Bastards! Bastards, I say! Don't Touch My Logo!

Creating in Second Life is creating.
Starting a business in Second Life is starting a business.
Marketing in Second Life is marketing.

Okay, starting a business in SL is pretty straight forward and the easiest of these three. Find a mall, plop down some Linden Dollars (L$) into a rental box - all set. But what do you sell? The first option above is a bit more difficult.

Creating in SL requires a pretty steep learning curve. And, there are multiple facets to it: Prim building (creating that sofa,) Texturing (Using your favorite image editor to create the image files that, when applied to your prim sofa, will allow it to look like a sofa,) and then scripting (adding pose balls or something more elaborate.)

Many will go the easy route and purchase a "Business in a Box" (BIAB) - unfortunately, this is a bad idea. First, BIABs are usually just chock full of freebies or someone else's throw-aways. The items are not very good, quality-wise and the prim items are usually quite bloated and heavy with inefficient prim-building design.

On top of that, if ten people buy the same BIAB and all set-up shop in the same mall, what does that do for each of them?

The next best thing is to learn to build prims. Then head off to a texture vendor to shop for textures. This saves time, and doesn't require image-editing talent or upload costs. You buy the textures, plop them onto your sofa prims and away you go.

The same for pose balls. You can buy 'resale' pose balls that you can attach to your sofa, and sell the whole kit-and-kaboodle at will. of course, this route requires a monetary investment (resale pose balls are not cheap!)

Then of course, you could simply do it all yourself, taking the time and effort to learn what you need to learn to make things happen, or a combination of all of the above, except for the BIAB.

Then comes the marketing.
Ouch.

This is by far the most difficult of anything you can possibly do in SL. The reason is that it is too easy to just buy stuff. There is always someone who creates what you create. Many will be lower in quality and many will be higher.

The problem is that there is a mall or shopping vendor in 99% of every place you could want to visit. In fact, SL is really just one gigantic shopping mall. Everywhere you turn, there is always a vendor machine or box with something to buy.

So how do you market your wares and not get lost in the 'for sale' desert?
One idea is to put your vendors in as many places as you possibly can. But be careful, this can backfire. Personally, I am so sick and tired of seeing that horrible pink "Kinky-O" logo every damned where I go. To the point that I refuse to buy anything from the creator or visit her properties (her properties are owned and run by her alt - or vice-versa.)

So, you really need to work the classified and search system. Doing this, and marketing in general is beyond the scope on this post. But suffice it to say, there are those who cheat in this, too.

We all know about campers. As soon as I land at a mall or shopping location, or any venue where I see campers, I teleport out to the next place before the floor even finishes rezzing for me.

I also stay away from bogus logos.
I've written about this before.

And yet, here is another column about the plagiarism of logos. If you use a logo without an explicit license or written permission from the logo owner, beware. The wolves are out and they are hunting. If you don't believe me - put up anything that looks like or mentions "Mickey Mouse' related to your product. You be on the national headline news before long. I guarantee it.

Yes, we all know Coca-Cola has given explicit permission for Second Lifers to use their logo. But Coca-Cola is open that way. And others like Apple Computer just brush it off, knowing it is all fandom-created anyway. But be careful, I say.