Empire Avenue Tutorial

Recently I’ve been feeling kind of burned out. I think I’ve overworked myself a bit in SL. Also the daily drama on plurk has left me with a bad taste in mouth so I’ve kinda stopped reading (sorry). So I started searching around for another social network (yes I know, addict) to distract myself with when google led me to Empire Avenue. I signed up right away with my SL id because I read that the more active you are on different social networks the more you’ll do well in the game. Since my RL self is almost non-existent on social networks, I signed up with my SL id.

Once I was in, that was it. I totally got addicted. After a while of getting to know it, I plurked about it and since then there has been a wave of second lifers signing up and playing too. I know on the surface it may look like you are buying and trading people, but there’s more to the game then that. Just like on the surface most people say Second Life is just for porn and cybersex, there is more to SL than that. We all know that. So it’s always nice to remember to be respectful, just because you may not find it appealing, doesn’t mean others won’t.

Anyhow, I digress. Since I’ve forced encouraged some of my friends to join, they’ve all been like, “ok I am here, now what? I don’t get this!” So I am taking the liberty to do a tutorial trying to cover as much as I have learned so far (I’ve only been playing 4 days). I’m sure I will learn more as I keep playing but I thought I would at least cover the initial steps.

Signing up

1. 

   I will love you forever and ever (or for at least the next 5 minutes) if you use my invite code to sign up: http://empireavenue.com/?t=r2xa3dbi If you sign up using that link and then connect a Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or YouTube account, both of us will receive 2,000ea (ea=Empire Avenue currency)
2. Once you click the invite code you will be taken to a sign up page that looks similar to the one above. If you are using your RL or SL name to sign up I suggest you make sure you are logged into the right social networks to make sure you don’t link up the wrong accounts.

3. 

   Once you enter in your email (or signup using facebook) you will get a page that looks like this and you can sign up as a person or a business. I know some people have signed up with their sl businesses and have listed their social networks and blogs. It’s a great way to get more traffic (mine has increased since joining). I have signed up as a person. For your Ticker I suggest you choose something short, I chose Berrylicious and I’m actually thinking about changing it to something else that’s shorter. (EDIT: I have changed my ticker to BERRY now) For Index, most of the Second Lifers are in the Virtual Reality index (too bad there’s no Second Life index :P)

4. 

   Once you are in, I suggest the first thing you should do is click settings in the top right hand corner of your screen. Once you click that go through each one to update and change what you need to. I know some people wanted to set it so they don’t get any emails from EA and you can easily do that by going to “notifications and settings” and you will see the “No E-mail” option on the right hand side. Remember to also put a picture of yourself there, it encourages people to invest in you more.

Tips and Tricks

1. Connecting social networks – So now that you are all signed up lets connect all your social networks. The more social networks you connect and the more active you are on them, the more likely you are to do well in the game. So hit the yellow “my connections” button from your profile and add in all the networks you can along with the rss feed to your blog on the bottom of that same page.
2. Looking for investments – Now you should start looking around for people that you think would be good investments. First, I had started a plurk here that has a list of most of the slers that are playing EA. If you are not on there, please add yourself to it. It will let others know you are in the game and playing. The people that you really want to invest in are the ones that have filled out all the information on their profiles and are actively playing the game and interacting on their social networks. You don’t want to invest in people that have just signed up and kind of abandoned it or have not filled out their profiles completely or you suspect might delete their account. So just remember, invest wisely. 🙂
3. Recommend and Endorse – Recommending and endorsing others not only helps out the people you are doing that for, but it shows you are really into the game and there to build good relations with others which will result in attracting more investors. So if you can, please visit my Empire Avenue page, click the recommend button, endorse my blog and purchase some of my shares. I promise great dividends!
4. Communities – Joining a community is another way to interact with other EA players (after all, this is a social network). There is a private community called Second Life where you will find a lot of the SLers interacting and joking around with each other. This is another way to make friends, not only on EA but also on SL. I have tried to join as many communities as I can and interacted on them which resulted in getting many more contact requests on my flickr, twitter and facebook. So click on the “community” button at the top of the page and start interacting with others and finding more investors.
5. Achievements – The “My Achievements” button on your profile will show you everything you have accomplished thus far in the game. The more you interact, invite, invest and play the more awards you will receive. You can click on the greyed out achievements to see what you need to do to accomplish those tasks.
6. More tips and tricks – While searching around, I found another website that has some excellent tips and tricks that I have also put to good use. Check out alainsaffel.com for more tips and tricks to succeeding at Empire Avenue.
7. Empire Avenue widget – If you have a blog, you can add an Empire Avenue badge to your sidebar to share with everyone. Learn more about it here.

That’s all I can think of for now. This will probably be the last time I blog about Empire Avenue since my blog is more about my Second Life. So if you want to keep up to date about more of the things that I learn about Empire Avenue, you can go to my EA profile, click “Manage Lists” and add me as a friend. That way you can keep an eye on my EA wall in case I ever share anything else new and neat I pick up. Or join the Second Life community and share your tips and tricks with the other second lifers that are playing. You can also add me on Twitter since I’m more active there now especially with other Empire Avenue players.

Thanks again for reading and I promise I’ll be doing more fashion posts very soon!

» You can view all of my current tutorials on my tutorials page.