Professor Kaminski is somewhat mistaken. I don't believe that Linden Labs is profitable yet. I am not 100% sure this is true, but if they are, it is only just recently. On his point that he doesn't believe that anyone else is making money, well that isn't entirely true either. Of the top 50 or so fashion designers in SL, I don't believe any of them are making less than $4,000 US Dollars per month. The top designer is making considerably more than that. Now to his credit, a year ago those same people were making barely anything, but the growth, from 150,000 registered accounts to 5,565,749 registered accounts as of the writing of this reply, has yielded incredible growth for their products.
He is correct about Adidas, and the selling of their shoes, but he is wrong about their number. 2 Weeks ago a representative from adidas who spoke at the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference said that they had sold 27,000 pairs of shoes in 1 month. And while that is only several thousand dollars, it is several thousand dollars, with zero raw material costs. This does not factor in the advertising value from the press that their decision to enter SL has garnered.
As for the premiss that it is easy money, there you are right on the mark. It is not. I have only taken 3 days off in the last year. My days are typically 12 hours. I have been in SL for a year. In the first 9 month, I spent close to 5,000 USD on upgrading my computer, buying virtual land, opening several business, purchasing Photoshop CS, and attending the SLCC convention in San Francisco. My sales did not come close to covering my expenses, during that first 9 months. But that wasn't my goal. My goal was to create a development company to help real life companies establish their presence in SL. I have succeeded and I have two very good clients. So good that I have been able to leave my RL job, one that I was earning 75k/year, to run my company. There are also 8 people, 7 of whom I met in world, that I am paying apx $30.00 per hour (US dollars), to do this building/texture/scripting.
All told there are 58 companies, that I am aware of, that are making money, doing what I just described. The top companies, Aimee Weber, The Electric Sheep, River Run Red, and Million of Us, have gone from little start up companies, like mine. To having 5 - 25 full time employees, with an additional 10 - 100 contract workers. They have done this in only 18 months. The Electric Sheep recently announced a deal with CBS worth 7 Million USD. Most of these top companies are only accepting jobs that are greater than $100,000 USD. This is because the demand for such work is so high, that finding the workers to complete the jobs is difficult.
This platform, some believe will be the next internet. It may be another company, who does something similar, but better, it may be Linden Labs, but many believe that virtual worlds are future.
I respect the right of Professor Kaminski to have his opinion, but it has been my experience that virtual worlds offer a bit more opportunity than it might appear on the surface. In SL there are not the typical barriers to entry that one finds in RL companies. There are not the typical economic factors that one needs to deal with in RL, as I mentioned, zero raw material cost. Also one isn't limited by geographic space, as my workers live in the US, France, England, and Belgium. In SL, one will find a handful of people making their livings, a larger group of people making a nice bit of hobby money, and the vast majority of people enjoying themselves at lectures or concerts, going to dance clubs, or exploring their creative sides building wonderful things in the sandboxes. So if the honorable Professor Kaminski would like to take a tour, and see some of the goings on, please have him look me up. I would be pleased to share the virtual world with him, as it is through my eyes.
Thanks,
Ecocandle Riel
Riel Life Productions
CEO
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