MaxineCrow

Probably a late reply from me, but here goes... First off, Mylie already mentioned a few solid points to consider, and in more detail than I would have been able to do as I had no idea about Plurk for example. Second, the question about land (rent or buy); flat-out buying basically still means you're renting, from Linden Labs, with real-cash payments. The tier system for buying land this way isn't -too- bad, but if at any point your real-world monthly cashflow hits a hill (bank's computer throwing in the towel just when your income is supposed to hit the bank, something else in your RL suddenly needing more cash more urgently than your SL, stuff like that) then your SL premium account (you'll need premium to "own" land this way in SL) will be sort of put on hold by Linden Labs until payment is made. Renting land from other residents can sometimes be cheaper, will often be priced at around the same value (except translated into L$), and in some cases someone is just out for profit which means it'll be more expensive in those cases. There are quite a a few reputable, solid SL realtors about, just as there are others that put the mob's loansharks to shame, not to mention that there still are some who'll take your payment, but suddenly pack up and dissapear (have had this happen myself long ago on an old account of mine, so I know from experience that it can really kill off even the most solid business plans when almost litterally someone sweeps the ground from under you in that sense). So... buy or rent, it's still something worth thinking about, "buying" directly from Linden Labs offers the security that you won't get swindled by some shady type, but renting from one of the better realtors out there pretty much does the same, and might even work out a bit cheaper than "buying". Third, how to advertise/attract traffic... Advertising can be done in many ways, you can hire people for "word-of-mouth"-advertising (or, given the nature of SL, maybe "text-of-fingers" would fit better). You might have some friends or another group in SL that you're already involved with, who might be able to spread word of your business. You could also look at advertising places/companies, two names that come to mind are SecondAds and Bletaverse, but there's many more of these companies in SL where you can buy advertising space on billboards/adboards for just a few cents' worth of L$, another. And, depending on what type of business you start, you might be able to organize some events in your place of business, with some contest or something, and get some DJ's at clubs to put the word out about that event. In fact, there was one DJ who played at a club I used to go to a while back who ended up advertising a small event that I used to run for a store that I was setting up back then (but which never really took off), out of the kindness of his heart... if you're visiting clubs in SL and actually get friendly with some of the staff (I'm talking sincere friendly, not "convenience-friendly") you might be surprised at just how willing some of those people are to help spread the name of your business. As for pulling in traffic... well, advertising hopefully does its part in that, but a lot - especially early on in your business - will come from the crowds that you move around in yourself, or that any staffmembers move around in. Also, another form of advertising is the type that Linden Labs itself provides right in the viewer; the "personals" section (or however it's called again... I'm thinking it's personals, but my memory is rusty on that point). This is an often overlooked type of advertising, because (at least from how I remember it being when I last used it myself long ago) it's basically a free-for-all, you could start out cheap with an advertisement on there, but any others who paid more for their ads would push down the cheaper personals ads, so if you got lucky and got an ad on the first page with a cheap payment, two hours later you'd likely be on page 9 or further down... still, if some people were looking for what you're selling, and no competitors show up higher in the listings than your ad, page 9 still beats no page when you get found that way Fourth... honesty is a good thing, and you're able to honestly state that you're a "newbie", but with some capital behind you... However, despite there being plenty good people out here, it only takes one greedy shark to ruin your business adventure early on. And those types love fresh meat with cash, bluntly said... so don't advertise that too much, and always keep an eye open for any fishy offers. That's not really critisism towards you; as said, honesty is a good thing, as is trying to find out how to do stuff well enough rather than just plunging in blindly. It's more a little piece of general advise, and a bit of a segway into the question of whether you should go into business with someone. The right business partner can do wonders, the wrong one can rob you blind faster than a politician can twist his own words. If you do go into business with someone, I'd say initially a setting where you hire them is best; this way, you determine mostly how much you're risking on them, and you can always change to sharing if they prove themselves enough for you to be comfortable with. That said, others can and likely will bring up very valid points for the opposite situation, it's just how I see it.

Whether I'd tune in or not, I'm not sure of either way but I will run my mouth - well, fingers over the keyboard - anyway. First of all, I know there's at least two "regular" (mixed male/female) federations on SL already, I'm not sure if they also post on Youtube or other media besides their own websites, but they do shows in SL. And it works well enough with them, or at least one of them that's built quite an audience. Whether their matches are roleplayed (freeform on-the-go or otherwise) or someone comes up with a script for each match beforehand I don't know, it might even be a mix of these options, but one thing here is what they are doing right, they're taking it serious enough for people to want to watch it. And by extension, they're doing a second thing right - merchandise; avatar t-shirts with their logo, with individual wrestlers' stuff on them... wall-posters with their wrestlers and stuff to spruce up the in-world houses of fans.... while I'm not sure about commercially milking such things, it does show that they are committed enough to their SL wrestling set-up, and people noticed it. Then, in the case of one of those federations, I can add that a bit of boobfest mixed in actually turned out quite well - because it's a bit, mixed in with enough humor so they don't appear too pretentious and up their own bu- ehhhh rear gas exhausts... Imagine the RL equivalents, imagine the old WWF/WCW/any of the old feds doing their shows but not throwing in the occasional boobfest/comedy relief... they'd be turned into a fringe industry catering to just a small fraction of die-hard fans who have no link with reality anyway, while in fact today we see those feds catering to people who feel like they themselves as fans are being taken serious enough. Sure... Mikhael "The Russian Rampage" Stroganoff having a major beef with "Corporal Punishment" and "Major Pain" (fictional names, fictional examples) because Major Pain did something to the Russian Rampage's cousin's goldfish' favorite fish tank isn't very realistic, but that's the whole thing that makes comedy relief/boobfest matter, it shows that you're an industry built on entertainment and that you're not trying to pass your wrestlers' grudges as too serious. So, in short, a bit of boobfest/comedy relief can go a long way in making such a federation.... but I do agree that if they make it a pure boobfest, if it's just another excuse to flash the boys some pixel-smut, well... there's already other venues and easier ways to get that, so if it was all about the boobfest, it'd be broken pretty soon. I can't say if I'd tune in or not, but I'd definitely welcome the opportunity and possibility to see some entertaining wrestling performers do their stuff on SL just as I would in RL... and while "don't try this at home or in your backyard" definitely applies to RL wrestling, SL would be THE place where anyone can be a great wrestler without the repercussions of physical harm (oh bite me, you keyboard-pounding carpal tunnel whackos ).

