Doing Virtual Business

One of the attractions to Second Life ™ is that you can be whatever you want to be. Open a store, be a doctor, an agent, a lawyer, anything at all. You don’t need a degree, experience or background in the field, just desire, willingness, open shop and away you go.

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It’s not enough to open shop and put your items on display or simply to provide your service. It takes so much more. Unfortunately, a lot of people think that’s all they have to do. Create a product or service, find a location, build or buy a store and bam, customers come streaming in to buy and you get very, very rich. Well, that’s not how it works. Just like real life, business in second life is a lot of work if you want to be successful and respected. Customer Service, Marketing, Employee Relations are but a few areas that consume a business person’s time.

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When I first started my businesses in Second Life ™, I probably spent about 90% of my time creating. After all, that’s the fun part. But now, after over two years in business, my creating time is more like 30-40% and the rest of my time is spent running my businesses, marketing and dealing with staff issues. It sure helps having good staff, but with the limitations in permissions here, you can’t turn everything over to your employees.
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Running a business can be fun and rewarding, but knowing how to run it is foreign to a lot of business owners in Second Life ™. If you have followed my blog, you’ll know my problems with music agents, but it’s not just them. While some businesses are run efficiently, most are not. Most people who run businesses here do not in real life. That doesn’t mean you can’t be successful, you can.

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Throughout my time in Second Life ™, I have dealt with every aspect of running a business and certainly have dealt with many other businesses here, both as a consumer and as a compeer. I’ve seen all the mistakes made, and used that to my advantage by not making the same mistakes. I’ve seen the pluses as well and always attempt to incorporate those ideas into my own business dealings.

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Business in Second Life is not a lot different than real life. Sure there are some limitations, but the basic principles are the same. Attracting and keeping customers, promoting your brand, having competent, reliable employees and all the other dealings you would have are here for the Second Life ™ business person to deal with.

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In this series, Doing Virtual Business, I’ll share my knowledge of what I feel is important in running a successful business here. For the next three weekly posts, I’ll deal with one area of running a business I feel is important. In part one; I’ll discuss customer service, why it’s important and how to improve upon it. In part two, I’ll look at Marketing and public relations, how do you get your product noticed. And in part three, I’ll deal with employee relations, how to deal effectively with your staff and to make them feel rewarded for what they do.

NEXT POST: CUSTOMER SERVICE