In our continuing effort to provide statistics and tools to empower Second Life’s content creators and producers, we’ve published three new statistical categories under the ‘Commerce’ section of our Community Website. You can view the stats, updated daily, here. Under ‘Population’, we are now showing…the number of Logged-in Residents during the last 7, 14, 30, and 60 days respectively. We have also added two new economic statistics. The first is a monthly profit index of Second Life business owners. These statistics show the number of Residents per month who are making a profit (in U.S. dollars) within a specific dollar amount range. Please note, this understates the true in-world profitability picture because:
– These numbers don’t include profits generated from land-related transactions
– These results understate profits for those business owners who spend part of their proceeds in-world for non-business-related purposes.
– These numbers don’t include the significant proceeds that some businessowners receive from 3rd parties in US$ (paypal, check, etc..)
To put it simply, if you have ever thought, ‘oh, only a few people actually make money in Second Life,’ here is ample evidence to the contrary.
The final new statistical category will show you the distribution of monthly spending by Residents in Second Life per Linden dollar amount range. This should help give business owners some idea of the distribution of wealth in Second Life and offer some guidance for the pricing of goods and services. These particular categories were chosen based in part on requests from you, the Residents. If you have more statistical catgories you would like us to consider publishing, please let us know.
Official Second Life Blog 
What a comprehensive tabulation! Kudo’s LL beancounters…and congrats to all the SL Biz Community! SL RAWKS!
For the “In World Business Owners Monthly Profit” section the highest it goes is $1000-$2000. Shouldn’t it be
oops, bad formatting..
For the “In World Business Owners Monthly Profit� section the highest it goes is $1000-$2000. Shouldn’t it be $1000 and above??
Would it be possible to drop the files by date in a directory? For example
xml-20061001.zip
xls-20061001.zip
xml-20061002.zip
xls-20061002.zip
etc
Instead of having to use a PHP request to fetch a specific date?
Also, I’d like to see each day’s Lindex activity made available in a raw file format along with all of the other statistics that are being published.
Thanks!
Great work.
I agree with Celebrity Trollop about making the Lindex data available in raw file format aswel. It would be very much appreciated.
As for the files by date, why not just have static naming in addition to the files by date? This way, the most current file would always have the same name.
Again, great job Linden.
Corona
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I second what Mathieu asks, and like to add that i think you are probably missing the 2000$ and above.
In regard to your statement: “To put it simply, if you have ever thought, ‘oh, only a few people actually make money in Second Life,’ here is ample evidence to the contrary.”
Au contraire, mon frere…
At this time, of the 234,898-residents who logged in over the past 30-days (September) during that same measurable period only 10,356-residents made a profit. In other words, only 4.4-percent of the residents engaged in businesses in SL, based on your own metric, made a profit. Plus, considering that more than half of all profitable residents made less than US$10 and another quarter made less than US$50 is… err… contrary to your… err… “ample evidence to the contrary.”
Simplest terms: Out of 100 residents during a 30-period, only 4 will turn a profit. Out of those 4 there will be 2 earning less than US10, 1 who will earn between US$10 and US$50, and 1 that will earn more than US$50.
1 out of 100 residents making more than US$50 a month really does show that only a few people make money in Second Life.
Very impressive – keep up the good work!
This is a very handy tool! Thanks for implementing it LL.
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Thanks for the economic statistics page. From the data there, things seem to be going very well for those that are willing to put in sustained effort. Businesses of all sizes are growing month after month. 1 out of 20 making a profit while playing a “game” is actually quite an opportunity. How much turnover is there in these business profit categories?
It would be great if a few of the sections could be expanded to included data beyond the current set. Why are land sales, islands added, and Acres auctioned restricted to a single month and current MTD if you have business profit data back to April? It would be nice to have access to the historical data for all of the sections similar to the business profit table.
