Transcript of MTG #21 – Building Costs in Second Life
Intro: Welcome to the brand new world of digital marketing consumer-generated media and no control PR. The rules of engagement are no longer black and white. You need to change, to evolve, to manage the gray, and how do you do that? You let C.C. Chapman help you.
C.C. Chapman: Well, I am sure going to try to help you. Welcome to Managing the Gray #22. I am C.C. Chapman. How are you guys doing? Hope you are doing well.
Listen, I know this is kind of quick back-to-back, Managing the Gray’s, but that is okay, I hope you do not mind because the main reason was — it is two-fold. By the time you hear this I will probably be on a plane or already in London, England for PodcastCon UK. I am on a panel talking about unique ways to use marketing for podcast. It will be a lot of fun. People I am on the panel with are very, very cool and I cannot wait to meet — it is my first trip to London, so I am really looking forward to having some great conversations with people that I have never met face to face or may not even have met before at all, which is excellent. I am very much looking forward to that. That was part one and part two was I got this really good question yesterday through the comment line. They sent me an email at managingthegray@gmail.com and I was like, “I wanna answer this right now.” I want to answer this because I think it is a very, very valid question.
The other reason was because while I am going to be on a plane, there is going to be announcements flying, so I can pre-record this and put it out when the time is right. What that is, is I am very excited to announce that a couple of weeks ago, when Crayon went live, Bryan Person from New Comm Road, Bryper.com, said, “Hey C.C. and Joseph, what do you guys think about holding a case camp in Second Life,” and I said, “Of course, let’s do it. Let’s have it at Crayonville. No questions asked. Let’s do it.” That’s one of the reasons that we put together the island was to have events like this, where people could come together and just have events. So, we are happy to announce that if you go to casecampsecondlife.org, you can get all the details on a case camp being held in Second Life. I do not know if it is the first in Second Life. I do not care if it is the first in Second Life. I am just excited that it is happening and it is going to be a lot of fun. If you are not familiar what a case camp is, they have happened in Montreal and Toronto as far as I know; those are the two that I am aware of. It is where you get up and you give — rather than a traditional speech, there are rules. You are limited to five slides. In this case, you are going to have 10 minutes and you present a case. This is not a sales pitch, this is not theory. This is a real case on something you did in the new marketing space that you want to share with the world. Does it have to be Second Life-related? Heck, no. I am thinking that, if not all of them, I am thinking most of them are not going to be on that. We are looking for people to present. We are looking for people to attend. Because of the limitations of how many people can come, we are going to do it as random style. People are going to register and yes, the presenters get in. There are the other people that have to get in, you know, the organizers and such. We are going to randomly pick people out of the registrations to attend. We figured it was the only fair way because first come, first served does not work because when you hear about this, when I hear about this is different and all that. We just want to make it as fair as possible.
Some people are not going to like it, but we are trying something new. This is going to be the first of many case camps I hope and I hope they bounce off all over the place in Second Life. I think they would be very cool. Would we have another one in Crayonville? Of course, we will, but wherever you want to have them, I think that is great, so casecampsecondlife.org. Bryper has been doing some huge things on this. Eli, I am not sure how you say it, from casecamp.org and Kate from My Name Is Kate — the four of us have been going non nonstop so it has been a lot of fun.
So, now, let me get into this comment. It is Second Life-focused, but it is a really good question that I think — these are the type of questions I do not think are getting answered enough out there in the blogosphere, the podosphere and the mainstream media and I wanted to give you mine, C.C. Chapman’s, perspective on the answer to this question. I think it is important if you guys are thinking about — if you have a client or if you yourselves are thinking about getting into Second Life and you see these articles about building islands and stuff I think this question really hits home to that. He said it to both me and Joseph. I do not know if Joseph is going to take an answer, I did not check with him. He is his own man, it is all good, but here is the comment and the question.
