Who will be Second Life's next Millionaire?

Hi:

Would it be the Real Estate Business owners or the gamers?

Anyhow, I work for a grid wide lottery system in Second Life. We are in the middle of rolling out and am wondering about the following:

1) What is the best form of marketing in SL?

2) We are looking for business owners to take our terminals. They get to make good commission as well. How do I go about doing that?

3) Are the classifieds in SL good?

4) How do you find out if traffic is for real in a mall or a rental space. Sometime there are high traffic numbers in about land section but I don't see anyone there. What is that mean?

Thank you.

-Homer

Wow, an advertisement in the form of a question. How original.

And how will you guarantee payment to a ticket "buyer". In a RL lottery, the winnings are already in an escrow account, untouchable until time for payout. How will we merchants verify that the money really exists and not just some grab the lottery ticket money and run scam? To whom do you think a disgruntled "winner" will harass if they don't get their promised payoff? You? Or we the merchants in whose stores said tickets were bought?


I'm a merchant. I would not consider putting one of these vendors in my store without proof of legitimacy.

And the spamming of several forums with this advertisement also makes me suspicious. Legit operations don't need to spam... word of mouth spreads much faster.

clarification:
Because this -IS- the Resident answers forum, my answer to residents is to be leary of schemes like this. Get rich quick schemes are almost always scams. Good example is that pyramid scheme rip-off that is even now still floating aound SL and still drawing in suckers.

Stephanie - this was not meant as an ad but it is what it seems like then I will remove the post.

Second Lottery posts everything on the secondlottery.com. Not many businesses in SL has a website. If you buy a ticket then your numbers are listed on the website. How is anything real in Second life? We wanted to come out transparent and improve customer satisfication. We wanted to be different. We will hold draws in public and let people choose random numbers.

I have deleted the post here. Any input on how to make it even more Legit would be helpful. We are working on getting it certified through an online trust company. However not sure how soon that can be done before any draws.

Yes I have changed it so that it does not come out as an Ad. That was not the intention. However I am new in SL and basically spent all my time building and scripting. Now I need help marketing. So if you can help answer those questions then it would be helpful. I just need to know where to get started. Thank you.

Simple answer....

Our L$ are = real USD. Last time i looked at lindex it was roughly 250L/1$

I recall an NPR "Marketplace" broadcast some weeks back that talked about Ansche Chung grossing a million US$ from SL. I believe it too based on how many sims she owns.

The US$ value of your prize might be small, but it's still real and tangible.

I don't mean to sound like i'm putting your scheme down. Perhaps you might wish to postpone your go-live date until you have the other steps in place. Here is why:


Hypothetically you offer a million L lottery. At the above exchange rate, that is a market value of $4000 USD. That is Present Value. Unless you have the 4000L now and in some form of verifiable SL escrow account, People will be suspicious.

Why? if you count on ticket sales, to pay the lottery, then you need to sell "X" number of tickets.... 10,000 tickets at 100L, or some other variation. And then, you make no profit to pay the merchant as promised in the original post. this is strictly payoff for the winner.
And this ignores 2nd place & 3rd place winners.

So... what happens if you don't sell the 10,000?
What if you only sell 5000? Do you make up the difference out of pocket?
So let's assume that there is no 2nd place or 3rd place, and you only need to pay off 10% to the merchant where the winning ticket was sold. So now you need 1.1 Million L$.

Price the tickets too high and you get fewer sales. Price too low and you risk not enough sales to break even. Let's assume you go with 100L (too high IMHO). You need to sell 11K tickets to break even.

This is your first lottery, people will be suspicious since there have been many fly by night scams in SL... (there is -NO SUCH THING- as free money) ...so I doubt you will hit 11K ticket sales on the first run. I'll assume 90% because of how gullible i've seen many SL'ers be (like with the Ponzi scam... there is a good reason it's illegal in RL). That's alot higher than most RL lotteries on their first time.

Let's say the lottery goes on for 2 months so you can get max ticket sales (and you WILL need to advertise to keep sales up... more cost.... oh, btw... i'm a cost accountant in RL)
Future Value comes into play. The L$ has been dropping against the US$ thanks to policies, so let's assume this trend continues at the same rate of decline. Let's say that in 2 months it is now 225L/1$. Now your 1 million L has a cost of $4,444.44. If you didn't buy now, you have to pay more for the same amount of L$.

So... with 90% of your break even point, you were short 1100 Present-value tickets (i'm keeping this simple... you're short more because you need to calculate at future value) or 110,000L (US$440 at the 250L rate, $488.89 at the lower rate)... that comes out of YOUR pocket. If your 1st lottery is successful and pays off... word of mouth will increase your sales. I would expect 100% to 110% the second time, and more the next.

But... you need to innovate. My own state's lottery is in the decline because people have gotten bored with it. So they innovate with bigger jackpots (do your homework first, can your sales support it?). That works for a time until they realize that they can't keep it up.

Don't take my word for this. Go research this on your own. This is basic economics 101.
I look at it from a cost accounting lens. Honestly, I don't see this lottery as feasible without the money in escrow up front and even then i do not see you making a profit. I see you taking a substatial US$ loss over the course of several lotteries before you get established. I won't speculate on what you might do after that loss.

Q: Who will be Second Life's next Millionaire?
A: Javier Puff

LMAO... good one!

I don't know... I think Briggi & Stroker will give Javier good run for this.
Hmmmm... 12,000L for each Platinum-100 unit sold and Javier's products can be used with Briggi/Stroker's products.

Yeah, but you gotta shake a LOT of money trees before you can afford a Platinum.

Yeah but it's worth every one of them trees!

Me.

*wakes up*

*adds looking up Javier Puff's profile to to-do list*

If I copybot Anshe Chung's avatar, does that mean I get $500,000 alimony?

Who the F is Javier Puff, I want to laugh too.......

Javier Puff is the creator of Xcite.

Ah ok! I prefer Stroker