Who's cashing out 1.7 Million USD ?

I totally need to find a sugar momma.

Russians buying SL land at seriously over the odds from their relatives in the US, who decide they don't want to play any more and cash out?

Pep (Money laundering for idiots)

Oops. My bad. Sorry about that.

I call Shenanigans on this report.

I'll believe the data when it can actually be verified.

It's quite convenient- I call tell you how many millions of dollars, I can tell you what the earners did- but oh, I'm not allowed to tell you who or any possible means of backing up the claims.

P.S. Save this article, print it out, and put it in your files. When Linden Lab tries to shield itself from liability on the "It's just game money, we didn't promise you could make real money, blah blah blah," this is one of the articles you pull out.

I know the guy from Mauritius who owns the FantasyLand Estate....he has around 800 sims the last I heard. So even it average 100 USD p/mth profit a mth per sim .....thats 80k x 12 mths ......more or less a Million pa.

Ahnse i think has 500+ sims now, mostly grandfathered....so she is till making a fair whack.

Azures Estate is also a few hundred sims

As for a shoe maker...Stilletto Moody? Are they that popular?


Events i'm really surprised about, must be a company set-up.

I know of some Fashion designers that use to make between 8-10k USD p/mth.....but that was more in 2007. not sure they make that anymore.

lol where do I get some Russian friends? hey while I'm at I need some Cayman friends too

and yes for the record I know that'd raise all sorts of red flags

Robin clarified in the comments to her blog that by cashing out she was talking about LindeX sales only, and not profit:

Thanks for posting that clarification!

Would imagine XCite makes a fair whack!

I won't argue for against the validity of the report, or of the alleged "shenanigans" some people have "called" so far. I will throw out some simple math, though. Others have already talked about the real estate numbers. I'll talk about item sales.

All it takes is around 130 sales per day of a L$5000 item, and you'll take in a million dollars worth of Lindens in a year. That might seem like an outrageous amount of sales for someone who's got a little shop somewhere that sells just a handful of items per day. But imagine if that same shop were put in malls all over the grid. Take an item that sells 1-2 copies per day, put it in a hundred different locations, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to imagine that it would sell 100-200 copies per day.

The simple fact is a million dollars in revenue is not a lot for any small business. That doesn't necessarily mean the business owner gets to keep the full million, though. There are always expenses. I don't know which company that "designs virtual goods including shoes" was specifically named in the report, but I know someone who owns a similar business (might be the same one, might not), and they've got a full time staff that gets paid in real money. I know for a fact that this person makes a very nice high 5-figure income from the business, after expenses. I never asked the owner how much revenue the business does each year, but it's got to be at least in the hundreds of thousands. It wouldn't be much of a leap to take it to a million, if it's not there already.

So why isn't everyone on the grid a millionaire? Same reason everyone in the real world isn't one either. It takes a lot of hard work and a special set of talents to be a successful entrepreneur. Most people can't even run a business at all, let alone start one up from scratch. Know anyone who inherited a profitable business and then proceeded to run it into the ground? It happens all the time.

I've never been fortunate enough to run a million dollar business myself, but I did run one for many years that did around half a million in revenue every year. From that, I got to keep a solid 5-figure income, after all expenses were paid. Even though I had a competent staff, I still had to work 18 hours a day, often seven days a week, to keep the ship on the right course. If you add up all my hours, I was easily the worst paid person in the company, from a per-hour perspective. The same is true of almost every business owner I know.

It's not unusual to make a million dollars. It's just unusual to get to keep a million dollars, and even more unusual to have time to enjoy it, even if you do.

Correct me if I am wrong but cashing out US$1.7 million for a real estate business could actually represent a mere fraction of that amount in actual income if it is rent based income. Can't pay tier in L$ after all can you?

LL tier are paid in USD dollars...a Land baron can collect Tiers or rent from its residents in USD via Paypal or Lindens in game and then converted into USD.
For the very largest Land baron in SL, its quite feasible they could have cashed out 1.7 Mill USD over a year if they enjoyed a high occupancy rate.

Making a 100-150 USD profit per full sim per month is quite normal......and if you have Grandathered Full sims, you can easily make 200 USD profit per mth.
E.g LL Grandfathered Tiers are 195 USD.....a full sim could be cut up as 16 x 4096 sqm parcels and charge 25 USD per month (which is the same that LL Tiers on Mainland). That's 16 x 25 USD =400 USD....less your 195 USD LL Tiers = 205 USD profit for the month

Now Fantasyland Estate did have 850 sims at one point, not sure how many they have now after Open Space Sim fiasco.....however quite a lot of them would be Grandfathered Full sims.