Paul: Wow you did it! I heard you talking about getting old school media interested in reporting about how your new company, Crayon, is doing business online with its headquarters at Crayonville Island on Second Life. Specifically, you commented on when you might be covered in the Wall Street Journal. Well today, Monday, the 13th of November, I was very excited to see my Wall Street Journal. Right there on the front page of the section B is a large picture of Crayon’s virtual Second Life meeting room with, I believe, you Joseph and you C.C. attending what seems to be a very informal meeting. They even included close-up headshots of Joseph and his avatar. However, I was dismayed to read the part about it costing roughly 20,000 to build a Second Life presence at least, according to Emily Steel, the article’s author, Industry Executives. I have been wanting to delve into the Second Life experience, but this now has me a little apprehensive about the whole thing. Could you guys comment a bit about your experience with building your Crayonville Island? How long did it take? How much did it cost? I know you had help from the people at Millions of Us and that probably kept cost down, but when the Wall Street Journal talks about a company like Volkswagen AG spending 20,000 to build their presence, what exactly are they spending all that money on? Is it spent paying their staffers to design and build a lavish Second Life presence? Or, is a lot of it going to Linden Labs for paid promotions and “land purchases?” Well, I am really enjoying the podcast, guys. Keep it up and thanks a lot. Cheers from Paul at pdvd.wordpress.com.
C.C. Chapman: It is a really good question there and something that I am sure many of you are thinking about. So, again, this is my take on things and some of it is definitely factual, some of it is opinion-based. When you go to buy land, there are two major decisions you can and — Oh, first off, the answer to the question is no. It does not have to cost $20,000 and the answer is also yeah, it can cost a lot more than $20,000, but there are two different ways to go. You can buy land. A parcel of land can be any size just like in the real world. This is just like the real world. You can buy a parcel of land. It costs more depending on how much land you buy. You buy an acre as opposed to 10 acres, it costs a different price. Likewise, just like in the real world — all of these is like in the real world, the location matters. If you buy an acre of prime, prime ocean real estate in a very nice neighborhood, it is going to cost a lot less than a little hovel on top of the hill in the middle of the dirtiest zone of Second Life imaginable. It is just the way it works. So, it all depends. You can go in and buy land right now. Anybody can go into Second Life. When you are in there, if you do a Find command, which is Control F on the PC, F where it is on the Mac. You can type in Land Sales. You tell it how much you want to spend. You say how much land you want, how many acres, square meters you want. It will bring back results. You can just go on that land right now and click Buy and you buy and you own it and it is yours. Okay?
Now, here is something to think about because I have had a Second Life office for awhile now. I have always had secondlifeoffice.com redirect to wherever that is. Now, here is the interesting thing. It has moved behind the scenes a couple of times and one of the reasons is — here is the biggest thing about not owning an island. I am going to talk about islands in a minute. One of the biggest things about not owning islands is you cannot control your neighbors. Whoever pops up, whoever is next to you now might not be there tomorrow. My old Second Life office, a perfect example. When I bought it, it was next to a beautiful replica of Walden Ponds. Someone had actually built a ginormous replica of Walden Pond, complete with the woods, the deer, everything. It was gorgeous. Within a week of me buying it, they had sold it and it was empty. Then came along a sex shop. Then came along a beautiful, wooded playground, that is what it looked like, but it was a role playing area. Now, it is empty again. You never know. That is one of the biggest pitfalls about buying land not on an island. For corporations, it is something to very much think about, is that you are not going to be able to control who your neighbors are.
Now, on that note, there is zoning in some cases. As an island owner, people who sell pieces of island, there are huge real estate companies in Second Life, they can zone it. You will see an island that has a theme. Themes may be a better description. You will see an island theme, lots of beach. You might see a winterscape, you might see a dreamscape, you might see a Japanese — I have seen some beautiful builds that are all Asian-influenced, they are beautiful. Samurai Island is a perfect example. Warning, Samurai Island is violent, so be careful if you go there. Everything has a certain theme to it. You can buy land there. It is more expensive because it is at a premium. It is just something to keep in mind. Now, when you buy an island, the biggest difference about the island is you control everything. Everything about the island is yours. You control access, you control who can and cannot get there, you control the night, the day, you control everything. That is one of the reasons so many people go for islands, especially on the corporation side because they want to be able to control that level of access and have that level of detail about it.
