Second Life Content Creators Cashed Out $60M Last Year, Says Linden CEO - Including Someone Making "Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars" Selling Avatar Feet. Yes, Feet.

Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg let out a couple fascinating facts about the Second Life economy during his SVVR talk yesterday (video below): Content creators cashed out over $60 million last year by selling their Linden Dollars for good old USD. That might not seem like a lot, but there's about 600,000 regular active users in Second Life, so applying the 80-20 rule, it's safe to estimate 120,000 SLers creating and selling SL content on some level, which comes out to an average of $500 per creator (on a very very rough guess). However, there's probably a lot less than that 120K creating content on a highly active, professional basis. And one of them, Altberg says, is doing extremely well:

"There's a woman in New Zealand who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars making hands and feets for avatars and feeds her family by doing that."

Yes, hands and feets. That's how valuable avatar enhancements can be. Notably, Linden Lab also once reported that a maker of Second Life avatar shoes makes close to $1 million a year

Ebbe's full talk after the break, starting at 39 minutes in:

By the way, the pictured foot above is probably not from the Kiwi hand and foot entrepreneur, since it was taken from a 2008 post. I recycled that partly because it's easy to pull archive photos, but far more key, if I posted a newer, more recognizable foot, people might assume its creator is the toe tycoon in question. And if there's anything stranger than someone getting wealthy from avatar feet, it's avatars chasing around an avatar foot kingpin, begging for virtual handouts. (Which does sometimes happen to successful SLers.)

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Comments

[isis eagle]

It's obviously the creator of Slink!

[irihapeti]

i think is totally inappropriate for a CEO to give out that kind of info about a customer, to the public

a relationship between a company and a customer of theirs is actual none of our business. Unless is the customer themselves giving out that info

[zz bottom]

I do must agree, He seems that he still does snot understand that Sl is more then a game and Ppl are being taxed, persecuted and a lot more, if they don't follow legal procedures, therefore any personal mention to a user should be avoided, leave that to the tax employers.
Still i do acknowledge the idea behind his approach, to make sure to all that SL is still alive and allows for some to cash really good money.

[melponeme_k]

I highly doubt that most of the audience at this event has any idea about the creator or product being sold in SL. Altberg is not selling her. He is selling the concept behind what makes selling virtual goods possible.

As far as all these people are concerned, SL is a dinosaur. Even though it is the only VR out there making money. It was a giant joke to all of them until the recent hype cycle that Oculus started. It is a no brainer that they don't want SL users. They are hoping that the FB people out there will suddenly change and want VR.

And creation will be handled more by professional companies rather than individual users. Unless those individuals have enough money to work with professional programs that will make their products be superior.

Isn't it interesting that all new VRs starting with non-modable anything on their newbie avatars? It is all gimped from the start in order to force people to buy. And even then you won't be individual.

[zz bottom]

Well then good luck with that, lol.

[Cube Republic]

There's no such thing as superior software. Nobody can tell the difference between an ankle made in blender and an ankle made in 3DSMax. Honestly, this whole 'SL2 will be elitist, only the chosen ones will be producers', is pure paranoid speculation and has no basis in reality.

The most used software for mesh creation will be blender as it is now. It has the largest user group on the grid, because it's free, and SL content is for the most part produced by amateurs(no matter what their skill level is).

On a side note, the slink business model is based on certain nuances within the aging SL system. E.G. the need to attach separate avatar parts, rather than using a complete mesh body.

[melponeme_k]

"There's no such thing as superior software. Nobody can tell the difference between an ankle made in blender and an ankle made in 3DSMax."

Ok. So all the graphics companies and computer art people have dumped Adobe et. al. for Blender? When did this mass adoption change occur? Wow, I guess all those professional programs are going broke now.

NOT.

They get to charge big prices because their product is clearly superior to free programs written by any ditz who has free time.

And the SL2 plus all other VRs will be built on the Candy Crush model not SL. That is the way of all F2P, which really in reality is not F2P but an illusion filled with hidden fees and onerous advertising junk.

[A.J.]

"I highly doubt that most of the audience at this event has any idea about the creator or product being sold in SL. Altberg is not selling her." -melponeme_k

No, he's not selling her. Ugh. He's cashing her out.

He did a very ignorant and ugly thing.

I don't think it's "okay" that he doesn't understand or care where his paycheck comes from.

Careless. As in "could care less".

[melponeme_k]

No, AJ he didn't cash her out.

He sold the dream she represents that the VR tech biz will peddle. The same kind of dream that keeps people paying for lottery tickets.

