subject: Club NeverDie, Entropia, And Virtual Real Estate [print this page] Club NeverDie, Entropia, And Virtual Real Estate
In November 2010 there was a shocking piece of news that went viral on the Internet. It was a bout Club Neverdie mall being sold for $630,000 by its owner Jon Jacobs. For a realtor this number is unrealistically low, given all the involved land and buildings, management, goods, and every thing else. But if you know that this is a virtual mall inside a game you'll might get the shock of your life on how expensive non existing things could be.
The funny thing about the story is that Jon Jacobs got a mortgage on his house back in 2005 to buy this mall for $100,000. Over the next 5 years the mall made him around $200,000 annually. Inside this game, Entropia, which is a virtual reality game, other players stop by this mall to buy virtual items like ammunition, fuel ... etc, and they pay for them with real money. This is how the mall was making the owner that much money per year.
Eventually, Mr. Jacobs decide to sell the mall and follow his passion in the film making industry (or this is what the viral news was saying at the time). And because it was already making money it was easy for him to sell it for $630,000.
That was the end of the story, and the beginning of a new trend in my business called "Virtual Real Estate Investment".
Away from the games and virtual realities, there are virtual properties that is worth the money and you use them every day. Now as we speak you are using a computer to browse the Internet and read this article. The operating system, the Internet browser, and this website are all virtual properties that are worth money. You paid for the operating system, and the browser could be included or is making money for some one else, and this website is a virtual property where some space is rented to advertising agencies like Google and is making money.
If the owners of this website decided to change career they can easily sell this website for hundreds of thousands, if not more. There is a domain name that is getting traffic (comparable to "location" in the real world), and the website is built already, and some space is rented to advertisers and is making money.
