How to run a business?

How should I run a business? I would like to find one thing I'm good at building or texturing at. So far, I haven't found it yet. But what if I love building it, but it just isn't demand or it doesn't sell? How do I know if I price my products too low or too high? How do I know which places to rent at if I can't afford land? How do I compete with that guy who builds/textures his stuff way better than I do?

I really need some advice for making a business in Second Life. I greatly appreciate your help.

first and foremost you will not get rich quick in SL, and even more rare is getting rich at all in SL

that being said, do not make stuff just to sell, the first thing should be your love of creating it, if it sells then cool, if not, then no loss, because you enjoyed making it

as for the rest... research, research, research

we get asked this about once a week in these forums, the first bit of research would be doing a search in the forums for business

You need the book. "How to build and make money really fast in Second Life". Unfortunately, it hasn't been written yet. The business owners and builders here will tell you, you have to start small. First decide what you want to make, then make it, because you want to make it. If you can sell it, that's a bonus. trial and error are the best teachers, along with some RL business sense.

Improving marketing can help a great deal, but fundamentally not everything will sell. If you love building it, then selling it should be a bonus though.



You have to adjust for your market and your sales. Low prices and high volume can be very, very effective on SL for some items. For other items, overpricing them can create exclusivity which increases their value to match the price. It depends completely upon what kind of item it is.



Look for people who are established and recommended by others as trustworthy. This is vitally important if you are renting.



Try to find a stylistic difference you can develop to distinguish your products from his. See if any customers actually prefer your style to his, and what best to do about it. But if he really can and does do everything you can do, but better, then probably you can't compete, since the money going to him instead is a good thing for capitalist efficiency (which is what the economic system is _really_ designed to develop - that business about "being rewarded for your work" is just what they put on the brochure )

I'd say if you good at business in real life you have a good chance at being good at it here. But I sense that is not the case. So probably the only way to go is first to learn how to make things in SL.

When you get good at making something look for that thing and things like it in search and go to all the places that sell things like that to see how they do it, what prices they charge and so on.

Rent a small retail space and put what you've made out for sale.

If a lot of people buy it try raising the price and see what happens. If no one buys it try lowering the price, moving to another location, making your package look better.

Keep making things/adding to your inventory/improving you products and presentations/trying different or additional locations.

Good luck and have fun!

I beg to differ on the getting rich from Second Life. Yes the 'boom' definately over, the market is oversaturated, hugely. The best way to start a business is just to start one. Literally go buy some land and set up shop. I never know what i am going to build next. It could be anything from a mid century bungalow to a space ship, thats the fun of SL. I wouldn't really recomment scouting for copies just to flood the market with the same things people already sell. Of if you do then you better offer a better product. I myself started small, originally I made 40 prim homes. Which is really something different. if you can build to a market then you have a better chance at succeeding. And I offered something different, I offered a super low prim starter home at a really low prim count. And it did well, and eventually I went onto larger things. Some taking months to develop.

Now I make amusement park rides, after a stop off for a year making sex toys. Which I really don't recommend. The sex trade is the quickest buck, I thought anyway. I can tell you if you pick a market that can apply to anyone, which is hard to do, the maney is far better. the sex trade is really a small part of the grid. A niche, which is fine, and I still have a niche business, that being Victorian Christmas trees, and it does well at the holiday times, but thats it. And that's fine, I love Christmas, and I also love my amusement park.

So do what you love, get you passion in there. And network your ass off. Start saying goodbye to your Sl social life now, if you are a business owner you won't have much time to chat. i go in cycles, sometimes I build, sometimes I draw a blank and just go explore the grid and have fun.

But I will say this, you never know who you are talking to. that's a huge rule of business. is it easier to just give away an item to a disgruntled customer rather than make up excuses? I would say yes. And I secured my last few RL jobs all through SL. And still continue to network and strengthen thone connections all the time. So I may be the exception to that rule, but a few of my friends have had much success inworld as well. In a very real life way. I have been interviewed in a few magazines, and even on a radio show once. A few friends of mine have been on TV talking about their work.

Now I didn't see a lot of cash for a year. Honestly not even my tier would realistically get paid by sales for a very long time. Eventually if you have the skills people will notice. And offer you more work and the chance to do things you never thought you could.

Secondlife is the only 'job' I have even had in my life that encompassed my entire spectrum of skills. From photography to graphic design, film, and image, and most of all imagination. You need to have a great one to survive. Hope that helps.

