May 2013
1 post
Three Months Have Passed →
It’s been 3 months since I left Second Life, but I’m planning to return for SL’s 10th birthday celebration.
March 2013
1 post
Empire Avenue Vacation Mode News! →
February 2013
2 posts
5 tags
Advice to New Players of Empire Avenue
At the risk of sounding like a know-it-all, I’ve been playing Empire Avenue (“EAv”) long enough to give some sound advice to new players. I think you’ll see the value in this advice as you confront the early days when EAv is a mystery.
First: Empire Avenue does have a learning curve, so one step at a time!
Immediate Action:
Fill out your “Profile” because...
Five Years of "Being Yordie Sands" →
I have to admit, I’m proud I made it this far — 5 Years. So, I’m celebrating a bit. :)
December 2012
1 post
Earning 100,000e Per Day
A few months ago, I was very impressed when I approached 25,000e per night. I felt I was rolling in Eaves and could buy, buy, buy. Last week I topped 100,000e per day and I’m still finding I don’t have enough Eaves to buy all I want to buy. heh.
I’m over six months into the playing of Empire Avenue. I’ve learned a lot along the way. I’ve grown my weath to almost...
October 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Stabilized & Moving Up
When I last wrote about Empire Avenue I was concerned by how many of my investors had dumped my shares during my relocation. I’m happy to say that after some slowness in getting my Earnings and Dividends moving up, things are stabilized and moving up again.
Buyers Back/Sellers Gone: One good outcome seems to be that the types of investors who dumped my shares without regard to my temporary...
2 tags
Impact of Move on EAv Account
I did everything in my power to prepare people for the two weeks of inactivity that accompanied my move. Nonetheless, many didn’t get the message and paniced as my Dividend declined.
Still, the jumpy investors reminded me of my own jumpiness when people disappear for that long. You never know when someone has just lost interest. HOWEVER, the difference is, I check to see if my investments...
September 2012
1 post
2 tags
Strategic Surprise
On July 26th I made several changes to my Empire Avenue strategy. At the time I was toying with the idea of focusing entirely on my WordPress blogs, Being Yordie Sands and iRez magazine. I was hopeful that this new strategy would make it easier for me to have a social media presence because this is really what I enjoy best, photography and writing.
After a couple weeks of sliding, I started to...
July 2012
3 posts
4 tags
Day 116: My Difficult Decision
I see people seem to leave of Empire Avenue far too often. They seem to leave in three ways: Terminate, drop out, take a break. With the exception of people who officially Terminate, it’s not always clear when players have dropped out or taken a break.
Termination: I think this is a mistake unless you see that this game/business will be of no value in your work.
Dropping Out: I suspect...
5 tags
Day 86: Strategy
I believe my shares have appreciated pretty well in the past three months, but recently I’ve had a couple bumps. I believe improving my Empire Avenue strategy will help keep that uptrend in tact.
A few days ago I wrote about some Lessons Learned in Empire Avenue. However, there is one more lesson I need to note, I’ve found that the strategy I use needs revision regularly. However, I...
Day 83: Lessons Learned
I’m planning to wrap up my comments about Empire Avenue. This is part one of a two part series; this part is Lessons Learn, part two is my EA Strategy.
My Empire Avenue experience has been a process of discovery. I’ve learned many things about EA, more that I wanted to for any “game” I play but certainly not enough to use EA as an effective business tool.
Lessons -...
June 2012
12 posts
Profile: Luca Spoldi
I didn’t know Luca Spoldi before he signed up for Empire Avenue on my invitation. I discovered him when I got a nice 2,000e reward which I immediately used to buy 200 shares. Luca has all the attributes to be successful here in EA and I want to take a moment and share his profile with friends of this blog.
Day 70: Evaluating Vacation
My “Vacation” ended on Sunday. Following are some lessons learned:
#1 Overpaid: I have to admit, I bumbled my way into my 7-day paid vacation. I bumbled because there was very little information to work with. For starters, I double paid for the vacation (EA did refunded the overpayment). I’m still a noob here, there are many things I didn’t know and it looked to me like I...
