Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Top Second Life Entrepeneur Cashing Out US$1.7 Million Yearly; Furnishings, Events Management Among Top Earners
During a March 9 Silicon Valley forum held at Microsoft's Mountain View campus,recently-departed Linden Lab VP Robin Harper offered some extraordinary financial numbers from Second Life's internal economy: based on a quarterly annualization the company conducted, they discovered that several Resident business owners were cashing out Linden Dollars in excess of a million US dollars a year, with the top earner grossing an estimated $1.7 million. An initial blog report suggested this top ranking was based on the sale of virtual shoes, which seemed fairly incredible, so I double-checked that point with Robin. The $1.7 million figure is accurate, she told me by e-mail and in a correction on her blog today, but it's not based on shoes:
"[S]everal people/accounts are cashing out US$ amounts in excess of $1M per year (with the highest amount estimated at $1.7M), based on annualizing one quarter of data. Most of the top 10 are in the real estate business, but the group also includes a company that does events and one that designs virtual goods including shoes."
Besides the pure wallop of those weighty numbers, two things stand out to me:
Though it's well known that many of SL's land barons are enormously successful, many people have assumed their equity was mainly in the value of the land (i.e. servers) they owned. (This was the case of Anshe Chung, who claimed in 2006 to be SL's first millionaire, but mostly through her land holdings, which she would have to sell, to truly have a million in US dollars.) Now thanks to Robin, we discover that several land barons are indeed able to cash out that amount, or more. Equally surprising is the fact that the top ten is not just in real estate, but include virtual fashion/furnishings, and events management. I'd not have guessed either could reach revenue levels of such heights. Now follows the immediate speculation: who's doing so well, and how did they get that way?
Hat tip: JeanRicard Broek
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