My virtual summer job

By Alexandra Alter

The Wall Street Journal

While his friends scramble for jobs flipping burgers or bagging groceries this summer, 18-year-old Mike Everest will be working as a trader in the fantasy Web world of Entropia Universe, buying and selling virtual animal skins and weapons. His goods exist only online, but his earnings are real. In the past four years, he’s made $35,000.

Everest, of Durango, Colo., is among a new breed of young entrepreneurs seeking their fortune online in imaginary worlds. As the pool of traditional summer jobs shrinks, tech-savvy young gamers are honing their computer skills to capitalize on growing demand for virtual goods and services. Some work as fashion designers, architects and real-estate developers in Second Life, a fantasy world populated by digital representations of real people. These so-called avatars shop in malls, buy property, hang out with friends or sit “home” watching TV, all manipulated by their real-life counterparts with computer key strokes and a mouse.

In the real world, summer jobs are in short supply. Only about a third of teenagers are expected to work this summer, the lowest levels in 60 years, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Summer youth employment has fallen from about 45 percent of teens in 2000, a downward trend made worse this year by the faltering economy.

But money-making opportunities in virtual worlds have grown as such sites go mainstream. Research firm Gartner Media estimates that by 2011, 80 percent of Internet users worldwide will have an avatar, making animated online personas as common as screen names. Such companies as IBM and Adidas have moved into Second Life, helping to drive employment.

Entropia Universe boasts 722,000 players and allows money earned online to be withdrawn from brick-and-mortar banks with an Entropia ATM card. On a typical day, Second Life players spend close to $1.5 million on virtual clothes, jewelry, homes, cars and real estate. The site’s roughly 1.2 million active players use their credit cards to purchase Second Life currency called Lindens, which are pegged to the dollar at about 270 Lindens to $1. Virtual merchants can convert their profits into dollars through a money exchange run by Linden Lab, the company that operates Second Life. Linden Lab pays out proceeds with real-life checks or through PayPal accounts.

“It’s an incredible environment for young entrepreneurs,” says Claudia L’Amoreaux, of Linden Lab. “The ones who are really successful at it are beginning to make that their main work.”

Here are seven young and successful virtual-world entrepreneurs:

Mike Mikula

Age/school: 17, high-school junior

Home: Racine, Wis.

Avatar: Mike Denneny in Teen Second Life

Job: Architect

Firm: M3D Productions

Mike Mikula worked as a busboy at a local diner last summer for $7 an hour. He got laid off in July and started spending 12 hours a day in Teen Second Life. His avatar, like Mikula, has brown hair and wears jeans and Adidas sneakers. At first, his parents were dubious. “They hated it that I was on my computer so much,” he said. He started out doing renovations, using the site’s graphic-design tools to add wood and glass textures to virtual buildings. He graduated to custom-built homes, offices and schools.

A month after losing his diner job, he landed a $2,000 contract to build a virtual version of a real school for Skoolaborate, an Australia-based global education project that draws online participants from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.

“He’s one of the best,” said Josh Geddes, 16, a Teen Second Life player from Middlesbrough, England, who hired Mikula to build an art gallery.

Kristina Koch

Age/school: 17, high-school graduate

Home: Bossier City, La.

Avatar: Sylver Bu in Teen Second Life

Job: Character designer

Firm: KinZart Productions

Kristina Koch joined Teen Second Life two summers ago so she and her boyfriend could play together. Instead, the game turned into a job. She designs and sells virtual fairy wings and wizard’s robes to dress avatars, and markets customized characters.

Koch’s avatar, Sylver Bu, is a cross of an albino tiger and a snow leopard. Using the Second Life design tools, she adds such effects as shadows to avatars. She also designs “furry” avatars – anthropomorphized cat, dog and wolf characters that sell for 1,000 Lindens, or $3.70. Her first week, she made $50. Koch trades land in Second Life for computer scripts that animate her avatars so their jaws move when they speak and their ears wiggle when they listen. This summer she hopes to expand her line into satyrs and dragons.

