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Internet Marketing and Web Design News - Florida & Beyond

Thursday, November 17, 2005 3:24 PM

Can you make money selling imaginary items? During the "dot-bomb" age, people sold vapor-wear. Some even say that web design is selling nothing but pushed-pixels. But now, you can sell (through ecommerce) imaginary items and get this kind of money:

"Though Paul declines to pin down his annual income -- it's more than $150,000 and less than $1 million, he says -- his Porsche 911 Carrera and wife's Lincoln Navigator suggest that he is comfy."

How does this happen? Through massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMO for short). Now that video games have become a multi-billion dollar industry and are increasingly online, it was only a matter of time before gamers could make a little dough. "Estimates of the size of the new market in virtual property range widely -- from about $200 million to $1 billion worldwide -- but most industry observers agree that it is increasing at a breakneck pace, possibly 100 percent year over year." And, MMOs allow players to find items that have real value in these video games. So, if someone wants to play a game quicker or have advantages without time delay, they can now go to various e-commerce places (i.e. Ebay, CraigsList, and real-money trade virtual worlds - a.k.a. RMT) and buy these items.

However, the real money lies in the character's profiles called Avatars. A gamer can create an avatar and sell their entire profile to an e-commerce merchant. This e-commerce merchant (also known as the middle-man in business terms) then upsells the Avatars for real cash. Transactions through the RMT have proven and will continue to be lucrative. It's only a matter of time (and bandwidth) before gamers can start making their pixels pay off.

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