After nearly a full year of giving it a good go, it's time to step back for a bit and regroup. I'm closing down the Cherry Street Nightclub and Mall. I opened it back in March of 2011 with the help of Lark for construction and Emi for events management. Events at the club were held between one and three nights per week. The events would consist of anything from clothing colors or styles to demon avatars to naked dances and the prize for winning the event was usually at least L$300. With the rare exceptions of Clancy and Nezzy and a couple of times Olu, I was the only DJ for these events. It was very very rare that I would get a tip and when I did, they were not enough to cover the cost of holding the event. Don't get me wrong. I would never expect for an event to profit or even break even. What I was looking for is something to offset my expenses in SL, not pay for them completely.
The idea of holding an event at a club is to raise the traffic rating. The more people who show up for an event and the longer they stay, the higher the traffic rating goes. The higher your traffic rating, the higher your place will show up in the SL search results. The higher your place shows up in the search results, the more people will show up to... in this case, shop for women's clothing. That's what I sell in my mall. My sis Pearl sells jewelry and women's complete outfits. She has a shop there too.
So after over a year of opening Cherry Street up to the public, I did a study of the last 6 months of transactions for sales at my shops and discovered that running the club with its events was costing 4 times what the shops were taking in in sales and profit. Even with my traffic rating at a consistent 8000 to 10,000 for the past two weeks, I only took in around L$300 in sales. That's the cost of just one of the 6 events I held in that time period. Certainly not worth it. There has to be a better way to offset my expenses and I think I might have found the answer. But before I get into that, let's discuss Cherry Street just a little bit more.
First of all, it doesn't operate on its own. Thank you so very much Emi and birdie for all your help. Without your support there is no way I could have built the group to the size that it is (300+ members). Thanks also to Nezzy, Clancy, Olu and Alobar, all of whom have DJ'd there at one time or another. Thanks to the few dancers we had over the past year and especially thanks to the regulars such as Darren and Zuri, Neva, Chica, Cupcake and of course my girl cat. The future Cherry Street (and there will be a reopening) will have a full staff and operate full time. Currently, I belong to Dolls of Death and attend their events at least one of the 4 they have per week. I strive to keep my events from overlapping theirs which may be another reason Cherry Street is a ghost town lately. Most of my friends are in that group or the clan of Champions of Death.
I will keep Cherry Street in place. The nude beach, cuddle forest, club, mall, free sex/orgy room, BDSM dungeon and the castle will remain right where they are for anyone to use. But I will no longer advertise for the place nor will I hold scheduled events there, at least until I can assemble a good sized staff to run events round the clock.
So how do I offset my expenses in SL? The most lucrative way I've found so far is DJing. I really do not enjoy DJing but I can learn to love it. I have only ever DJ'd in order to throw a party at a moment's notice. But I need to come up with a style and something that an audience will enjoy and want to keep coming back. I need to build a following. I need to attract more people to my shows. I need to expand my styles of music too. Right now I have hard rock and some metal and some country. But because my only regular gig is at a blues place, I need to add a heap of blues music to my list of styles as well. Then I will look into applying at high traffic clubs that run very nearly around the clock. As an example, I made more in tips at House of the Rising Sun Blues in 2 hours than I made in 3 weeks of clothing sales. If I were to have two nights per week of that sort of income, I would be able to cover half my expenses in SL and that's all I've ever wanted. So I guess it's time to become a professional DJ.