Very good work 🙂
A. Fairplay
This constant emphasis on ‘making money’ is what is killing Second Life. Only a very small percentage of people make reasonable money and cover their costs, out of the 600,000+ accounts.
I’ve used Lindex to convert L$>$ once in my year here – to get rid of some excess cash after I’d have to buy some temporarily to buy a larger plot of land. I come here for fun, not to make money.
SL is like a pyramid marketing scheme… a tiny percentage of people at the top (mostly land dealers) make obscene amounts of money whilst they sit back and pay minions peanuts to do all the work, those of us at the bottom work very hard for little to no return.
Unless you stop perpetuating the lie that it is ‘easy’ to make money in SL, then you will never become profitable. People come here hearing the ‘money’ hook, realise it’s not that easy, then quit, possibly without ever experiencing the potential that SL has.
Ever wondered why the most popular places are all casinos and Tringo places (and sex)? Not because they’re the best and most impressive builds in SL, it’s because they are based around the hope of people making money. In the meantime, those of us who build impressive structures get left behind with no visitors, because unless you are selling sex, giving away money, or both… nobody will visit.
So far you’re appealing to people with just one aspect of SL. Every aspect of your marketing is based on that one single thing. I don’t know what your marketing department are doing, but they most certainly don’t understand the concept of ‘balanced’ advertising. Advertise a car as having a great stereo, it’ll appeal to just a few people. Talk about fuel economy, safety equipment, reliability, low insurance, seating/luggage capacity, low maintenance, you’ll suddenly find a whole load of new markets open up to you.
Would you buy a car if the only thing you knew about it was a top notch stereo system? Of course not. So why should people try SL when all you use is ‘money’ to advertise it, when you’ve got the building tools, socialising, roleplay etc that never get touched?
Originally I came here just to see what the fuss was all about, because a lot of people I knew were talking about SL. I didn’t come because of the “get rich quick” advertising. Since then, I have taken the effort for myself to discover the building tools and made some great friends here, now ending up with a quite senior position on a third party SL forum staff because of my enthusiasm for the way SL can be developed, almost in spite of the official advertising and ‘party line’.
Lewis
Why aren’t you including land transactions in business transactions? Why this skewing of the coverage to content-creators once again? Do you feel there is something illegitimate about land sales?
Also, a figure that could tell us how many land owners; of these, how many are 512 and how many are greater; and further estimates on the number of island rentals would let us know whether the world is stabilizing. 19,000 landowners, the figure Philip cited at Picnic 06, is a very low figure; even if it does not count island deed owners, it’s disconcerting that land ownership is growing at so slow a pace when land sales from the auction and the land store are a prime source of income for LL.
>the number of Residents per month who are making a profit (in U.S. dollars) within a specific dollar amount range.
Also, does this number reflect merely “more Lindens coming into the account than spent or going out”, i.e. a Linden dollar analysis only? Or does it reflect profit AFTER subscription costs and tier is paid?
Well said Lewis, although you kind of lost it with the car metaphor.
Unfortunately SL is painting itself into a corner. The market for cool items, clothing, and architectural services, etc. was hot for a period as the initial excitment drove the early adopters to want those products and services. They wanted to stand out, to be more interesting to others in social interactions. The primary motivation was just that, but now that more people have spent time becoming technically skilled, fully aware of the monetary success of those they purchased product from, the prime motivation is changing for many, and not for the better.
SL society is no longer something that people wish to be part of, to gain the respect of, to contribute to – it’s now becoming fragmented and adversarial as more and more people see it as something to take advantage of. They are no longer seek immersion, but instead they remain outside looking in; trying to find a way to suck as many SLers in with their scammy crappy crap. 🙂
Lewis, some of what you say makes sense, but in fact the content creators have the much higher incomes after expenses. Land dealers, outside of the outlier statistic of anshechung.com, do not make the kind of riches you imagine — their costs are too high, and there’s too much competition and land glutting from the Lindens to devalue land.
