Turning one year old virtually, some reflection

With the Christmas and New Year’s holiday passing I didn’t really get a chance to reflect in text (did mention it on the Friday radio show) about having my first virtual birthday. I received a couple Christmas holiday cards inside Second Life from friends which was a neat occurence. Back when I commissioned my custom avatar I had streaks of gray hair put in to match my real life appearance. Still, I look older in RL than in SL. I’m definitely the oldest looking one year old I’ve come across.

First year accomplishments
What did I accomplish in the virtual world over the first year? I bought land, built and established a RL business presence, created and have been selling my own scripted object (product). Did some custom Linden Scripting Language programming for others for hire. Had a custom avatar created that looks somewhat like my RL presence. Met many different people and travelled across new and wondrous virtual lands. Held RL group meetings and presentations inside Second Life streaming live audio. I even DJ’d an event one time for a friend. And can’t forget this group blogging project where the VTOR Authors share the revenue that the site makes based on their posting activity — paid in Linden dollars monthly, of course.

Surely, I’m missing some stuff, but then you can now more easily traverse back through my posts here at VTOReality with the new and much improved site search. And the search will get even better when there’s more time to do some RL customization. I did a little tweaking last night with the templates, adding the missing author byline to the permalink pages as well as the post times to a central location and right aligned the comments on the category and homepage. Once I’m done tinkering I’m going to zip up the theme and share with the rest of the group so they can add their changes. One of the things we kicked around last Friday was possibly altering the theme once a quarter or so, to try out new looks and different ad to content blends to figure out what works best.

VTOR will be selling advertising space
Now that we’re at a more stable web home, we will be offering a formal way to buy advertising in Linden dollars on this blog. As for what to charge? We don’t have very much traffic yet, thus the price would definitely be affordable. We’ll have to kick around some mutually beneficial rate plans and ideas during this coming Friday’s weekly radio show. I’m thinking the white banner space to the right of the logo or just below would be good real estate to offer, what do you think? If you are reading and have virtual or real life products or services you’d like to pay for advertising here drop me an IM in Second Life and let’s talk. Wonder who will be VTOR’s first paid advertiser? Hopefully I’ll know the answer to that question by the time I turn two years old.

How old does your avatar look?
It’s interesting to note that most avatars I come across in human form appear youthful in SL. Guess nobody wants to look all gray and wrinkly. If you have a human-form avatar, how old does it look? And how old virtually are you?