Looking at that first pic (the one on the Tinypic url) I can say that a while back I've seen a few outfits that come pretty close to that dress in at least two different marketplace stores. I don't remember which stores unfortunately, they came up while I was searching for something else and it's been between 1 and 2 months since then. You might even strike it lucky and find complete avatars that look very similar, or at least the different parts to get an avatar with that complete look (hair, dress, skin and so on). Commissions are possible, and as long as it's not a copyright issue you'd be very likely to find someone who could do it - someone skilled, not me because I lack in the skill department as far as making avatars/skins/clothing in SecondLife goes.

It sounds like an update server, and searching for "update server" on the marketplace should come up with quite a few. I'm not certain if there is one among them that does -exactly- what you want with the rezzable terminal but if you treat the terminal itself just like whatever products you're selling, then the client would rez the terminal, the terminal would update from the update server andf the client would either get a newly updated terminal or the terminal would simply update itself after finding a newer version on the update server. I did use something similar on an old avi of mine, but that account no longer exists so I can't check which update server that was; It might have been one of the Hippo products or another brand that was well-known back then (Hippo still is, and I'm sure several others still have a big enough name out there right now, but Hippo is the only one that comes to my mind right now from memory). And while typing this, I also looked on MP for the HippoUpdate server; You could check here to see if it's something you're after or if you are after something a bit different.

Well, yesterday was the time that my land tiers were to be billed at. I had the money on my creditcard, I watched my SL account about every hour. I went to bed, woke up, checked my creditcard, money was still there. Went to the SL website to check my account and was greeted with: There is a problem with your account You have an outstanding balance due (USD 30.25). Please pay your balance. Yeah.... way to streamline it, lol... So, the old way of ensuring that Linden Labs would have my money in their greedy grubby hands well before the billing date, to ensure that there would be no glitch in payment and my account would be safe and sound, has been streamlined to where I now have to watch my account like a hawk around billing time, so I can manually run the payment, so my account doesn't end up in LL-induced limbo-land... which would mess up my group. And the "solution" which they steamrolled - oops, "streamlined" us into, is that instead of the complex way of simply depositing US$ into our accounts, we now can simply... buy L$ from them, which we can then sell back to them, but if we pay them 10 US$ for 1000 L$ (not accurate rates, just numbers pulled out of my rear for example's sake) and then sell them back those same 1000 L$, I'm pretty sure that we won't be getting the full 10 US$ back so we'll actually have to buy more than the value needed to top up our accounts that way. If I'm wrong on the part of charges/fees/rates/whatnots then I stand corrected and it actually would be a better thing than I assumed, but it wouldn't exactly be a streamlined thing, after all... it'd just have added an extra, unneccisary step in the process of topping up our accounts.

After two occurrences where first LL suddenly stopped liking my Paypal, and the second time something wonky going on with my CC of which it's still not clear whether the cause was at the end of LL or the CC issueing company, I have been in that oh-so-brilliant spot twice where land/business/account went under because of some billing issues. Since that second time, I've made it a habbit to put enough US$ in my account to fund at least two cycles for land-tier and account fees. Now they "streamlined" it to where I get forced to buy LS from them at their rate, then sell those L$ again - and I'm willing to bet that when you sell, you won't get as much for it that it cost to buy - so I can have US$ in my account to pay for tier and account fees when something goes wrong. Now, why does it feel like the next step in streamlining might be that we actually have to pull real cash out of our bank accounts, and travel over to LL headquarters to pay in cash? Stuff has happened, does happen and will happen with LL and paypal/CC payment methods going all wonky somewhere along the line... and now we get shafted with this "streamlining" where we can't use an easy simple failsafe anymore. LL, maybe all of us who pay for this "service" should also do some streamlining of our own, by first demanding that you deposit twice the ammount of L$ into our accounts that would be equivalent to the land tier/account fee that you're going to pull out of our bank accounts/credit cards/paypal/whatever... then after you took the money for tier/account fee, you can write us all a hand-written letter in each of our languages, explaining that you deposited twice the value in L$, took the tier/account fee, and that you are then ready to receive back the remaining L$ value. ** Edited for a few typo's and "non-responding keyboard syndrome"