Nu Vibez and Roleplay Guide Magazine - February 2014 | Page 64

Stroker Strikes Back, Part 2 - p3

with the pose ball measles and designs just like the one's
I'd shown to my friend. This didn't stop me though, I
con nued with my designs and intent to sell in the LL
sponsored stores that existed on the mainland at the me
– basically like Walmart managed by LL where you could
s ck your crea ons on a shelf and sell.
One day, I got an IM from this guy that I did not know. He
sent me a picture of himself (well supposedly of himself),
in military fa gues holding an AR15 or an M16; then he
says to me, “if you sell sex beds in SL I'm coming to your
house and to prove I can find you, here is your computer's
ID.” It wasn't difficult to find out he was the partner of this
compe tor. But what truly astounded me was that he
could capture my internet ID. Eventually we had it out in
SL. It was actually amusing, a lot like an O.K. Corral
showdown with two groups of people screaming and
cursing out the other. And that, was the launch of the
SexGen Bed business.
Just to cap that story off, several years later at the second
SLCC, I approached the creator of those compe ng beds
and told her I wanted to clean my side of the street (so to
speak), that I had never intended to be compe on and I
hoped there weren't any hard feelings. By this me the sex
beds were selling well and I was making a few hundred
dollars a week in Real Life (RL) – I was happy enough with
that. She says to me, "oh don't worry about it honey, that
was my X-husband, he's an alcoholic and we're divorced
now." To this day, we are very good friends. Lesson #1
learned from this experience – always remember … you
can pick your own level of stress in SL!
NVM: Stroker, you really were an incredible inspira on to
so many people. Turning what you did into that much
annual income was amazing. It created the desire in
others to aspire to do the same. I think, and I wonder how
you feel about this, that it also helped improve things such
as customer service and product quality. In conjunc on
with that, I'm curious as to what you feel the keys to your
amazing success were.
STROKER: #1 – easy, customer service! There may be 10's
of thousands of people who log into SL every day and yet, it
is s ll a very small place and word of mouth is s ll the most
effec ve marke ng tool. It's important to remember that
SL is first and foremost, a social network. When you have
an inferior product and lackluster customer service, where
people can never reach you if there are problems, they tell
all their friends, “oh don't buy from them because it'll
break, you can't get any help from them and you've just
wasted your lindens.”
64 - Nu Vibez Magazine - February 2014

You see, I come from a family of entrepreneurs – I've always
understood the necessity for posi ve promo on. So, I
stayed online all the me! That was actually a throw back
to our Seducity days. We had to be online 24/7 with
someone in the shop, to have a business in that pla orm.
and have someone It was the only way you could be
contacted as offlines did not exist back then. So when I
started a business in SL, I carried that business model over.
On top of that, whenever someone made a purchase, I
would take the me to thank them. Eventually we did
automate that process, but s ll gave customers contact
informa on, for support and handled customer support
the same as we ever did. I think that is the cornerstone of
my success and a good business model to emulate because
all you have to do is anger a handful of people, make just a
fe w d i s g r u nt l e d c u sto m e rs , a n d t h ey m u l p l y
exponen ally.
We made sure we had real people in the shop. Today we
see so many bots and automated group inviters and A.I.
customer service reps – it's just so impersonal. It's
important to remember that SL is a personal pla orm.
Granted, as creators we have a lot of solitude, but when
people log in to SL (creator or otherwise), it's s ll to
connect with other people. It's very easy to spread that
kind of defama on across a network of thousands and
before you know it, you're a pariah.
NVM: Well this is fabulous insight Stroker, and makes me
curious about something. You said originally it was all
about the personal touch, the customer service, the thank
you for your business stuff, and then eventually you
automated it. You also commented on the prolifera on of
bots of today. I'm curious if you saw a difference in
response and sales between the personal touch to
automa on when you made the change … and now
between that and the bots we have these days.
STROKER: Absolutely! The personal touch is the way to go
but, the bigger SL got, the bigger my company got, the
more staff it required to handle the mul tude of issues
because LL was always breaking “this or that.” Then there
were the newbies who'd been told about sex in SL which
led to the avatar make-over process so they could get laid,
“ok now you have the avatar, let's go hump some pixels.”
We actually created a line of about 6 avatars that residents
could drag on easily, at the me a huge improvement over
“Ruth.” They spread across SL quickly. It was nice to see
our prepackaged avatars all over the grid. But these
weren't unique concepts to us. We borrowed the ideas
from other merchants and from RL businesses, applying