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Monetizing Virtual Worlds

by jvm127
11 replies
Most people have heard about the game World of Warcraft and how people make real life money buying and selling characters and other products within the game. Has anyone heard of secondlife.com? It is a virtual world a lot like the video game "The Sims."

I have partnered with someone who effectively "owns" one of the largest cities in this virtual world - New York City. She sells virtual real estate in the city - everything from studio apartments to large condos. She designed and rendered all of the graphics herself and her city gets thousands of visitors a day. She has a staff of 10 people who sell real estate for her and keep up a blog about what's happening. She also has access to about 7,000 people who have opted in to her list in some way or another.

We have been brain storming about ways to monetize this list. We have considered an e-book/video series about creating a city of your own and monetizing its real estate yourself. We have also considered some things that are a little more simple just to gage interest - maybe a newsletter from her (she's kind of a big deal in this world) or a survey of some kind.

Overall, we are just trying to think of the best way to market products to these people that they may actually buy. Does anyone have any ideas or experiences?
#monetizing #virtual #worlds
  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    I think you're right on with the tutorials. Since she's been so successful setting up her own Virtual Real Estate empire she could sell that info to people who want to cash in too.

    Very impressive work by her. I tried Second Life and couldn't figure out how to do much
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    • Profile picture of the author jvm127
      Originally Posted by PerformanceMan View Post

      I think you're right on with the tutorials. Since she's been so successful setting up her own Virtual Real Estate empire she could sell that info to people who want to cash in too.

      Very impressive work by her. I tried Second Life and couldn't figure out how to do much
      From your limited experience would you say people are so wrapped up in their virtual lives that they wouldn't be interested in generating income within their world? That was one of the main factors we considered that may be a reason the idea may not be as successful as we hoped.
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      • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
        Originally Posted by jvm127 View Post

        From your limited experience would you say people are so wrapped up in their virtual lives that they wouldn't be interested in generating income within their world? That was one of the main factors we considered that may be a reason the idea may not be as successful as we hoped.
        I think there are a lot of people like me. I went on Second Life because I was interested in making money (that's sort of my main interest!)

        At least a percentage of the people on there would be happy to generate some sort of income I'm sure.

        I mean when you tell her story people hear it and say "10 employees! Wow - I wish I could figure out how to do something like that."

        Most won't take action but I think plenty of people would buy the training.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ashley Walker
    I have one niche that these people might get interested : make money at home. It make sense considering that list is full of people who love virtual world, they will rarely go outside. The product itself is can be an ebook of step-by-step making money online. Real life is like "bad game" for them, no offense to gamer out there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Anonymous Affiliate
    Virtual worlds and virtual e-commerce in online games (WoW and the such) is a multi-million (hundreds of them) industry, but mostly on the currency arbitrage field (buying/selling ingame currency for dollars). I was *very* active in that field about 10 years ago (pre-WoW) and millions were already exchanging hands every month...

    However, there is still a huge market for info products, so Im positive you could make good money teaching others how to generate revenue from virtual worlds.
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    • Profile picture of the author arronlee
      It's definitely a unique idea. I myself joined Second Life at one time and was interested in buying virtual real estate to rent to others but never could figure it out. One thing I noticed was there were plenty of homeless people in the virtual world asking for donations in the currency of the virtual world. I wondered how they got into that as well lol.
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  • Profile picture of the author CandyxLand
    One idea that occurs to me is to keep scaling the operation up. Use the list to promote a new city and keep going with it. You've found something that works and are unlikely to make as much money selling people tutorials and things like that. Why fix what isn't broken?
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  • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
    From someone who has spent probably years playing WoW, Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Starcraft and WC3, I can tell you that it's a lot easier to sell to new players/casuals than it is to hardcore players.

    You see, the entitlement generation is upon us and it easily reflects in any online game. Why is this good news for internet marketers? People aren't looking for a hard and challenging game, they're looking to take the path of least resistance. A lot of people that I used to play games with have grown up, have families and don't have time to play the games like they used to anymore.

    So now, the majority of the people I meet in online gaming communities are these people that I like to call the "entitlement generation." They want it now, they don't want it to require effort and it's usually a hassle if they don't have a guide from Point A to Point B.

    All you have to do is visit popular online communities and look to see what problems/complaints people have. Let's take World of Warcraft for example.

    If we visit the forums, we can see that "Rate my Transmog/Rate that Transmog", "Dailies suck", "Gearing up/Leveling up Sucks" posts are the most popular.

    Why not make guides tailored to finding transmog gear, how to efficient farm dailies or how to efficient level up kind of like the Zygor guide and other popular leveling guides? In Diablo 3 for example, you'd probably make a pretty decent penny selling "How to level up Paragon efficiently" if you had the means to support a site and a means to get traffic to it.

    Just follow the complaints of any online community and you'll have your product.

    Corey
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    Skype: Coreygeer319

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  • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
    From someone who has spent probably years playing WoW, Diablo 2, Diablo 3, Starcraft and WC3, I can tell you that it's a lot easier to sell to new players/casuals than it is to hardcore players.

    You see, the entitlement generation is upon us and it easily reflects in any online game. Why is this good news for internet marketers? People aren't looking for a hard and challenging game, they're looking to take the path of least resistance. A lot of people that I used to play games with have grown up, have families and don't have time to play the games like they used to anymore.

    So now, the majority of the people I meet in online gaming communities are these people that I like to call the "entitlement generation." They want it now, they don't want it to require effort and it's usually a hassle if they don't have a guide from Point A to Point B.

    All you have to do is visit popular online communities and look to see what problems/complaints people have. Let's take World of Warcraft for example.

    If we visit the forums, we can see that "Rate my Transmog/Rate that Transmog", "Dailies suck", "Gearing up/Leveling up Sucks" posts are the most popular.

    Why not make guides tailored to finding transmog gear, how to efficient farm dailies or how to efficient level up kind of like the Zygor guide and other popular leveling guides? In Diablo 3 for example, you'd probably make a pretty decent penny selling "How to level up Paragon efficiently" if you had the means to support a site and a means to get traffic to it.

    Just follow the complaints of any online community and you'll have your product.

    Corey
    Signature

    Skype: Coreygeer319

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