“It’s everyone’s dream job,” she said. “My brother is completely jealous.”

Ariella Furman

Age/school: 21, college senior at Temple University

Home: Philadelphia

Avatar: Ariella Languish in Second Life

Job: Filmmaker

Ariella Furman used to dress up her avatar as a geisha or an Amazonian warrior. These days, she sticks to business suits. She wants to look professional when she meets with clients.

Furman is a master of machinima, an emerging genre of virtual movie-making. She writes scripts and shoots her scenes with avatar actors who are controlled by other players. She began her work last spring in a documentary filmmaking class. She wanted to capture how people live and socialize in Second Life. She’s since landed work with the media tech companies Popcha! and Electric Sheep Co., doing Second Life videos for such clients as IBM and the World Bank.

Mike Everest

Age/school: 18, high-school graduate

Home: Durango, Colo.

Avatar: Ogulak Da Basher in Entropia Universe

Job: Hunter and trader

Mike Everest got his start in precious metals. He became a miner in the Entropia Universe five years ago, using bombs to uncover iron and gold ore. He learned to transform the ore into weapons accessories, including liquid propellant launching systems. He also hunted animals and sold the skins.

Everest asked his mother, Pat, to join the game and the two played together. Impressed with his trading skills, she gave him money to invest in the site, about $6,000 over three years. He was able to eventually withdraw about $11,000 from his earnings to help pay his older brother’s college tuition. Everest said he’ll continue hunting and selling weapons after he begins San Juan College in New Mexico this fall.

“I don’t ever want to quit the game,” he said. “Probably I’ll have a real job, but this will still be a way to make money.”

Josh Eikenberry

Age/school: 25, college senior, Eastern Michigan University

Home: Ypsilanti, Mich.

Avatar: Lordfly Digeridoo in Second Life

Job: Developer

Firm: Digeridoo Designs

In real life, Josh Eikenberry studies urban and regional planning. In his virtual life, he’s a seasoned land developer. He builds entire Second Life neighborhoods that spread malls, coffee shops and an auditorium over 16 landscaped acres called regions.

His avatar is a dapper professor-type who wears a blazer and flies with the aid of a pork-pie hat topped with a propeller. After buying property in a river valley five years ago, Eikenberry learned how to build from his Second Life neighbor. About a year later, he was building homes and shops.

Two years ago, he quit his job as a Sears appliance salesman to work in Second Life. He’s done work for Microsoft, CNET and Intel. He recently built a theme park for Splenda, the no-calorie sweetener. He has some trouble explaining what he does to his fiancee’s family.

“I’m pretty sure they think I deal drugs,” Eikenberry said. “I tell them it’s like ‘The Matrix,’ but without all the evil machines.”

  Andy Ortman and Michael Ortman

Age/school: 19, college sophomores, Tennessee Tech University,

Home: Cookeville, Tenn.

Avatars: Alpha Zaius and Ming Chen, respectively, in Second Life

Job: Inventors

Firms: AZ Tech and Dynamics

Twin brothers Andy and Michael Ortman went from manufacturing virtual gadgets to creating virtual worlds. The brothers started designing calculators, computer keyboards and other gadgets in Teen Second Life. After mastering the site’s scripting language, they moved on to animated cars, boats and robots. They began selling their gadgets in 2005, when the site started a currency exchange.

This summer, Michael and Andy, both computer engineering majors, will work for Deep Think Labs, a virtual world development company based in Australia. They’ll be programming Open Simulator, which will allow companies and individuals to hold private meetings and training sessions in a virtual environment similar to Second Life.

“They’re both brilliant programmers,” said Adam Frisby, director of Deep Think Labs.

The brothers say they’ll each make $2,000 a month working for Frisby and hope to make an extra $500 to $600 a month running their own Second Life businesses.