As for pricing, I find that offering a range of prices is helpful. I have about 4 companies currently, some are low price as a rule, some are high as a rule. That is market research, you need to study your competition. But if you offer a low end and high end version of things that helps. baiscally you want to get to the point where anyone cound walk in your door and buy something, either from interest of affordability. Now my low prim homes were super cheap, but newbies won't spend cash. And my higher end SIM development products are expensive, partly because I spend the hours on them, and they are a different market. But both have quality textures and scripts, just one is designed to flood the market, one I choose to be exclusive to the types who can afford them. And as somebody said pricing low on a high end product won't work. People expect to pay for expensive things, just always give them what you advertise and customer service if they ask.

Not so fast Rhaorth, we did not ask them if they wanted Ethical or non-ethical. Non-ethical is popular too and often far more profitable ((ps. hope the op chooses ethical though).

If you're new to Second Life, my answer is don't start a business yet. Wait a few months and get used to how the Second Life "economy" works. Read these forums to find the common issues, good and bad, that keep springing up.

If you're not patient and try to jump right into a business, there's a good chance you'll find more headache and expense than it's worth.

A lot of the questions you asked are things which you can probably answer for yourself if you just spend some time studying Second Life.

Finding what you are good at doing is a pre-requistite to starting a business anyway. Figure out if you enjoy something like building or texturing enough that you'd want to make a business out of it. Experiment with it and improve your skills.

But the single biggest piece of advice I could give is not to jump into it right away. Spend a few months in Second Life at a minimum before you start a business. The Second Life "economy" just doesn't work like the real world economy. You can only get used to it and survive it through exposure and time.

Sure, I will tell you.

1. Create a business plan
2. Work your arse off implementing it
3. Repeat step 2 indefinitely

Then you will have a small chance at success in SL. After you achieve success, you may opt to do step 4

4. Come to the forums and tell everyone exactly how you did it

Or not.

I'd recommend getting about 1000-2000m of mainland for yourself, and just start screwing around with things.

Go ahead, pick up the land, go premium, get some $L - you are gonna be into it for about maybe 100-200 bucks after membership costs and so forth.

By the time you figure out if you are going to succeed or fail, 100 - 200 bucks is nothing, entertainmentwise.

You'll get hours and hours of use out of your land, you'll learn things, make friends and so forth. Say you fail - so what? Realise everyone here can afford some fairly decent computer hardware, broadband - all that. In which case it's ridiculous to burn dozens of hours of your life trying to make 30 cents, when dinner for two is easily fifty bucks anyway.

Besides, it's waaay easier to get started if you have a tiny bit of a head start like that. Your world won't come crashing down if you don't make that critical fifty cents to keep paying the rent.

Worst case, just go premium (6 bucks a month) and get say, $L 10k - and just start messing around making stuff.

You'll do just fine I think.

I own a reasonably successful avatar and gadget store here in Second Life which I've been operating now for a couple of months shy of a year. But I didn't start a business because I "wanted to start a business". Here's how it came about:

I spent my first month or two in SL exploring, getting to know people, getting a sense of what was available and how things worked, in a general sense. I then started learning to build because it seemed like fun. Then, when I realised that something I really wanted myself either wasn't available or wasn't easy to find in SL (a "realistic" looking, or non-cartoony quadrupedal cat avatar) I focussed on learning the skills required to make one for myself that I liked. Before my cat avatar was even half-finished I had folk coming up to me and telling me that it was really cool or asking where they could buy one, which suggested to me that if I succeeded in finishing the cat avatar to my satisfaction and got it working properly, it might just be worth trying to sell it. So I started chatting to folk I knew at the time who had SL businesses of their own, with the intent of getting my head around what was involved in running an SL business and seeing if it was something I might like to do. And after a bit of thought, I decided that yes, it sounded like it might be fun!

I was very lucky in that one of my friends let me have the use of a plot of land free of charge for the first month or so that my store was open. That was a great confidence-booster, because I'd have been nervous about putting money into rent or land without any idea if my avatars were going to sell - but in retrospect, it wasn't necessary at all, since from the first week that my store opened for business, I was making enough in sales to at least cover what the rent would have cost me. Anyway, my avatars sold well enough in that first month that I could afford to put the proceeds from the store into land, and in the second month I bought a plot of land and moved my business to the site that its on now. And the rest is history.

