Julian Dibbell reports that his year-long experiment in virtual item trading from the fantasy world of Ultima Online netted him, in its final month, a tidy profit of $3,917. Over the course of a year, that would be $47,000. The self-imposed challenge here was to beat his best-ever earnings as a writer, but that's not the only benchmark one could apply. Consider the following:
GDP per capita in both China and India: Below $700
Average earnings of short-order cooks: $17,000
US poverty line for a family of 4: $18,400
Average earnings of dancers: $27,000
Average earnings of drug abuse counselors: $32,000
Average earnings of firefighters: $38,000
Average earnings of museum curators: $40,000
Average earnings of secondary school teachers: $46,000
Trader Dibbell: $47,000
Average earnings of insurance salesmen: $54,000
Average earnings of computer programmers: $63,000
Average earnings of economists: $76,000
Average earnings of lawyers: $108,000
Earnings data from BLS.
In short, Play Money has proven conclusively that virtual item trading is a viable occupation.
Congratulations, Julian. [applauds]
Recent Comments