3 tags
Day 66: Returning Sunday
Sunday afternoon my “Vacation” officially ends. I’m not sure exactly what time I go off vacation mode due to unclear instructions from Empire Avenue, but I’ll start trying to push account activity beginning tomorrow morning.
Lessons Learned: When I began playing Empire Avenue I found myself swept away, like in a race. Seemingly every day I found more things that needed my...
3 tags
Day 60: Reassessing & Reprogramming.
Today I sent a notice to shareholders that I’ve purchased a “7-Day Vacation” which prevents changes in share price from lack of activity. I’ve had a good run but demands on my time have made me realize I need freeze everything in place while I reassess.
“I’m taking a Vacation break. Share prices are fixed at currently level and my understanding is no...
3 tags
Day 59: Catching Up
In the past few weeks my shareholder base has more than doubled. This has put my “interpersonl system” to the test and it failed. I’m not satisfied with what I’ve been able to reciprocate, not to the extent I would like to. I continue to feel that I’m a day late and dollar short on catching up with my investors.
One good thing is my daily dividend income, it’s...
3 tags
Day 57: Share Price Breakdown
Today my dividend income was over 33,000e, puny by the standard of many, but very useful to me at this stage. My plan is to expand my investment base every day now. I’m not sure it was wise to focus so much attention on my getting dividends but this income is very useful now.
I believe my “Share Price Breakdown” indicates that I’ve not bought enough shares in others and I...
2 tags
Day 56: ROI On My Investments
I’ve been very concerned about my ROI for my investors, it’s dropped off it’s high of 1.01 as the price is outrunning my earnings. I’m working on this and hope to keep up the dividend in the coming week.
Then there’s the ROI I’m receiving on my investments. I’ve made no secret that I have many high yielding stocks, but when I figure in all the...
2 tags
Day 55: Observations
I just have a some miscellaneous observations today:
My Network Activity: I’ve made a change which I believe may have a positive effect on my network activity. I’ve opened a feed from Facebook to Twitter. This automatically tweets my FB posts and I hope this will increase my outreach. I don’t know how to get feedback from Twitter to FB. It that were possible I could make FB my...
2 tags
Profile: Kim Reynolds
Kim Reynolds’ Empire Avenue ticker is (e)QRKIM. She was one of my first investors and I invested in her in my first week also. And I’ve continued to invest in her because she delivers the goods in every category. I’m currently “maxed out” on Kim’s shares and she delivers the largest daily dividend payments of all my investments.
Getting the picture?...
3 tags
Day 53: Real Engagement & Conversation
I’m sure others are aware that there are many levels of social networking, and perhaps the best is when there is a real conversation. One of my investor (also, investments) wrote this candid piece, Social Networking: Engagement & Conversations, about the subject. This is an issue I become more interested in every day as my Empire Avenue focus shifts more away from just creating good...
4 tags
Day 52: The Diff
Dear Diary (*smiles*)… Each morning I awake to a wealth of Eaves from dividends received from the night’s processing, currently over 31,500 Eaves. That would have seemed like a lot of Eaves a few weeks ago but those Eaves don’t go very far at all. Aside from saving for “Bigger Piece of the Pie”, Missions and purchases of high yielding shares, I am confronted with...
2 tags
Day 51: A Surprising Ranking
Yesterday afternoon I was surprised to discover that my shares are doing really well on the “inside Empire Avenue” list. Using the list’s “score” sort, I’m #16 at this moment. Yay!
#16) Score: 1.03, 7-Day Avg Div: 0.98, 2-Day ROI: 3.03, (e)YORDIE
Aside from a handful of appearances on the “Recent Arrivals” list as I wended my way through...
May 2012
22 posts
2 tags
Day 50: Overrun
The past week has seen increasing Empire Avenue shareholder & investment related activity, and in the past few days I’ve felt more and more overrun.
