As per usual, the media has been tearing down business in Second Life. Whether it's about WWF's Conservation Island or the long term foul up of American Apparel. However, there are many facets of the situation that have not been looked at.

     1: Second Life is a community platform, to get visitors and thus customers, you have to engage them. Big name appeal does not work as well in Second Life, you can't just announce that you have a place, and expect avatars to flock to it, even if you're a famous millionaire. To get the eyes and ears of the people, you have to offer something that is already lacking, or something that has not been seen before. And you have to keep at it, opening a sim and having one event, then letting it rot, abandoned will turn off more customers than that one event ever will turn on.

     2: The media will not do everything for you. You may have the biggest island with the coolest custom buildings and best scripted toys, but if you do not advertise it in-world, your sim will stay empty, and the few that do come through will notice a lack of green dots on the mini-map and teleport out. The community needs to come to know you before you have their full attention. It's a great idea to sponsor events for others and starting small - but public, rather than merely immediately going for the island and sitting in your massive, but empty, sim.

    3: Control the media, not the other way around. Do not go to the news rags until all of your projects are completed, you have events running, and people are actually at your in-world places at a frequent basis. There should already be an in-world buzz about you by this time.

     4: Produce quality goods, if you are going to produce anything at all. American Apparel failed because their clothes were designed poorly their ameture neighbor a few sims away produced better quality pixels at half the price, and they merely created an inventory and never updated it - the clothes they sold on January were the same exact pixels as the clothes they were selling on April, and June.

 There are many other things to look at when entering Second Life, but these are some of my most obvious thoughts on the subject.

Ciao,
~Micheru Mathys