The best advice I can offer a would-be business person who is contemplating setting up shop is to not rush into things straight away, before you have a clear idea what you're getting into. Spend some time learning your way around SL. Explore a whole heap, see what's out there. See if there's any item or service that you'd really like to have or use but that doesn't seem to be easily findable in-world - and then develop the skills to be able to make it or offer that service yourself.

The next bit of advice I'd like to share is this - always try to give your customers the very best service you can offer them, even if they're being pains-in-the-ass (coz some will). If your customers know that they can approach you with questions and/or problems and that you'll respond promptly, courteously and helpfully, they'll cut you a lot more slack if something goes wrong. For example, my early attempts at scripting took a few tries to get right, and sometimes a product would go out on sale and I'd discover that I'd stuffed something up. But I bent over backwards to fix stuff and get it working to the best of my ability, and always thanked the customer for bringing the problem to my attention (even if they were less-than-polite about it themselves), and I'd be pro-active about sending fixs or improvements out to owners of my products rather than waiting for them to contact me about an issue. And some of those early customers who were patient with me through the early difficulties are still loyal and enthusiastic customers now, almost a year later - because they have no doubt that I really *am* doing my best to give them the highest-quality product and the best service I possibly can. It's time-consuming to do that, but it's very much worth it, since in SL businesses often live or die by word of mouth and reputation.

Anyway, there's a bit of the best advice that I can come up with, based on my experience of starting a business in SL that has gone on to be quite successful in its own little niche. If you do it because you're passionate about it, then the time you need to put into the business to make it work will be a pleasure, not a chore.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Being a fashion designer in SL, I have to share the advice I've recieved in the group chat from the FashCon Cafe....there new designers and experienced designers pass the days talking about all sorts of things. You can glean SO MUCH advice from there, it's all good, it's all tried and true, if you're into fashion.


The best advice I got..ever ..was not just from one person, but from every designer I've talked to. It takes about 2 years to just break even in SL. Don't judge your success before the 3rd year you've been doing it.

So, just start. What's the worst that can happen? You put some money into SL and have a good time.

You won't make money for a long time, more than likely, so find some other reason to do what you do!

QFT!

I have been in SL a year now and *just* started selling a few things. I know a lot of people have talents that they brought into SL for the specific reason of starting a business, but for me, I was introduced to SL as a social platform. The idea that people had businesses here was a real eye-opener to me at first.

I had no clue how to build, knew nothing about textures or graphics programs. (Still don't - I'm on a waiting list to get into a Gimp class.)

Awhile back, I wanted to weed out my inventory and held a yard sale and put in a few items I had learned to build and was amazed (and delighted) when people actually purchased them!! That gave me the encouragement to continue honing my building skills and putting my personal "spin" on items I was learning how to make.

A couple months ago I had enough products to rent a small stall-type shop. Even though the rent was low, I didn't sell enough to cover it. I learned a bit about marketing through that venture.

I recently purchased a bit of land. I can afford the tier, so will put up a little shop there and sell my wares; adding more as I become a better builder. That bit of land is for me to have fun with and if nothing sells - I've still had fun per month at less cost than the price of one movie.

I also teach which is my real passion - RL & SL. A lot of my exploring and learning is to bring that experience into SL for my students.

Ok, that was a really long-winded way of agreeing with Amity as well as what some others have said. Enjoy SL for a time - learn the way of things - find something that interests you, then start small.

Also...you can sell products with no outlay for rent or land at all - on SLexchange and Onrez. (I attended a "How to Start a SL Business" class recently and that was one of the suggestions for someone who wants to test the waters and/or has little beginning resources.)

That is very true, and really good advice. And would probably explain the huge turn around in world. I really didn't pull into the 'black' and out of the 'red' until year three. Or at least the second half of year two. Gosh this makes us sound so old, lol

overhead management is very important as well..a lot of people that go into business need to realize the patterns and seasons..
this is a good reason to take it slow and monitor the flow for a couple of years..
see when your highs and lows are and learn when people feed off your product or when they are full..i've seen so many businesses in rl and in sl that get a rush and feel they have arrived and dump tons of money into their business only to see it slow down or level off leaving them in a world of overhead..nothing kills off a business faster than overconfidence..
also a good reputation and good communication with a great attitude twords your customers will have them remembering your business..
going in with the mindset that the customer comes first and keeping that mindset will give the feel to them of a professional but also mom and pop style of caring that will only bring them back for more and help spread the word to their friends..


never bite that hand that feeds you and never forget how you got there because word of mouth travels fast especially in sl and for every bite you have bitten ten hands or more..

if you are the only shop on the block that has this certain product you will get return business even with a bad attitude if they need it..but only until a new rooster shows up in the hen house..

the bottom line is it takes experience to stay in business..anyone can start one but stick with your mindest you went in with and if it is a good mindset and you love what you do and use caution instead of haste in your decisions you should do fine..