Yesterday shares of (e)YORDIE ran up over 2-points to 110e per share.
The average dividend soared to 1.09.
Somewhere around two dozen new shareholders poured in.
Existing shareholders added more and more shares.
First, the upswing...
2 tags
Profile: Mr Crap
The second investment I made in Empire Avenue was in another one of Second Life’s influential (although he’d shudder at the word) blogger, storyteller, photographer and videographer, Crap Mariner (aka Mr Crap).
Mr. Crap is actually mild-mannered cat lover, Laurence Simon. And Mr. Crap’s EA ticker symbol is (e)CRAP. In case you are wondering, Mr. Crap is a broken robot.
I...
2 tags
Profile: Strawberry Singh (e)BERRY
This is a new feature for this blog, profiles of my influential people.
I’m beginning with Strawberry Singh. Call her “Berry” and her ticker symbol is (e)BERRY.
I’m starting with Berry because she’s the person who got me interested in Empire Avenue. Her blog is one of the top blogs about Second Life, where she is famous for her photography, writing and...
2 tags
Day 47: Managing Investment
This past weekend I’ve seen my holdings rise to 300 stocks. I have seen others on roughly the same track as I am with many more, and others with less. Managing less is easer, so no problem there its facing a future where I will be managing more and more.
My problem is my system. My system is very individual and interpersonal.
The Numbers: Yes, I begin with a search ROI and upward price...
2 tags
Day 45: All My Luvin'
A couple weeks back I realized I hadn’t really thought out reciprocation. I came to the conclusion I hadn’t been giving back enough to shareholders.
I see some shareholders creating missions for simple things like a “Like” for a Facebook page or a Follow on Twitter, and I got the idea that one way to reciprocate shareholders I can’t buy back equal numbers of shares...
3 tags
Day 44: A New Goal
Having met my 100e price goal, I’m still .01e short of my 1.00e per share Average Dividend (although I’ve returned over 1.00e for the past two nights). So I expect to achieve that goal soon.
Looking forward, the only meaningful price per share goal I see is 200e per share. Yikes! That is a very long way away and I just don’t understand what drives share price up (I’m...
2 tags
Day 43: Spreading Daily Earnings
I’ve worked hard to get my daily ROI up to 9.6% for my investors. And I’ve worked hard to get good daily dividends coming in from my investments, currently over 26,000 a day (and rising), that’s about 6.9% of the value of my invested portolio.
That daily 26k would have seemed like a lot, a couple weeks ago but the demands against that income are growing faster than the income.
...
2 tags
Day 42: A Costly Bug
This morning I learned that there is a “Bigger Piece of Pie” bug that shows up on the dialog box used to make purchases. As a temporary workaround, EA customer support took Eaves from my account and I got my first upgrade.
However, software engineer that I am, I figured this was a browser specific bug and was able to use the feature on my laptop where I’m using a different...
Day 40: What He Said!
On Saturday I saw a video by Craig Chamberlin ”10 Empire Avenue Tips: Mastering Social Media Rocket Fuel” and I was very interested. In fact, I watched it three times and I have to give it a What He Said! Craig put a lot of thought into the tips he lays out in the vid. Craig is (e)PCMTECHHELP and I’m a shareholder.
Day 37: Mission Mishmash
I do my share of Empire Avenue missions each day. I like doing missions for shareholders especially, however some shareholders make it more difficult than it should be to do a mission.
The other day, Emma Geraln mentioned in a forum that she finds it difficult to sort through some mission instructions. She mentioned one case where the instructions were written in all caps, but her main issue was...
The Most Important Grammar Rules All Bloggers Need... →
Good grammer is something that’s easy to forget, but I really apreciate good articles that keep me on track.
Day 35: Mystery Sandwiches
I’ve been going over the Empire Avenue site, link by link. Some links lead to pages with little links that can’t be found through main pages. It’s almost as if someone is embedding clues hither and yon about how to “play” this game.
