How to open a club

Bartholomew Gallacher 1. September 2007 0 Kommentare

Well, lately some of my friends (hello, Aquela, Eve, Kyz and Juliet ^^) either bought a club or are thinking about opening their own club. Since I am a frequent visitor of different clubs, some asked them on my advice how to get it running. Well, there are some insights I’ve got to share with this world about opening a club in Second Life.

So, here we go:

1. Don’t. That’s right, don’t do it all, don’t waste your time on it at all. Why? Clubs and also malls come a dozen on a penny in SL. They come and go, it’s one of the most frequent business types opening up and closing their doors very soon to be forgotten again and leaving their former owners with a big loss. They can be happy to have their expenses covered at all.
2. Having said that, if you’re not already scared off on opening your own club, don’t expect to make big profits with it. Running a club is a hobby for most of the people, so if you want to make real big bucks with a club, you’re on the wrong business model. Better sell clothes, start building, scripting or other high paying stuff!
3. Ok, so you’re still convinced to open your club? Good. That’s rule number three: be sure of yourself and your goal. Opening up your business is a hurdlesome task in SL and expect it to take quite many hours before you can open your club at all.
4. Be observant. If you want to have success, first take a good look at the established club scene, visit them, especially some of the bigger clubs, find out where their strengths are, where they are weak and for which kind of club there could be still a chance. For example, if 80s music is popular and there’s no such big club in SL covering this topic or you think you can do it better, this might be your chance. Go for it then.
5. Be unique. This can cover many topics: music wise, design wise, people wise. My opinion is people come most for the in crowd hanging around the place and the music. So cook up your own in crowd, your own special staff, your own live djs and keep it running. Some of the best running clubs in SL don’t have fancy architecture at all. It’s the people who keep a place running!
6. Hire staff. Yes, that’s right, to have a good crowd hanging around setup a schedule of hosts, who are there around the clock. Peak usage in SL happens at North American evenings and European evenings, if you want to cover both areas, hire them from those countries/continents.
7. Make events on a regular base, perhaps with some contests. It helps you to spread the word around and people are more likely to come when there are special events and they can win something.
8. Create something like a corporate identity on your venture. This means getting a club logo for your own, that you can use on freebie give aways, in the ads and so on.
9. Get your own stream. Nothing is more boring like the 42nd club running on the same music stream coming from an established web radio. If you are not willing or unable to hire a dj, at least get your own stream running with music that’s being in good vibes with your place.
10. Do you want to make money or just make it as a hobby? Some bigger clubs have attached malls or vendor places to get some of the money back. But not all places/clubs go well with them.
11. Make yourself a limit of how much money you’re willing to pay per month for the club. This should be pretty clear.
12. Some clubs have escorts, dancers and in former times games. Be sure before opening a club, if you want such hanging around or not. Normally not worth the money, they also come for a dozen per penny.
13. This also means: be sure, if you want to go into a mature or PG rated region
14. And at last: make your mind up, if you want to open at the mainland or a private sim. Mainland is cheaper in the beginning, but you’ve got normally the avatar limit of 40 on most places and when you club is good running, expect complaints from your neighbors. Private sim is better on that aspect, but normally you’ve got to pay it then for yourself, so that’s only an option if you’ve got enough money or already a big club making much money.

That’s all, folks. Could be, that some would make other main focuses on their own pet club, but those are my experiences so far.

The Seventh Sun

Bartholomew Gallacher 18. August 2007 0 Kommentare

I’ve found by chance a newspaper on a sim from which I haven’t heared anything before. It’s called the Seventh Sun and available as in world edition and on the homepage as well. Looks quite good to me. 

World of SL

Bartholomew Gallacher 17. August 2007 0 Kommentare

There’s been a planet for SL based news around for some weeks already, I forgot the URL, but now again stumbled upon it, so without much further adago I present you World of SL. It belongs to Tao Takashi aka mrtopf.de. 

Hell Fire Motorcycle Club

Bartholomew Gallacher 17. August 2007 0 Kommentare

Motorbike clubs are not uncommon, but this one has a twist: it’s a biker club for bikers in Second Life – the Hellfire Motorcycle Club! It’s strictly virtual and just exists in SL at all.