Now, how much does an island cost? Actually, the prices are just about ready to go up. Actually, by the time this goes out, they may already be up. An island costs, you buy it Linden Labs and think of it as buying a web server, it is what you are doing, you are buying web server space, it costs $1695 USD to buy the island and then you pay $295 a month maintenance fee. It is just like paying maintenance on a server. That is how much an island costs. That gets you a plain, flat, green island in the middle of nowhere or wherever you put it. That is what it gets you. You can start with that and be done. Now granted I do not think it is going to be very exciting to you as a marketing person or anybody in Second Life, so you have to hire builders to build your land. So, the $20,000 quote, yeah that is probably a good estimate. If someone asks me right now, “C.C., I wanna buy an island for my company and I wanna have it built up. I wanna have buildings. I wanna have some interaction. I wanna have it very nicely done. How long is it gonna take and how much do you think it’s gonna cost?” I would tell them roughly, I would say estimate between $10,000 and $20,000 and probably a month of build time because there are going to be lots of — it is just like building a website.
Do you remember the first person you paid to build a website? You cannot be talking about last week. Go back 10, 12 years when there was not a whole lot of people building websites. Think about what you paid for that. It was not cheap! It is supply and demand. There is not a huge number of people in Second Life who are builders, who are skilled builders. A lot of you play around, which is a great thing, but that is what it is. It depends. You can hire an independent builder who is probably going to cost you less than a big company builder. Now, I am not going to say that independent builders are not as good as big company builders because I think there are some amazing independent builders out there. There are tons of them. It is just a matter of you finding the right one that is for you and that is what is key. There is a developers’ directory and a builders’ directory on secondlife.com. Look them up, talk to them, see what they have built, talk to them. That is the key. Most of them, at least most them I have worked with and most of them I have seen quoted, work on usually an hourly basis rather than a build basis, but I have also worked with some who do on a build basis. You talk about what you want to build, they say, “Okay, that’s gonna cost X,” and you go, “Oh okay.” I have also worked with people who charge based on hourly. You start with an idea and of course the minute you get going, you know how scope creep is, you build more and more and more. You have more ideas, more ideas so it costs more in the end.
The other thing I have learned is that there are builders and then there are scripters. Some do both, do not get me wrong. A perfect example, on Crayonville, our builder built all the buildings. She put it all up, she put up the wallpaper on it, she put up the little things, but she did not script. She did minor scripting, but when like I wanted — when I wanted the jukeboxes and the diner to play music, they are still not happening yet because our scripter is working on that. It is a separation of power and you are paying them individually. Some people will do both. You can also pay for decorators, we decided not to. I have done all the decorating on Crayonville. So, if you do not like a chair, it is my fault. I mean, no, because I am a guy and I do not know this stuff. I am figuring out as I go along. There is that level of difference, too. Every piece of furniture you buy costs money so it can add up very, very quickly or very slowly, depending on how you do it. It is the nature of the beast.
Something else that I wanted to mention is about controlling the island. You control whether it is PG or whether it is mature. All land is labeled as that, so if you are going to buy some individual land as opposed to an island and you are really worried about who might pop up as your neighbor, buy some PG land because that is going to make it — granted you still do not know what is going to pop up next to you, but you can be pretty sure that it is not going to be anything of the adult nature, so look for PG land. It actually will say it right in the “About Land” tab. Actually, it also says that up in the bar across the top of Second Life. Wherever you are, it says that so keep a look out for that. Do not be scared by $20,000. It could cost that much. Might it cost a lot less? Yes, it will and I strongly encourage people to work with people who have done it before.
