“An initial build might cost a client between $75,000 and $100,000. Another $50,000 might pay for six or so events at the site. Monthly support fees could add another $10,000 a month to the cost.”

Why so high you might wonder? Consider the following…

1. Start with your Strategy and Creative brainstorming, which will determine what your destination may be. Then factor in labor for Design, Developers, Project Management and Quality Assurance.
2. How will you promote the destination and what will that cost? (Promotion both inside Second Life and in the real world.)
3. Do you need to hire virtual staffers to appear at your destination and interact with visitors?
4. How “permanent” is your destination in SL and how often will you stage events to drive traffic to your destination?



5. Finally, don’t forget these basic costs:

• You need to create a member account ($10/month, $22.50/quarterly, or $72/annual)
• The price for portion to entire region ranges from $5-$195/month based on the number of square meters you want. Here is the land pricing chart
• Want more land? You can own a private island, which costs $1,675 for 65,536 square meters (about 16 acres) to setup. Then monthly land fees for maintenance are $295/month.

It adds up quickly, doesn’t it?

In my travels through Second Life, I come across so many vacant places. You can’t have a Field of Dreams attitude about it. Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come. You need to constantly work at promotion and improvements to make it a premier destination.

What’s your experience with planning for Second Life? Please let me know.
Thanks.
-Roland

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“An initial build might cost a client between $75,000 and $100,000. Another $50,000 might pay for six or so events at the site. Monthly support fees could add another $10,000 a month to the cost.”

But I’m disappointed that the article didn’t go further.

“Creating a virtual destination packed with interactive content takes more than an expert in the digital stitching that keeps “Second Life” together. Artists, writers, marketing gurus and others are often needed to develop everything from the look and design of a project to event programming within the space that will keep people coming back.”

Of course, no one says how they demonstrate a return on investment.

“A lot of these companies are treating it as marketing research and development.”

Great, so what are they learning?

“A good campaign, you can expect a lot of people to pick up and use your virtual product for hours.”

So how did people find out about it? What tactics were successful at driving traffic to the SL destination(s)?

I find it frustrating that these journalists gain access then get lazy and just regurgitate the basic info we’ve all read/know already.

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The following statistics are based on data released by Linden Labs (owners of Second Life):

Gender self reported
60% male
40% female

The average Second Life user is 33, according to self-reported data

Age of active users:
18-25 27.5%
25-34 38.8%
35-44 21%
45+ 11.5%

On the teen grid, where ages range from 13 to 17, the average age was 15.

Active residents by country:
United States 31.19%
France 12.73%
Germany 10.46%
United Kingdom 8.09%
Netherlands 6.55%
Spain 3.83%
Brazil 3.77%
Canada 3.30%
Belgium 2.63%
Italy 1.93%

“Europeans make up the largest block of Second Life residents with more than 54 percent of active users in January ahead of North America’s 34.5 percent, according to new Linden Lab data.”

“In a related blog post, Linden Lab Chief Financial Officer John Zdanowski aka Zee Linden addressed the much-disputed Second Life usage numbers. He said that unique users — consolidating multiple accounts held by a single user, and eliminating people who have registered but never signed in — totalled 1,974,607 in January, equal to 63 percent of the “total residents” figure that is displayed on secondlife.com.”

“Approximately 10 percent of unique users have logged in for 40 hours or more. Committed usage at this stage of Second Life’s growth requires a great deal of effort,” he said. “Clearly not everyone is going to find relevance, and be able to build on a technology at this early stage.”

So, imagine a scenario where we would want to exclusively target North American females, age 18-25, with a promotion or presence. How big is our audience?

Assuming…
Total Residents: 3,664,703
Logged In Last 60 Days: 1,253,228

Starting with 1,253,228 active residents
390,882 (31.19%) North American
107,492 (27.5%) age 18-25
42,997 (40%) female

Roughly 43m prospects that fit the profile. Then, the challenges become:

1. What to build in SL?
2. What to offer?
3. How to find them and drive them to the destination?
4. How to get them to engage with the brand?
5. How to get a repeat visit?
6. How to get them to tell a friend?

It’s a lot of work and expense, and your not likely to reach every one of those 43m females. Be cautious and think through whether SL is the appropriate place for your efforts. A CPA program on some targeted media properties or a target pay per click campaign may get you better return on investment.

Please share your experiences with Second Life marketing and statistics.
Thanks.
-Roland

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A few excerpts:

“Fully 3D social spaces have been around at least since the mid-1980s, and some would argue even longer than that.”

“So what can Second Life and There and other virtual worlds offer that all that real-life stuff can’t? That’s simple: All the cognitive stuff like flying, wild dress, different modes of communications.”

“Some criticize the environments by saying they take people away from “real” contact. But for several decades “real” contact has become a complex recipe that includes phone, telex, messages/letters/memos, media, etc. Face-to-face conversation is a smaller and smaller fraction of our communications. I see virtual worlds as bringing us a bit back toward embodied person-to-person conversation but also allowing people to have a creative element–”come visit my cool place, see my cool garb”–so it is more engaging, colorful and expressive.”

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That’s the beauty of virtual environments–they enable users to interact with data in multiple dimensions.

Now wouldn’t it be amazing to do data mining in such a fashion? I’d love to get my hands on the Amazon purchaser database and model out buyer personas.

-Roland

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MediaPost.com reports today:

‘Laguna Beach’ Goes Online
MTV THIS WEEKEND WILL MAKE 10 episodes of “Laguna Beach” available online. MTV also will start debuting new episodes of the program on Virtual Laguna Beach–an online community site described by MTV as a “social networking virtual world”–two days before their air dates.

It’s interesting for marketers from several perspectives:

• Use the advance screening of episodes as an incentive to drive trial and use of Virtual Laguna Beach
• Use the virtual world to gauge reactions to the episodes, like a test audience, and possibly adjust before national broadcast
• Reach elusive teens and deliver video on demand content, where they want, when they want.

-Roland

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Even more virtual worlds are coming. In addition to Second Life and There, MTV just made a big splash with it’s virtual adaptation [http://www.vlb.mtv.com] of the “hit” series Laguna Beach.

Second Life now has a special version for teens under 18:

Point is, users can shop in these environments to outfit their virtual selves. They have currency to spend in these worlds to do all sorts of things like:

• buy clothes (think retailers, jewelery, shoes, accessories),
• change their eye color (contact lenses),
• build a store to sell virtual stuff,
• buy/build a house to decorate,
• attend online concerts,
• visit baseball stadium (MLB),
• play games to learn financial responsibility (Wells Fargo)
• buy a vehicle (Ford) to get around the virtual world.

All of this provides the opportunity for brands to allow potential consumers to explore and experiment with digital versions of their products — after which adoption/loyalty can be extended to the real world.

You should check them out. Free, basic accounts are available for all.

-Roland

Update 10/18/2006: Laguna Beach episodes debute in Virtual Laguna Beach first.

Update 10/19/2006: News.com reports that Second Life now has over 1 million registered users, of which 41% are active users (active in the past 60 days).

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