Getting the word out, Best Ways?

I am a creator in second life and really enjoy making things, the problem is we can all build as much as we want but what is the best way to get the word out about new products? We have allot of basic items seen in second life but also have items like my fireplaces that are different than most. I built them and scripted them to be different and not the same old thing you always see. They have real life looks and many menu driven options. I think or I hope they would go over well but again, people have to know about them to be interested. What ways of advertising would be useful to get the word out, I already spam a few groups but most of the time, spam is just ignored.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this and all help or ideas are appreciated.

Here is the surl for you to see what I am talking about and maybe help in your response:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Oshima/150/102/38

Hello, Knight.

You might be interested in this thread:

/327/ac/274749/1.html

It is fallen off the front page at the moment, but it is still very active and full of ideas for growing your business in SL. Feel free to post in that thread for feedback on your products.

A few quick ideas -

First, I hope by "spamming" groups you don't mean you go into other peoples groups and announce your products and give a slurl. I can tell you, there are few quicker ways to earn a terrible reputation, and end up muted and on a list of places people won't shop than that. Now, if you are a member of a Home Design or Freebie group that encourages product announcements, that's fine. If it is your own group, and you customers aren't responding I would look through your sales history and see what sorts of things are popular and make more of what sells to keep bringing them back.

From your post, I don't know what you have tried so far. If you are not already doing the following here is what I would suggest to get started.

-List your products on https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace
When you do, be sure to add a new announcement to their new product forum

-Announce new items in the subforum here for new products. Include a picture, and a slurl to your store. also include a link to the listing on xstreet if possible.

-Add a forum signature with the name of your store, a graphic with your logo(optional) and a slurl.

Best way to get the word out:

Continued, incredible, dedicated, over~the~top excellence.

And the secret to that is: doing what you actually like to do.


Spamming ads will make it more difficult in any case, though.

Thanks for the ideas so far.

What I mean by spamming groups is they are groups to announce your products and advertise in. I do not, and never would spam a group not intended for that purpose.


Nimue - Thank you and I will go have a look at that thread you suggested.

Desmond - I am not one to make a product and just leave it at that, I continue to make it better and upgrade my scripts and options offered to make it a better product. And I also help customers when ever I can, If I keep them happy and give good support then they will pass the word to others.

You could keep your name, and the signature ad, visible in this forum by answering one question every day.

You should check sluniverse.com out. I think it has some free ads.

I will dare challenge the wisdom of Desmond that a great product advertises itself. It does not.

Providing great products does improve your word of mouth. Eventually, it leads to sustainable business. But word of mouth travels slowly in Second Life. Very slowly.

In-world Search really isn't meant to be a source of advertising. But as a practical matter, it is. Optimize yourself. It isn't hard, costs nothing (other than the L$ 30 per week to list your land in search), and makes a big difference. Here are the basics:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SearchAPI

Putting your products on XStreetSL has been mentioned, and it's probably the next best thing you can do to help advertise yourself. It has cost associated, but (I think) no up-front costs- just a percentage of what you sell. And they are probably sales you just simply would not have made without XStreetSL, so I'd think giving up the percentage has to be worth it. Plus, since Linden Lab recently bought XStreetSL, its visibility is heightened and probably become more and more important as a marketplace over time.

Advertise your wares in your profile, and spend some time in SL socializing. Another small, truly costless thing that is fairly effective. People are more likely to go to your store after personal contact with you, rather than just seeing an impersonal ad somewhere else.

Get your friends to help you. For example, having your store in others' Profile Picks helps you in Search. Your friends are probably glad to volunteer that little bit of help. Plus, just reminding your friends of your store every now and then makes it more likely that your friends mention your store to their friends. If your friends have stores, cross-advertising might be of benefit to you both.

