Second Life merchants making $1.3M a day

  • By thorsen-ink, GameSpot
  • Posted Aug 2, 2007 5:19 pm PT

With the stock market growing increasingly skittish, these are uncertain financial times. That is, unless you're hawking wares in Linden Lab's Second Life, the popular PC life simulation/virtual world whose generation of real-world cash with in-game real estate deals have created at least one...

With the stock market growing increasingly skittish, these are uncertain financial times. That is, unless you're hawking wares in Linden Lab's Second Life, the popular PC life simulation/virtual world whose generation of real-world cash with in-game real estate deals have created at least one real-world millionaire.

This week, Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale told Business 2.0 the scale of trade in Second Life. He estimates that virtual merchants make over $1.3 million every day hawking in-game goods. He said around 830 of the game's 200,000 daily players take home over $1,000 a month from their Second Life-based businesses.

In other Second Life commerce news, realtor Coldwell Banker announced it is selling a real house via Second Life. The property is a house in suburban Seattle, and is valued at over $3 million. It will be reproduced in the game to allow potential buyers to take virtual tours.

68 Comments

  • 705H1R0

    Posted Aug 10, 2007 2:05 am PT

    daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang. I gotta get into this.

  • roryk666

    Posted Aug 9, 2007 10:49 pm PT

    i dont care who you are and flame me all you want but if you play 2nd life your a loser

  • generalpf

    Posted Aug 8, 2007 10:03 am PT

    Some of you didn't read the summary, let alone the article. Coldwell isn't selling the virtual house for real money, they're selling the REAL HOUSE for real money. They're putting a virtual version of the house online so you can walk through it. Pretty darned clever even if you're not into the whole Second Life thing.

  • namdar

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 11:23 pm PT

    I guess I should have sold my LEGO blocks back in the day

  • namdar

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 11:23 pm PT

    I guess I should of sold lego blocks back in the day

  • SpoonMan54321

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 9:43 pm PT

    this is not a game. i dunno how to classify it but games are supposed to be.... fun.

  • RoC1909

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 8:43 pm PT

    @RaiKageRyu

    "Virtual tours can't replace real tours... it's not the same."

    But neither can photographs yet they are used for selling product. A virtual tour of a house is a nice 'addition' to photographs but frankly, I wouldn't buy a car not a house if I couldn't see it in person.

  • Advent_Ech0

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 1:34 pm PT

    wow....i read that people were having an important business meeting in Second Life. It ended early because their avatars were attacked by flying man parts....second life seems to me like a lost cause. A strange, desolate lost cause.

  • A7Xfan

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 1:31 pm PT

    As long as we don't lose touch with reality, this is really cool.

  • rety5

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 5:29 am PT

    jesus im making me a second life account and selling virtual junk through that! seriously if there is that much money to be made out of it and there are prats buying it for years to come then I would be set for life!

  • DjGootch

    Posted Aug 7, 2007 3:16 am PT

    all things aside...this "game" blows dick. i downloaded it and played it for roughly 5 minutes...its like an MMO for the retarded. you fly, look awkward, like a reject from "Logans Run" and its just a virtual mess...i don't know how people "play" this...no swords, guns, armor, none of the niceties of other MMO's...i found myself yelling in rooms "WHERE'S THE EPIC LOOT??"

    no one got the joke...

  • LinkBOX

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 11:56 pm PT

    MOAR LIEK SECOND CLASS!!!! AMRITE?

  • ChinoJamesKeene

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 7:54 pm PT

    MMO's are sad places.

    Can't believe theres enough retards spending real money in that baddly textured myspace.

  • Unorthodox1978

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 6:09 pm PT

    I need to get on Second Life and start hawkin' some wares.

  • TheC0m1ssar

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 4:37 pm PT

    If only real life worked like that...

  • SirMonotone

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 1:59 pm PT

    That's crazy! Why spend that amount of money on virtual stuff?

  • majin_vegeta300

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 1:25 pm PT

    disgusting, but to each his (or her) own

  • curua02

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 11:47 am PT

    Normally I wouldn't touch SL, but I'd be tempted if I thought I could make scratch like that in my spare time.

