Second job: Second Life's 60,000 users trade $2.72 million monthly

They exist only as three-dimensional representations in a virtual world called Second Life.

The clothes Nafus sells aren't physical either, merely a covering for the virtual bodies people make for themselves in Second Life. That doesn't mean the store, called Pixel Dolls, is not a real business. This is Nafus's full-time job.

"It's not something I'll get fabulously wealthy from, but it's a living," says Nafus, 27, of Seattle.

About 20 million people around the world are spending time in so-called massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

These online spaces are not only adding users, but are growing economies that interact with the real world.

Second Life, for instance, has its own currency, convertible to US dollars at a fluctuating exchange rate, and users can buy the virtual currency with credit cards or sell it for real dollars by cheque or PayPal transfers.

Its 60,000 users trade $US2 million ($2.72 million) monthly, making its economy about the same size as that of South Pacific island nation Tuvalu.

It's small, but large enough to supports about 100 virtual jobs, according to Philip Rosedale, chief executive of Linden Research, which created Second Life. Some design virtual buildings, others create schemes of movement that make virtual bodies dance or perform other complex actions.

Indiana University economist Edward Castronova estimates that real-money trading in virtual worlds is at least $US100 million this year.

Surveying players of the online game Everquest four years ago, Castronova found that 39 per cent would like to quit their jobs and earn a living in the virtual world.

Multiply that by 20 million gamers, and virtual jobs begin to look like one of the more popular professions.

Nafus says part of the reason she began making a business of Second Life was that she was practically spending a full work week on the game anyway.

Designing the clothes is time-consuming and she spends a lot of time creating the "fabric" for the clothes in an image editor before uploading it to Second Life, where she shapes it into three-dimensional forms.

She sells her regular inventory (for instance, linen tie suit, black), for about $US1 each, and limited editions for about $US5.

Selling digital clothes is quite different from selling real clothes. For instance, Nafus doesn't actually have to make each item and the store runs itself, customers just click on clothes images and have copies transferred to their accounts.

Even so, some aspects of a virtual business are similar to the real world. Once, the Second Life computers didn't actually transfer goods to the buyers for three days and to Nafus it was as if the post office had lost all her shipments.

Most virtual jobs are, however, quite different from hers. Second Life is an unusual virtual place in that the residents have great freedom to shape it and make objects in it, creating openings for skilled professionals.

The most popular virtual worlds focus on fighting and have limited scope for creativity. There are plenty of jobs there, but some of these moved overseas pretty almost as soon as they were created, in what is perhaps the fastest example ever of a new job category being outsourced internationally.

"I kill monsters and things to get their items," says Ilin Aurel, 19,of Caracal in Romania.

He makes $US200 monthly, and is employed by Gamersloot.net, based in California, to play online games such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.

The Romanian office is staffed around the clock in three shifts with gamers (known as "gold farmers") who collect gold and other virtual riches, which are then sold on the Gamersloot website to people who don't mind spending real money to enrich their in-game characters.

"There's a future in this job," says Aurel.

The presence of gold farmers in a game is not necessarily popular among people who are playing for fun, and game publishers try to limit it, with little success.

"It's almost impossible to design a game that does not generate real-money trade, a secondary market," says freelance journalist Julian Dibbell, who supported himself trading virtual gold, weapons and "real" estate for a year and has written a book about the phenomenon, to be published next year.

"I don't think it could ever become a dominant sector of the economy," Dibbell says. "But look at the real economy itself - the overwhelming proportion of economic transfers that take place in the world today are pure information transfers."

AP