Techdirt points us to the perfect microbusiness opportunity - buying and selling virtual goods from online games.
I remember reading a few months back how an economist had done a study and found that some of these popular online games worlds have economies worth more than some small real world economies! How can an online game have an economy? By virtue of the fact that it takes months or more of game play to progress your game character (or avatar) to the degree that it accumulates worthwhile skills, tools, weapons or other attributes. And some people with more money than time (or sense if you want to be mean about it) are willing to pay for the extra fun to be had playing out the game in those virtual bodies, without having to put in the actual hard 'work' of 'growing' their own characters.
But Techdirt is somewhat sceptical -
I wonder how sustainable this is. In a test, the guy said he made $1,000 in three weeks - though, they don't indicate how much time he put towards the test. Of course, $1,000 in three weeks is not a lot to support a wife and a kid while living in San Francisco. He's also worried that if his account gets hacked into and he loses everything, the police really aren't going to care. Well, with so much going virtual these days, maybe he should buy himself a "virtual" insurance policy. Now, there's a business opportunity.
Indeed! Especially if we created a virtual Ireland and started selling insurance policies there. Now that could be very lucrative ;-)
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