2nd Life was founded in 2003. It already boasts millions of users. There is some argument about the number of distinct users that utilize the site because of some people having duplicate Second Life avatars. 2nd Life provides users the ability to move around in a cyber world. You can interact with other people, own land, buy clothes, buy and rent transportation, and buy entertainment among other things. The site has its own currency in the form of Linden dollars which recently had a conversion rate of 256 Lindens = 1 US Dollar.
Given the number of users in the 2nd Life site, it didn't long for commercial concerns like car companies, clothing manufacturers, compute companies and others to make their presence known. Non-Commercial concerns like colleges and Universities are also starting to hold classes in the virtual world. Given this activity, there appears to be openings for affiliate marketing concerns to make money.
Basically there are two ways that money can be made with affiliate marketing on Second Life. One way would be to market materials to educate and advance your customers experience within the world itself. There are tricks to getting money and spending it in a way such that you can be successful in the world. Just like World of Warcraft, people like to take shortcuts if possible and will buy the information to help them advance in the game. Affiliate marketing an eBook would be the most logical route to monetize traffic for 2nd Life.The other, more interesting way of monetizing the virtual world would be to affiliate market within Second Life itself. One possibility would be to create a storefront and sell services, products or information. The large companies I spoke of earlier are currently making their presence known in the virtual world, why can't affiliate marketers also do the same?
The general plan would be the same as done for people doing searches in Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Affiliates would find people with needs and fulfill those needs. There would be an issue of adaptability to actually attract the users in the virtual environment. The difference between the search engines most of us are familiar with and 2nd Life is that in the latter, the users are typically doing more of a random walk around their virtual world. Those in the affiliate marketing industry would need to figure out the habits and tendencies in the new world. They would need to figure out which peoples habits led to actual sales as opposed to just looking. They would need to see if it made more sense to sell the product in the actual Second Life environment using Linden dollars or move the consumer out to the more traditional web interface to get the transaction done with a more normal currency.
For those wanting to attempt to affiliate market to the 2nd Life users, it is highly suggested that a coaching program is used to get the basics of affiliate marketing mastered. Doing this kind of marketing is difficult enough. Moving into the virtual world is a great opportunity but probably shouldn't be attempted without having a solid foundation. Some of the more well known coaching programs can be found easily on google.
Posted in: Affiliate Marketing
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