  • markrousseau21

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 10:02 am PT

    "mr_killer_man Buying real life houses in games? Soon we will be able to work thru games! I don't think I'd buy in game content but these guys are making a killing!"
    you can work in games..... its an unfortunate part of the MMO world called GOLD FARMING

  • DryvBy2

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 7:57 am PT

    I can't wait for Microsoft to put this game on Marketplace. Boy, will they make a killing.

  • ryan-man

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 6:42 am PT

    making money like that!
    don't know who's stupid the crazy people that made this or the peeps that are buying virtual stuff :X

  • chrono_wind

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 6:29 am PT

    BewilderedRonin

    I find it surprising that anyone bothers to "play" Second Life, let alone pay for any of the crappy content available.

    That may be so, but that will not stop the fact that a lot of casual gamers or just people who want to chat will want to enter the Second Life world. Think of it as AIM, but with a graphic interface. You may hate the idea, but others will appreciate it, especially when some money is involved.

    It may sound pointless, but people like to decorate. For example, why the hell do we buy a ringtone for our phones? Dive deep down and you will realize that a ringtone is rather pointless too. I dislike the game, but being able to make a profit, even if it means that it is temporary is a success nonetheless. Of course, I doubt the game will continue to make any profit once the idea is taken seriously by others.

  • dryden555

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 6:27 am PT

    The CEO "estimates" that amount. He's bluffing. Dont believe everything you read.

  • headhunter16

    Posted Aug 6, 2007 3:51 am PT

    Isn't it kind of funny how these people with no REAL life get all there money to spend on a FAKE life, and we wonder why the World is such a mess. Goddamn bludgers.

  • audioaxes

    Posted Aug 5, 2007 10:30 pm PT

    who are the idiots playing that dumb game?

  • super51

    Posted Aug 5, 2007 9:42 pm PT

    http://www.getafirstlife.com/

    lol

  • xgalacticax

    Posted Aug 5, 2007 5:13 pm PT

    where are the hackers and fraudsters when u need em??

  • lilmp89

    Posted Aug 5, 2007 12:13 pm PT

    wow....

    I see it now...."US Goverment wants slice of the pie...6 hours of Second Life every day added to presidential duties."

  • taquitoscopio

    Posted Aug 5, 2007 12:01 am PT

    Welcome to the future...

  • living_wmd_888

    Posted Aug 4, 2007 11:13 pm PT

    Wow, there seems to be quite a market for virtual whores as well as ugly oversize **** for your avatar to have sex with those virtual whores. I don't understand why anyone would throw away real money on such a buggy, badly made virtual brothel. Does anyone actually get off on this stuff? Seriously?

  • dbgarfield

    Posted Aug 4, 2007 10:23 pm PT

    it does leave one to wonder who's spending money in Second Life. if there was some greater motivating factor to the program then just "having lots of cool stuff" I might understand. Some people are just hyper-competitive and willing to waste dollars on even very small advantages to help them win. But there doesn't appear to be any actual competition going on in Second Life, its just people tricking out their avatars with elaborate fake houses and fake clothing and things of that nature. doesn't make any sense to me that there would be a market for this at all.

  • jeremy45

    Posted Aug 4, 2007 9:59 pm PT

    This is nothing but a forme of myspace but "Virtual"

  • SoupNatsi

    Posted Aug 4, 2007 4:22 pm PT

    Why dont they take that money and get a real art and development team to make a game that actually looks decent. It still looks like a low budget piece of crap, so until they actually prove that they are making money with this game I refuse to believe their claims.

  • Kastigador

    Posted Aug 4, 2007 12:16 pm PT

    It's a lot because it's Second Life. Seriously, who regularaly plays that "game" anyway? It should just be called media land, because the ype surrounding second life has always been way bigger than the reality. That said, 1.3 million per month total, for all merchants isn't a lot. A $1000/month? Considering how much time people spend on making the things they sell on there, again, that's not much. These are mostly players trying to financially recoup their time and energy spent on the "game". You can make more money playing WoW now that character transfers are allowed..

  • subrosian

    Posted Aug 4, 2007 1:27 am PT

    This isn't surprising. Statistics tells us that if you test a thousand hypothesis, a few of them are going to come back as "correct" even if they aren't. How does this apply to business? If you have enough vendors, some of them will be successful, just by sheer luck.

