Business presence in Virtual Worlds

It appears to me virtual world inhabitants expect everything to be free. I have yet to see profit from direct sales as a result of a business' existence in a virtual world.

clipped from www.clickz.com Advertising in the New New Media, Part 1 This hype brings to mind the old dot-com days when people tossed around lines like: "Well, we're on the cutting edge and you have to expect a lot of failures." Reading about the Virtual Worlds Conference and thinking about the utter confusion on the faces of many clients these days, it's time to determine the leading-edge approaches worth pursuing and what's pure hype. The 3-D social spaces promise to enable brands to engage customers by providing a place to hang out, to hold online product demonstrations, even to try out virtual products. Sounds cool, right? Yeah, in theory. An ongoing presence in a 24/7 virtual world, such as Second Life, requires time, money, and human resources. Plus, many folks don't take kindly to commercial invaders. And some may object to unsavory content. Finally, these sites tend to have a high churn rate, with a relatively small number of users making up the majority of the visits.