It's hard to tell without doing any sort of scientific study, but I doubt that any sort of spam campaign can be effectve in SL. Spam advertising is most effective in real life when targeted at separating fools from their money instantly. I'm sure there is a percentage of fools in SL. However, they probably aren't carrying high Linden balances; and even so, any sort of step they have to take to part with their money reduces the chance they will actually do so. The time it takes them to get to your store and wait for it to rez is time to lose that foolish impulse.

And, I don't mean to say that making quality products is not imortant. It is. Financially, it will help you more on the back-end than the front-end. It won't help you get people in initially, but once you get them in, you can turn them into repeat customers and good references. Plus, I'm sure it will help you feel better about yourself, because in the long run, most of us aren't talking about making it rich in SL. For must of us, it's about enjoying ourselves.

I remember old Yadni Monde used to hang at the Ahern Morris boardwalk wearing a T-shirt that was an ad. I think it was an ad for Yadni's Junkyard, his freebie site. He'd wear a cool avatar from time to time. He never engaged in sales pitches in public chat. He didn't need to. It's been a while, but I think there might have been a sign at the junkyard with a landmark to his For Sale site, either that or I wound up there just from accidentally clicking on landmarks to his store when I meant to go to the junkyard.

I suppose it's a bit harder to show off a fireplace in an unobtrusive manner than it is to show off an avatar or clothing.

Well, this reminds me of a friend last week asking me to help her make a profile picture. I did it in two parts- first was just getting a picture of her avatar in a nice pose against a green screen. The second part was putting a background behind it.

I asked her what kind of background she wanted. She said she thought a cozy room with a fireplace would be nice. So I did a Search for stores selling fireplaces, found a nice one, and took a picture to use as the background shot.

Marketing idea? What if you had a free little photo-studio setup in your store, allowing people to use your decorate creations, like the fireplaces, as background or prop for their snapshots?

Well Amity is right of course. You have to do all the basics, too.

Getting known is not a 'fast' thing though no matter what you try. About the only fast way to get word out at lightning speed is to be involved in something that's truly scandalous.

And naughty stuff isn't very scandalous; that's a dime a dozen in SL and commoditised long ago. You'd have to be the center of a major controversy or a well known lawsuit, or offend an entire community or something.

It's difficult now; it truly is. When there were only 5000 people in the world in the evening, there was at least a chance to be in the top 50 (top 1%) of that crowd in whatever you did, and stand out. Now, that's a *lot* harder.

The one good thing about excellence though; it actually does work after a while. If there were some kind of fast route, people would be trampling over you to take it.

Suezanne...lol

I agree the SL world is so much bigger now it's just hard to get the word out. And that the quality of what you offer definitely helps.

Try having a group of you and your friends going out and exploring the SL world while also having your group title read your business name or t-shirt that says "Ask me about (your business name)" or something along those lines. Don't go to competitor's places of business for this, though, I'm talking like clubs and other crowded places. We've come across a lot of new hockey players that way.

Try taking out an ad with one of the places that provide SL- television, let me recommend SLCN. Sometimes you have to spend some $ to get known.

Why lol?

That was not a suggestion for a complete ad campaign. Signature ads, which others mentioned, don't do any good if they are in old threads unseen. Answering someone's question - a technical problem question or something of that sort - keeps your signature ad visible, establishes a record of you as a helpful person, one who takes the time to help others, and doesn't take much time, assuming you pick the proper question to answer.

I'd take a bit of time to admire the work and support materials developed by Stiletto Moody, who has taken over the hearts of zillions by storm, starting at the toes. Genius.

Thank you everyone so far!

I do have the fireplaces on Xstreet and am in the process of updating the the listings to reflect the new updated script that I just finished this past week. I average around 10 views for fireplaces a day on Xstreet but haven't sold any yet on there.

I have been working on optimizing the keywords and such for the search. So far fireplace and fireplaces are in the top 6 pages, yet we have other items that come up in the top 3 of the first page. So this is working but it does take some time to get it all right.

