Latex Station Hunt

Recently, a place called Latex Station, makers of latex outfits among other things, decided to sponsor Alobar's House of the Rising Sun club. So on Friday night we had a huge party which lasted four hours. I DJ'd for the first half and Alo for the 2nd half. During the first half, we had a "sexiest avatar" contest. My scrumptious and tasty cat won of course. I'm so damned proud of her! I'll have to explain it to you all one of these days. Anyway, cat won and I had a great time playing a few requests and some blues and rock.

During the event, I would frequently announce between songs that there was a hunt going on sponsored by Latex Station and the click on the sign they had provided in the corner of the dance floor for details. A hunt is a event where you start at a location, read and decipher a clue and find a hidden prize, which will contain a clue for the next hidden prize, etc. until you have found all of the prizes, then it's like Christmas morning as you open them up and rezz them. In this case, it's all latex outfits donated by Latex Station. So it's kind of pointless for a man to go on the hunt as it's not often I'll be wanting to wear see-through form-fitting latex. But I did logon as one of my wife's avis and did the hunt. The clues were good and made sense, unlike most other hunts I've been on. After a short while and some looking around, it was likely you would find the prize. There were 25 of them in all and most of them that I looked at were quite well made outfits. This hunt is definitely worth the effort and time. Be sure to go to House of the Rising Sun for the starting landmark. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eagle Grove/73/161/23

Hanging Out At Deranged Rock Club

This hunt will take you to some exciting places: House of V, House of the Rising Sun, etc. But one of the places was certainly different from anything I have ever been to before. There is a place called Deranged. They have a great setup. It's a rock club with some clever decorations. I intend to check the place out better once I have some free time. The hunt continues half way into next month (June) so be sure and check it out soon.

DJing

Way back when I started my first nightclub in SL, I used to select streaming music radio stations to play music at our club events. We'd have pole dancing girls and some escorts too. So people would come in and dance and chat. The guys would tip the dancers and sometimes an escort might find a customer and go off to do what she does. The winner of the contest selected and a payout from the contest board would occur. The whole event would be over with in about one hour.

We never really did get a lot of people in to party with us though. Jojo would often go out and pick up guys to come and party but for the most part, there were not a lot of people attracted to our club, The Golden Nugget. Every so often, I would run across a DJ. Sometimes I would pay them, most times they worked for tips. Those events would tend to bring in a lot more guests than the ones without a live DJ. So I decided to learn to DJ primarily to save myself money. As it turns out, DJing is very expensive. The software of choice for me was SAMs Broadcaster. Hundreds of dollars later I'm finding that I have to pay a monthly service fee to ServerRoom to stream my SAMs output to. ServerRoom in turn streams it back into SL. So after getting this all setup, I find that I can finally stream my music with voice over into SL. But there's a problem. It seems the stream was coming in too fast and with too much data for SL. So I had to turn down the quality of the stream just to get it to keep from cutting out. An important lesson here: The laggier a location, the less quality of stream you will want to try to force SL to accept. If your music stream tends to cut out, then chances are you are pushing too high of a bit rate. I have found over the years that 48kBit per second with 24,000 Hz stereo works the best under a wide range of lag conditions.

After a while, I got out of the nightclub business. Too much drama from the girls and too much stress from the lack of attendees and too expensive. But I maintained my subscription to ServerRoom because it was very very handy to be able to stream music in SL during parties and stuff. Also, the occasional scheduled DJ would fail to show up at friend's clubs and getting paid good money to take their place at the last moment's notice was nice too. Still, no matter what I made DJing in SL came nowhere near compensating for the expense of maintaining a readily available streaming music source. This final effort of mine to make Cherry Street a busy place pretty much failed. I've discovered that it's the number of group members your club has that makes all the difference and the only way to get a lot of group members is through hard work and a lot of time and expense. But it does eventually start to pay off. Just ask my buddy Alobar. He and sami have built a successful night club and BDSM hangout over the years. As I mentioned in a recent post, their club was even chosen as a top destination by Linden Labs for a week or more. And what a busy week that was. But the main thing was that during that week or so, hundreds of people were asked to join their group via an automatic joiner, and it worked. They now have almost 2000 members and that's when efforts start to pay off. In contrast, my group only had 300 members. If I sent out a notice, I was lucky to get 1% of that number to attend. 1% of 2000 is a very good sized party!

So now, once per week, I DJ at Alo and sami's club. Sometimes I break even in tips, but most of the times the tips are good and I do well. The house does not take a cut so I usually tip back about 10%. I will never get rich DJing at the rate I am now, but offsetting my modest expenses here in SL is really all I'm after. But it is conceivable that one could make a very decent living in SL as a DJ. DJing in SL has changed a bit from the first times I did it at my first club. First of all, the events are at least 2 hours if not longer. I was considering applying at a very busy and popular place in SL, but they wanted a 3 hour commitment. Hell, I can barely commit to 2 hours as it is, so I'll have to think about that one for a while. Secondly, most places will want you to stick with a certain style of music, which is okay, but just because a song is popular, does not mean it will fit in with the local nightclub's theme. At Rising Sun, I blend their genre of blues with some rock, pop and oldies too. It works out pretty good.