Interesting profiles #5

Bartholomew Gallacher 11. August 2007 0 Kommentare

I cant believe that someone would go so low as to Ban a person from their dream business.  Dil and Charity built Phat Cats out of pure love and hard work.  to ban these two loving people is beyond belief.  You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Dil and Charity you are very near and dear to me not only in SL but RL now too.  I love you both and I will always be there for you.

Big drama in the making, it seems.

Lame pickup lines

Bartholomew Gallacher 11. August 2007 0 Kommentare

Something that just happened to me at Phat Cat’s:

[13:01] X: Are you a homo?
[13:01] Bartholomew Gallacher: Now what’s that kind of a pickup line? That’s lame.
[13:01] X: Jeez, apologies
[13:02] X: you just look like a raving woofter
[13:02] Bartholomew Gallacher: If you’d taken the short time to look at my profile you’d know that I’m partnered up with a lovely wife.
[13:03] X: Beared wedding if you ask me

The nerves of some people; such behaviour cries out for "mute me for a lifetime!"

Voice is now mainstream

Bartholomew Gallacher 3. August 2007 0 Kommentare

The until now beta tested voice feature of the First Look client has gone into the main client. Thus it is enabled everywhere and now mainstream.

The use of voice is always going to be optional, and estate owners can disable it, if wanted, but it’s now there and without any extra charge at all for the sim owners, as it seems.

While some couldn’t await the arrival of this feature into the main client any longer, others are still sceptical about it and/or don’t want to use it at all. Consider it working under Mac OS X and Windows, but not under Linux yet.

It’s simply not working under Linux because the proprietary binary that’s needed to connect to the servers of Vivox is still non existant, meaning what you’ve got under Linux there is an empty shell so far.

Here be GrieferWiki

Bartholomew Gallacher 31. Juli 2007 1 Kommentare

Interesting what you can find under the hood if you’re following the
links of well known blogs. I have taken a look at the blog of the Patriotic Nigras and found a link to the GrieferWiki

To quote them:

Here be GrieferWiki, where griefers and trolls can amass valuable
information and scripts to aid other griefers and trolls. If you want
to add an article, put the desired article name in search, click go,
then click the edit button on the next page.

This makes the intention of the side pretty clear, hu? There are some scripts online to use for various attacks, if they work – who knows. But taking a closer look at this site, if it is growing in the future, could be a valuable source of information about how a griefer ticks and what he’s doing how.

Disclaimer: I don’t endorse or like griefers and their doings.

Attack on the grid?

Bartholomew Gallacher 31. Juli 2007 1 Kommentare

Prokofy Neva and the Second Life Insider are both claiming that the problems we’ve been experiencing with the grid for the last two days are not the result of internal, technical problems but instead of a concerted attack of griefers at the grid.

The exploit used has been reported already at 12th February 2006 and still remains unfixed. They are claiming it is hard to fix, but hey, after more than a year and it being abused to attack the grid, it is time now to do something against it! Neva claims, that the purpose of those attacks is to make Second Life unusable for good use like the Relay for Life event last weekend. Hm, some logic in it, could be, for sure if it was attack this event could have been a worthwhile target for griefers.

What are the conclusions? We are never going to know, if those problems were a gridwide attack of griefers or not, until the Lindens are going to tell us. Some things are clearly pointing into that direction. But if it was a griefer attack, the Lindens should tell so and don’t leave us in the dark about it.

SL is a mess – again

Bartholomew Gallacher 30. Juli 2007 0 Kommentare

Second Life is a mess today. Inventory is not loading or only loading slowly, teleports are mostly broken, money not loading, and the map is not loading, too. 

They are over it for already more than 10 hours and it is still unusable. It’s a frigging mess. This is the worst case of SL problems since months. Oh, and I forgot, friends lists not loading either, instant messages not always working and so on and on… if you want to spend time in Second Life, better do it after those problems are solved. Right now it’s unusable. Period.