Hi well, most of these answers are standard warnings to jump in and start making money, and us oldens have been through may phases trying to make money.

One poster is spot on!!, when he/she says u can forget your sl social life now, u will find little time for your friends, but take an evening off and chill in yr fave club whatever.

I tried building a whole adult palace on my own in jan2008, what a disaster, i didnt have the skills, i didnt know much about building, and had to learn about setting up an account to buy $ to buy L$ to use making the club.

After 8 months nearly of being in SL I have met/ got paly with and an estate owner in uk, who turned out to be a person i could trust...!! We decided to be partners only last week ) My first partner since being here.

But my new partner is skilled in how to run a group, how to buy/sell land, and also how to set up parcels to rent out, You need help to run a business, its almost impossible to run a group or a business bigger than one stall....u need the input and ideas, and a possible backer, but I would def get your self a little land, where u can build, get used to sls features and stuff, and take it easy!

So u need some luck on the way, I am lucky now Me and my new partner have bought a sim mostly for ourselves, but theres a few bits and bobs, in it to make a few lindens, but we have just bought another sim across the water, and this, we have built several nice 2 floor coastal house with verandas to rent out, on a class 5 sim with a good prim rate of 3750 prims for only 15000sqmetr area, Im also lucky to have one of the respected land owners in sl..... I fell foul to 3 bent land owners, before I found Rickenbacker sims, i have no hesitation in recommending her, and she has several plots available, and will help u in any way she can!

A long time ago, I was always told it, "its who u know" who can turn yr fortunes around, and I found this to be very true in SL, just be very careful who u trust.....quick learning curve, on rip offs, sharing rights with others, and competition, plus many problems, u thought never existed will make your head ache, but anyway, best of luck and "may god have mercy on us all" quip from the Simpsons!!! lol

mich

1) Just build a load of crap, pay to rent space in malls full of campers and no shoppers then pay to have you items plastered all over the ad farms.

Thats what allot of people seem to do and judging by the amnount of busineses in the world today that do the above, I can only assume they are a great success or they wouldnt be doing it.

2) Failling that, then the other popular option is to just go out and steal lots of other peoples products and sell them at half the price with full permissions.

3) There is a third less popular option and that is to create something innovative and new, research your market and your potential customer base and come up with a unique idea that can be used to create a unique brand around a unique product. Sounds like allot of hard work to me though so you are better off just buying a business in a box and following option 1

Good luck.

I am not so sure I totally agree with this notion. I guess it all depends on the parameters and degree of success you want to base your scale. Most of any designers time, during a startup, should be spent dedicated to content creation. ALOT of time. Now if we use 'time' in the fiduciary equation -- turn around now and go home. Cause you will never break even when you count your time dedicated to serious content creation. There are also financial considerations for uploads and purchases etc. But all of this can be done relatively inexpensively by utilizing the beta grid to test products functionality or appearance.

You can't make 10 things and expect to start making money. Your most important quest now is to fluff that inventory so when you come out of the gate -- you are stocked well. I had 14 pairs of shoes and some camping systems when I decided to shift my business focus to shoes and giftcards. In order to effectively market both, I knew I had to substantiate my business existence with products --- lots of them. You must also know that you need to continually offer new things so your customers come back. And you must continually strive to offer better products. Customers like to follow favorable designers and like to see what happens next.

It all requires out of the box thinking and extreme dedication. Remember, this is SL, you have a lot less encumbrances in going to market here but a lot of the same rules of business and marketing apply. I had a girl complaining to me yesterday that she had no sales -- when i tp'd to her *ahem* store -- she had two pairs shoes and two purses. She also had 4 locations and she wondered why she was losing money.

So true. I was just going to add this exact message. It's kind of a no brainer that the more different pieces of merchandise you have out for sale the more sales you will get. Nothing else a business owner does will help her business as much as making more and better things to sell.

Very true. I went shopping for some slacks at a shop that I know sells professional clothing and was sadly disappointed to find that the inventory for separates had not changed much, if at all, in the last year. I got a different color of some pants I liked and picked up the freebies, but in all honesty, I'll probably wait another year before going back.