Island Marketability?

Hello everyone,

I have some growing interest in purchasing a private island here in Second Life, but have a few questions before seriously considering diving in.

1) What is the average player draw to a Private sim away from the mainland? Is it that the private sims won't allow gaudy sex castles and poorly-maintained knockoff stores? Obviously themed communities have been very successful.

2) Any advice on initial building of the island? What are prospective landowners going to look for in the area before they choose to set up shop there? I am not a particularly skilled builder, would it be of great benefit to hire someone to help build some initial structures and layout before launching land sale to the public?

3) Obviously restricting building style on an island to a specific theme/era/et cetera has been very successful. How restrictive should the covenant be? Also, are landowners going to be more interested in large one-time land purchase fees, or lower monthly rent on parcels? What about some median point between the two?

4) How about sales and advertising? Obviously nobody likes giant floating ads for money exchange services, but what about things equivalent to real-world billboards on the sides of public buildings, with the ads targeting the island demographic? Would that scare landowners away?

Any advice or insight people could provide would be excellent and greatly appreciated! Obviously the key to making this successful is meeting the demands of those who reside on the island

1. there are so many different types of islands it would be hard to tie it down to a certain reason. maybe the lack of adfarms is the only real constant throughout islands.
i think it may just be that people like to live someplace where there are rules created and enforced by a like-minded person. that being said, 'gaudy sex castles' are actually quite popular on some islands.
2. ive seen intricate islands with a theme and great builds and all, and ive seen island simply parceled off like mainland. i think either of them would have a market. personally, if i were renting id likely opt for something closer resembling mainland simply because id less likely be forced to conform to a theme.
3. the closer the covenant comes to common sense, the happier i would be. suggest making it very clear what happens if im late on rent, want to sublet, or want to move.
4. dont mind ads that look like something from real life, but an adgrid will chase me away.

Trouble is, if you approach it 'as a business' from the get-go, people pick up on that, and... it's not always good.

It's really hard to stand out, as pure land offering. Themed areas are no guarantee of success. I think the success to failure ratio is 0.1 or worse. Remember, most fold in what, 6-8 weeks?

I only know what I do, but there are dozens of viable methods out there.

My personal mix - about 3 to 6% of a sim is infrastructure like roads &c, theme rules are present but enforcement is *very* light (almost nonexistent) and... 'live' your dream: tons and tons and tons of metaversal participation.

If you don't do this naturally, and it's joblike to you, it may be a prison rather than heaven.

Here's my biggest stumbled-upon secret: the group IM channel.

Yeap, a big, noisy, chattery group. Annoying? YES! But I get at least a note a day from someone who left it, felt sad or maybe bored, and wants back into the group just for the talking factor alone. I'm not talking loners here either - people with very full lives on the grid like it.

That's about the best way for everyone to kinda get to know each other and feel part of something, and make your lands special in a community way.




I'd almost flip the question around entirely - what would YOU like to make, see and do?

Make that.

Maybe it's profitable, maybe it's not. Who knows? But it's your very best shot at success.

Excellent advice Desmond, thanks!

I didn't really think of it that way at first, but it makes a lot of sense that people would be drawn into the 'community' more than how marketed the island is to them. Abut I suppose in the event of failure, I would rather see my own vision fail as opposed to putting a bunch of work into something targeted at other people and not seeing it go anywhere.

I'm thinking of also setting up some central 'venue' on the island that residents can use to hold events in, decorate as they see fit, et cetera.

Anyone think this would be a good idea that people would enjoy participating in, or just a waste of space?

Good luck in what you decide to do but I would suggest you have a degree of care when or if you decide to purchase an island.

There are two separate markets to achieve this.

The first is directly via Linden Labs. No issues there, usually straightforward and with tons of help (on line and via support) with issues such as build, sim management and such like.

The other way is via another SL resident who may wish to sell his or her island. The big issue here is price, usually it is possible to get a discount on the cost of upfront purchase. However this is allowed (but not software supported via Linden). There has been the occasional issue of people who have purchased what they thought was full title to a sim, only to find out that was not the case. A difficult issue.

Hi Sobriquet,

I run three very successful private island sims, but there is no secret to success. Just do your own thing and take pleasure from what you do.

Having been a tenant in several different sims on the mainland, and noting all the things I liked, and the things I disliked, I took the approach of building a private island sim that incorporated all the things I liked, and none of things I disliked. I added a drop or two of my own personal fantasies (1001 Arabian Nights, or Amenthes for example), and just built it. The people did come, and I was pleased.

I think the first thing you need to get very clear in your head is whether you are buying a private island sim to make money, or to fulfil your own dreams. I break even on all my sims, and I could make money, but I get enormous satisfaction out of what I am doing, and that trumps profit for me. So I have just 12 tenants on each of my sims, they are 100% residential with no commercial enterprises whatsoever. There is no lag at all, and we all have a great Second Life there.

Bottom line is, go where your heart takes you.

Rock

Oh, I'm not out to make tons of money or anything. The main reason I seem so concerned with money is the upkeep tier you have to pay and such. I don't know that I would be able to pay the monthly price to keep an island sim running, so I would need to subsidize that with income from land sales or something.

So people have no problem finding the areas on their own?

You need to advertise of course, which I do in the Classifieds. The people then come and then either myself or one of my managers meets and greets them and gives them the tour. This is how we have signed up almost all our tenants. In just over 1 year we have had only one resident tp in, and take a rental WITHOUT being aproached by a sales person. That does not mean that our sales are hard, it is just that our homes have lots of 'hidden' extras, which when the sales person pouints them out we get a 'wow!'. Three 'wows!' and we know we have them hooked, but we usually get 5 or 6.

Look in the Classifieds, under land rental, at the L$501 mark, and look for Fabulous SkyHomes for Rent and Luxury SkyHomes for rent (Swey, Sukka Mire and Hoini) to get the idea.