My quest for further information about how to make money on Second Life continues.
This is a whole new area to me so I am threading very carefully as I don’t want to get my facts and figures wrong or indeed make some Second Life newbie mistake.
So here’s what I’ve learnt so far.
You can make a million real US dollars on Second life.
One user who goes by the avatar name of Anshe Chung has made a million real USD from her activities on Second Life. I found an interview with her from a few years back when her Second Life activities were worth a real 250,000 USD. This interview is very interesting as it comes from a person who is actually making serious money on Second Life. You can read the full interview here –
There are two things I want to point out that I noticed in the interview.
The first is that back in 2006 when this interview happened, Anshe Chung had a whole team of people working for her. So my advice is not to think that she is making serious money on her own. In the interview she says that at that time she had a team of about seven freelancers working for her but that she had also just created a team of ten full time people in
So straightaway it gives some idea of the effort involved in generating serious income in Second life. That said our aim is create a decent second income in Second Life and not to build an empire.
The second thing that struck me was that she gave an incredibly valuable piece of advice to anyone thinking of joining Second Life to generate an income. Here is the quote directly from the Business week piece.
“To what do you attribute your success?
One reason for my success here, I strongly believe, is that I am not only here for business. I am very deeply rooted in this world, like a real native person. Most people who just come here for money fail miserably. They are foreigners, act like foreigners, and lack deep understanding of this virtual country. Many of them are also lazybones who think you just need money to make more money. The truly successful people I know here all are deeply involved in life and society here too.”
The key thing to take away from her answer is “Most people who just come here for money fail miserably”.
To me this simple sentence speaks volumes. Unless you are prepared to make the effort to fully integrate and become part of the Second Life community and experience, it appears that your chances of successfully generating an income are limited.
The figures speak for themselves.
You can check the earnings statistics on the Second Life website here.
The statistic that we are interested in is about half way down the page with the header ‘Linden™ Dollars’ and the sub header ‘Unique Users with Positive Monthly Linden™ Dollars Flow’.
From what I can gather this statistic basically shows us the number of people who are making positive income in the Second Life and how much they are making.
I’m going to use a well worn cliché – but the figures really do speak for themselves. Of the 57,821 people that generated a positive income on Second Life in June of 2008 – the vast majority earned less than $500 – 55,732 users to be exact. Most of these people earned less than $50 – 47,546 users. That’s $50 for the whole month. Not exactly a decent second income.
This makes for slightly discouraging reading. If you thought that Second Life was a quick route to riches or even a quick route to a decent second income then you need to think again.
If you examine the figures closely they seem to be representative of nearly all businesses and markets – where the top five percent make the most money. This to me illustrates nicely that Second Life is acting just like any other competitive market where there is real money involved. The winners win big while everyone else struggles on.
But Second Life is different.
Er no not really. When it comes down to it the people who succeed are those who put in the effort or as Anshe Chung puts it ‘are deeply involved in life and society’. The same with any other business venture really.
So I’m still not convinced about generating a second income from Second Life. I’m sure it can be done – Anshe Chung as well as the other 2089 users who made over $500 in June have proved that its possible.
The question is what will it cost to get to the level of income that you are happy with? How long and how deeply integrate in Second Life do you have to become in order to start generating a second income?
That’s my next bit of research…
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