Events, good or bad

Two weeks ago we decided to increase our traffic by running events at my tavern.

Traffic is a mysterious Linden figure that works out how popular your piece of land is. Nobody seems to know how it is calculated but seems to involve how long people stay on a piece of land and how large the land area is. The most important thing is that places with high traffic appear nearer the top in searches and will hopefully attract more people.

Events are listed in the Second Life Search (under the events tab) where it shows events that are in progress and about to start. We ran an event each night and I collected data for twelve events from 10MAR to 22MAR07 (13days). I also have pre-event data from the 22FEB to 9MAR07 (19 days).

I don't pay my dancers a wage nor do I take a percentage. They dance for enjoyment and tips. Most of my dancers are trained to dance, they also help newbies, chat, role-play and take part in combat. Yes, its a weird combination but Tanglia is an odd place.

The question is “What was the effect of the events on traffic and tips”.

Answer: Traffic did not increase and tips dropped to 45% of the pre-event average.

A lot of our dancers stopped coming during events. Before events we would regularly have ten or more dancers; for events we have 5 or less. The events also killed off the chat which is such an important part of the mood of the Tavern.

I need to talk to my dancers and see where we go from here. My own feeling is that events are not in character with what we are trying to do.

I am hoping to start lessons in basic building, adjusting clothing, how to be a dancer and so on. I wanted to do that anyway, but will be interesting to see what happens with traffic.