    Unfortunately, as humans, we have a terrible tendency to look at singular, strong cases, and ignore thousands of less attention-grabbing ones. So we gravitate to the one "millionaire" instead of the thousands of people who dropped $10 or so into a hole in the ground called Second Life, or the hundreds who make money, yet dump it all back into a useless virtual world.

    On top of all of this, Linden Labs makes money by charging for the space within the game, good for them, but if you're buying into this, well, what a sad way to spend life - sinking free time and money into someone else's dream. Add in that Linden Labs is counting "virtual assets" that people haven't removed from the game as income, and that 830 merchants number becomes much clearer. When Everquest was at the height of its popularity, analysts used the average selling rate of gold on eBay to figure out exchange rates, and determined the average "income" for an Everquest player (in game) was equivelant to $2000 per year. That doesn't mean the best players were actually *making* a couple hundred a month though - much like gold farmers in WoW, only a minority became "wealthy" doing it, and if you figured out the hourly rates, well, you wouldn't be profitable paying people above minimum wage to do it - hence why most gold farming operations are in China.

  • chokehead

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 9:46 pm PT

    suckers.

  • Evanrocknuma

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 9:32 pm PT

    The creaters of second life make a rediculous amount of money... I mean charging real life money (up in the hundreds usually) for virtual houses and thousands for your own island. This is just a rip off of your money and no smart person would ever invest thousands into an online game or else he is just saying that the game really is his life... F!@# second life

  • Dungeoncrawler1

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 9:32 pm PT

    Ah, what exactly is the theory behind this? Dc

  • uk_beny

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 3:43 pm PT

    lucky them lol

  • bodylotion

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 3:03 pm PT

    I'm staying as far away from this game as i can, i did play it once but it sucked and i will never buy anything in there.

  • GamingDisgrace

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 2:47 pm PT

    Ugh, the concept of micropayments and buying virtual content online is not as disturbing as the actual content people are probably buying on this god-forbidden game. I'll bet you that a large sum of this profit is through porn, not making 'houses' and 'paintball guns'. The fact that Second Life is making this money, rather than the money itself is really making me retch.

  • ColdfireTrilogy

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 2:16 pm PT

    I played the game for quite a while. The concept is great. Its the fact that as they say, more than 70 people in one area and you start to chug. The game is incredibly fun if you actually make stuff yourself. I love creating houses and paintball guns, then making a paintball mod and go have you and 50 other people go tear it up in a mall or a random building. Its fun, but the practicality of places like Coke and IMB are very little as they can not offer REAL drinks or REAL computers and therefore most of that stuff its just walked on by as we see enough advertising in real life that we would rather just skimp past it and have fun driving around.

  • NWA_31

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 1:19 pm PT

    Who the hell is actually dumb or rich enough to pay for virtual stuff ?

  • mehoff88

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 11:50 am PT

    This is probably the stupidest and smartest thing anyone has ever came up with. If you have money to waste in a virtual environment, then all the power to ya. I prefer spending my money on stuff I can at least touch and what not

  • BigDaveyDogz

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 11:47 am PT

    looks like I need to get my hustle on in the virtual world! 1k a month extra couldn't hurt at all!!

  • Axe_336

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 10:52 am PT

    Oh, I thought the article was saying that individual merchants were making that much. But its saying as a whole they make that much. That makes a lot more sense.

  • jknight5422

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 10:29 am PT

    I'm not sure why Second Life is here at Gamespot. For one, it's not a game. For the other, there is nothing to do there. Lastly, it's a ghost town where you will likely not find anybody, only large virtual buildings pushing ads. Who needs it?? Go read Wired Mag's latest article about why it's a useless place: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-08/ff_sheep

  • sens_rocks_40

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 10:12 am PT

    wtf is the appeal of second life, why waste money on a virtual house, when you could save it and buy a real house?

  • livinglegend305

    Posted Aug 3, 2007 9:32 am PT

    internet drug dealers..people are paying for virtual goods..merchants are selling basically useless garbage..i wont be suprised if im moderated for this comment..

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