There are project managers in Second Life. Right now, I own a separate piece of land outside of Crayonville that I hired a project manager to help me build. She is doing an amazing job. She is helping me do that. She knew the builders, I did not know them. She reached out to the builders, she found me a builder. We talked, we went to the land. We talked about what I wanted to do. It is just like any other requirements document on any other campaign you have done. Do not think that just because this is a virtual world, it is different. You have to sit down, you have to write a brief, you have to have discussions, you have to lay out the scope of what it is and then you start building. It is like every other thing you have ever worked on. Think of it like a website. When I was laying out — the office has to go in the middle of the island. Yeah, we could have put it in another corner, we said, “No, let’s put it in the corner.” “I wanted the amphitheatre in the corner.” You lay those things out. It is just like when you build a system or you do a campaign. You want to get it done and make those decisions before it goes to print, the same thing with Second Life.
I know I am kind of rambling here and I have kind of gone in a couple of different directions, but I hope I am giving you the information you are looking for on getting land in Second Life. Do not be scared off by high price tags, it all depends on the campaign. You can get really creative with what you want to do. You could buy a piece of land and just stick a pole in the middle or stick a lighthouse and put an ad on top. Is it going to get you what you want? Probably not. It is going to cost you to do it effectively. Now, I am not saying it is always top money. It might be time that is going to cost you because you could build it yourself if you wanted to, you are just going to learn the skills, but to do it right you have got to have the skills. If you do not have them and I do not have them — I do not have builder skills, I just do not have them, I have to reach out and find them. Let me tell you, there is a thriving building community in Second Life that you can work with. My experiences so far have been hit and miss. I have had builders promise things and then they disappear. I have had them promise and not deliver, but I have also had them promise things and I get them. It is just like in the real world. You do business with people and then if they do not work out, you never do business with them again. Second Life is no different than the web. There is no difference in the agency world. There is no difference in life in general in that sense. So, find people, ask around.
One thing I wish and I really want to make this happen, so if you want to help me, let me know. I would love to get this built. I want a job posting system in Second Life where people can rate builders and this goes beyond builders too. Like, I want to hire a receptionist for Crayonville. I have no way of doing that right now and that drives me nuts. Would it not be great to have a board where I could go and post, “C.C. is looking for such and such.” They used to have forums on secondlife.com which have been disbanded unfortunately, which had that to an extent, but I would still like to have it much more detailed than that where people could rate like eBay where before you buy something, you can actually see the ratings on people. It does help you make a decision. I wish I could have that for builders and scripters and decorators and event planners in Second Life, every type of thing possible because people are doing it. That is what I wish so I wish that can happen soon. Oh, I am wishing a lot today. It must be the rain. That is the way it goes.
I really hope that answers your question about does it have to cost me $20,000? Keep in mind, like with anything else sometimes you get what you paid for and free is not always the best solution. My advice to you, in Second Life, in anything new marketing that you are trying, work with someone who has been there before, work with the expert. Get them in there, learn from them. Pay them what they deserve, but learn from them as well and then take that knowledge and take it to the next project. That is really what it is all about.
I am going to get out of here. I know we have been very focused on Second Life lately and I hope that has not deterred many of you listeners because we are getting back to the — it is just Second Life is a hot thing right now and there are a lot of questions coming in and people seem to be asking me a lot with the questions, which is cool. I love that. I am happy to answer it and I am very happy also to do cool things like this where we boil it down to a very basic question. How much is it going to cost me to play in Second Life? It does not have to cost you anything. You can do a lot of stuff for free. You can interact for free. When you start building and you want to do a proper marketing campaign in Second Life or to open up a proper presence in Second Life, then you have got to talk about it. It all depends on what you want to do, how much it is going to cost. It is the nature of the beast, we all understand that. Virtual worlds are no different, in Second Life, or there or any of the other — any of these virtual communities, they are all going to have different costs associated with them and you just need to be conscious of that and think about it.
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at managingthegray@gmail.com. I am going to get out of here. I will talk to you soon when I get back from London. I will have plenty of pictures and I am sure I will be blogging something before then, so you guys all take care. Thank you for listening. Thank you for passing on the word. I have got a bunch of new listeners lately and it has been very nice to hear from them all. It has been very, very fun. I will talk to you very soon. See you around Second Life. Swing by Crayonville, swing on by cc-chapman.com, say hi and I will talk to you very soon. Take care.
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