Looking for a 'Virtual' Gold Mine?

For those who are not familiar with the secondlife online virtual environment, I'd like to take another look at the opportunities for employment and/or real cash revenue that a virtual world can offer. 

First of all, secondlife is not a game.  It is a virtual environment.  It's more like a highly evolved chat program.  It supports both text and voice and uses computer rendered avatars instead of a webcam or other videoconference hardware to place you into a virtual world, full of virtual objects, that you can buy with virtual money.  So far it still sounds like most other games being played on the web.  The difference is that there is no goal to be achieved in secondlife.  There is no competition between players.  In other games earning or gathering your virtual money is part of the challenge, in second life it is not.  In other games allowing other players to purchase virtual money or items with real world cash would be disruptive and unfare.  In secondlife there is no game to generate assets for you to accumulate.  If you want virtual money, then you buy it with real money.  And the best part is, when you have extra virtual money, you can trade it back for real world cash!!  And that's where the magic happens.  Virtual items in secondlife are not 'found' they are created by other users and sold to anyone who is willing to pay for them.  Pretend Items selling for real money, and lots of it.

I tried working with secondlifes building system a few years ago.  I spent a few days building something my wife wanted, which she then put on sale, and I promptly forgot about.  I recently reviewed the sales of the item and was shocked to discover that it had a net earnings of over $500 a year.  To be totally honest, it is not what i would consider a high-volume product.  Needless to say, that my interest in virtual merchandise has been rekindled, and I would welcome anyone with a talent for graphic art, 3D modeling or state machine programming to come to secondlife and see if your talents can earn some additional income.