Meanwhile the VR biz will be raking in the dough on other people's blood, sweat and tears. Just like Google now makes money on free content provided by you and me, the same way Flickr, instagram, etc makes money on everyone uploading their photo work.

Its all Candy Crush, its all free for you and the profit money for only me tech biz.

[Dartagan Shepherd]

Got to love unverifiable numbers without context. How about the amount content creators have made year over year?

Anyone? I seem to remember Rod Humble pegging this number at least twice as high.

[A.J.]

Sorry Kinggoon, but she has a great product and a fair price and good service.

She just made something that a lot of people wanted.

It's interesting to watch how people come up with all kinds of justifications for stealing other peoples property and privacy.

[Guni]

I am sure the happy days of making hundreds of thousands selling avatar feet are now over for that lady in New Zealand. Everyone knows now that there is big money to be made with the kind of product that creator is selling. Competition will heat up now. Who knows, maybe some guys in China now also read about it. Welcome to the avatar feet and hands gold rush!

[Ajax Manatiso]

(Thinking to himself - Ill be the first to come up with avatar ears -- make fortune -- yeah, that's it).

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Guni, there were (and are) other brands of feet and hands. It's just that, for the most part, "Slink" became the "standard". Sadly that is NOT the case for mesh bodies.

[Skylar Smythe]

I rather like having toes. :)

[Jared Xue]

In any RL country the numbers of any company are public and audit, I really don't understand why all drama about everyone knows what big sellers earn... or are they afraid that people start to know that some of them don't pay any tax over their revenues?

[zz bottom]

That is not a issue for us to deal with.
About the rest, competition is good, to resume a product to a company is just monopoly and that is against the law in most World.

[Cube Republic]

melponeme_k - I was talking with regards to the end product, not the production software, and also within the context of second life.

For a start professional graphic studios use the likes of adobe and autodesk software because they get support and updates. A blender user is at the whim of the community as regards to which updates and features get added.

But like I said , SL is largely served by amateur and hobby creators, not game production studios.

[namegoeshere]

Oh now, another software "preference" issue. I have read a bit about this, so I will comment.

For the tl:dr crowd: The creation software is for the artists and has nothing to do with end users and for a studio, a business, that has other concerns than if you can make good ngons or if you should make quad only.

So, Blender vs. 3DS (or maya or anything) is not about end users, it is about the needs of artists, modelers, animators in the context of a team.

Everything counts, from the plug-in eco-system (bigger budgets bring in programmers who make these plug-ins) and stuff like how the whole thing fits into a pipeline WITH OTHER SOFTWARE. Yeah, some use multiple software solutions. The army of programmers that can aid and work with commercial providers is maybe there in open source, granted the pay was the same. But the pay isn't, the trust level isn't, the incentives and rewards and competition. For instance, money spent on software in the exact same amounts and with same outcome (equal features to what would have been to the now bankrupt closed source company) into open source means buying tools for your competitors! Lower costs to start a studio means more competition when bidding.

Some studio's work on games for large groups, such as AE, to complete the tasks of actually making the game. If you think about this, and look at recent bankruptcies in the whole 3D CG effects studio's for example, you see that even with barrier to entry you have other countries with lower costs etc.

The end users are the last ones to be concerned with when making a game, your file formats etc. are all figured out in cooperation with your programmers. The game ships as one thing, unless you agonize about mod makers being part of the success of the game. Heck, you could have collaborated with other studio and game makers out there and made a open source tool for mod makers. Look at Unity3d and Unreal engine, not to mention cryengine and think of who made them. Programmers. Programmers work to make games, they work modifying 3D software engines. In fact, the very people who work at Unity or whatever could have easily been hired at this new open source group as full time guys. In fact, funny enough, maybe the engine might have ended up being called "Unity" because it was a united effort of them all!!!! No one needs autodesk, blender or a specific structure. It is just how it played out, just what people seem to see a benefit in right now because they have thrived in that business environment. So, duh they want things to keep on going and keep the status quo to some degree. Not in all ways, but if you can become the guy who chooses the change than you can prepare to reap from it. Choas doesn't help, open source brings about more choas, so you go with what has worked.

3DS and maya have tonnes of features, blender may have lots but some of the work on ngons is many years after they where used successfully in other softare. Turbosplines programmers had no incentive to work on making a blender version, when you start a business, or get a loan/VC to start developing beyond a prototype, you need to prove the profit potential to the company over some time period. Break even and all that. It's just math and time costs, not which makes better looking models.