I haven’t had very much to do with marketing groups; I belong to a Victorian shopkeepers one that’s kind of invitation only, but haven’t quite gotten my role updated to “can send notices of new products to the group” yet. But I might make myself a big fat TO-DO list on that, because last night I experienced the power of marketing to the right group of potential customers.

I have set up a vendor with the (currently just two) Dinkies-sized hats at the Dinkies Village at SOMA Design School – it’s a nice little hangout with play areas, dance ball, and some shops and a cute litle Tudor marketplace. The deal is great: the owner of the area gets a decent little commission on all sales, but there’s no rent to make. I had let her know but hadn’t sent anything to her for the group.

So last night I finished tweaking the display, fixed a LM up to send out and took a deep breath before taking a look at the “send notice” function – I had the ability turned on (I guess by the group owner, yay). Sent a little message about the hats, made it sort of cutesy (“Feeling blue about the end of summer and the approach of winter? Why not feel purple, or gold, or warm brown insteead?” and described the hats in the vendor, added the landmark, and mentioned a tiny (dinkie) bonus item. The other day on a whim I threw together a freebie vendor with the little dance ball/bathyscaph that I’ve been playing with since the Sharknado! party, so I mentioned that. It’s a 1L “dollarbie” because of the vendor I’m using… anyway, I clicked send.

Just moments later, I had a sale. Within 5 minutes, I had 3 sales, plus people picked up the dance ball, too. WHUT? I’ve never had such a fast response to a product before! Talk about reinforcement and validation!

Not only that, but I made some new Dinkies friends and visited a gypsy camp they’re building. What a fun end to the night…

So I’ve got those pith helmets handy, and they don’t even need to be resized – they look cute on my kitty bobble head rotated back a little. I guess I’d better be organized about this and make a TO-DO list.

• Add LM for Dinkies Village vendor to my Picks
• Verify various pith helmet colors/trims sized and rotated for Dinkies
• Product/vendor photos (usually where I bog down)
• Upload to Marketplace, write listings
• Add to Caspervend dropbox, ditto listings
• Blog, Tweet, send CP and Dinkies group notices
• Profit? Fun? Both?
• Lather, rinse, repeat

Another set of tasks that’s kind of related to the Dinkies stuff is figuring out the classes I have in this “SOMA HUD” thing that I have. The Dinkies are hosted at the SOMA location, probably because their originator is an alum(na) of their classes in clothing design and the use of GIMP, Photoshop, Corel, etc in making stuff for Second Life. I had started a class – you get the classes for frree if you attend in person, but there’s a cost if you want to pick them up at your convenience. And I had only part 1 of a 3 part class (dammit, I knew I should have gone to those other ones, I liked how they did them).

I am the first to admit that I get frustrated pretty easily with classes conducted entirely in voice (cough, cough “babyvoice”), but the class structure is very picture heavy with plenty of text and pointers with SOMA. AND… the class itself is just a screenthrough of all the slides in the class presentation in the HUD, with pauses to discuss questions from the class. So I enjoyed the class and then got bogged down doing the homework for the first one (too many other irons in the fire).

Last night I went back to try to pick up parts 2 and 3, which aren’t scheduled to run again for at least another month. I paid for what I thought was all three parts, but don’t have any update for my HUD. In the meantime, I may have messed it up because I deleted courses out of it that I assumed I didn’t need (for Corel, Paint shop Pro, Photoshop) but now I’m getting link errors. So, whee…. I have to reload everything I had previously obtained (a free set of Level 1 GIMP courses, plus the single Part 1 of the Men’s Shirt course). That won’t take long, fortunately, it’s a snap to upddate the way they have it scripted. Just time-consuming.

I’ve been in contact with the person responsible for the class vendors, will check back and see if the course has shown up, then she’ll check my payment history and I expect it’ll be sorted out. I should have stuck around longer last night, I think the laaaagmonster et my class. Heh.

So on the Hoomin side of the To-Do list, I’ve got a few more things that I’m working on:

• Victorian Wedding Fascinator Hat
• Full-sized Pith Helmets (male and female, various trims)
• Newly built shop on my Pini parcel, need promote it
• Idea for a fountain/reflecting pool in middle of shop
• Go through my RL tropical plant photos for landscaping stuff
• Finish a plant texture for a rare-ish Maui plant called a Silversword
• Revamp my Steelhead St Helens shop to be more authentic
• Work through the Gryllus.net Blender tutorials
• Read the damn Blender book(S!) again
• Tinker with Materials (Knald beta) some more
• Tinker with my Open Sim installation
• work on various unfinished projects
• wonder how the hell real content providers get stuff done
• Check on status of Victorian Shopkeepers role re: notices

That’s all in addition to my normal online routine of being completely sidetracked by IMs from friends, listening to music, or playing another game of Solitaire (it’s impossible to lose the one game I play, I find it very easy to waste time that should be done doing something more challenging and therefore more threatening).

Currently listening to Radio Riel Main, should really listen via the link that puts the songs up in my sidebar, it’s Gabrielle in Wonderland from yesterday’s show. See what I mean about distractions!

Now that my RL workday is over, it’s time that I checked in and tried to knock a few items off my “To-Do” list and get them onto my “Been-Done” list.