She's an event sponsor's dream. Joey Williamson of DWA is another event host who does right by his sponsors. I've had him do things like put my logo (a very large logo lol) in his club with a notecard giver, and mention my business and sponsorship on DWA radio during the event. Yay for Joey and DWA! I don't even care if I sold anything; I just got a kick out of hearing my biz mentioned on the radio. hehe You can bet I will continue to support him and his club (and he's a great neighbor, too, which sure doesn't hurt).

I've sponsored and donated prizes to a lot of other events and clubs as well, and sometimes the results are good. Other times . . . well, I mostly sponsor events because I like to help out event hosts and support them in giving us fun things to do in the world, so if I don't get customers from it doesn't matter much to me. But it has hurt when, a few times, I attended an event to which I had contributed and the hosts didn't mention my name or my business name, or even the prize I provided, or do anything but just say something like "here's your prize" and drop it on the winner. I won't contribute again in those cases. Even aside from feeling unappreciated, what fun would, say, a game show be if the host didn't bellow, "You have just won . . . A BRAND NEW CAR!" or even a "LIFETIME SUPPLY OF TURTLE WAX AND A CANNED HAM!"

I'm happy to contribute prizes to good event hosts, even if (heck, especially if) their events are new and small. Just drop me an IM inworld.

Sponsorship can certainly work. In the weeks that The Naughty Fun Store sponsored events at the spa (I sell items in that store, so I pay attention to this) we did get more traffic and I personally had a couple of more sales as a result, I think. Of course, regular mentions of the merchandise are important, and this is much easier to guarantee if the sponsor actually attends the event and models / gives away prizes. What we've done sometimes that worked really well was to make sure of mention and landmarks being given by making a freebie especially for prizes and put it on a notecard along with a landmark. The freebieprize & notecard go to everyone and the cash donation subsidizes the event by paying toward the costs of the event (landowner & event host).

Something I have noticed, though, is that sometimes sponsors and attendees don't like the same sorts of events. I think this is why IRL we have things like arts councils, etc. For example, take mature events. I like making some art events mature events so that no one feels hindered in his or her artistic expressions. The very fact that a poetry slam or a round-robin bedtime story is a mature event might put off sponsorships; yet, our crowd loves feeling the ability to be expressive without having their language use curtailed. We have consistently high traffic and are on the dwellnor award list, yet sponsorship is difficult to come by simply because we have a mature site. What I think we need is makers of mature products who are interested in sponsoring events AND some kind of council to help event hosts and venue owners connect with interested sponsors. Running around every week and asking for sponsorship from different sponsors is more time consuming than getting a darn paper route to buy GOM! If there were a central source (a foundation centre, say) to apply for funding, that would make it sooooooo much easier.