Second Life Business: Advice to the Avatars
May 14th, 2008 | Published in SL Business | 6 Comments
By Cheyenne Palisades
I have a small fashion business that is beginning to thrive. My designs have received favorable reviews in fashion magazines and I’m considering a move to a light prim sim.
I met a wonderful man three weeks ago in world and we are SL engaged. He has been pressuring me to make him a partner in the business. He wants me to put the new land in his name and give him the passwords to my SL account, networked servers, SL Exchange, OnRez , and to sign some papers his “lawyer” has drawn up—all this, and his contribution will be to make signs; which I can do myself. I have a long history of making bad decisions in regard to men. Should I give in to his demands?
I met my SL partner in 2006 and we spend every possible minute together. I love her more than life itself and I trust her implicitly. We know intimate details about each others’ first and second lives. Yet she doesn’t have my passwords, nor I hers, nor would either of us ask that of the other.
Three weeks? Three weeks? And he’s pressuring you for access to your in-world finances? No honorable man would do that. And of course, his “lawyer” is probably a busboy at Bob’s Big Boy in real life. Kindly but firmly tell him no. If he skulks off, it will be because his schemes have been foiled, and good riddance. If he shuts up about it and doesn’t bring it up again, he may be worth keeping.
I’ve been in world two weeks and am desperate to make money. I rented a 512 property and just set my first product for sale; an avatar light. My problem is my neighbor has a pile of freebies and one of his freebies is guess what? An avatar light. I’ve asked him to remove it, but he refuses, saying it was given to him and he’s just passing on the kindness. How can I convince him he’s raining on my financial parade?
If you’ve been in world two weeks and have a product for sale, good for you! If you’ve made a truly superior avie light, the world will beat a path to your doorstep. But if your product is but a simple prim with alpha texture, an attachment point, and is light enabled, I suggest you give it a bit more work so it offers sophisticated scripted features that will compensate for the time of day and make avatars look good in avi-uglifying Windlight. And don’t be mad at your neighbor. He’s just being charitable. It’s clear he didn’t put his light out to spite you, and he’s within his rights in keeping it out. In fact, it might say something about your own character that you asked him to remove it.
I want to design clothes, but I nearly had a heart attack when I learned the cost of Photoshop! More than $600 US! Should I channel my entrepreneurial spirit into another area? Making dances, Maybe?
Uh, I guess that last sentence means you’ve not priced Poser…
Fortunately, there’s an alternative to PhotoShop—and it’s free! The Gnu Image Manipulation Program, more commonly known by it’s unfortunate acronym, GIMP, can be downloaded for free and will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix. It’s less well-documented than PS, but seems every bit as powerful. You can get GIMP at http://gimp.org.
As with Photoshop, the GIMP has a bit of a learning curve. I’m no whiz, but it took me only about a month to get comfortable with the program and learn to not only touch up my photos, but create my own textures and make animated GIFs. A book called Beginning GIMP by Akkana Peck was a big help. It and other GIMP-related books are available at www.amazon.com
GIMP seems to do pretty much anything Photoshop is capable of, and I’m sure it will be more than powerful enough to do the detailed texture work clothing designs demand. But don’t kid yourself—Photoshop is the standard. It has better documentation and support and there are about a kazillion books to teach you how to do just about anything imaginable with images.
May 15th, 2008at 1:24 am(#)
This blog is related to Advice on Small Business that my friend runs a small business and he is working hard their and the main responsibility of any business is that planning must be done with utmost care. Then only one can predict the results in the business.
May 15th, 2008at 8:28 am(#)
Oh Cheyenne – this section promises to be fun… TY!
Maybe find a way to separate the citizen comments from your advise.
To be first writer, pleeeease you know the answer, looks like the guy wants to scam you. Strangely enough you are evaluating his propousal, let me tell you: love has no deal with business.
I am not sure but I think that its agains TOS (Terms of service) to give your password? If that is the case you would be acting agains the terms of service of SL, and stupidly enough you would have made a mistake. Advice: love your self and if your SL Partner is such a Star sing maker pay him whatever his price is for each sign and keep your business, yours.
Cheers
Like my Granma (who played when this games where board text games) used to say, “Beware of good looking male avatars!”
P.S. I got the odd feeling this cases were made-up, no one can be so stupid me thinks.
May 16th, 2008at 9:04 am(#)
Dont give your password or type it anywhere off SL.
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/05/16/omg-free-linden-snow/
May 21st, 2008at 9:11 am(#)
Another thing to consider is to look for classes in-world that teach GIMP — my friend Calla Cela teaches a great GIMP class (my sweetie took it, but I got to listen along in voice to parts of it). There’s so much education available from many different sources in world to help you learn to create and run a business, it’s great!
January 15th, 2009at 3:23 am(#)
Don’t listen to anything this writer says, she is biased in her views and doesn’t research things before making judgements. Its people like Cheyenne Palisades that go on witch hunts and probably was jilted in a relationship in RL, which is why she is so bitter against the whole world and everyone.
January 15th, 2009at 11:04 am(#)
Hi Crooked,
I have worked with Cheyenne Palisades for over a year and have not found her to be bitter or quick to make judgements. If you would like such accusations to be taken seriously you should post your comments under your real name and stop using fictitous email addresses. As the admin of this blog I can safely say that 99% of the negative comments made against Cheyenne and the magazine have come from the same IP address – 86.21.19.114, under the guise of different aliases. So Miss Polly or Shack a Khan or Crooked Billet indentify yourself and take ownership of your comments or keep them to yourself.
Sincerely,
Avarie Parker