So I might look into taking on a 2nd night of the week DJing at either Rising Sun or some other place to help offset my expenses, but keeping in mind that a group with members of 2000 or more will make it worth the effort.

Goings On

Yes, that's a tail on Nezzy. I have no idea why.

Ever since I stopped promoting Cherry Street Nightclub and Shopping Mall, I've had lots of free time to catch up with old friends, make new ones and party. As I mentioned earlier, I'm also DJ-ing. It's been a fun ride and I intend to keep on going along just like this.

Lately, my dear long-time friend Nezzy has returned to SL. She's still not what would be considered regular, but she has been logging on frequently. So frequently that she has somehow had a baby named Lizzy. I'm not really sure how this happens in SL but I for sure know how it occurs in RL and I have a feeling they are far from the same. In other words, I'm sure the delivery went off without any discomfort whatsoever except for maybe some surgical removal of linden$ from her wallet. Anyway, I got to go and check out her new place and her baby. Mother appears to be in very very good shape considering her recent (and quick) labor. It's so good having her back in SL again! Yes, I know there are probably better ways for friends to keep in touch. We are in each others Facebook for example, but living the SL life with a friend has a very special meaning. It just seems closer and more intimate to me.

IKR Me playing pocket pool.

Speaking of intimate, cat and I have been having a wonderful time since I quit my SL job! We are still restricted for time due to our real lives but when we are able to get together, we are learning quickly how to take full advantage of it. I still cannot believe what that woman will let me do to her! We were made for each other. I love taking her out and showing her off. She's been helping me with little projects such as shopping for clothes, decorating and building a new mountain getaway setting. Friday night she was able to logon and be with me at my event at Rising Sun. It's coming up on one year since she and I met and at that time, I'll post the story here.

My daughter Neva has brought so much joy and happiness to me and cat lately. She's so much fun to be around. Such a happy young woman. We're both very proud of her. Recently she suggested we pool our resources and share a parcel of land together. I looked at the proposal objectively and measured the lag rating on my sim and hers along with pricing and prim counts. These are all important factors in choosing virtual land to live on. I will go into more detail about land purchases in a future post but for now suffice to say, Neva and myself and cat are each getting the best deals for what we want on our current parcels. Yes, I have land and so does cat and Neva, and we keep them all separate. Why? Well, in Neva's case, her virtual land comes with a large castle and a very well designed back yard entertainment area. While the castle could exist in the sky, the back yard cannot. So for her, the surface of the parcel is required. In my case, I have always craved living on a tropical island. So I too need the surface land and water to accomplish this. One could argue that a very nice tropical setting could be constructed without having to use the surface land and water, but you would have to argue that the water in the skybox simply would not have the same physics as surface water. In cat's case, we talked about her letting her land go and at the time I argued that it's always good to have a backup parcel to call home. If my sim were offline, chances are hers would be up. If hers were down, then mine should be online. But lately I've been thinking that maybe we could let her parcel go. While it is a tropical setting just like mine, her's has no surface water on it, so a skybox or platform would work fine for her needs. We'll see.

My other daughter Chica just hooked up with her man Nils. They purchased a nice skybox and home with lots of great and fun furnishings and games to play. It's a wonderful place to hang out and I will be returning soon to see how she has decorated it. She and Nils seem like the perfect couple and I'm very happy for them and proud of her. She and I often go out dancing or playing Greedy Greedy while cat and Nils are not online.

And Ambriel has returned at least temporarily to SL while she recovers from a RL illness. It's very nice having her back. But just ask Nezzy: If you don't logon regularly, you are going to have problems with your SL viewer and your avatar's inventory. Not quite sure why that is but it's been a huge problem lately for my less-than-frequent-logon friends. So Amb's clothes would not load for her. So what? She rezzes in next to my nude beach so we are all set. Clothes create too much lag anyway. So I spent a wonderful evening dancing with her. We had lots of catching up to do.

New Tee Shirts from Cherry Street Creations

My brother Nugget Michigan is developing a line of tee shirts with most of the stars from NASCAR racing featured individually. They will be for sale at the Cherry Street Mall in Sensual Freedom as they are completed. Right now he has points leader Greg Biffle, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. About 30 more to come! If this proves successful then proceeds from the sales of these tees will go to a worthy NASCAR charity such as Relay for Life. They are L$99 each.

