People spend over $1.5 billion on virtual items every year. Pets, coins, avatars, and bling: these virtual objects are nothing more than a series of digital 1s and 0s stored on a remote database somewhere.Virtual objects aren’t really objects – they are graphical metaphors for packaging up behaviors that people are already engaging in.
From fashion to business tools to décor for virtual homes and offices, people who are avid users of virtual worlds are hungry for well-designed virtual goods. While there is a learning curve for each proprietary virtual environment such as There.com, Kaneva, Lively, and Second Life, if there is a commerce component of the world that converts to real dollars, with a keen eye for design and detail and the right building skills, you can generate income from creating products made of bits and bytes.
Tencent
is one of the largest Internet portals in China with over 250 million active user accounts. They generated $100 million+ in Q1 of 2007 and over 65% of their revenue comes from virtual goods. Both Dogster and HotorNot are succeeding with a hybrid ad/virtual goods business model
In Second Life, for example, some of the more successful clothing designers are bringing in thousands of dollars (US) a month selling items of clothing at 75 cents to $1.50 a pop. And if you are truly an artist, your virtual goods could sell for a pretty penny.