Werner, I find your picture way too bleak. I see new people come in all the time and start little businesses, grow them, find enormous sources of satisfaction and even joy in them. They might just sell t-shirts or start making furniture or designing for homes — but they get their games paid for at least, and then some. There’s a “long-tail” story here for sure — many part-timers making some cash, some serious; making money where it did not exist before, from their labour and skills and socializing. The idea of “monetarizing your time online” is a rich one, and hardly tapped yet.
I agree that society is fragmented and people are atomized, but it’s more about their political controversies or their class warfare or their lifestyle antagonisms, not about the economy.
The economy is a very uniting and civilizing factor. Everybody has a skin from Chip Midnight or an animation from Cristiano or designer clothing from Aimee Weber or Nephalaine Protagonist or Simone Stern. Everybody knows what a house by Barnesworth Anubis or Ingrid Ingersoll or Bill Stirling or Daimani or Jack Feaver — and everbody has tried Moopf’s skates or has the freebie Calla Lily — there are many unifying images, brands, experiences.
While it may be sad thinking of consumerism as the only glue to make society stick, it’s what’s available. The challenge is to find the same kind of glue and stick out of ideas that civilize people and help them get along with each other and find solutions to their common problems.
First, I’d like to know what you mean, mathematically speaking, when you say ‘profit’. Do you mean revenue? or L$ received minus L$ spent by an avatar? Does tier cost figure in as an expense when calculating revenue? (And if so, how do you handle the case of tier paid by one avatar and revenue received by another?)
Second, in your statistics tallying number of “business owners”, what is your standard for who is considered a business owner? (Land ownership? Sim onwership? Purchase of classified ads? Anyone with items offered for sale? Some threshold volume of L$ received?)
Elex, you say that “In other words, only 4.4-percent of the residents engaged in businesses in SL, based on your own metric, made a profit.” No: 4.4 percent of those who logged in made a profit; but not everyone who logged in was engaged in business. (And my second question above is meant to get at that distinction more precisely.)
Thanks for the start in providing more open information.
As others have said, the non-inclusion of land trading is strange and seemingly ignores a large tract of the SL ‘Business community’
More information is always good to see and the comprehensive caveat notes, are a good example of open statistical information, it is for the user to disseminate further.
I would like to see more information regarding transaction times and useage times, breaking the clock into 2 hour segements over the day, as this is a global world and for any users who wish to focus on a particular global market or on hosting events, having the information available woud help greatly.
I can’t be certain that the user inworld at GMT 19:00 is from Europe, but if there are spikes at certain times of the day, I can at least have some idea when people are around.
In regard to providing information of non-commercial activity, the break down in users online will at least permit non-commercial users to host tours, or whatever they feel appropriate to get the maximum impact in getting peeople interested in the ‘Sights’ of SL. It may not skew the data completely from financial analysis, but it willl at least provide those in the non-commercial sector, the opportunity to identify when they have the best chance to make an impact. How they market and use this information, is of course, as with commercial information, to the individual.
It would be possible to extrapolate from the information available to LL
Wow, I really enjoyed looking a these statistics, and I’m very glad SL is growing when it comes to the economy. I love the 140 some people making >1000 USD a month, I wish I could do that, but Im stuck to around 50-100 😛
The best way to make gas money as a teen, ever.
Werner….
“SL society is no longer something that people wish to be part of, to gain the respect of, to contribute to – it’s now becoming fragmented and adversarial as more and more people see it as something to take advantage of. ”
Exactly what I feel. More and more people are here JUST to make money, and actually don’t care about giving anything back to the community more than they have to, let alone actually participating in it. Further fragmentation of the community is seen every day, and there seems little effort from Linden Lab in bringing it back together and uniting it for the common good of all players. There are some of us who still play this game for the common good – but we’re few and far between, and less every day.
