Most businesses have an online presence, and now many are also setting up their business in Second Life (SL) as well. It makes sense, as you can broaden your customer base exponentially, and it can be done inexpensively.

Corporations are often SIM owners, many owning and running multiple SIMs. But that is overkill for smaller business, and may not be practical financially. There are better, less expensive alternatives.

Of course, what drives how you present yourself in Second Life depends entirely on what kind of business you run. It should mirror your in-person presence.

There are a few ways of establishing and running a business presence in Second Life:

• Renting an office
• Renting a building, and or land
• Renting a home

Each of these can be fairly inexpensive. Some offices, buildings, and homes are rented furnished, and some unfurnished.

Renting an Office

Small Office Available for Rent

Consider your needs, just as you would when renting a land office. Do you need just a small office, or do you need a larger one that has desks for several people? Do you need access to a conference room that will allow for media viewing?

A simple furnished office for one may rent for as low as 350L a week, or higher if it’s in a well-trafficked area in a busy business center.  There are established office buildings with office rentals available, where you also have access to large conference rooms.

The Ginny Business Center is a center that has large offices as well as smaller ones, and a conference theater available to renters. If all you need is an occasional conference room that will hold a lot of people and allow you to play media, then you can rent the conference room for an hourly fee. Conference rooms can be up to 2,500L per hour.

A benefit of using the Ginny Business Center is that each  office comes fully furnished with PowerPoint  and web viewers; as well as audio and video equipment.  In addition, each office is on its own parcel, which means it will come up in the SL Search from the keywords you use for your parcel.  As a tenant you also have full access to meeting and conference facilities.

To find office space for rent in SL, use Search -> Classifieds -> and type Office Space. From there you can locate furnished and unfurnished offices.

But perhaps you need more room than that, or you may want to define the atmosphere of your business instead of the typical office atmosphere. In that case, you might consider renting a building, land,  or a house.

Renting a Building or Land

You can rent empty land, then purchase a prefab building, or you can find land rentals with buildings, though the latter is often harder to find.

Locating a building to rent can take a little more time, but often there are great deals to be had. Search the classifieds. Sometimes it’s easier to find land than buildings for rent. If you rent land then buy a prefab building for inexpensive.

No matter whether you locate an unfurnished building or a piece of land, check how many prims are available. Prim counts affect how many objects you can put on the land or in the building, and every object is at least one prim, generally more. A building may be as many as several hundred prims, even before you have begun to furnish it.

Renting a House

Depending on your business, a house may be all that you need, one that is furnished, or one that comes unfurnished so you can decorate to your business needs. Homes for rent can be found in many places in SL.

Old World House

In fact, there are a few for rent on the SIM where my home is located at  Tarington. One of the homes for rent here is called the Old World Cottage. Homes vary in appearance greatly in SL, so shop around. They can be as low as 250L per week, or as much as 6,500L per week.

But a home is  good for many types of businesses.

No matter whether you decide to rent office space, a building, land, or a house check the SIM it’s on, find out out how many prims you have available to you, and read any covenant that you and your neighbors have to follow.

Lastly, check out similar business like your own. There may be large SIMs devoted to some speciality or topic area that is well trafficked and where your business can thrive.

Tags: Add new tag, Business

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Education, Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.