Virtual people spend money too
What if you could make a virtual product, sell it to virtual people, and make real money?
I’m not kidding folks. That’s what real people are doing in virtual worlds like Second Life.
There are shops that sell everything from clothing to haircuts for virtual people known as avatars.
And even though the entrepreneurs are paid in something called Linden dollars in this cyber world, they are converted into real U.S. dollars in the real world.
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One woman
I recently interviewed for BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine makes thousands of dollar selling funky shoes to avatars at a virtual store she created in Second Life.
It’s part of a growing community of virtual business owners, many of which never tried their hands at running a business in the real world.
About 33 million money transactions happen every month selling virtual goods and services in Second Life, says Chris Collins with the company behind the new frontier Linden Labs.
You can buy land in Second Life starting at around $5 a month or up to $1600 for a whole island. If you want to keep it on the inexpensive side, just rent a space from an existing landowner for less. Or pop over to a mall or flea market in the virtual world and set up you wares if the avatars that run those places let you.
There are programs available in Second Life to help members build their own stores, and you can even hire an architect if design is not something you’re good at.
Right now, there are about 9.3 million registered members with about 10 percent of those considered active and logging in at least once a month.
There's also a marketing and recruiting component to this. Some companies are setting up buildings there in order to get their names out to avatars.
I wrote about virtual recruiting a while back.
If you come up with a virtual design or product in Second Life, Collins maintains you own the digital rights to whatever you create.
But good luck policing the place to figure out if someone is ripping you off. The world seems endless, with new islands and cities popping up all the time.
Just getting to a location I’ve been before took me longer than I’d like to admit. And give yourself lots of time to figure out how to navigate the system and how to move your avatar around.
I know how to fly, but am terrible at landing. And I keep walking into walls.
But I was able to get into a store or two and peruse the many virtual products.
Now buying something. That’s another story.