I will look into sluniverse.com and see about getting some ads on there, I am also gonna put some listings on the xstreet forum and sl forums. I will also look into the SLTV idea and see what can be done with that.

I do have friends with us in their picks and am going to look into some social networks to see what I can do as well.

Thank you for all of the ideas and help. I am not looking to get rich here in SL but more just enjoy building and scripting and making things in general that might help or improve the quality of the game in general.

Give out some freebies or sell some of your work (at a less than retail cost) to people who have clubs, build or sell houses, etc. People will see your work there.

Once they find out who made it they will look you up if they like what they see.

Melita - Actually I have sold a whole copyable set to a builder for him to use in his home builds. And would be interested to discuss this with other builders as well.

That's great, Knight.

Also Knight, you could start a Flickr account, as Flickr has a huge following of SL people who love photography and SL imagery. Use this to help display photos with your work. You can link this to friends Flickr accounts, as well as other relevant Flickr groups. Search for some that have people who love home decor/architecture in sl, get involved, and link your most inspiring photos with these groups.

It's a fun thing to do, another way to connect, and the photography practise is really invaluble if you have a SL business to promote.

Best of luck

QFT! I always wear my *Czari`s Attic* tag wherever I go in SL and have had people ask me what that was, giving me the opportunity to tell them, usually resulting in the inquirer asking for a lm.

At a discussion I attended last week, 3 of the participants asked for lm's to my store.

Reworking my profile picks but (when they're completed) I use them for my shop and/or specific products along with associated keywords.

ETA: Knight, if you haven't already, I would join the group Homestyle Consolidated and contact the owner for a designer tag so you can post notices.

Here you are now.
Here is where you want to be.

Successful people in SL help other people as best they can. Joining inworld building and scripting helpy groups and forums is a good place to start as this is what interests you most. And just answer questions from people about what they are trying to achieve.

People respond warmly to this and buy stuff even when they dont need it particularly. Is lots of stuff gets bought in SL just because people like you for who you are.

then charge outrageous prices for the stuff

(make that 1 less than 1 zillion, never bought there, never will, zoomed in on the stuff... erm, I was told to not say anything if I have nothing good to say so.... (blank). (also they do not provide demos!!! For those prices they should have gold plated demos!!)

(edited to add)
Speaking of toes, I made some (yes I used someone else's sculpt maps, I am not a sculpter hehe) I am not going to be charging more than 100L for a pair of prim toe shoes with a scripted hud tinting system (and of course a notecard to explain how to do it heh)

granted the full foot and toes can be cute, but god the ankle connections is creepy when the foot moves a certain way *shudder*

so I will stick with just toes (for now LOL)

what kind of pics are people interested in? How do you post directly from SL to flickr (or can you?)

Do people looks for ad shots, or just random cool looking snapshots?

(I have a flickr account but never use it)

Hmmmm.........Never thought about using a site like flicker to advertise for second life.

I will be however looking into the help groups to see if I can help others in learning how to do things in SL. That is a good thought and will be doing that when I have a few minutes. (Today is a bit busy.)

I will also be giving a few away to help get the word out and see if that works as well. I do know this will be a slow process and I am willing to do what is needed to be successful.


Hmm... Why doesn't my signature show on my posts? I have one saved and it set to show? Or can I just not see my own signature?

Getting the word out? How about asking a question in the Residents Answers forum about the best ways to get the word out?

Pep (Don't bother reading that big thread about "Advice on Sales"; it would take too long.)

You can't post directly from SL, but can upload from your hard drive.

I suspect that people might avoid blatant ad shots like the plague, and for good reason, so I'm not suggesting anyone spam groups with their promo shots. (If I were to include any of my work, it would just be for my contacts/friends who choose to visit so they can see what I'm up to, or it would have to be completely relevant to the group it's pooled with). But, people do appreciate beautiful and artistic SL photography

I keep wanting to poke my head in there, as I just *know* it's chock-full of goodness and wisdom, but it's too confrontingly long.