Likewise, be prompt. Even show up a little early to show you’re eager. If you’re unavoidably delayed or detained, message ahead. Tell the person you’re meeting so they’re not waiting around for you. Being late or not showing up at all leaves the worst impression. Especially for those that are used to dealing only in the real world.

Doing business is a negotiated partnership. Use every advantage you can.

There is always a problem with trusting a new client. Just as they have a problem with trusting you. Until the relationship is established and there is a successful and mutually beneficial consideration both sides are somewhat wary. Many clients think that only they are at risk when entering into a transaction, but those who have been in business know the contractor also runs the risk. That goes double for freelancers and it multiplies again every time a client fails to pay. After a while you start to get a nose for the dodgy ones. It’s not foolproof by any measure but it’s close.

One of the ways we tell is how they came to choose us. Usually this is a referral or as a result of our advertising. There are lots of other ways but if you’re pleading for contractors on an obscure and unrelated forum, while claiming to be a big-player in the industry, then we’re going to be a little suspicious. Then there is what they want, and how they plan to achieve it. If they want the world – 5 camera coverage of a 2 hour show 3 times per week – then it starts to raise alarm bells. Especially if they believe a fair price is in the tens rather than the tens of thousands per week. Finally, there is how they behave. Especially around others. If a potential client introduces us to others as ‘our video guy’, while we’re still negotiating (or, as happened recently, before the job was even discussed) that’s usually another red-flag.

That doesn’t mean that we won’t do a 5 camera coverage of a 2 hour show 3 times per week for someone that pleaded on our blog while referring to us as their video guy. It just means that we’ll be wary and we’ll do some checking as to your bona fides. To see if you are in fact the Vice-President of a major recording label. And if you check out and accept our price then cool, we’re only too happy to do business with you. But if, like this new potential client, our search shows major discrepancies then chances are we’ll deem you too much of a risk. Sorry.

BTW all those are real world examples from the last 6 months.

One of the big differences I’ve noticed between real life and Second Life is that people doing business tend to be more relaxed. This has both good and bad aspects. On the one hand there’s much less pressure. For example, nobody gets upset if you make a joke. Even a bad one. I’ve had real world clients that look like they haven’t laughed since Kennedy was president.

On the other hand, people doing business in Second Life tend to be a lot less prompt than their real life peers. Missing a meeting deadline by as little as 5 minutes can be the difference between sale and no sale in the real world, but I’ve seen people rock up 30 minutes or more late, and on occasion not show at all, in Second Life. I’ve had proprietors make promises about delivery and then miss them by a week or more – usually with some lame-arse excuse. In one case I had a business owner promise to deliver, fail to answer enquiries for a month, deliver a lame-arsed excuse and then decide that they didn’t want to sell the item they had advertised at all – would you be interested in this other item I have for sale? Of course in the real world such business owners would fall foul of the anti-bait and switch laws, but Second Life’s laissez-faire approach means that currently such businesses not only exist but flourish.

Second Life is like being in a foreign country. Doing business there has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, but it’s really all a matter of learning the rules and applying them.