Been a while.

I'm finding a new thing lately. Well, not "new", but new to the last few years. Virtual money and real cash. It seems like in more and more venues, virtual money and objects are having real monetary value.

In places like SecondLife and IMVU, people pay real cash for virtual money, that they then spend in the virtual world. And on the same token, they can sell this virtual money for real money. The MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games really started that. Entire companies existed that would sell you money in the game, if you paid them.

More elaborate is things like SecondLife and IMVU, which I've dabbled in. You can create things for these "games", then sell them for the virtual money. If you have enough of this virtual money, you can then sell it for real world dollars. I haven't made enough to turn around and sell it for any significant amount of money, but I can see how it works. And with the economy getting bad and money getting tight, I'm seriously considering trying to pursue this further. What's better than essentially free money, right?