Prokofy…
“The economy is a very uniting and civilizing factor. Everybody has a skin from Chip Midnight or an animation from Cristiano or designer clothing from Aimee Weber or Nephalaine Protagonist or Simone Stern. Everybody knows what a house by Barnesworth Anubis or Ingrid Ingersoll or Bill Stirling or Daimani or Jack Feaver — and everbody has tried Moopf’s skates or has the freebie Calla Lily — there are many unifying images, brands, experiences.”
I haven’t got anything from any of those people. “My world, My imagination” means I make my own things where possible. I buy things in SL in exactly the same way I do in real life – based on whether I like them or not. The brand name does nothing for me – but then again, SL is heavily commercialised and capitalistic, just like real life.
Lewis
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One statistic, unrelated to money, that I’d like to see tracked somewhere is “average number online per day” and/or “peak number online per day”. Even better, I’d like to see a graph showing this over time.
To clarify…right now there are 7,995 people online according to the front page of the Second Life website. Maybe there are 11,000 logged in at 8:00 PM Pacific, but if I look right now I’ll get the impression that there are never more than 7,995 people logged in. I realize this is an incorrect perception: but human behavior suggests that its a common one.
I’ve seen lots of folks post “Ah, there really aren’t more people playing second life: I never see more than 7,000 logged in now, and that’s what I saw six months ago”… completely ignoring the fact that both numbers are anecdotal based on the instant the observer looked at the main page.
I can’t see the statistics today. The “In World Business Owner” part is empty. What happened?
I am so curious, I want to know where I stand in the SL economy ladder.
Tomas Hausdorff>One statistic, unrelated to money, that I’d like to see tracked somewhere is “average number online per day� and/or “peak number online per day�. Even better, I’d like to see a graph showing this over time.
If you plot up the 7, 14, 30, 60 numbers and perform a nonlinear regression on the data, you’ll see the numbers roughly follow the relation # online in interval k ~ k^0.5. You can extrapolate this back to k=1 day to find that roughly 39,000 distinct avatars log in each day.
Peak usage is even easier — check out http://www.cybergate9.net/personal/secondlife/viewslstats.html for an hour-by-hour summary of the population data. I’ve personally been pulling numbers off this page for a few weeks now for my own analysis.
Ricky: Fantastic stuff! Thanks- until today, I didn’t know that there were existing “stats feeds” on the SL site. Apparently, you really *can* learn something new every day… 😉
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What do they mean by profit – In my real life business profit comes after all costs of doing business. How do they know what. a business owners profit is after all cost i.e payroll — for salls people.. Other then land cost LL has no way of knowing what SL’s business owners profits are other then knowing the cash balance in the accounts and what land costs are. This is way to mis leading for me!!!
Added to other reply — revenue is not profit just because money is coming in that dose not mean a business is making money. (I know this all to well Had a good week last week in my RL auto repair shop and this week not so good— i.e. payroll and the mortgage still need to be paid!!!!
It is a welcome fix to inventory for showing unworn items as worn. I have lot of outfits I change often through the day and it is problem when I cannot tell, especially wen I mix an match from more than one outfit. Thank you Lindens. 🙂
Why all the emphasis on making money?
For $6 a month, it’s cheaper amusement than NefFLIX. It’s also one of the few (maybe the only) MUDs where creativity and social experimentation is the point of the “game” instead of amassing hit points and armies.
I’ve learned more about 3D design an animation in a few days in SL than I owld have in WoW … and survived to write about it.
Would it be possible to have a longer monthly comparison on the site? Only having two months to compare data to doesn’t show trends very easily.
Hi,
Do you have any stats for the overall number of registered users/residents from launch date to now?
Cheers
It sure would be helpful to be able to gain access to a history of a sim or group of sim’s traffic reports by date. For example, to track sim progress in our category, i go to search and type in “gorean” … then look at the sims there. I’d love to be able to go back and get a historical view of the traffic to these sims.
Additionally, being able to say more in the message that goes with the sim’s listing in search, would be beneficial.