I’ve been wondering about Missions. Sure, I know how to setup Missions, I’ve setup three so far and one is still open....
2 tags
Day 33: Share Price Goal 100e
Ok, this is an obvious goal to set now that my shares are trading at 92e, my goal is reach 100e per share.
A few weeks ago I was struggling to drive my ROI to 0.8. That was a big goal for me but today my shares are trading at 0.98 ROI.
My Average Dividend is 0.90e but a couple times in the past week my dividend reached 0.98e. So with a little more work I hope to drive my dividend to 1.00e.
The...
2 tags
How Can I Complain?
I’ve become increasingly concerned that my Network Activity is out of sync with my “Your Earnings” and Dividends generated.
And I’ve become flustered by the seeming lack of a relationship between the number of Missions I go on and the credit I get for those missions. It seems the more missions I go on, the higher the bar gets set. And if I relax for a single day my...
2 tags
Day 28: Empire Avenue Observations
Yesterday was my 28th day in Empire Avenue and last night I paid out a 0.95e dividend, up from prior day 0.88e or up 8.0% and my Average Dividend rose to 0.83e.
Those are big “Yays!”
However, I pushed the envelope of my activity yesterday, all day. I went on 50% more Missions, mostly shareholder Missions. I created my 3rd Mission for shareholders (1,000e x 20). Also, I worked on my...
Re-Thinking My EA Strategy
I’ve been thinking about ROI a lot this afternoon. It’s now confirmed, a “player” could theoretically have a successful “stock” without owning shares in anyone. As long as that player is working their social network and generating good Network Activity, they will generate good dividends!
For me, that concept has been hard to absorb. I’m an active...
2 tags
Has My Understanding Been Wrong?
Today I had my first exposure to a point of view from a successful investor that just doesn’t make sense to me.
I’ve been assuming that buying shares with high ROI will yield dividends which in turn will give my shares a higher ROI, thus enticing investors to drive my shares higher.
According to this investor, the shares I buy have nothing to do with the dividends I generate and pay...
Ghostwriting 101: The Challenge is in the Secret →
Roxi piece has triggered some ideas for future writing projects. Thanks Roxi!
EA Profile Update
Ok, I’m keeping track of changes in my perception of what the game is and what I’m doing to encourage peeps to invest in me. So here is the latest update of my profile information:
I’m Yordie Sands, a Second Life adventurer, blogger, photographer, socialite and occassional romantic (*blushes*).
My shares seem to be doing relatively well. I’m balancing high-yield shares...
“It has been said that we need just three things in life: something to do,...”
– Anonymous (via strawberrysingh)
Some Yays
I’ve seen several of my rankings improve in the past few weeks, and I’m tempted to attribute all of them to Empire Avenue.
My Klout has risen to 53K, my Alexa ranking has dropped to 3,860,870 (lower is better, Google is #1 in the set of 350,000,000 websites on the planet). And my Empire Avenue shares are at 82.40e. Oh, and yesterday my main blog’s Followers reached 100.
I say...
“And unless someone steps in before bidding ends on Friday, one of the most...”
– Ocean to auction block: Real Bond villain stealth ship yours for just $100,000 (PHOTOS) — RT
April 2012
16 posts
1 tag
Empire Avenue - Day 17
It’s the close of day 17 and I’m still learning and mastering of Empire Avenue. I continue to enjoy the game but I’ll admit its becoming a little stressful as I find myself becoming more and more competitive.
Here are some observations:
1) Balancing Social & Game Objectives: I continue to struggle with trading shares because each time I sell there is a photo of the person...
“Social Media has become one of the most powerful influences on the global...”
– Become a Thought Leader in Your Industry: The Power of Social Media
Being Yordie Sands "Fav Links" →
Meshinima added to Favorite Links. This is the home of Flufee!!
Spotlight: Bryan Dearsley →
Alex Mortimer & The Beast of Wildeor
asianfoodeconomics.com →
Toxic Capsules