The Friday night events at House of the Rising Sun have been going strong. All of the previous week, the Rising Sun has been featured in the Phoenix Viewer's Location Guide. These are location featured on the splash screen of the viewer that are chosen as worthy destinations to check out. Actually, I suspect these destinations are chosen by Linden Labs, so the splash screen may apply to every SL viewer. I would not know as I only use Phoenix viewer. But what I do know is that featuring House of the Rising Sun in the Featured Destinations has made the place very very busy. Lots of new group members now and lots of people at the club for dancing, conversation, trivia and of course strip sploder. This past Friday was historic in the fact that it was the first time I've played strip sploder that I did not end up naked! Yet between Alo and Gus and myself, we were able to get 3 fine ladies naked, and that's what it's all about. You really owe it to yourself to come on down on a Friday night when quietygr and myself are holding the event from 6pm to 8pm SLT. See their schedule at http://cnrisingsun.wordpress.com/category/weekly-schedule/ http://cnrisingsun.wordpress.com/category/weekly-schedule/

Speaking of DJing. I ran into my sister Whisper last night. She is heavy into another virtual world called InWorldz. I exist in IW as Otto Turbo as well. I was marketing a couple of ladies outfits there and they were selling at a nice steady rate, but I ended up letting my land go and committed completely to developing shops and nightclubs in SL. Because that has not worked out, I think I'll be returning to IW at least once per week to DJ for one of Whisper's events. She owns an entire sim there and it's packed full of shops and events areas. There is a regular live performer there too. I'll post more as this develops but at this time, Whisper is allowing me to live for free on her sim so I might as well setup shop there too. You can find out more about InWorldz and download the basic viewer at: http://www.inworldz.com/

Turning

I'm not a vampire in SL, or vamp for short. But my SL wife/submissive/girlfriend/mine is. She is not an active vamp though. Long ago she paid a bunch of money so that she didn't have to drink another avi's blood to stay alive. The database they call Bloodlines keeps track of who has the most "souls" and if the vamp requires blood, and if they are about to 'die' from lack of it. I'm a blood doll which means I'm human and vamps can bite me for blood if they need it. I can purchase apples to eat to replenish my blood supply or "humanity". In the clan cat and I belong to, Champions Of Death, I'm considered a blood stud, which is a more playful way of denoting us male members as blood dolls.

Olu and Raoul 'turning' Valerie

A notice was posted the other day to come to a "turning" ceremony. That's where a human (or in this case some kind of demon/animal hybrid) has all their blood sucked from them in order to become a living dead vampire. Champions of Death has a pyramid with a ceremonial altar in it for this purpose. I was invited to attend. Because I have never witnessed anything like this in SL, I was eager to go.

The turning chamber had plenty of seating for members of the clan. I took a seat not knowing what to expect. Oluthus began the ceremony by laying Valerie out on the altar. She was bound by her wrists and ankles to keep her from squirming too much as the life was sucked out of her. Olu made a short speech then sank his fangs into Valerie's soft neck. Raoul took to the artery in her thigh and both vamps gorged themselves on her blood.

Olu and Raoul sucking the life out of Valerie

This took a surprisingly long time to do! In the end, Olu used a type of spike to pierce her heart and suck the blood out of her more efficiently. It was grizzly but fascinating at the same time. After all the blood was sucked out of her, Valerie was allowed to drink the blood of the clan's blood studs so I got up and volunteered. Olu immediately informed me that a good blood stud does not wear a shirt, so he tore mine off. I'll have to remember this in the future as shirts are not cheap!

Valerie bit me a couple of times and sucked out about 8% of my humanity. I would have let her have more had I known it was going to be such a small amount. I assume I'll only be needing 2 apples to replenish myself one of these days when I get the time.

She was then placed back up upon the altar as she transformed into a vampire, having drank of human blood and also vampire blood. She levitated as she turned and was enveloped in a dark cloud. And that was it! She was now immortal and one of the walking dead. Congratulations Valerie!

Natsuki's Party

Last night I received an invitation from Natsuki to attend her party. The invitation stated that she would be playing the music. Oh good! I finally get to hear her voice. So I finished up what I was doing (attending another party) then popped on over to her place.

Nat (now called suki by her friends) and I go way back to the early days of Cherry Street. She used to be the group slave. She would hang out in cages all day waiting for someone to show up and use her. It was very rare when that happened but it did once in a while and she had fun. She and Zuri used to be an item too. Check this out: http://keepingupwithzuri.blogspot.com/2011/06/one-night-in-natsuki.html

After a while she hooked up with a domme or two and sort of drifted away. She returned when she had an idea. She had met another nightclub owner and because they were in daylight while we were in darkness and visa-versa, that if we both advertised our events on each other's group that we could bring in more people. It was a nice idea but it didn't really work out. Most everyone in Cherry Street's group were offline when the other European group was online and they were offline when our group was active. And that was the last time I saw Nat for quite a while. Then one night she invited myself and cat to her new friend's party where he was DJing. Well, it was fun and while the music was certainly different, we enjoyed it. Darren and Zuri showed up there too. Then again, that was the last we heard from Nat up until last night.

So I go to this party to listen to her mix of music. The music was okay. It was odd that it never ended. I mean, there was no "song". It just went on and on and transitioned from one vague tune to another but the key and the beat were exactly the same. Needless to say, I did not get to hear the lovely Nat speak, because there was no opportunity for her to, but she sure looks amazing!

Her and her friend had a very nice dance floor and party spot. And she looked wonderful! It's obvious she has been working on her looks quite successfully. It was so good to see her again and I hope she stays in touch and comes to some of our parties too.

Cherry Street

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.