
Pictured: The author visits one of his favorite Second Life brands
Brookston Holiday has been building in Second Life for 10 years. You can view his work on the SL Marketplace here and his ProMaterials brand
If you followed my advice about branding your new SL business, you’re already well ahead of most beginners. On the other hand, you still have some disadvantages. You don’t have an established customer base, you have no name recognition, and you probably don’t have the cash flow for advertising. But being small can also be an advantage.
The Advantages of a Small Business : The Personal Touch

When Airbnb was starting out, they had relatively few hosts. The hosts they did have were posting lousy camera phone photos to the site. In an effort to grow their business, the company sent out professional photographers to each and every host’s home. The photographers took glamour shots of the homes to put up on the site. They also would go door-to-door, recruiting new hosts. While the company could never afford to do this now that they have millions of hosts; at the time, it was an effective way to grow their business. Thus, the Airbnb founders were following Paul Graham’s advice: Do things that don’t scale.
One way I’ve tried to adopt this philosophy was when I was starting my 3D textures business. I would take time twice a week to go through my list of sales and thank every one of my customers individually. I would ask if they were happy about the purchase, and if they needed any help.
Most people just ignored my IM’s, a few people said they appreciated it, but every so often someone was confused and needed help. For whatever reason, a lot of people were too shy to ask, but once I contacted them they were more than willing to explain the problems they were having. It was almost always something we could figure out together, and the few times it wasn’t, I simply refunded their purchase.
This habit of thanking my customers helped me to avoid negative reviews on the marketplace, and when I helped a customer fix a problem, I had no compunction about asking them to take a minute to write a positive review. As the business grew, it became less practical to contact everyone individually, but at the time, it was a quick way to get good reviews and create a good customer service reputation.
This brings me to my next point of advice: