Member question: “What can you tell me about Second Life and how you view it as a web marketing environment?”

Actually I am quite familiar with Second Life [SL] and have been a regular player going on two years now. In SL I am pretty much considered an ancient.

I originally joined Second Life for the possible business opportunities but it didn’t take me long to give up on that and just start playing it for recreation.

While there are some very powerful features to Second Life it can still be a very difficult group to market to.

Pros:

• Extremely interactive, very close to one on one
• Few limitations on product creation or marketing strategy (Not a lot of rules in SL)
• It is possible to tie your Real Life [RL] products and SL products together.
• You can adjust your strategy very quickly
• Very diverse player demographic
• International player base

Cons:

• Very hard to “Get the word out” about your product or market
• Difficult at best to track your traffic and demographic
• Very easy for someone to mimic or outright steal your products and strategy
• Very fickle group and Second Lifers get bored quickly
• Products and businesses don’t always translate well into the SL environment
• Can be difficult to get repeat visitors
• While you can make money, and even a lot of money in SL, the exchange rate is pretty weak.

Sounds a lot like traditional internet marketing doesn’t it?!

In the Members section, I discuss possible strategies for marketing in this medium.

Resources:

• Second Life

::ToddS
DW Kickstart - Learn to build and market your own website